Clichés everywhere in German TV’s ‘Friday Night Jews’ talk show

Tied to a year-long sponsored celebration of 1,700 years of Jewish life in Germany, the state-sponsored program uses humour to familiarise Germans with Jewish culture

“JUDE, JUDE, JUDE einfach nur ein Wort.” The phrase — “Jew, Jew, Jew is just a word” — comes near the start of the opening rap theme song to the German talk show “Freitagnacht Jews” (“Friday Night Jews”), a state-sponsored program aimed at broadening the German public’s understanding of Jews and questions of Jewish identity.

The rap goes on to other punchy lines, such as “Antisemitismus ist in Deutschland Sport” (“Antisemitism is a sport in Germany”), before lapsing into a refrain of “Jude, Jude, Jude” like a kind of techno niggun.

At the start of every episode, viewers join the show’s host, Jewish actor Daniel Donskoy, in the kitchen. He’s busy whipping up a mix of traditional Jewish dishes for his guests, like latkes and borscht, or Moroccan chraime, as taught to him by Shani Leiderman — the owner of the Israeli restaurant Beba in Berlin.

Next, the episode’s guests are introduced. Joining Donskoy thus far at his roundtable have been figures such as Helene Braun, poised to be the youngest and first openly LGBTQIA rabbi in German history, and Sascha Chaimowicz, editor in chief of Zeit-Magazin (the prestigious magazine of the widely-read Zeit newspaper), who has a German-Jewish father and a mother from Trinidad and Tobago.

FULL STORY All clichés are on the table in German TV’s ‘Friday Night Jews’ talk show (JTA/Times of Israel)

Photo: Actor Daniel Donskoy makes a toast with guests Helene Shani Braun, centre, and Laura Cazes on Germany's 'Friday Night Jews.' (Christian Pries/JTA)