Sarah ranks as one of the most complex characters to appear in contemporary television—principled, passionate, long-suffering, and intrepid. Her decision to convert, made after falling in love with a Jewish doctor during the Spanish Civil War, leads to her excommunication from the Catholic Church and subsequent estrangement from her mother. It results in her internment in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and her torture by the Nazis. Yet the most insidious challenge to Sarah’s identity comes after the Holocaust, when a wealthy Australian widower invites her to work as a nurse in his quiet country town. There she must wrestle with almost daily displays of anti-Semitism.

It comes in various stripes, from the “Hitler should have gotten you all” variety to the aristocratic “to be born a Jew is misfortune enough, but to become one is a tragedy.” Jew-hatred is shown to permeate every stratum of Australian society, along with prejudice against gay people, women, and Blacks. Sarah stands up for them all. Though not formally observant, she is fiercely attached to her adopted faith and what she regards as its liberal ideals. She confronts the bigots and, for the most part, defeats them. When chancing on a former Ravensbrück guard, she seeks not closure but vengeance, and after giving birth to a son, insists on having him circumcised. Along the way, Sarah befriends other Jews, many of them Orthodox, all of them noble.

If glowing in its portrayal of Jews and Judaism, A Place to Call Home, which is streaming on Acorn TV, is no less admiring in its treatment of Israel. Sarah is unreservedly proud of the Jewish state, defending it from detractors and yearning to visit at the earliest opportunity. Zionism serves as an inspiration to other liberation movements, she believes, as do several of the series’ protagonists. “Israel … it gives a man hope,” an aboriginal worker observes to her. “Two thousand years for your mob and only 200 years for ours … so maybe there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

Such a positive portrayal of Jewishness and Israel might be understandable if the makers of A Place to Call Home were themselves committed Jews or evangelical Christians. But writer Bevan Lee, a renowned gay-rights activist, wrote the series not as a tribute to Jews but to the veterans of World War II. Marta Dusseldorp, who plays Sarah, is also a non-Jew. She prepared for the role by watching Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah film, visiting Sydney’s Holocaust Museum and speaking with a convert. “Sarah doesn’t walk around as a victim,” she explained. “Her life is about … being positive and enriching the world.” A search of the producers’ backgrounds reveals no Jewish connections whatsoever.

By contrast, one would be hard-pressed to find an American series in which Jews did not play a significant if not dominant role. And Jewish characters have long been a staple of American television—from the presumed-to-be Jewish stars of Rhoda and Seinfeld to the over-the-top Jews of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The progression from subtle to flagrant portrayals no doubt reflects the increasing success and security of Jews in the entertainment field, but it also mirrors their own sense of identity. For them, it seems, Judaism is less a source of pride and values than of ethnic quirks, psychological fragility, and angst—less a religion than a syndrome. And it is funny, easily caricatured: an ongoing Jewish joke. Donny’s Bar Mitzvah, a new Amazon Prime comedy, seeks to be “the raunchiest Jewish movie ever made.”

But other series, most graphically Our Boys and Unorthodox, dispense with humor altogether to show a Judaism that is racist, anti-feminist, cruel, and ultimately violent. Israel is painted as heartless at best, and at worst, evil. These themes converge in Messiah, a Netflix production that touches on almost every anti-Semitic trope, from the hideous IDF soldiers who torment a Christ-like figure and his unarmed Palestinian followers to the Israeli security personnel determined to kill him.