Saul Rubinek and Carol Kane play a husband and wife who are weapons experts in “Hunters.” (Christopher Saunders)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The blood-soaked series boasts a cast packed with Jewish actors, many with close personal connections to the Holocaust. Those actors say they are looking forward to having viewers join them in grappling with the ethical puzzle embedded in Meyer\u2019s quote. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe center of the series really revolves around the moral, ethical question about \u2018Does it take evil to fight evil? Do you have to be a bad guy in order to effectively combat the bad guys?\u2019\u201d Logan Lerman, who plays the show\u2019s protagonist Jonah Heidelbaum, says in a phone interview from Los Angeles. \u201cI\u2019m really curious to see what people\u2019s responses are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show, which was co-produced by Jordan Peele \u2014 the acclaimed writer and director behind the horror blockbusters \u201cGet Out\u201d and \u201cUs\u201d \u2014 whirls into motion after Jonah\u2019s grandmother is murdered in her Brooklyn apartment. Jonah\u2019s quest to discover the perpetrator brings him into contact with Meyer, who has assembled an \u201cOcean\u2019s 11\u201d-style team with members whose specialties range from combat to disguise. Jonah fits in immediately as a code-breaker because of his ability to recognize written patterns.<\/p>\n
Meyer informs Jonah \u2014 one of multiple Jewish members of the squad \u2014 that there are many Nazis hiding in plain sight throughout the country. In fact, in the show\u2019s world, there is a large Nazi network that plans to establish a \u201cFourth Reich.\u201d The hunters set to work to dismantle it, and they aren\u2019t afraid to get their hands dirty (and very bloody) along the way.<\/p>\n
The show imagines an alternate history in which some of the thousands of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who made their way to the U.S. after World War II maintained their Nazi identities rather than hiding them. (It\u2019s Amazon\u2019s second alternate Nazi history drama following \u201cThe Man in the High Castle.\u201d) Simon Wiesenthal\u2019s famous Nazi-hunting organization also was established in 1977, the year the show takes place.<\/p>\n
But the series also draws from the graphic violent style of Quentin Tarantino \u2014 his 2009 film \u201cInglourious Basterds\u201d is arguably the most famous in the Jews-killing-Nazis genre \u2014 as well as comic book culture. There are numerous comic book character jokes and references: At one point Lonny Flash, a member of the gang played by Josh Radnor, calls Jonah, who in fact works at a comic book store, a \u201creal life f***ing Jew-perhero.\u201d<\/p>\n
Creator David Weil said that his first and main inspiration was his grandmother, who survived imprisonment in the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, and whom Weil said he used to see as a superhero while growing up in a Conservative Jewish family on Long Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a love letter to my grandmother, it is a way to honor my birthright and my heritage and my Judaism, and it\u2019s a way to shed light on hidden crimes and secrets,\u201d Weil tells the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.<\/p>\n
Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cMunich,\u201d an epic drama about Mossad agents who seek to retaliate against the Palestinians responsible for the \u201cMunich Massacre\u201d at the 1972 Olympics, was another influence looming large in Weil\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n
The show offers two arguments for the need for violent Jewish revenge \u2014 one is the biblical eye-for-an-eye means of paying back the Nazis for the suffering they caused. The show is full of flashbacks to scenes of chilling Nazi atrocities, such as a chess match that SS officers play involving real prisoners, who are forced to kill each other as the game progresses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Talmud is wrong. Living well is not the best revenge,\u201d Meyer tells Jonah in episode one. \u201cYou know what the best revenge is? Revenge.\u201d (The \u201cliving well\u201d axiom is actually attributed to a 17th-century British poet and priest.)<\/p>\n
The other argument is one of self-defense. As the hunters torture a Nazi by blaring loud music into his ears, Jonah urges them to stop \u2014 he is clearly conflicted by inflicting pain on someone else. But the goal of the torture is to extract information about who else the Nazi might be working with in order to stop a possible plot that could harm Jews and others.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf \u2018Inglourious Basterds\u2019 is one end of the spectrum, and \u2018Munich\u2019 is the other end of the spectrum, I think \u2018Hunters\u2019 lives in the middle,\u201d Weil says.<\/p>\n
Weil also says he felt an urge to create \u201cbadass\u201d Jewish characters.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up, I had two Jewish superheroes \u2014 there was Judah Maccabee and Jeff Goldblum, and very few people in between,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd so to be able to show a Jewish superhero with might, with power, with strength, not just a Jew who is as the media often portrays us, as ineffectual or intellectual only or nebbishy \u2026 that was so important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In separate conversations, the Jewish actors who worked on the show all said they were undecided on how they feel about the idea of revenge.<\/p>\n
Veteran actress Carol Kane, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1976 for playing a Jewish immigrant in \u201cHester Street,\u201d plays Polish immigrant and weapons expert Mindy Markowitz. She admits that she was shocked by parts of the script. <\/p>\n
\u201cI really thought, \u2018Oh my goodness, that\u2019s really a huge moral question,\u2019\u201d Kane, who believes some of her Russian and Austrian relatives died in the Holocaust, says about the show\u2019s violence.<\/p>\n
After a long pause, she adds: \u201cI still don\u2019t know. I have not made up my mind. In general in the world I feel that forgiveness leads to a better world, but this particular circumstance is so completely unforgivable. I really don\u2019t know the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josh Radnor, the star of the sitcom \u201cHow I Met Your Mother,\u201d avoids the issue, saying instead that he thinks the show works to break common stereotypes about Jews.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s the audience\u2019s job, and the job of journalists and thinkpiece writers, to grapple with those bigger questions,\u201d Radnor says. <\/p>\n
Lerman, best known as the star of the \u201cPercy Jackson\u201d movies, says something similar. He notes, however, that his family\u2019s complicated Holocaust history \u2014 relatives on his father\u2019s side ended up in China and Mexico \u2014 added to his work on the show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you that I have a specific opinion,\u201d Lerman says. \u201cI think that the question is complicated and nuanced and one for audiences for debate after completing the first season.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cast members do agree enthusiastically on at least one thing: the brilliance of Pacino, who stayed in character, with a thick Yiddish accent, for the six-plus months of filming.<\/p>\n
\u201cHearing him talk about \u2018Serpico\u2019 in a Yiddish accent was pretty hilarious,\u201d Radnor says. \u201cHe\u2019s a toweringly great artist.\u201d<\/p>\n
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