Today’s small-screen Jews do not resemble Molly Goldberg’s heimish family. More likely, they are intermarried and trendily cool. Is this good for the Jews?

Andrea Zuckerman was never cool; neither was David Silver. They were the Jewish nerds on the popular teen show Beverly Hills, 90210, shown from 1990 to 2000. She worked on the school newspaper and wore (gasp!) glasses and he was (double gasp!) a freshman with a serious crush on a pretty shiksa. They eventually became part of the cool group, but always remained slightly outside the main circle.

Then there was Willow Rosenberg, the shy computer geek in the unconventional hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which premiered in 1997. She was the awkward sidekick to the titular Buffy (played by the Jewish Sarah Michelle Gellar). It wasn’t until the end of season two that Willow came out of her shell and discovered a penchant for witchcraft.

But that was all before Seth Cohen.

Seth Cohen is a comic book fanatic and has a slight lisp. He knows a lot about sailing and is very smart. In short, he has all the makings of the classic nerd—but somehow he manages to be legitimately cool in an alternative, geek-chic sort of way. Cohen (as his friends call him) is a lead character on The O.C., Fox’s hit teen drama centering on the Cohens’ life in tony Newport Beach, California. Cohen identifies as half Jewish; his father, Sandy, is an ethical, smart, compassionate Jewish lawyer.

Played by the adorable and Jewish Adam Brody, Cohen has a quick wit, cute girlfriend and the funniest lines. A new breed of Jewish character, he embodies the trend of cool Jews emerging in television today. (As evidence, check this out: Cohen sells more T-shirts on www.tvtee.com than his brooding blonde-goy counterpart, Ryan.)

Other cool Jews include Everwood siblings Ephram and Delia Brown, who also consider themselves half-Jewish (their deceased mother was Jewish), as well as Joan of Arcadia’s Grace Polk, an atypical rabbi’s daughter.

Cool can be an elusive trait. Besides being witty and confident, these characters have charisma, charm and an edge. Naturally, they dress fashionably and are good looking.

Today, when youth culture is defining popular culture, how did being Jewish suddenly become trendy? Certainly, both Jewish and non-Jewish celebrities like Madonna, Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller affect television and all other media when they create Jewish-related buzz. Sandler, who mines the adolescent zeitgeist for humor, may have laid the groundwork for Jewish cool with his “Hanukkah Song” and animated film, Eight Crazy Nights. But his earlier Saturday Night Live “Jew, Not a Jew” quiz segment may have also been a defining moment.

Whatever your opinion, you can’t argue that Madonna’s attraction to Kabbala got the word on Jewish mysticism (or red strings, anyway) out to the masses—and to Britney Spears, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. And Stiller, in one film after another (Keeping the Faith, Meet the Parents and its sequel, Meet the Fockers), has been playing the Jewish shlemiel for all its worth—while still getting the (non-Jewish) girl.

But there is another explanation for the unabashed expression of Jewish roots: The generation that lived through the Holocaust no longer runs the studios.

Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein sees assimilation as a factor. “The fact that young Jews in Hollywood feel comfortable creating Jew-y characters isn’t surprising,” he wrote last January. “That’s what happens when you forget to stop scaring us. You let us into your country clubs, gave us your women and encouraged us to run for president. So now that we’re completely the same as white people, we’re trying to re-create a community by shoving our culture down your throats.”

For The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz, however, it just seemed natural to write about what he knew. “So often people write away from that,” he said. “It’s like everyone on the show, [everyone] who’s writing the show, is Jewish, and none of the characters are.”

Writing away from Judaism was the goal of 1950’s-era Jewish studio heads, whose power continued through the mid-1980’s. David Zurawik wrote in The Jews of Prime Time (University Press of New England) about a legendary memo distributed to CBS executives in the 50’s about the kinds of characters Americans didn’t want to see on television: Jews, divorced people, New Yorkers and men with mustaches. NBC and ABC, also run by Jewish men, followed the same guidelines. Today, these policies seem self-hating, but in the context of history, it can be viewed as a post-Holocaust survival mechanism.

Over the years, a few Jewish characters managed to sneak onto the small screen. Most notable was Gertrude Berg, whose showThe Goldbergs (a spinoff of the popular radio show) aired in 1949 and lasted until 1956.

Another prominent Jewish character, Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, did not appear until 15 years later. Mary’s frumpy, sharp-tongued neighbor was played by non-Jewish Valerie Harper.

In the mid-80’s, the moguls sold off their vast empires to major conglomerates and television became a brave new world. By 1987, there were a few shows with interfaith romances, includingthirtysomething.

In 1990, there was Northern Exposure, with the fast-talking, anxious Dr. Joel Fleischman, played by the Jewish Rob Morrow, who couldn’t find a Jewish girl in Cicely, Alaska.

And then came Seinfeld, whose success was eventually large enough to carry many Jewish characters on its coattails, according to Vincent Brook, author of Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of the Jewish Sitcom (Rutgers University Press). Included on that list were Dharma & Greg—another interfaith couple, but atypically, it was the wife, Dharma, who was Jewish.

In the late 1990’s, there was a “huge burst of energy,” said Joyce Antler, professor of Jewish history and culture at Brandeis University. “Jewish characters and themes were really cascading from the screen. That was something that was in many ways quite wonderful,” she added, referring to The Nanny and Will & Grace.

But Antler also noted many stereotypes, the prevalence of intermarriage, the negative treatment of religion in general and the invisibility of many Jewish characters, something she referred to as the crypto-Jewish character.

Seinfeld’s George Costanza is a prime example of the latter. While Jerry Seinfeld’s character was implicitly understood to be Jewish, executives feared making the ensemble Jewish. They insisted George be Italian, even though he was played by a Jew (Jason Alexander), as were his parents (Estelle Harris and Jerry Stiller). “The network asked for name changes and ethnic [changes],” wroteSalon television critic Joyce Milliman in a May 4, 1998, article. “Still,Seinfeld was the most successful Jewish-centric sitcom ever seen in prime time.” Kramer was originally called the more Semitic-sounding “Hoffman.”

Antler sees Seth Cohen and Ephram Brown as “a notch up from the depiction of the Jewish male character as shleppy or wimpy,” she said, but she isn’t particularly impressed with television’s rate of progress, nor is she convinced it will continue. “That’s a positive development,” Antler said, “but I’m wary.”

So is Heeb magazine editor Josh Neuman. He is worried about Jewsploitation. “It’s a kind of a fetishization of the Jew,” he told Stein in an interview. “In the Middle American mind, Jews are beloved people. They’re a special kind of Christian. They’re like babies. They haven’t yet matured into full-fledged humans. I don’t think it’sMeet the Fockers today, Kristallnacht tomorrow. But I don’t think [the] Kabbala [craze] is a good thing.”

Schwartz hopes Seth Cohen will be a role model for young Jews. “I remember when I was a kid I was always looking for someone like that, that was kind of cool, to kind of get behind,” he said.

The O.C. and other shows integrate Judaism as a substantive aspect of their characters.

“We always enjoy throwing out our share of Yiddish terms,” said Rina Mimoun, Everwood’s executive producer and writer. “But we explore the religion itself.”

In the show, Andy Brown, a hotshot brain surgeon, has moved his family from New York to a small Colorado town to take stock of his life after his wife’s death. The kids were raised Jewish by their mother and, Mimoun said, “Delia, as a way of staying close to her mother, has chosen Judaism.”

This season, Delia showed her usual spunk as well as pride in her Jewishness by choosing to play a Maccabee in a Christmas play. An early episode showed Ephram saying Kaddish for his mother.

Joan of Arcadia featured an episode in which 16-year-old Grace finally gives in to her father’s pleadings to have a bat mitzva. Grace is rebellious, contrary and politically outspoken. But her questioning nature, she learns, is in line with the religion she has been rejecting until now. When she is handed the Torah, “she’s not being handed a bunch of answers,” said consulting producer Ellie Herman, who wrote the episode. “She’s being handed all the questions of life.” In another ground-breaking episode, death is explored through a Jewish perspective.

It’s the kind of Judaism we’re not used to seeing on television.

Larry David, Max Mutchnick, David Kohan and Mitchell Hurwitz also bring an edgier brand of cool geared to 20- and 30-somethings.

Mutchnick and Kohan are responsible for the hit sitcom Will & Grace, whose characters are funny as well as morally weak. Neurotic and beautiful Grace Adler was always Jewish, but Debra Messing has said she encouraged the writers to give her character more Jewish references—from Camp Ramah to Jewish prayers.

Hurwitz’s dysfunctional Jewish family on Arrested Development is undeniably hip and in tune with angst-ridden Jewish cool. Having just finished its second season, the show has yet to find a solid audience, but it picked up seven Emmys, including one for outstanding comedy. This season included a story line in which the father, George Bluth Sr., played by the Jewish Jeffrey Tambor (see photo, page 3), returns to Judaism while in jail under the influence of a prison rabbi.

No one creates conflict more offensively than Larry David, cocreator of Seinfeld. His current show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, a largely improvised HBO sitcom going into its fifth season, displays his boundless cynicism, irreverence and ethically challenged character. This is perfectly showcased in an episode titled “The Survivor,” in which a Holocaust survivor and Colby Donaldson, winner of CBS’s reality show Survivor, argue over who suffered more to earn their respective titles.

Self-deprecating wit, like Cohen’s on The O.C., is less a rarity today, but the humor now has Jewish content. Cohen expresses nothing short of zeal for a holiday he created—Chrismukkah—so he can celebrate the religions of both his parents.

“I love that we do it and have fun with it,” said actor Adam Brody. “We have fun with the stereotype.”

But while the show doesn’t overtly tackle religious themes, it has its more meaningful Jewish moments, as in “The Nana Episode,” in which Seth’s paternal grandmother comes to visit from Brooklyn for Passover. There is tension between Nana and her son, Sandy, played by Peter Gallagher. She has never gotten used to the fact that his wife is not Jewish and that he moved so far away from her. She also has come to tell him that she has cancer. The episode ends with the whole family gathered for the Seder and reading from the Haggada.

Schwartz said the Judaism on the show is “not going to be a Star of David burning on the Cohens’ front lawn or anything inflammatory like that. I think we just want to sort of weave [Judaism] into the background and have it be part of [the characters’] personal culture.”

Of course, one can’t help noticing that almost all the families on these shows are interfaith.

“It’s the same old patterns,” Antler said. “Where Jews are depicted, it’s always stereotypically. In Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, he’s married to a non-Jewish blonde. The Jewish wife on the show, the best friend…she’s sort of frumpy and frizzy and a loudmouth.” (David’s real-life wife is Jewish.)

The defense echoed by so many show creators comes back to the fact that differences make for good stories.

Today’s small-screen Jews do not resemble Molly Goldberg’s heimish family. More likely, they are intermarried and trendily cool. Is this good for the Jews?

“Out of that comes conflict and opposites,” said Fran Drescher, creator and star of The Nanny. “That’s what makes comedy really successful. Lucy and Ricky got so much humor out of the fact that he was Cuban and she was Irish.” On her new show, Living With Fran, Drescher will again be playing a Jewish woman with a non-Jewish love interest.

You can also count on Jewish jokes of a coarse nature, like the one in Arrested Development made at the expense of the Jewish Defense League. Daughter Lindsay Bluth remarks on her work with the fictional anti-circumcision organization H.O.O.P. (Hands Off Our Penises). “I’ve got the JDL on my ass,” she says.

Such rough humor may cause complaint by some. However, Olivia Cohen-Cutler, a member of The Morningstar Commission, which works to increase and expand diverse images of Jewish women in media, sees the picture differently.

“If there is any shared humanity in a character that people can relate to, then it’s a positive,” she said. “The fact is that television exists to entertain.”

Cohen-Cutler, who is also the senior vice president of broadcast standards at ABC, acknowledges that “we absolutely should be doing more and having more of the depths and the breadth of Jews.”

Given that Jews are a minority population, one could argue that they are overrepresented on television. “There are 13 million Jews in the world,” Mimoun said. “If we got all the Jews in the entire world to watch our show, that’s not even a good Nielsen rating.”

And since Jewish characters are so popular with non-Jewish fans, we may see more of them in the new fall season. Mimoun sees good reason for optimism. “I think television always represents what society is willing to take,” she said. “I always think that television reflects where society is, more than films, more than anything.

“You get a sense of what this country is willing to deal with at this time.”

Keren Engelberg is the calendar editor at The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles and a freelance writer covering lifestyle, culture and arts and entertainment.