Reboot Network member Todd Krieger offers us a spirited reflection on the enduring genius of Mel Brooks, sparked by HBO’s Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! In it, Krieger explores how Brooks didn’t just shape American comedy; he transformed Jewish survival into an act of joyful defiance. From the Borscht Belt to Blazing Saddles and The Producers, Brooks reframed fear and persecution as objects of ridicule, wielding satire not as self-deprecation but as a bold assertion of power. More than a tribute, the essay argues that Brooks’ greatest legacy is permission: the courage to mock what terrifies us, to commit fully to absurdity and to meet darkness with laughter. In heavy times, Krieger suggests, Brooks’ life and work offer more than entertainment, they model resilience as an art form. Read Krieger’s reflection on Brooks.
As a formerly Orthodox, now secular, deeply online millennial woman who loves the incredible extended chain of shared imagination that makes up the Jewish people’s collective narrative world-building, Reboot Network member Miriam Anzovin refused to accept the interpretations of Tanach, Talmud, midrash and folklore that she was handed as a final draft. After all, Jewish texts are multivocal – there is rarely is a “final word.” Her “Jewish Lore Reactions” project, an ongoing short-form digital video series in which she remixes and retells epic stories about iconic figures from Jewish lore, began as a response to what she learned – part delight, part frustration, part existential scream – and a desire to give a voice to female characters who have been marginalized, flattened, or weaponized by a tradition shaped largely by male storytellers. Read more about her Jewish Lore Reactions.
Holding Liat, directed by Brandon Kramer and produced with Reboot Network members Lance Kramer and cinematographer Yoni Brook, follows the family of Israeli-American Liat Atzili after she and her husband Aviv were taken hostage on October 7th, 2023. As Liat’s father Yehuda Beinin works to secure her release, he refuses to let her captivity be used to justify violence in Gaza, exposing deep emotional and political rifts within the family. We asked Kramer and Brook to join us for a Q&A to dig into the film, which was shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature at the 98th Academy Awards and named to the Guardian’s list of best movies of 2025. Holding Liat has sparked urgent conversations across continents, cultures and communities, bringing people together at a moment when many are being pulled apart. See the film in select cities nationwide. Read the Q&A. Watch a recording of the full conversation.
Rob Kutner is not the most, shall we say, “traditionally male-coded” of men. He’s the family cook, he cried more than his wife did at their son’s recent Bar Mitzvah, and as for sports – when a cousin recently sent him a picture of his new Kansas City Chiefs jersey, his first response was, “Ah yes, Taylor’s fiancee’s team!” These are interesting times for men, to say the least. For Jewish men, when they look back to the Jewish Patriarchs, it’s hard to know how to model themselves. That’s why Kutner is co-hosting Mamas’ Boys, a new podcast devoted to “Jewish men having real talk.” The very first command that Abraham, the O.G. Jewish man-bro, was given was Lech Lecha, which the Rabbis have often interpreted to mean “Go into yourself.” It’s been 4,000 years, but Abe, I think we’re finally ready to go there. Read more about the new Mamas’ Boys podcast.
When Noam Dromi attended Limmud, the sprawling UK festival of Jewish learning and culture, he encountered a Jewish world that refused simplification. Learning and argument, music and prayer, identity and contradiction all coexisted in the same space. It offered a lived answer to a question that has been sitting with him for some time: what does Jewish cultural life look like when it refuses to flatten itself?
That experience sharpened a tension Dromi has been grappling with in his work as Managing Director of Reboot Studios. While Jewish life on the ground is messy, plural, and expansive, Jewishness in film and media is too often sanded down in the name of “universality.” His work is not simply about telling more Jewish stories, but about expanding what Jewish stories are allowed to be — moving beyond Holocaust-only narratives, Ashkenazi default settings, or Jewishness reduced to background texture.
He left Limmud convinced of something essential: there is an audience for complexity. Not a niche audience. A human one. Read more in “The Jew-Shaped Hole: What Gets Lost When Jewish Stories Try to Be Universal.”