Rachel Israel has directed two unabashedly Jewish comedies in the space of a year, and the timing says as much about the pressure around Jewish identity as it does about the films themselves. The Floaters, set at a Jewish summer camp, and Influenced, a satire of Manhattan influencer culture that ends in a b’nai mitzvah celebration, arrive as much of Jewish culture has been shaped by war, rising antisemitism and questions of identity under pressure.
Jewish Joy, Packaged for the Circuit
Israel said she didn’t set out to make only Jewish content, though her two latest movies, along with her 2017 love story Keep the Change, all have what she calls a strong Jewish element. “I didn’t set out and decide I’m only going to make Jewish content, and I don’t think I’m only going to make Jewish content,” she said. “It’s just kind of rolled into being.” That’s the line. The work keeps circling back anyway.
Reviewer Nell Minow wrote that The Floaters has “an appealing Jewish neshama (soul) that peeks out from under the surface,” and said the film offers “an exceptionally authentic movie portrayal of the way Jewish traditions and culture reflect and shape the Jewish worldview.” Israel said she hoped to provide an alternative image of Jewish joy at a time when antisemitism is on the rise and anti-Israel fervor over the Gaza war has put Jews on the defensive. The films don’t solve that pressure. They just sit inside it, trying to make room for laughter.
The Floaters is a comedy about a Jewish summer camp, starring Jackie Tohn, from the Netflix hit Nobody Wants This, as a would-be rock star hired to supervise a group of misfit campers, the floaters of the title. Influenced follows a newly divorced Manhattan Jewish mother, played by Jill Kargman, who tries to climb the ranks of the Upper East Side influencer scene while also helping her twin children prepare for their bar and bat mitzvah. The Floaters was shot first and Influenced second. The Floaters is currently in theaters, with a video-on-demand release expected later this year. Influenced is currently available for rental from Apple, Amazon and other providers.
Family, Labor and the Film Machine
The cast list reads like a small ecosystem of Jewish comedy and New York character actors. The Floaters features Seth Green, Steve Guttenberg and pro wrestler Maxwell Jacob Friedman. Influenced features David Krumholtz, as an unhoused onetime rock star who collects bar mitzvah shirts, Justin Bartha and Dan Hedaya. Judd Goodstein and Ellie Biron play the two b’nai mitzvah kids, and Gwyneth Paltrow also makes a cameo.
Israel said, “The way I approach it is, I’m grateful for the bounty when there’s bounty.” She added, “I was pregnant while filming The Floaters, and we reached some sort of milestone in the edit, and then I delivered. Then my daughter was 4 months old when we went into production on Influenced.” Israel has five children between the ages of 2 and 9, and she said she has enjoyed bringing a child with her for “a weekend date with mama” to festivals where her films have screened. She and her husband, producer and filmmaker Kurt Enger, have made it work. “When you have filmmaking parents, I think it’s 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 features 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 said, “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 didn’t attend Jewish summer camp herself, but relished the chance to immerse herself in the culture.
Identity, Institutions and the Festival Circuit
Israel has been based in New York since beginning graduate school at Columbia University, where she earned an MFA in 2013. A New Jersey native, she spent many formative years in Florida and attended the Rhode Island School of Design. Shooting Influenced on location in New York City also involved a learning curve. “I’m not even on social media,” she said. She enjoyed the opportunity 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. Israel said the film was “based on people I knew.” Influenced is not centrally a Jewish film, but 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 time on the Jewish film festival circuit, which Israel said she 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 wasn’t Jewish, but “we brought out the Jewish community in Arkansas.” “It’s fun feeling that expansive, Jewish film family,” she said.
Israel 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.” Israel said, “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.” She said her maternal grandparents were both Holocaust survivors. “How much they cared about family, and their sense of humor, they were very pivotal figures in my life,” she said. “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.”