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Amy Krause, center, and her production crew take a trip to Krakow, Poland, to see the debate for the first time.

She was also drawn to the humor behind the subject, which includes clever takes on whether the latke or hamantash is the more perfect Jewish food. “It was funny,” Krause said. “I didn’t see a lot of funny films at Jewish film festivals, so the idea really intrigued me.”

Krause began to research the debate, which is academic in nature, and connected with fellow debate enthusiast Benjamin Lorch, who now serves as an adviser and producer for the documentary. The two partnered on the idea and officially began working on the film in the summer of 2018 after Krause attended the Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow.

Over the course of the next two years, Krause flew all over the world to gather information. From Philadelphia to Israel, she interviewed people about the debate and what lies at the heart of Jewish culture. She spoke with rabbis, moderators, foodies and debaters — including the oldest living debater, 98-year-old Bernie Weisberger — about the legacy of the “Latke-Hamantash Debate.”

Throughout her journey, Krause also found herself growing closer to Judaism, a personal accomplishment that she feels proud of. While Krause personally sides with the hamantash as the more perfect Jewish food, she’s heard sound debates on both ends in favor of the winning dish.

FILMING CONTINUES

Though the pandemic has slowed film production, Krause continues to conduct interviews over Zoom and aims to complete filming at the end of this year, along with releasing the film soon after.

She also filmed a trailer in West Bloomfield in 2019 that previews the documentary and teases “the greatest Jewish debate in history.” It shows the intense academic rigor behind the subject, which has been dissected from every viewpoint imaginable.

Once the film is complete, Krause plans to exhibit it at Jewish film festivals and then introduce it to the rest of the world. “It’ll add a little lightness and remembrance of the joy of our culture,” she says of Latke vs. Hamantash. “Not just the struggles of our culture.”

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NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

THE WEDDING COACH, SHIVA BABY, HEMINGWAY’S JEWISH MATADOR FRIEND

The Wedding Coach, a six-episode Netflix romantic reality series, began streaming April 7. The advance publicity says: Jamie Lee shares her irreverent yet practical tips and tricks for wedding planning with struggling lovebirds.

Lee, 38, has climbed the comedy ladder. She was a writer’s assistant (2010) to Jerry Seinfeld as he co-hosted the reality series Marriage Ref. In 2011, she finished second on the Last Comic Standing. After, she did stand-up sets on many major talk shows. She’s best known as a core cast member on the popular MTV series Girl Code (201315).

Two Jewish-themed movies opened in the last few weeks. Donny’s Bar Mitzvah, set in Michigan in the ’90s, got terrible reviews “everywhere” and isn’t worth your time. The opposite is true of Shiva Baby, which opened April 2 in some theaters and is now streaming (for a fee) on Amazon. It’s a comedy/ drama set at a family shivah gathering. Almost all critics have lauded the cast and praised first time director/ writer Emma Seligman, 26, a Toronto native.

The PBS documentary series Hemingway (about Ernest, of course) premiered on April 5. It is a six-hour, three-episode series that was shown over three nights this past week. It was co-directed by Ken Burns (whose wife is Jewish) and Lynn Novick, 58. If you missed the first airing, it

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can be streamed on the PBS website. Michigan’s own Jeff Daniels provides the voice of Hemingway.

Before the series aired, I thought about writing about “Hemingway and the Jews.” No literary scholar disputes that he was, to some degree, antisemitic. But I was quite sure that the Hemingway filmmakers would address that issue. You don’t win as many Emmys as Burns and Novick have won by ignoring the flaws of their biographical subjects.

Oddly, however, I got back to the subject of Hemingway while checking out the background of David Caro Levy, a “hot” Latin American Jewish actor. Levy’s father was possibly a bullfighter, and I flashed on Sidney Franklin (19031976), a Jew that Hemingway greatly admired.

Franklin was born in Brooklyn to Orthodox parents. Estranged from his police officer father, he went to Mexico as a teen and, almost on a dare, he studied bullfighting. He became a successful bullfighter in Mexico and Spain.

Franklin was funny and fluent in Yiddish as well as several Spanish dialects. He was friends with Hemingway and James Dean. He was also gay, a fact he barely concealed during his lifetime (See 2019 NY Times article, “The Gay Jewish Matador from Brooklyn”).