Mikey Madison attends the 97th Annual Oscars at Dolby Theatre on March 02, 2025. Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images

By PJ Grisar March 3, 2025

Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach has enjoyed a long history in the American canon going back to at least Neil Simon.

Now a colorful demimonde rich with Eastern European immigrants — and, occasionally, organized crime — the boardwalk empire has been host to a particular kind of Jewish life, as seen in films like James Gray’s Little Odessa and Two Lovers.

Anora, 2025’s big Oscar winner, gives us many of the highlights, but stops short of giving us a new Queen Esther.

Mikey Madison, the film’s Oscar-winning star, was born Mikaela Madison Rosberg. She is Jewish, if not particularly religious, and has remarked that her Jewish curls created a problem in her portrayal of Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, a stripper who ends up married to a manchild son of Russian oligarchs.

As to Ani’s religious affiliation, the film offers no straightforward answers. Likely a child of immigrants, she is able to understand Russian, if not speak it. It’s possible her parents were part of a wave of Soviet Jews who flocked to Brighton Beach in the 1970s or the wave that came after, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A 2023 survey of Brighton Beach, Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay shows that around 39% of households include a Jewish person.

If casting was key, Ani and her sister Vera (played by Ella Rubin) would seem to hint at Yiddishkeit. But then her video game-obsessed husband Vanya is played by Mark Eydelshteyn, and his godfather is a literal Armenian priest. Their hasty nuptials that take place in a Vegas chapel do little to elucidate any faith traditions they may have. Though, it must be said, what some believe is a menorah is used as a projectile in the scene where Anora is abducted (it’s translated as “candlestick” in the subtitles).

Was this Judaica Anora’s or Vanya’s? In any case, it has nothing on Sarah Sherman’s actual Anora menorah. As The New York Post reported, the set for the mansion was actually located in Mill Basin, the home of a financier named Michael Davidoff, who was raised in New York and is the child of Russian immigrants.

That much of the plot involves trying to get Ani to agree to a divorce — and that it involves some controversial coercion — could be way less Jewish, given the lengths many have taken to persuade people, typically husbands, to grant their spouses a get.

It’s possible that’s all coincidental. But even though Ani may not be a Member of the Tribe, there are still suggestions of the Jewish imprint of the place she calls home.

Viewers will recall seeing the iconic boardwalk restaurant Tatiana, whose owner, Tatiana Varzar, an immigrant from Odesa, is a 2024 inductee to the Brooklyn Jewish Hall of Fame, during the search for Vanya.

Like Anora’s mother, who we never see, Varzar now lives in Florida. That alone is pretty Jewish.

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

Don't just read the Forward - invest in it. Make a gift today.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Support Our Work