Why is this TV show episode different from all others?

Niles: Sylvia has invited us over for the Jewish holiday.

Maxwell: Now, is this the holiday Ms Fine said you can’t eat all day then stuff yourself or the one where you light candles then stuff yourself or the one where you build a straw hut then stuff yourself?

Niles: I believe it’s the one where you hide crackers from small children then stuff yourself.

Maxwell: Ah, Passover

                             (The Nanny, season 4, episode 21, ‘Passed Over’, 1997)

When Pesach comes around for me, I think about those Easter long weekends growing up when the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible, would play on television.

At that time, it was a thrill to see a depiction of Jewish stories on regular television, even if we didn’t know that it was filtered through a rather Christian lens. There was something thrilling about being able to watch Moses battle Pharoah, and twice in one day to boot (who could forget Charleston Heston’s turn in the epic, Ten Commandments?).

So when it comes time for Pesach, I have some nostalgia for those Good Fridays spent on the couch seeing a version of my own story told back to me, and I like to revisit Pesach films and TV episodes. And I think about how far we’ve come in the decades since my childhood.

It can be difficult to remember that these kinds of depictions of Jews and Judaism were incredibly rare on television before the 1990s. Since the iconic 1950s series, The Goldbergs, which showed a Jewish immigrant family in New York city, Jewish stories and rituals have rarely been depicted.