The Reel Schmooze on 'Roommates' and 'How to Make Challah': Different slices of Jewish American pie
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to The Reel Schmooze with ToI film reviewer Jordan Hoffman and host Amanda Borschel-Dan, where we bring you all the entertainment news and film reviews a Jew can use.
This week, before diving into our two films for this week, we revisit the 1960 film "Exodus" with a few reflections based on listeners' responses -- and Hoffman's musing while sweeping.
We then hear about the movie maven's night out enjoying the Boss, Bruce Springsteen, and the E-Street Band's longtime Jewish musicians.
The first film we chew over in this week's episode is a short, 13-minute indie production called "How to Make Challah" by Sarah Rosen. The intergenerational look at New York Jewry is framed within footage filmed by Rosen's aunt of her grandmother making challah in 1975.
Now #1 on Netflix in Israel, Sadie Sandler's new "Roommates" left the team almost speechless, but they valiantly rallied at the sight of Jewish acting greats Natasha Lyonne, Nick Kroll and Carol Kane. Chloe East stars as Celeste, joined by Sadie Sandler as Devon. Does her apple fall far from the Adam Sandler tree?
Stick around to see if "How to Make Challah" and "Roommates" got an "oy," "meh" or "not bad" in this week's The Reel Schmooze.
The Reel Schmooze is produced by Ari Schlacht and can be found wherever you get your podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Times of Israel's The Real Shmooze, bringing you all the entertainment news and movie reviews as you can use. |
| 0:12.9 | I'm your host, Amanda Borschelle-Dahn, with our Movie Maven, Jordan Hoffman. |
| 0:17.7 | Jordan, thank you so much for joining me again today. |
| 0:20.3 | Hello, it's nice to be here. |
| 0:22.2 | Thank you for having me. And thanks to all the listeners who are listening. And we got a big, |
| 0:26.7 | big week tonight, tonight, today, last week. We got a lot of stuff to talk about it. I think it's like 7 a.m. |
| 0:33.5 | where you are. So if you're calling at night, I don't want to hear about your night. |
| 0:38.2 | That's true. That's true. The first thing I wanted to bring up, I had a brilliant insight yesterday |
| 0:44.7 | when, because I'm still rattling a little bit about the movie Exodus, which we watched and |
| 0:50.4 | discussed last week. And we got a lot of listener feedback from it, I would say, threefolds |
| 0:57.6 | from the usual. So it certainly resonated. And it's just such a fascinating document. We both agreed |
| 1:04.7 | that, quite frankly, the movie is not good. It's just not good. There's nothing you can say about it, |
| 1:08.8 | but everything about it is so fascinating, given the subject matter matter when it was made, what it's about, how it would be different today, all these topics we talked about yesterday. So I was still kind of thinking about it. And I was like literally like, I was like, I don't know what I was doing. I think it was sweeping the floor yesterday because my cat is a slob and there was cat kibble all over the floor. |
| 1:30.3 | And I was sweeping the floor. |
| 1:31.6 | And as one does, when you're doing mundane tasks, you're thinking about something. |
| 1:35.6 | And it hit me. |
| 1:36.9 | There's the character that we talked about a little bit in Exodus that Jill Hayworth plays, the young girl who is, you know, |
| 1:48.1 | the 15-year-old refugee who falls in love with Salminio's character and she is sort of the, |
| 1:54.1 | you know, she, and then at the end, she's buried with the Arab character and she represents |
| 1:58.1 | that one day in the future, everything will be good in the |
| 2:01.3 | land of Israel. And her name is Karen Hansen and she's 15. So for most of the film, she's 14, |
| 2:08.4 | actually, because there's a scene where she says, I'm 15 now, which doesn't make it any better. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Times of Israel, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Times of Israel and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.