This can't be a fun week for Jews working in the CIA or any kind of high-level intelligence agency in the United States.

Not only is there the anticipation of the Friday release of Jonathan Pollard, the most notorious case of dual loyalty by an American Jewish government worker who betrayed his country by transferring classified material to Israel.

But in the same week, just last Sunday night, high-level CIA operative Saul Berenson stunned his colleagues by defecting to Israel in a dramatically staged fake kidnapping in Germany orchestrated by the Mossad.

Yes, yes, of course — Saul is completely fictional — just as Pollard is utterly real.

And yet, it has significance. "Homeland," the hit Showtime television program on which Berenson is a central character, isnt just another show. It has become something of a bellwether for the complicated policy dilemmas of the U.S. and the Middle East. The creators of the show have an uncanny, slightly psychic knack for predicting what the burning issues of the day will be precisely when their next season airs — issues ranging from Irans nuclear capacity to U.S. drone strikes to terror cells in Europe.

And so it feels meaningful that at this moment they are exploring the relationship of a prominent Jewish character to his personal Homeland of Israel. The Jewish state, thus far, has played a relatively marginal role in the previous four seasons of the series — considering that it is all about the Middle East — and especially because the series was loosely based on "Prisoners of War," an Israeli series by Gideon Raff, produced by the network Keshet, and both Raff and two of the network's executives had hands-on involvement in creating the American series and remain in the credits as producers. In the first two seasons of the series, many of the scenes set in neighboring Arab countries, were, in fact, filmed in Israel.

Berenson, has, of course, always been identifiably Jewish, and is played by the talented veteran actor Mandy Patinkin, who frequently inhabits Jewish characters on television (in stage and film, he has been more versatile, notably as the original Che in "Evita" and the legendary Indigo Montoya in "The Princess Bride.")

The tough talking, frequently cursing, Yiddish-using character of Saul has been a milestone for Jews on television. After the critically praised first season concluded, one critic crowned Saul "the most accurate depiction of an American Jewish identity ever portrayed on television." Like many American Jews, Saul, as we met him, was far more committed to his job than his religion — he was intermarried and in a rocky relationship with Mira, an Indian. It seemed as though his demanding career (and possibly his completely platonic devotion to his protégé Carrie Mathison) posed more of a problem to their marriage than religion.

His first big Jewish moment on the show took place after a captured Al-Qaida member Afsal Hamid commits suicide mid-interrogation. Over the dead suspect's body, Saul recites the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. In interviews, Patinkin told journalists that the moment was improvised after he asked himself what Saul would do in that situation. The Kaddish was brought out again for a reprise in the devastating second season finale, this time for maximum dramatic effect, with Saul saying the prayer while standing in front of 200 dead bodies after a mass terror attack at a memorial service takes place. There are other revealing moments — on the road with an anti-American terrorist named Aileen and trying to get her to open up about her co-conspirators, Saul tells her about his strict Jewish upbringing, about being forbidden to celebrate Christmas and growing up feeling "different, strange, isolated" and desperately wanting to fit into his small hometown in Indiana.

Then, in subsequent seasons, Saul's Jewiness took a back seat to the ever-changing, often head-spinning plot twists of the series, which changes drastically in tone and setting from season to season.

Early on in this season, the show's fifth, nearly entirely set in Germany — there was clear foreshadowing that Israel and Judaism were going to play a role. It happened in the fourth episode, beginning from the title "Why Is This Night Different?" As it opened, Saul, together with his colleague and secret lover Allison Carr are attending a Passover seder at the home of Etai Luskin, who we learn is the Israeli ambassador and an old intelligence buddy of Saul's — Etai was a Mossad man. Around the seder table, Etai reminds everyone the significance of celebrating the Jewish festival of freedom in Berlin and cautions about "the enemies we still have all over the world who wish to destroy us."

After that episode, a writer for Salon.com hypothesized that "this season, 'Homeland' is bringing Zionism front and center."

Indeed, in typical fast-moving "Homeland" style, subsequent episodes informed us that Allison, whom Saul trusts with his secrets as well as his body, is really a Russian mole ready to plant her knife firmly in his back, setting him up to be suspected by the CIA as collaborating with Israelis in sabotaging a key CIA plan to replace the leader of Syria. Saul, she knows, is vulnerable to these suspicions, we learn, because he passed secret information on suspected terrorists to the Israelis decades earlier — and his CIA colleagues have always looked askance at his cozy relationship with his co-religionists in Jerusalem ever since.

The suspicions weren’t totally off-base, judging from the way that Saul made his getaway, once it becomes clear to him that he is being plotted against from inside the CIA. He obviously had an exit plan in place with the Israelis, triggered by an innocent-seeming phone call regarding his laundry. Moments later, his CIA escorts are set upon by a band of masked men who grab him and whisk him away in a van, and he ends up next to Etai, the ambassador, cluing us in that his "kidnappers" are really Mossad agents. Etai turns and asks him, "So what exactly are we doing here?"

Saul responds: "I don’t know, I’ve never defected before."

So what now? Only the clever minds behind "Homeland" know for sure. Unfortunately, there was no news of the series filming in Israel last year, so it would be wishful thinking to imagine we would see Saul in exile strolling on the beaches of Tel Aviv, enjoying hummus in Jaffa, or maybe finally hooking up with a nice Jewish girl after the long-suffering Mira and the treacherous Allison. One wonders whether Patinkin’s off-screen relationship with Israel — he is on the board of American Friends of Peace Now — has had any impact on the script.

In any case, the pieces seem to be in place for an exploration of the relationship between American Jews like Saul Berenson and Israel, the extent — and the limits — of their ties, especially in these unbelievably complicated times in the Middle East.

When we entered the world of "Homeland" in its first season, the show was all about the CIA team led by Saul Berenson trying to get inside the mind of former Prisoner of War Nicholas Brody, a scarred but faithful Muslim convert, and figuring out where his true loyalties lay, and what he really considered his "Homeland."

It will be fascinating to see what it is like for Saul on the other end of that microscope.