Why ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Introducing the Franchise’s First Jewish Character Is so Important

I didn’t realize how important it was to me to see a Jewish character on The Walking Dead until this week’s Fear the Walking Dead finally showed one on screen. We’ve seen plenty of talk about god over the past decade of the zombie apocalypse, and met a priest (that would be Seth Gilliam’s Father Gabriel), a semi-devout Muslim (Avi Nash’s Siddiq) and even explored Zen-esque philosophy through John Carroll Lynch’s Eastman. But so far, no canonical Jews on screen.

So as a Jew myself, when I saw Rabbi Jacob Kessner (Peter Jacobson) appear on this week’s “Ner Tamid,” I was floored.

Spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead “Ner Tamid” past this point.

To be fair, there have been plenty of actors of Jewish descent on the shows, from Tovah Feldshuh to Michael Zegen, to Karen David currently on Fear and Cooper Andrews on The Walking Dead. There have also been two Jewish characters established in the novels spinning off of the show, though as of yet they haven’t made their way onto either television series.

But Rabbi Kessner is the first to wear his Judaism on his sleeve, his yarmulke on his head — and as we find out by episode’s end, he isn’t the last, either. The plot is pretty straightforward, classic Walking Dead. Kessner is living alone in his synagogue, saying prayers and occasionally killing the undead. He happens on Charlie (Alexa Nisenson), who got separated from our main group while trying to find them a more permanent home. Having had a bad previous experience with caravans last season, she’s skittish about the current wagon trail nature of the team; the synagogue seems to be a good alternate option. And Kessner seems pretty normal, other than his anxiety over keeping the temple’s Eternal Light — the “Ner Tamid” of the title — lit, a symbol of his devotion to ritual over reason. Naturally, those cracks spiral outwards as Charlie finds out that Kessner’s shul isn’t safe either: he’s been keeping the zombie versions of his congregation locked up in a neighboring building, unable to end their “lives.” Together with June (Jenna Elfman) and John (Garret Dillahunt), they manage to escape Kessner’s congregation, and he gains back a little of the faith that he’s lost in the face of the dead taking over the world.

The first moment, as Kessner sings prayers and waves the havdalah candle near his ring — a clear indication his wife has previously died — I could feel something welling inside of me. I should note, though I was raised Jewish, had a Bar Mitzvah, and even ended up going part-time to Hebrew High School, I have since significantly lapsed on religion, and therefore have a complicated relationship with the faith. I also have a complicated, and frankly derisive take on most Jewish characters in TV and on film as they tend to fall squarely on the side of caricature.  My thought process on Kessner in those first moments, therefore, jumped between, “oh my god, they’re doing a Jewish character!” to “oh my god, how are they going to screw this up.”

What ultimately made Kessner work for me is that he’s clearly a Conservative or Reform rabbi (I was raised Conservative), versus Orthodox. Perhaps that’s why I could relate to this more, that it wasn’t the typical black-clad rabbi with payot and a beard we see in media: Kessner looks like the rabbis I grew up studying with. Over the course of the episode, we see him read from a torah, encourage John to wear a kippah (it’s okay though, John has a cowboy hat to cover his head in temple), and in the episode’s most ridiculously on the nose moment, blows a shofar to attract zombies away from John and June when they get trapped. That was certainly the point when I felt like they could maybe leave some of the Jewish stuff for another episode instead of packing it all into an hour; but at the same, I get that after 10 years of TV shows, particularly for writers Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, there may have been an eager anticipation to get as much in as possible.

What also works about Kessner is how he’s effacing, funny, very casual about religion — it’s very typically Jewish to ask people if they want to participate, but immediately back off if they show any signs of reticence — and grappling constantly with his faith. Perhaps it’s because I was raised Jewish that I’ve never particularly identified with most of the wrestling with religion that’s happened on either Fear of Walking Dead before. But Kessner’s climactic speech, revealing that he’s rejected Hashem in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (read: the dead walking the Earth) rang very true to my personal Jewish experience. How does one repeat the same empty prayers and rituals, day after day, when it’s clear nobody is answering? Judaism is based in doubt, and questioning, trying to poke holes in the scripture, pointing out contradictions. For a brief time during “Ner Tamid,” the holes become so big for Kessner that he gives up.

There’s also a rather beautiful subtextual thing happening with the visuals on the show, which I’m not entirely sure was purposeful but worked nonetheless. Unlike a lot of other world religions, Judaism barely mentions or acknowledges an afterlife. If you do some research, as I did in my teens, you’ll discover there are scant references to a place called Sheol that is essentially a big gray valley. Not Heaven, not Hell. Just a nowhere place that everyone goes after they die, regardless of what you do or how you act in real life. The goal there is to put the emphasis on doing good deeds because they’re the right thing to do, not for some imagined eternal reward. Can you act badly and end up in Sheol right next to a righteous man (or woman)? Absolutely. But it’s your own moral compass and the guidance of your community that’s important.

For the past several seasons, Fear the Walking Dead has pushed a visual palette that was initially to differentiate between a sepia-toned past timeline; and the present, which was desaturated. With that in mind, how else is one supposed to view Kessner’s gray-toned, lonely synagogue, full of pacing undead, forever shambling together through an otherwise empty parking lot, than through the lens of this being Sheol? It underscores Kessner’s struggle, as well, lining up with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) classic realization back on the mothership show that, “we are all the walking dead.”

Of course, that’s not what Fear is about. The show for the past season and change has been leaning into how, even in the face of zombie herds, it’s friendship and kindness that will keep us going. Survival is one thing, but what’s the point of living if you can’t make a connection with other living people? Like the short passage about Sheol, you need to focus on the deeds and connections you make in life, versus the pressure of what will happen next. That gives Kessner hope, lets Charlie move on from her convoy-angst, and ultimately Kessner joins the group for the foreseeable future.

That’s when the show finally introduces their actual first Jewish character ever, in a scene that resonated with my modern Jewish self, just as Kessner’s struggle echoed my own struggles growing up in the religion. In it, Kessner walks up to Mo Collins’ hard-drinking, sarcastic Sarah and introduces himself. “Say, you wouldn’t know how far we are from Yom Kippur, would you?” she asks. “I have a few things to atone for.”

Surprised, Dwight (Austin Amelio) asks Sarah if she’s Jewish, to which she grabs a beer bottle and says, “Rabinowitz. Card carrying member of the tribe.” Then Rabbi Jacob Kessner and Sarah Rabinowitz walk off to do a kiddush together — and no need to do it with her beer, because Kessner makes his own wine.

This was, without a doubt, the smartest move the episode, the show, the franchise could have made. Introducing a rabbi character who skirts certain cliches is one thing, and as happy as I was to finally see Jewish representation on screen, and as important as it is for other Jewish Walking Dead fans out there, there’s a twinge of regret that the character’s whole identity is based around Judaism when so often in real life one’s religion is a fraction of your personality. By revealing a second Jewish character (really, the first) in Sarah, who has been there all along, you’ve got not just one of the best characters on the show (Collins is reliably delightful to watch in every one of her scenes), but one who is defined first by her sarcasm, second by her truck-driving skills, third by her fierce loyalty to her friends, fourth by her drinking, and now by her Judaism, as well. Not that I hang out with a ton of truck drivers, but that sounds a lot more like the Jews I know from my everyday life.

That’s representation. Particularly for Walking Dead‘s audience, which certainly spans the spectrum but errs on the side of a more rural fandom, it’s lovely to see not one, but two positive portrayals of Jews on screen. Without getting further in the weeds than I’ve already gone, instances of anti-semitism and anti-Jewish hate crimes have been steadily on the rise since 2016. It’s an incredibly harrowing and dangerous time that, as a Jew, makes waking up in the morning a near daily panic, wondering if today is the day that the straw will break and they’ll start rounding us up — as, consistently, has happened throughout history. It always comes down to the Jews, and that spark starts with a deep-seated hatred and lack of understanding. Not that Fear the Walking Dead is going to single-handedly hold back the tide of anti-semitism, but it is vitally important that a massive, mainstream franchise like these shows depicts Jews in a positive light, struggling with the same issues and feelings as the other non-Jewish characters on the show.

So gone is the Saul, the Hasidic man with rotting yellow teeth depicted in “The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor.” Thanks to Kessner and Rabinowitz, we now have two Jewish characters on screen who represent the real breadth of the Jewish American experience; or at least part of it. Thank Hashem.

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

Where to stream Fear the Walking Dead