Amazon’s ‘Hunters’ Is Super Jewish and Worth Your Time

There’s nothing quite like猎人on TV right now.The Amazon Prime节目stars Al Pacino as the犹太head of a team of Nazi hunters in20世纪70年代纽约— and it is a lot.

猎人tells the story of Jonah Heidelbaum (played by a very Jewish, very handsome, and very brooding Logan Lerman).At 19, Jonah lives alone with his南亚自由贸易区(the Hebrew word for grandmother) Ruth, played by Jeannie Berlin.(Berlin, Elaine May’s daughter, is charming and raspy-voiced as Jonah’s南亚自由贸易区。) It’s 1977 New York, and Jonah seems to face anti-Semitism on a daily basis.On the day his grandmother is killed by a supposed burglar, he is beaten up during a marijuana sale gone wrong — his assaulter pummeling him with anti-Semitic expletives and fists.

At his grandmother’s shiva, Jonah is visited by Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino!), who introduces himself as a friend of his grandmother — turns out, the two survived Auschwitz together.Jonah later finds out that his safta’s killer was no burglar — but an actual Nazi, part of a group of Hitler-loving German ex-pats and American ideologists trying to start a third Reich in the U.S.

He also discovers that his safta was part of an eclectic Nazi-hunting group, headed by Offerman, who is a sort of rabbi preaching from the pulpit of vengeance.At one point, Offerman tells Jonah, “the Talmud is wrong — living well is not the best revenge.Do you know what the best revenge is?Revenge,” misattributing a quote of a 17th-century British priest.

Jonah joins Offerman’s group, the eponymous Hunters.But his involvement with Nazi-hunting comes at a price, as Jonah buries more people and pushes away those he loves.Still, like biblical Jonah could not escape the prophecy,猎人‘ Jonah can’t seem to be able to escape his apparent destiny to hunt Nazis.And just like the biblical Job, tragedies keep falling upon him one after the other.And,猎人doesn’t seem to condone or celebrate revenge.While the “eye for an eye” mentality is prevalent among its protagonists, the human price they pay for their obsession with revenge is hard to justify.Rather than being shown as glamorous, the killing of Nazis is often clumsy and unsatisfying.

The exploits of the Hunters team, and the Nazis, are depicted in brutal detail.There is a gory flashback scene in which Nazi officers play a game of deadly human chess human prisoners at a concentration camp.There is another graphic scene in which a suspected Nazi is tortured by being fed — there’s no elegant way to put it — horse dung.And this is just the tip of the blood and gore iceberg.

But on the other side of the coin (or perhaps the reichsmark?),猎人is really, really silly.There’s a video in which Josh Radnor, who plays a has-been actor called Lonnie Bruce, explains in breaking the fourth wall PSA how to spot a Nazi.There’s an absurd technicolor musical montage encouraging Nazis to immigrate to Huntsville, Alabama.“Come see all our new white friends,” says a sweet Nazi lady, previously seen holding up an apple pie.In this sense,猎人takes a lot from the world of 1970s pop culture and comic books — and it does this well.The colorful and campy montages it juxtaposes with horrors of brutal Nazi murders make the watching experience like nothing else, and the motion graphics and animated segments are a true visual delight.

猎人tried to do so much — violence!dark humor!犹太 references!— in every single scene.Still, after watching the show’s first six episodes, I have come to the conclusion that the show is worthy of our time.More than its over-the-top violence,猎人is full of biblical, Talmudic, historical, and emotional accuracies.It sometimes clobbers you over the head with all of them, but I prefer a show that does too much to a show that does too little.

Because yes,猎人does非常— it is almost too Jewish, if that’s possible.I had to stop taking notes of all the Jewish references in the show because they were just so relentless and ridiculous.There was Lonnie calling Jonah a “Judah Maca-bro” and a “Jew-per Hero”;艾尔·帕西诺的奥弗曼不断在湿婆经常向同一个女人塔木德和圣经引用，约拿喊的众多演讲中她关‘gefiltefish臭脂肪他妈的嘴。’ Yet, one thing that continuously confused me about the show was the mix of Hebrew and Yiddish.它似乎没有可信的大屠杀幸存者和犹太人在二战中德国发言，而不是意第绪语希伯来语，而不必去到圣地。不过，什么节目实现的是，它最终错过更重要。

有一些闪回镜头大屠杀击中了我一下。他们提醒我，我听说过我的大伯父的孩子谁失去了他的妻子和孩子的故事，我的外婆是谁华沙的轰炸中失去了她的父亲。这些都是在悲剧面前撬开家庭的故事。也许是因为该节目的心情并不总是忧郁，它并没有真正拿自己太当回事，我能真切地感受到那些闪回的瞬间的恐怖。

索尔·鲁宾克作为猎人之一，穆雷Markovitz是最让我感动。而他的妻子，由卡罗尔凯恩（其意第绪语口音我只是想在我的余生防晒）饰演的当地会堂的虔诚成员，穆雷已经丧失了信心。穆雷的蔑视宗教镜子我自己的爷爷的，他忍受让他不顾神，斥责犹太教纳粹暴行。我的母亲回忆他的烧烤赎罪日。

作为一个拉比尝试绘制穆雷回宗教他女儿的婚礼前，他告诉他，“有时会在我们的试验和创伤，我们不明白，我们都如此幸运。有时候我们会错过神的迹象“。 After watching all he lost in the Holocaust, one can understand how that platitude rings false to Murray.纵观通过穆雷眼中的世界，我明白我的爷爷比我以往任何时候了。

但它不只是做连接到自己的家庭猎人值得关注我。我爱最大约猎人，是我被吸引多久查找，如果事情是真实的 - 然后发现自己意外发现，是的，它是基于真实的故事。

难道真的纳粹实验犹太人用盐水？我GOOGLE了。他们真的让犹太人在奥斯威辛纹身对方与自己的序列号？难道美国在纳粹科学家真的邀请？那段日子我的搜索历史记录我看了前五集将报警人。几乎所有的问题，我问 - 答案是肯定的。（我还没有发现任何证据表明纳粹使用犹太人作为人本位的国际象棋的致命游戏中的走卒，但是。）这令人震惊，但我更多地了解了大屠杀比我一边看浩劫几乎任何其他虚构再现。

当我第一次看到预告片猎人- 与它几乎是好得是真实的全体演员 - 我希望一个有趣的，装模作样的表演有关纳粹猎人。从本质上讲，我想要的电视节目相当于有人说视频冲压纳粹。但是，我们得到的却是道德的复杂的，有缺陷的，而接合沉思，与一些大屠杀被遗忘的真正心态麻木犯罪的一种新的探索相结合。

猎人最终，是不完美的，但对于小的个人故事，帮助我们记住大屠杀的暴行一个引人注目的容器。

通过亚马逊工作室图片