The L Word: ‘Miss Yeshiva Girl’ Gets the Ax
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
‘The L Word” — the Showtime drama about a tight-knit group of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women living in West Hollywood, Calif. — kills off its resident Jewess in the January premiere of its sixth and final season. Jenny Schecter’s suspicious death will be the springboard for a whodunit plotline à la the famous “Who Shot J.R.?” mystery of “Dallas.”
Raised in an Orthodox household in Skokie, Ill., Jenny (Mia Kirshner) has been at the center of several storylines in which her childhood traumas are associated with Jewish imagery. As an adult, Jenny takes a job as a stripper, calling herself “Miss Yeshiva Girl,” and is troubled by her observant family’s rejection of her sexuality, which they refer to as a sickness.
“There’s nothing more you can do to make me the person you’re comfortable with, because I’m not going to marry that nice Jewish boy,” she tells her mother and stepfather after they find her in bed with a woman. “I’m not going to have those nice Jewish kids.”
Off-screen, the Toronto-reared Kirshner is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Her father, now a reporter for The Canadian Jewish News, was born in Germany in a displaced persons camp. When Kirshner was growing up, she said, her house was filled with books about the Holocaust. Even though her family never discussed their wartime and postwar experiences, “I think it shaped who I am,” she told The New York Times in 2004.
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.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
