Uncut Gems is one of a host of upcoming releases, also including Nazi satire Jojo Rabbit, that prove Jewish characters can be more than kvetching cosmopolitans

At the recent post-premiere party for Uncut Gems, held at the the legendary New York delicatessen Katz’s, I found myself talking with some fellow Jewish film critics. “That guy,” one said, “really reminded me of a family friend.” He was talking about Howard Ratner, the diamond district hustler played by Adam Sandler in the latest from Josh and Benny Safdie. “I have a cousin just like him,” another added. “I don’t think he’s allowed back in the country.” I was still too thunderstruck to speak. The truth is, were it not for a few life choices, Ratner could have been me.

Ratner in Uncut Gems is only the most exciting example of this season’s NCJs – New Cinematic Jews. We also have Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit and the Israeli-French film Synonyms. Although there has been no shortage of Jewish characters in movies and TV over the years, they tend to be primarily sardonic, rootless cosmopolitans kvetching about social encounters while working on a novel. Or Mrs Maisel. It’s not a bad look, but considering the recent surge in antisemitism in the US and UK, it can’t hurt to mix it up a little.

Ratner isn’t what a rabbi would call a righteous man. Rather, he is what Lenny Bruce once referred to as a “junkyard jew”: a schemer, a striver (a “hondler” in Yiddish). A pest, but not a villain. A toughie who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Each move may deepen the hole he’s in, but one day he’s going to make everything right. “This is how I win,” Ratner beams to NBA star Kevin Garnett (playing himself) while explaining a business deal (and bet) that could change everything. For Ratner, the hustle can be fun.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anti-hate satire ... Thomasin McKenzie, Roman Griffin Davis and Taika Waititi in Jojo Rabbit. Photograph: Kimberley French/AP

While he may not be the quintessence of ethics, Ratner isn’t stealing so much as working the angles. Some of his bets are at legally sanctioned casinos. Ratner ropes his soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law into an auction inflation that blows up in his face, but no one gets too mad. When borrowing against a pawned ring (as the interest keeps growing), the money-demanding lender will pause to ask: “You all right, bubi?”

Confounding stereotypes are at the heart of Jojo Rabbit. Writer-director Waititi, whose father is Maori, was raised by his single Russian-Jewish mother from the age of five. Jojo Rabbit is set in Nazi Germany and has been dubbed an “anti-hate satire” by the studio’s marketing department. Waititi plays a child’s zany projection of Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend.

The film won the audience award at the Toronto international film festival (a bellwether for Academy contention), but for me it didn’t quite land. The film had good intentions, as an examination of prejudice sculpting the fragile minds of vulnerable youth, but it couldn’t make up its mind if it was set in the real world or one of broad farce. “You can’t ride two horses with one behind,” as a wise aunt says in Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose.

I disagree, though, with critics who oppose the movie for crossing the line of good taste. It’s a tad featherweight, but I don’t think it is disrespectful. As Charles Chaplin, Mel Brooks and John Cleese have proven, mockery of even history’s greatest monsters is sometimes the only weapon we have. And that’s what drives the Jewish character in the film, Elsa, played by the sensational (non-Jewish) Thomasin McKenzie. She’s the story’s ersatz Anne Frank who clumsy 10 year-old Nazi wannabe Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) discovers hiding in the walls of his house. Once she realises he poses no threat, as turning her in will implicate Jojo’s mother (plus he has a crush on her), she’s a source of great wit and strength, and a rebuke to the notion that European Jews went to the gas chambers without putting up a fight.

She also gets one of the best the lines of the year when wide-eyed Jojo asks her to draw a picture of where Jews live. She hands him a picture of his head. “That’s where we live,” she says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A young Israeli heads to Paris to shed his identity ... Synonyms. Photograph: PR Company Handout

Yoav, played by Tom Mercier, is the troubled lead character in Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms. The Berlin Golden Bear winner, currently out in US, is another study in contrasts. Yoav is not a lovable rogue like Ratner, or a survivor who changes hearts and minds like Elsa, but a more complex character: a young Israeli just out of the army who heads to Paris to shed his identity.

Synonyms is an exaggerated autobiographical piece about a man who refuses to speak his native Hebrew, clutching a French phrasebook as he rebuilds his life. Yoav, feeling an unnamed trauma, is forever in flight. Retreat as the ultimate act of heroism is an unusual recurring theme. Yoav’s characterisation would appear to be an expansion of a theory that Annalee Newitz posits in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. The Jewish diaspora, Newitz argues, is the best recorded success model for a persecuted minority surviving centuries of attempted genocide.

Antisemites may have a hard time accepting it, but all this suggests that diversity within the tribe keeps it alive.