ChaiFlicks celebrates third anniversary streaming Jewish and Israeli films, TV series and documentaries
With all of the talk going down about the prosthetic nose that Bradley Cooper wore while playing legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein in the forthcoming “Maestro” and Helen Mirren’s star turn as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in “Golda” (which opened Friday), it got me to thinking about what other films centered on famous Jews might be out there. I figured it had to be pretty minimal. Jews, after all, are estimated to comprise a population of a mere 18 million of the 8 billion people in the world, or a scant 0.2 percent. Of the U.S. population, only 2.4 percent identify as Jewish. So I mean, how many Jewish-themed projects could there be?
It turns out the answer is a lot more than I thought.
How do I know this? Because while surfing around, I discovered ChaiFlicks, which in August celebrated its third anniversary as a niche streaming service bringing viewers a curated menu of Jewish-themed and Israeli TV shows, films and documentaries. It launched right around the same time as Peacock and what was then called HBO Max (now just plain Max), so you may have missed it. It was co-founded by Neil Friedman – president of the U.S.-based Jewish and Israeli film art house distributor Menemsha Films – along with Heidi Bogin Oshin and Bill Weiner.
ChaiFlicks now boasts more than 1,800 hours of content and is available in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, curating the highest-quality Jewish programming from all over the world – with plans soon to expand further into Europe and Latin America and co-produce its own content. A subscription is $9.99 monthly, with a discounted annual price of $57.60 currently available for 12 months.
Friedman has been in the film acquisition and distribution game since founding Menemsha in 1998, which since 2012 has been exclusively handling Jewish and Israeli films – distributing some 250 or so movies over the course of that decade-plus. Among the regular customers for Menemsha product was Netflix. But it was the rejection of a film by that heavyweight streamer – “1945,” a post-Holocaust story set in Hungary – that helped spur Friedman and his partners to launch ChaiFlicks.
“This is about 2018, 2019,” Friedman recalls. “It happened that ‘1945’ was among the best, if not the best, film we’d ever handled. I said that if we can’t have 1945 on an SVOD (subscription video on demand) with Netflix, then it’s time for Menemsha to start its own SVOD company. And that’s the origin of ChaiFlicks.”
It would be August of 2020 before the service was officially launched. But prior to that, Friedman and his partners developed some business plans in the pre-pandemic period. As soon as the pandemic kicked in full force in March of 2020, the streaming service had a beta version launch with 40 of the Menemsha titles. “After the pandemic hit, we thought, ‘Well,. this is the time to do it’,” he remembers. “Ever since that moment, we’ve been acquiring third party programs, series, documentaries, features, theatre works, cooking shows, shorts, everything you can think of with Jewish and Israeli themes.”
The first series ChaiFlicks acquired was an Israeli comedy called “The New Black” (or “Shababnikim” in Hebrew) that’s proven to consistently be the most popular title on the service. It follows the exploits of four rebellious students at a prestigious Orthodox Yeshiva in Jerusalem and is variously described as “‘Entourage’ in a Yeshiva.” It’s aired two seasons so far, with a third season (or “series” in Israeli parlance) coming early in 2024. “We were very lucky,” Friedman asserts. “A lot of the entertainment world on the distribution and acquisition side is about luck. ‘The New Black’ was a hit from the very beginning. And so we sort of got out of the gate very well.”
Another show that’s proven popular on the streamer is “The Lesson,” an Israeli socio-political drama that premiered on ChaiFlicks in June and was named Best Drama Series at the Israeli Television Academy Awards earlier this year. The service is now focused on launching a new high-profile series every month. In September, it will be “The Elected,” a docuseries that looks at how women are breaking barriers to enter Israel’s Parliament and the history of women in the Knesset. In October, the focus will be on “Normal,” a semi-autobiographical series from Leore Dayan, son of the renowned Israeli actor and writer Assi Dayan and grandson of the legendary Israeli military leader and politician Moshe Dayan. “Normal” follows Noam, a 24-year-old columnist struggling to establish himself as a writer but winds up in a psych ward.
Friedman believes he and his partners launched ChaiFlicks at precisely the right time, given the perceived leap in quality that’s taken place the past several years with original production in Israel. “Pound for pound, the Israeli TV business is the best in the world in my opinion,” he says. “And they aren’t sticking just to Jewish content for the Israeli audience. They’re producing non-Jewish, non-Israeli programming worldwide now.”
A quick glance at the ChaiFlicks offerings also shows programs like the 2017 documentary “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” and the 2019 documentary “Golda” (not to be confused with the Mirren film) that features a lengthy interview with the real-life Meir filmed just prior to her death in December 1978. There are also dozens of options categorized under everything from “Inside the Hassidic World” to “Comedy” to “Popular Movies” to “New York Times Picks” to “Based On a True Story” to “Sports.”
“We offer a wide range,” Friedman stresses, “and it’s going to get wider. In terms of our philosophy, it would be silly if we went after a Christian audience out of the gate. We’re going after our core audience, which is Jewish, and then the quality of our programming will get word out to the others – and I think others have already become subscribers as well. I don’t think just because it’s a Jewish theme that it’s limited to a Jewish audience. I think you see universal themes here in our programming.”
Friedman was also asked to weigh in on the recent controversy surrounding the hiring of gentiles to play Jewish roles in high-profile features including “Maestro” and “Golda” – the so-called “Jewface” debate.
“If I’m acquiring a French or German or American show or film, I’m sure there are going to be gentile people playing Jewish roles,” he says. “Do I have a problem with that? I don’t have a problem with that. I mean, it’s all about acting. Once you start doing that, then the whole world is segmented and everybody hates each other. We’re all the same. That’s the thing I like about what we do. I find the real Jewish soul is tikkun olam – making the world better. And that’s really behind my love of what I’m doing.”
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