Shtisel reunited! The series is back on our screens – sort of

Shtisel was the runaway hit that no one expected. Set in Jerusalem’s secretive Charedi community, there was no big action or drama – no one was being “saved” – and its characters danced between Yiddish and Hebrew while eating lots of chicken soup. It was about the small stuff that makes up the big stuff of life – love, death, ambition – so beautifully told that Howard Jacobson called it “the Jewish Chekhov”.

Now, 12 years after it first launched on Israeli television, and eight years since its appearance on Netflix turned it into a worldwide sensation, the series is back. Well, sort of.

Kugel is a prequel starring two of the show’s most memorable characters: Nukhem, the wily brother of patriarch Shulem, and his daughter Libbie. They turned the Shtisel world upside down when they visited Jerusalem from their home in Antwerp in series two.

Sasson Gabai as Nukhem Photo: Fremantle Israel[Missing Credit]

Libbie, played by Hadas Yaron, ended up falling in love with doe-eyed dreamer Akiva, but by the third series (made after the show did so well on Netflix) we discover – spoiler alert – that she has died.  But she has risen from the dead in Kugel as we learn about what life is like for Libbie and Nukhem in Antwerp just before they turn up in Jerusalem, desperate to find her a shidduch.

“When they said they had decided to make a spin-off based on my and Libbie’s character I didn’t have to think twice – it was yes with three exclamation marks,” says Sasson Gabai, the acclaimed Israeli actor who stars as the diamond dealer. “I loved Nukhem so much and I was sure that I would play him again – I put him next to my heart and I am pleased that we meet again.”

I loved Nukhem so much and was sure I would play him again. He makes mistakes, but he never pities himself and he keeps on trying

When we first come across Nukhem, in the series set in 2014, it’s not in the best light. He’s telling a recent widow that her husband had secretly bought her some diamond earrings that he has on him, but for which he wasn’t paid. It’s a trick he’s rather an expert at, we later learn. But Gabai says he still loves his mischievous character.

“He is a big survivor and I admire this quality of him,” he says. “He falls down and he immediately gets up and goes on to the next thing. He wants to make money but, somehow, he’s not lucky enough, or he’s too manipulative. He makes mistakes and that ends in disaster. But he never pities himself and he keeps trying. Even when he is selling the widows the jewels, he is selling them a dream. I think he is motivated by love.”

Yaron admits that at first the idea of going back in time felt rather “tricky”. She is now 34 but has to play a naive 22-year-old who is dreaming about becoming a writer and finding true love. “At first when they talked about it, I didn’t know what to say,” she says. “It was hard to think about – so we are going back in time but we are all older. I wasn’t sure how they were going to do it but I said, ‘Yes, of course.’” One trick to make her look younger was to add hair extensions. “For some reason, people think that longer hair is younger so I had younger hair,” she shrugs. “I was debating whether I needed to but I don’t know.” She went back to previous episodes she starred in and realised that her voice had changed since her twenties – it is deeper. “I thought about trying to make my voice different but then I was afraid it would come off weird and fake,” she says.

Hadas Yaron as Libbie Photo: Fremantle Israel[Missing Credit]

In the first episode a family disaster happens when we see Nukhem do something so unforgivable – one of his many schemes for riches – that wife Yiddis, played by Mili Avital, announces she is leaving him. This impacts not only Nukhem and Yiddis but also Libbie, whose chances of a match with a boy from a good family sink further.

Quite soon after, however, Nukhem meets another widow, one who makes kugels, and that’s what gives the show its title. Meanwhile, Libbie meets a Charedi man on the tram – perhaps she won’t need her own shidduch-maker?

Part of the magic of being in the Shtisel world is entering the cloistered domain of the Charedi. Kugel, like Shtisel, is written by Yehonatan Indursky, who was born into a Charedi Jewish family in Jerusalem. The Shtisel world is a reminder that despite the more stringent rules they have to follow, they are just like us – of course, they are. It is telling that the Charedim loved the show as much as other people around the world. A Turkish version, featuring a religious Muslim family, also proved a hit, with a second series being made.

“Before I did Shtisel I didn’t have anything to do with the Charedim – they felt very unfamiliar,” says Yaron. “I had my thoughts on the community – when you live in Israel it can feel like a complex, a not easy issue – but things change when you meet people, when you hear their stories, when you have a one-to-one conversation.

“I remember when I first started working on this show, maybe in 2015, I met this girl who was 24 and had not been married, like Libbie, and we spoke about why she hadn’t found a mate and she was very casual about it. She just hadn’t found anyone she liked and I was like, ‘Yes, it’s hard.’ I wonder about what happened to her sometimes.”

Gabay adds of the Charedim: “In Israel, we call them strange birds but what our writer does is introduce us to these people and show that they are facing the same problems – the same struggles, the same loves, the same envies, the same joys and the same sadness – as anyone else. So, on one hand, it could be in any society, but on the other hand you get a glimpse into a society that you will never otherwise be able to see.”

The actor was born in Baghdad and moved to Israel when he was three but grew up in a neighbourhood filled with Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, which he says helped him play Nukhem.

“I saw it as a challenge to be able to master the Yiddish,” he says. “I still don’t speak it but I know exactly what I am saying and I worked very hard with my dialect coach to stress the right syllable. I have had many compliments about it. In Antwerp, we shot in the streets of the Orthodox community and children would run after me to speak to me. We had a lot of support from the local community.”

Ahead of filming, the Kugel family had several meetings with the local Charedi community. In many ways the world is very different to that of the Jerusalem Jews. The Antwerp community – which dominates the diamond trade in the Belgium city — has many more dealings with the outside world of non-Jews and they are also, in general, wealthier.

I am Sephardi so I did not even know what kugel was. From the food they eat to the characters’ clothes, I had a lot to learn

For Avital, the entire world of the Charedim was “brand new” and she depended on the help of the Jewish women of Antwerp to help her understand it. “I’m Sephardi so I didn’t even know what kugel is!” she says of the noodle dish. “There was a lot to learn from the food to the clothes. All the women I met were absolutely fascinating. Everyone speaks at least five languages – German, French, Flemish, Yiddish, Hebrew and usually English – and they have to mix with the wider world much more.”

Avital, who lives in London, is one of the few key members of the cast to live in the diaspora and says she was fascinated to find so many of her non-Jewish friends were Shtisel fans. “I remember hearing about it when it was first being made and it sounded so strange,” she says. “And then it became this world hit. But for me it is proof that a good story is a good story and because the writer is from that world it is full of authenticity, which I think an audience can sense.”

Mili Avital as Yiddis Photo: Fremantle Israel[Missing Credit]

The series will be shown exclusively on streamer Izzy, which showcases Israeli drama around the world, after Netflix passed on helping to produce Kugel.

Fans will be able to watch the first episode for free before signing up to watch the eight-part series, which will see a new episode come out weekly.

For Avital being on the show at this time feels particularly important. ‘‘I love so many things about Judaism, both the spiritual and the cultural part of it and this was kind of my little way of acknowledging that,” she says.

“I think now, more than ever, it is also important to humanise the other. They may look completely different, even to secular Jews, and you may think you have nothing in common with them, but you do.

“This show is about characters who aren’t trying to be liked or approved; they are just very human and that is a brave take.”

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Kugel will be on Izzy from February 28