The 18 most Jewish episodes of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’
Larry David’s HBO show, about to air its 12th and final season, has a lot to say about being Jewish
Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm has given us (at least) 18 quintessential Jewish episodes. Photo by John Johnson/HBO
By PJ Grisar January 31, 2024
Consider Larry David, a man of mightily malleable convictions who, over 11 seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, has added countless dimensions to the Jewish-American tribulation.
Like Hershel of Ostropol or Gimpel the Fool, he has embodied for Jews a lopsided spin on our own tradition and served as a prototypical schlemiel. He is a man who has sparked holy wars and “spite stores,” demanded we respect wood and educated Jon Hamm on the proper meaning of the word “tsuris.”
David is a shanda for humming Wagner and a folk hero for disrupting a baptism-in-progress. He is a man torn between his libido and his obligation to his people. He is seldom one to cry antisemitism, but he has, on at least one occasion, argued to the police that he was the victim of an anti-bald hate crime, and, indeed, often felt more kinship with the follicularly challenged than he has with the chosen people.
And so when it comes to ranking the most Jewish episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, on the eve of the 12th and final season, these contradictions must be accounted for. It would be too simple — and too un-Larry-like — to simply claim the top spot for “Palestinian Chicken” or “The Ski Lift” or the entire season centered on a production of The Producers. And so I have arranged the 18 most Jewish episodes into three categories that best describe Larry’s changeable nature. (Cut for chai are episodes involving pickle jars, Larry sketching a swastika, Oscar the dog’s shiva and one where Jerry Seinfeld calls Larry a “bulvan.”)
There is “Larry the Shanda,” where he disrupts tradition and challenges the sacred; “Larry the Jew” where his Yiddishkeit or feeling of otherness is most pronounced; and finally “Larry the Prophet,” where his behavior, however disruptive, speaks to a larger Jewish principle.
Look to this as a guide as a reference for exegesis or grasping the Davidian worldview — or just a list of episodes that are pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Larry the Shanda
“The Pants Tent,” Season 1 episode 1
Larry offends Jeff’s parents by referring to Cheryl as Hitler. As Jeff explains, they had a gay cousin who died in the Holocaust. Quoth Larry: “Gay Jew in Nazi Germany? He must have had a hard time. What a combo.”
“Trick or Treat,” Season 2 episode 6
When Larry is heard whistling Wagner outside a movie theater, his neighbor Walter accuses him of being a self-loathing Jew. “I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish,” Larry insists. But later, Larry demonstrates a rather Talmudic concern for limitations, insisting that there should be an age cutoff for trick or treaters. “Not everyone knows your rules, Larry,” Cheryl scolds him. “You think everyone’s gonna adhere to them but they’re not because nobody knows ’em.”
If this reads like a common gentile criticism of Jews and their mitzvot (which, to be fair, are specifically for Jews), it’s the start of a larger clash between Cheryl’s non-Jewish background and Larry’s bootless attempts to bring order to society.
“Palestinian Chicken,” Season 8 episode 3
David’s favorite episode, and one of the show’s more problematic for reducing Palestinians to pat antisemites, sees our hero and Jeff enjoying the delicious chicken of a Westwood restaurant whose walls are papered with anti-Israel sentiments. The patrons applaud Larry for ripping off the kippah of the newly religious Marty Funkhouser and Larry ends up in bed with the proprietor, Shara, who hurls horny hate speech like “filthy Jew” at him while they have sex.
The episode closes with Larry stuck between two protests — one of Jews objecting to the opening of a new location of Al-Abbas Original Best Chicken next to a kosher deli, and the other of Palestinians supporting their right to occupy that real estate. His friends appeal to his Jewishness, Shara to his lust. We don’t know which side Larry chooses, but he does say in the episode that “the penis,” not unlike Herzl, “wants to get to its homeland.”
“The Surprise Party,” Season 10 episode 6
The man Larry enlists to create a self-heating coffee cup has a German shepherd named Adolf (named for his Opa), who growls at Larry but becomes a sweetheart when Larry offers a defensive “Heil Hitler.” The gambit works until the dog spots a matzo-scented Star of David air freshener on his rearview mirror and tears into it, accidentally damaging the borrowed handicap placard behind it.
“The Watermelon,” Season 11 episode 5
Larry accidentally ruins a Klansman’s robe with a cup of coffee and agrees to pay for his dry cleaning. (The two find surprising common ground when the Klansman agrees with Larry’s take on tradition: “Who has the right as master of the house to have the final word at home,” as cribbed from the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof.)
Despite the transgression of helping out a white supremacist, which Jewish law experts I spoke with felt conflicted about, Larry is very Jewish in this episode. He attends Rosh Hashanah services — after losing a bet to a rabbi — and parades his love of gefilte fish at a grocery store. He ends the episode blowing the shofar and waking up his neighbors when the Klansman turns up outside his house.
“The Mormon Advantage,” Season 11 episode 10
Attending an event with Colonel Vindman at the Holocaust Museum LA, Larry trashes his shoes after stepping in dog poop. When it starts to rain outside, Larry nabs a pair of a Holocaust victim’s shoes from a display, which, by chance, happened to belong to his girlfriend’s grandfather.
In spite of this sacrilege, Larry does add something to Jewish discourse, posing as a Torah teacher to recover a damning document from the home of a councilman named Weinblatt. The question at hand: “When the Israelites fled Egypt, did they go right after the Passover dinner, or did they linger and have coffee and drinks?”
Larry the Jew
“AAMCO,” Season 1 episode 7
Cheryl has a dinner party where all the guests, and notably an AAMCO car shop franchise owner, say grace before a meal. Larry, who insisted he wouldn’t have fun, tells Cheryl he would like Jews at the next gathering. “I want some Cohens, some Bernsteins, some Goldsteins, a Schwartz, okay? Anything in that area, that family.”
“Mary, Joseph and Larry,” Season 3 episode 9
The Davids are hosting Christmas, and Larry, retching over a stray pubic hair caught in his throat and expressing actual discomfort at Christmas festivities, looks the Grinch. When his in-laws ask what Larry got Cheryl, he says, “I think I’m gonna give her my grandfather’s tallis.”
Later, Larry gets in trouble for accidentally eating the baby Jesus cookie from a nativity set (he thought it was a monkey) and enlists a group of church volunteers to recreate the creche outside his house. But a remark Larry makes about the actress playing the Virgin Mary’s figure leads to fisticuffs, witnessed by his appalled Christian relations.
“The Survivor,” Season 4 episode 9
The rabbi officiating the renewal of Cheryl and Larry’s vows assures him that there is precedent for Cheryl’s offer of an anniversary sexual “hall pass.” (Sarah offered Abraham her handmaiden Hagar, he reasons.) Larry decides that he will have an affair with his Orthodox dry cleaner, Anna. The centerpiece of the episode, though, is a clash between Survivor contestant Colby Donaldson and a Holocaust survivor arguing over who had it worse.
“The Larry David Sandwich,” Season 5 episode 1
After almost drowning and landing miraculously on the beach, Larry commits to attending Rosh Hashanah services. (In the end he must get tickets from a scalper.) Larry is made to leave the service early when a child nemesis informs the police about how he landed his plush seats in the pew. This episode also starts an investigation into whether or not Larry is adopted and possibly Christian, a prospect that thrills him far more than a sable and whitefish sandwich being named in his honor.
“The Jesus Nail,” Season 5 episode 3
Larry has to hang a mezuzah on his doorpost or risk making Nat upset. Lacking the necessary hardware, he nabs a prop nail from Passion of the Christ, from Cheryl’s sleeping dad. (Earlier he ruffled feathers by suggesting worshiping Jesus was “a little gay,” but that he’d be on board if God had a zaftig daughter named Jane.)
“The Seder,” Season 5 episode 7
Cheryl agrees to host a Seder to make Nat happy and even makes haroset. She’s upset when Larry invites over their busybody neighbors, but Larry lets her know that it’s a “Jewish thing” to invite over Seder stragglers. This doesn’t go over well when Larry extends this hospitality to a local sex offender, who ends up snitching on a kid who cheated to find the afikomen.
“The Ski Lift,” Season 5 episode 8
Larry poses as an Orthodox Jew to get on the good side of Ben Heineman, the man in charge of a kidney consortium, hoping to raise Richard Lewis’ spot on the donor list. Though Larry dons a yarmulke and mumbles faux Hebrew and Yiddish, the ruse falls apart during a ski trip where Cheryl cooks bacon and reuses the fleishig plates from the day before during breakfast. Larry gets stuck on a ski lift with Heineman’s daughter Rachel and, rather than be alone with him after sundown as a single woman, she leaps to the mountain below. In this instance, Larry met someone even more rigid about her code than he is. (For what it’s worth, this seems like a pretty clear instance of pikuach nefesh, but perhaps David’s behavior, chomping down on edible underwear, was annoying enough that halacha was no longer the main concern.)
“The Divorce,” Season 8 episode 1
Larry discovers that his divorce lawyer, Andrew Berg, despite hinting at Jewishness, is, in fact, Swedish and a gentile. “I got Sweded,” he kvetches as he severs ties with Berg. The Jewish replacement is pretty, pretty, pretty bad, though. (The episode, inspired by non-Jewish Curb producer Alec Berg, foreshadows Season 11, where Larry and Jeff are uncomfortable with a Hulu exec who is very in your face about his Jewishness.)
“Mister Softee,” Season 8 episode 9
Larry finds himself stifled by the Mister Softee jingle, which triggers a long ago sexual humiliation, causing him to bobble a ball in the ninth inning of a softball championship. A chance meeting with Bill Buckner gives him perspective, and the two even end up attending a minyan to say kaddish. Buckner is ultimately asked to leave, as one of the bereaved hasn’t forgiven him for the infamous ball between his legs during the 1986 World Series. Larry storms out with Buckner, leaving the minyan short a man. Buckner, who redeems himself by episode’s end, is upset to miss out on the kishka that Sandy Koufax introduced him to long ago.
Larry the Prophet
“The Baptism,” Season 2 episode 9
Cheryl’s sister is marrying a Jewish guy, who she demands have a baptism before the wedding. Larry asks Cheryl why Christians insist on making everyone love Jesus, making his point in the most treyf way possible: “I like lobster. Do I go around pushing lobster on people? Do I say, ‘You must like lobster’?”
Later, he accidentally interrupts the baptism, becoming a hero to the groom’s Jewish family, who quote Rabbi Akiva in their praise and ask him to speak at their children’s bat mitzvah. The groom, rescued from the drink, has a religious epiphany akin to what Larry will have in Season 5 after almost drowning.
“The Bat Mitzvah,” Season 6 episode 10
Larry is taking his separation from Cheryl hard, but Jeff and Leon look to lift his spirits by encouraging him to find a date for Sammi’s bat mitzvah. A nasty bit of lashon hara occurs concerning a gerbil, and Larry tries to debunk it at the ceremony in a scene redolent, perhaps, of the embarrassment of Bar Kamsa.
But it’s an earlier moment that delivers perhaps the most succinct raison d’être for his behavior when he suggests to a receptionist at the gastroenterologist that she keep the patients’ sign-in sheet behind the desk to protect anonymity: “Things like this interest me,” he says. “I’m not an inventor, but I’m an improver. I improve things that are broken. This is broken, this system is broken — I’d like to improve it.” It’s a good summation of tikkun olam, though David quickly breaks with the principle to find the number of a cute woman he met in the waiting room.
“Man Fights Tiny Woman,” Season 11 episode 6
On the set of Young Larry, a Messianic Jew is disturbing Jewish cast members by preaching the Gospel. To his credit, Larry wastes no time putting the kibosh on the proselytizing. “Look, you wanna be a Jesus guy, zey gezunt, go ahead,” Larry tells him. “These Jews on the set are not for Jesus.” He may hate himself, and he may often hate other Jews, but some things are sacred.
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