December is a time of embracing the magic of festive cheer. It’s when we appreciate the warm company of our loved ones the most, and when we allow ourselves to wear comfy sweaters and drink hot cocoa 24/7. It’s also the time when we crash out the hardest from overloading on Hanukkah and Christmas commercialism, spending way too much time with family, overheating in winter clothes and eating a lot of oil and sugar.
That’s OK. Embrace the crash out. Find 15 minutes for yourself this season. And allow us to help you self-soothe with yet another end-of-year list.
In the Jewish pop culture sphere, 2025 was a year of pretty explicit Jewishness. Judaism, its prayers and its rituals were meaningfully featured on multiple TV shows and movies. Performers explored their own Jewishness onscreen for millions of viewers. New and old Jewish stars showed up on fashion’s most prestigious runways and on repeat in our earbuds.
Which of course means it was unbelievably difficult to whittle down all those Jewish pop culture moments into a finite list. Some honorable mentions include Lena Dunham’s major return to TV in “Too Much,” Benny Blanco and Selena Gomez’ wedding, Pari and Tina’s very Jewish meet-cute on “Love on the Spectrum,” the tribute to Gilda Radner at SNL50 and Jack Schlossberg‘s rise in the public spotlight.
Here are our picks for the top 10 Jewish pop culture moments of 2025:
10. “Nobody Wants This” season two
For better or worse (we say worse), “Nobody Wants This” returned for season two on Netflix this fall. How did Rabbi Noah and Joanne make their interfaith relationship work? Well, somehow, “Nobody Wants This” largely sidestepped this question in favor of rehashing the ol’ will-she-won’t-she conversion routine. But “Nobody Wants This” is still one of the most popular shows on Netflix. Season two featured Jewish rituals like a brit bat, a Purim party and the beginning stages of conversion, and while not all of it was 100% accurate, that still is a big deal, securing “Nobody Wants This” season two the 10th spot on this list.
9. The return of Haim
At the beginning of 2025, it had been roughly five years since extremely Jewish sister band Haim released a new album. The sisters were seemingly focused elsewhere — Alana on her burgeoning film career, Este on composing for movies and film and Danielle on… hanging out with Taylor Swift, mostly?
But in extremely Haim fashion, all three sisters reactivated their Instagram accounts around Valentine’s Day to 1) announce Este’s engagement and 2) begin teasing their fourth album!! “i quit” finally arrived in June and contained so many bops. It was a triumphant return for the Jewish sisters that was well, well worth the wait.
8. Both lead actor winners at the Oscars were Jewish
When Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison won big at the 97th Academy Awards this year, they made Jewish history. For the first time since 1987, both the Oscar for Best Actor and Best Actress were won by Jewish performers. This marks the third time this has happened at the Oscars — in 1987 Paul Newman and Marlee Matlin both won, while Paul Muni and Luise Rainer took home the awards in 1937.
“Oh, wow, I didn’t know that,” Mikey responded later when The Hollywood Reporter asked if she was aware of the Jewish significance of her win. “I think that the character that Adrien played in his film is so special, and the film tells such an important story that needed to be told, so I’m really happy for him, and I think that the win was so well deserved.”
Adrien snagged the Oscar, his second, for playing Holocaust survivor László Tóth in “The Brutalist,” while Mikey secured her first Academy Award for her portrayal of Russian-American sex worker Anora in “Anora.”
7. “Long Story Short”
Where “Nobody Wants This” season two fumbled, “Long Story Short” season one soared. Raphael Bob-Wakberg’s return to TV after “BoJack Horseman” is a tender, hilarious portrait of Jewish-American life. Over the course of decades — depicted in a non-linear fashion over 10 episodes — viewers were acquainted with the Schwooper family. They fight, grieve, celebrate and cooperatively overlap (with plenty of Yiddish thrown in), often over the idea of how to be Jewish, despite mother Naomi’s insistence in “a progressive egalitarian Conservative Judaism with an emphasis on ritual and community over faith and blind practice — that’s literally the only way it makes sense!”
“‘Long Story Short’’s sense of humor is heightened and cartoony in places,” Reuben Baron wrote for Hey Alma when the show debuted in August. “But its Jewish family dynamic feels very real: the memories, the in-jokes, the traumas, all the love and hate and joy and frustration.”
6. The Anora Menorah
When SNL star Sarah Sherman and writer Dan Bulla were writing a Hanukkah sketch in late 2024, fellow writer Jake Nordwind suggested it open with “Hey, do you guys like my ‘Anora’ Menorah?” And thus a legend was born.
Though the sketch was cut before it went to air, the SNL props department still made the Anora Menorah and, Baruch Hashem, Sarah Sherman brought it to an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” in January 2025. To say the “Anora” Menorah is magnificent is a understatement. It is glorious. It’s a massive hanukkiah, appearing to measure about a foot-and-a-half long and utilizing full-size taper candles, in the form of a red bikini-clad Mikey Madison from “Anora.”
Though the “Anora” Menorah never made it on SNL, it still lives in the show’s offices in 30 Rock. And when Mikey Madison hosted “Saturday Night Live,” she posed with it!
5. Zoë Kravitz calls herself a Black Jewish Queen on “The Studio”
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s “The Studio” was one of the best shows of the year. It lampooned the entertainment industry from the inside out with acerbic hilarity. Who could forget the scene where Matt (Rogen) et al attempt to cast the Kool Aid movie? But our personal favorite moment from “The Studio” was when Zoë Kravitz (as herself) accidentally gets too high at CinemaCon and, in encouraging Matt, says, “You can do it. You’re a Black Jewish queen. You’re Zoë Kravitz.”
Yes, that line was likely written for Zoë. Yes, she is playing a character version of herself, that character is really high in this episode and also technically talking to someone else. But even so, Zoë Kravitz is right and she should say it!
4. Dr. Robby says the Shema on “The Pitt”
What “The Studio” is to TV comedy in 2025, “The Pitt” is to TV drama. The show from “ER” veterans R. Scott Gemmill, John Wells and Noah Wyle is a massively compelling medical drama, following the doctors and nurses at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center (“The Pitt”) during one hellish 15-hour shift. What makes the show work so well is its thoroughly fleshed out characters, including Wyle’s senior attending physician Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch.
Throughout the show, viewers learn that Dr. Robby is a non-practicing Jew, based upon Wyle’s own Russian Jewish ancestry. But in the penultimate episode, after Robby cannot save his surrogate son’s girlfriend, he has a massive panic attack. Crouching on the floor of a makeshift morgue, he repeats the Shema and clutches a Star of David necklace, which he’d been wearing under his scrubs the whole time. “In a moment of crisis, Robby turns to the most important prayer in all Jewish liturgy,” I wrote at the time. “In exchange for his own powerlessness, he repeats the Hebrew words which declare God’s singularity, and evidently finds comfort in that.”
3. Nathan Fielder all but calling Paramount+ Nazis in “The Rehearsal” season two
If “The Rehearsal” season two taught us anything, it’s that you should never mess with the Holocaust on Nathan Fielder’s watch. As part of the Canadian Jewish comedian’s quest for greater aviation safety this past season — albeit a very convoluted part — Nathan learns that Paramount+ Germany has removed from their platform an episode of his prior show “Nathan For You” that dealt with Holocaust education. When he reaches out to them via email, they reveal that the episode was removed due to “sensitivities” following the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
“And so, Nathan Fielder sets about to do his own rehearsal: confronting executives at Paramount+ Germany in-person,” I summarized when the episode debuted. “He builds a set of what he imagines the Paramount+ Germany offices look like: a stark, wooden hall with huge blue banners featuring the Paramount logo, a map with flags of other streamers representing enemy war plans, goose-stepping Paramount+ soldiers and, inexplicably, a painting of a giant, rotund Germanic woman holding an apple.”
It’s a jaw-droppingly funny and memorable vignette in a show filled to the brim with relentless, shocking humor, and a reminder that Nathan Fielder is exactly as masterful as we think he is.
2. Kai Schreiber’s runway debut
The nepo baby discourse may rage on, but model Kai Schreiber is proof that people still really care about the children of celebrities. The biggest story out of Paris Fashion Week this past spring was the runway debut of Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber’s daughter during the Valentino show. The trans Jewish teen donned a leopard-print mini dress, blue-tinted sunglasses, tights and white pumps, both with floral designs. Frankly, she looked fabulous and walked with a confidence beyond her years, which is likely why she was also booked and busy during New York Fashion Week come the fall. It’ll almost certainly be a treat to see everything Kai does in the future.
And, without further ado, the #1 Jewish pop culture moment of 2025:
1. Robby Hoffman
2025 belonged to Robby Hoffman. The queer ex-Hasidic Jewish comedian has been working hard on the comedy scene for years, but finally broke out into the mainstream thanks to her Emmy-nominated turn as Randi on “Hacks.” Randi, who is also gay and ex-Hasidic, stole every scene she was in because of her weirdness and radical honesty. For anyone that knows Robby, that will sound familiar. “Between her piercing, no-holds-barred stand-up sets and various podcasts and interviews, it’s clear that there is little difference between her onstage and off-stage personas; everywhere she goes, Robby Hoffman is simply very Jewish, very gay and very honest,” I wrote earlier this year. “Why mess with success?”
2025 was also a boon for her personal life. Robby and girlfriend (and star in her own right) Gabby Windey were married once in a secret wedding in Las Vegas in January and again in a legal ceremony in Los Angeles in the spring. Their nuptials solidified their status as a power couple twice over, with the news of the first ceremony coming just after Gabby won season three of “The Traitors.” (Thanks in part, probably, to a Shema prayer card Robby gave to Gabby to take with her to Scotland.)
All of that in 2025, combined with Robby’s forthcoming Netflix stand-up special “Wake Up” and HBO comedy series, was the perfect reminder that it’s Robby Hoffman’s world, we’re all just living in it.
