At the 5783 Alma Awards, our yearly celebration of the best of the best of Jewish pop culture, “New Girl” took home the award for Most Binged Jewish Show. But let’s face it, this isn’t specific to any one year — the Jewish community will probably be binge-watching the seven season roommate comedy in perpetuity.
There has simply never been a Jewish character on TV like Schmidt from “New Girl,” nor will there likely ever be again.“His Jewishness, from the start of the show, is always prideful,” Mandy Berman wrote in Hey Alma back in 2018. “He peppers his language with Yiddish, posts a heavily edited video of himself on his JDate profile and proclaims an unabashed love for kosher yogurt. Any time there’s a less-than-complimentary allusion towards his Jewishness, he’s quick to call it out.”
The sheer volume of Jewish moments in “New Girl,” thanks to Schmidt, is simply unprecedented for a mainstream show. Of course, there are the more iconic instances like the line “Judaism, son!” or the Star of David-shaped black-and-white from Nick and Schmidt’s “Gave me cookie, Got you cookie” exchange. My personal favorite is when the gang gets stuck in the desert in the episode “See Ya,” leading to this exchange:
Winston: There’s not much sunlight left.
Nick: What are you afraid of, the dark?
Winston: No, I’m not afraid of the dark. Worried about Schmidt. He’s a Jew in the desert. I don’t want him to wander.
But there’s still so, so much more than that.
Normally, I would take it upon myself to list the majority of these instances from “New Girl,” like we have on Hey Alma for shows like “Big Mouth” or “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” But as it turns out, I don’t have to. YouTube user Ron Haim has done it for me. (Thanks, Ron!) So without further ado, please enjoy this video which essentially captures every time Schmidt talked about being Jewish or someone talked about Schmidt being Jewish on “New Girl.”
L’chaim, to Schmidt!