Jewish entertainment with a discount now!
Feeling deprived of stories about 'us' on TV? How about 2,500 hours of Jewish content from across the globe?
In America, Neil Friedman is the man to know if you want to see a Jewish film. Not that he’s schlepping a suitcase filled with DVDs of Max Nosseck’s Overture to Glory (Yiddish, 1940). Hardly. Neil is the founder of distribution company Menemsha Films, which, since 2020, has become the go-to for Jewish-themed cinema.
You know, the films that pop up at festivals and show two tantalising episodes before disappearing. With more than 175 Jewish film festivals in the US relying on him, Neil knows what audiences want, but when Netflix shifted its focus to original productions, he realised journeys for independent Jewish cinema would be short. “That’s when we knew we had to take control of our own destiny,” says Neil, who previously worked at New Line Cinema, Columbia Pictures and William Morris.
So, in March 2020, as the world locked down, ChaiFlicks launched with 40 titles from Menemsha’s library. There was time to binge Wartime Girls, a Polish drama about three Jewish women coming of age during the Second World War.
Neil and his team had a clear business plan and a mission: to create the world’s first subscription streaming service entirely dedicated to Jewish culture, storytelling, and identity from across the globe. What Neil calls “one-stop shopping” for global Jewish storytelling.
Now, ChaiFlicks hosts more than 2,500 hours of Jewish content: features, series, docs, shorts, food shows, concerts and lectures.
This matters to UK Jewry, where the challish for representation was sated by EastEnders’ Dr Legg or Ridley Road – both deeply appreciated, but not exactly a library. Hard as it is to believe, while we had Friday Night Dinner without chopped liver – “Shalom Jackie” – other countries have feasted. Luckily ChaiFlicks curates the ones we’ve missed. Argentina’s award-winning comedy series Family Therapy, about divorcing psychotherapists who also work together is one and, from America, Mickey Rapkin’s The Anne Frank Gift Shop is another. Shortlisted for Best Live Action Short at 2024’s Academy Awards, the film imagines a meeting between two Anne Frank House reps and the New York design firm hired to help them renovate the gift shop.
It’s required viewing –and just one of many titles from Hungary, India, Ethiopia, Israel and far beyond. “Jews are wanderers and every region has a different story with too many sidelined,” says Neil, citing Sephardi, Mizrahi and LGBTQ+ voices. ChaiFlicks is curating what’s been overlooked – like its first unscripted original, Schmoozing & Cruising: Tripping on Kosher Americana, in which CW, a self-professed “kind-of-kepping Jew” from the Midwest, explores the surprising diversity of kosher food across the US.
And ChaiFlicks isn’t doing it alone.
Its partnership with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research now brings subscribers access to one of the world’s richest collections of East European Jewish culture. Fancy some Yiddish theatre? A klezmer dance tutorial? They’re there alongside and exclusively with season 3 of The New Black (Shababnikim), the Israeli comedy about yeshiva students navigating faith, rebellion and swagger with a side of heresy. “ChaiFlicks is more than the Jewish Netflix,” says Neil. “We care about the content because it’s our culture.”
Visit http://chaiflicks.com to sign up with the JN promotional code 2LIFE
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