Whenever we used to watch a movie, my sister and I would play a game: "Spot the Jewish Reference" would have been the game's title, had we given it one. In just about every movie, there was at least one Jewish character who loved matzah ball soup, or at least one Hasid walking in a busy street. But looking back on all these brief references -- or not so brief, if the movie involved Adam Sandler -- I realized there really is no medium to those extremes. Jews, as portrayed by Hollywood, are either purely cultural, putting a symbolic Star of David up on their Christmas trees, or exceptionally religious, to the extent that their English is tinged with a shtetl-like Yiddish accent. Never once is there a young woman wearing pants and praying on her iPhone, as I do every morning on...