BySTEPHEN SILVER/JTA

AUGUST 5, 2026 10:12

For nearly three years, much of Jewish culture has been shaped by conflict, growing antisemitism and questions of identity under strain. Rachel Israel's newest projects take a fresh path.

Within one year, the New York director completed two openly Jewish comedies: The Floaters, placed at a Jewish summer camp, and Influenced, a satire of Manhattan influencer life that ends with a b'nai mitzvah celebration.

Both films dive into Jewish identity, yet rather than viewing Jewishness as an issue to fix or an identity facing strain, Jewishness acts as the setting for tales of friendship, family, drive, and connection.

Reviewer Nell Minow noted that The Floaters has an appealing Jewish neshama (soul) that emerges from beneath the surface, and that the movie gives an exceptionally authentic screen view of how Jewish traditions and culture mirror and form the Jewish outlook.

In a talk with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Israel spoke about creating two Jewish films one after another, why Jewish characters arise naturally for her as a writer and director, and why, even after Oct. 7, she thinks viewers are open to stories that honor Jewish community as much as they address Jewish vulnerability.

I did not plan to make only Jewish content, and I do not think I will only make Jewish content, she said. Still, her two recent movies, along with the 2017 love story Keep the Change, all carry what she terms a strong Jewish element.

It simply developed that way, she said.

Director aims to share Jewish joy amid rising antisemitism

The films also came together at a moment when antisemitism is increasing and anti-Israel sentiment over the Gaza war has placed Jews on the defensive. In talks for The Floaters, the director noted she aimed to offer a different picture of Jewish joy.

The Floaters is a comedy about a Jewish summer camp, starring Jackie Tohn, from the very Jewish Netflix hit Nobody Wants This, as a would-be rock star hired to oversee a group of misfit campers, the floaters of the title. Influenced follows a newly divorced Manhattan Jewish mother (Jill Kargman) who seeks to rise in the Upper East Side influencer world, while aiding her twin children as they prepare for their bar and bat mitzvah.

The Floaters was filmed first, and Influenced second. The Floaters is now in theaters, with a video-on-demand release set for later this year. Influenced is now available for rental from Apple, Amazon and other services.

Besides their lead actresses, the films also feature very Jewish casts. The Floaters includes Seth Green, Steve Guttenberg and pro wrestler Maxwell Jacob Friedman. Influenced includes David Krumholtz, as an unhoused former rock star who gathers bar mitzvah shirts, Justin Bartha and Dan Hedaya. Judd Goodstein and Ellie Biron play the two b'nai mitzvah kids, and Gwyneth Paltrow also appears in a cameo.

The way I approach it is, I am grateful for the bounty when there is bounty, she said of having the chance to make two movies back-to-back.

The same holds for family. I was pregnant while filming The Floaters, and we reached some sort of milestone in the edit, and then I delivered, Israel said. Then my daughter was 4 months old when we went into production on Influenced.

Israel's five children are between the ages of 2 and 9, and on several occasions she enjoyed the chance to bring a child with her for a weekend date with mama to one of the festivals where her films have screened. In an industry famously inhospitable to women directors and working moms, she and her husband, producer and filmmaker Kurt Enger, have made it work.

When you have filmmaking parents, I think it is really a family effort to support that career, because I was away from them for a while in making both films, and so it was great to bring them to see the work, she said.

The Floaters was shot at Camp Tel Yehudah in Barryville, New York, in the Catskills, the same camp where the producers' parents met. The film shows a wide variety of Jewish types, from kosher-enforcing kitchen staff to a group of outsider-ish kids to a female rabbi (played by Aya Cash).

Israel did not attend Jewish summer camp, but enjoyed the chance to immerse herself in the culture.

It was wonderful to have that, to be shooting in this real location and kind of have all of the texture of the place to feel fully authentic on screen and permeate the experience. I felt through making it that I absorbed some of what camp is like, she said of The Floaters.

Israel has much more experience with New York City, where Influenced was filmed on location. A New Jersey native who spent many formative years in Florida and attended the Rhode Island School of Design, she has been based in New York since beginning graduate school at Columbia University, where she earned an MFA in 2013.

Still, shooting Influenced also involved a learning curve.

I am not even on social media, she said. She enjoyed the chance to approach that world with fresh eyes.

Keep the Change, her first feature, was based on her own short of the same name, which she developed in grad school at Columbia. That film is set in part at a Manhattan Jewish community center.

The film, she said, was based on people I knew.

And while Influenced is not centrally a Jewish film, its characters are clearly Jewish, and it has a strong Jewish thread. At their climactic bar/bat mitzvah party, the kids reference the idea in Genesis that all humans are created b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God and are inspired by that lesson to create a charity to help the downtrodden.

Influenced had its world premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival in January, while The Floaters had its Southeast U.S. premiere at the same festival, after having its world premiere at the Bentonville (Arkansas) Film Festival in June 2025. Both films have spent some time on the Jewish film festival circuit, a process that Israel enjoyed.

Being Jewish, she said, you can find rooms full of family who you might not have met before, but that feeling of Jewish familiarity in all different places is wonderful.

The Bentonville festival was not Jewish, but we brought out the Jewish community in Arkansas.

It is fun feeling that expansive, Jewish film family, she said.

She considers herself, these days, more like Reform, Conservative-level of observance.

Having Shabbat and being a parent and wanting to continue that legacy and that connection, that positive emotional connection to being a Jew and pride in that identity, is very important to me and my husband in raising our family, Israel said.

While she did not write the screenplay for either of the new films, Israel said of The Floaters that she loved the opportunity to make a film that would say what I felt this film says about Jewish community.

Being Jewish from my earliest memory of myself, [and] understanding fully what it means to be a Jew intellectually, it was very central to who I was, Israel said. I had a very, very strong relationship with my grandparents on my mother's side, and they were both Holocaust survivors.

How much they cared about family, and their sense of humor, they were very pivotal figures in my life. Those relationships with my grandparents at a young age were to me what it meant to be Jewish. It was talking about stuff, it was talking about feelings, it was talking about messy things.