As she does in this seventh season of “The Circle,” Deb Levy slid into my DMs one day last month. She was going to be on the next season of the Netflix reality show, she told me, and she hoped that I saw in her a good example of Jewish representation.
I am not a reality TV watcher, but I knew just from a glance at her delightful Instagram profile that I wanted to see more of Deb. She’s the first contestant you see in this new season, and right away, the Pittsburgh mom won me over, with her big Jewish star necklace and her big personality. She peppered her speech with “oy veys” and when she created her profile, she made sure to add a #ShalomCircle hashtag.
The profile, however, wasn’t for herself. It was for a 27-year-old girl named Rachel. For those of you who know nothing about “The Circle,” it’s a show in which the contestants are each isolated in their own rooms and have to communicate via chat only. Some of them choose to make their Circle profile an honest reflection of themselves; others decide that in order to best play the game, they need to catfish the other contestants, pretending to be someone they’re not. Throughout the game, players rank each other, and those who get the highest rankings become “influencers,” who then get to vote on who is thrown out of the show — or rather, blocked.
Deb is not the first Jewish contestant of “The Circle,” but in a show where everyone is a gigantic personality, she’s the most extra about it. Onscreen, Deb wears shirts with Jewish prints that read “Jewlicious” and Star of David and hamsa jewelry (she also has a pillow shaped like her husband, Phil, with a picture of him printed on it, called Phillow). As Rachel, she makes sure to tell others that she is Jewish. And Deb is surprisingly good at this game — she has sons who are young adults, and she works in higher education, surrounded by young people. She doesn’t just show herself as a brilliant player, but also as someone with a lot of heart. She bonds with a player who suffers from a traumatic brain injury because, as she tells the camera, she has recently lost her own son at 22. She builds a fierce alliance with “Gianna,” who says she’s from Staten Island, but is actually two Italian American twins from the New York borough where Deb was born and where “Rachel’s mom” grew up. When she feels like she’s about to get caught as a catfish, she pulls out the big guns and gets sassy and real, even using the “#ImThatBitch” hashtag. Basically, Deb Levy is a larger-than-life delight.
Therefore, it was no surprise that I had the most unhinged, wonderful conversation with Levy, who has officially made it to the final six contestants of “The Circle,” of which the last episodes are airing this Rosh Hashanah eve. And since we talked on Friday at noon, of course our conversation started with…
Debra Levy: Gut shabbos!
We’re always talking right before Shabbat.
My brother’s Orthodox and we have a family chat, and right around 4 o’clock, all the “gut shabbos” texts start coming in!
I grew up secular in Israel so…
We grew up secular too, but my brother became Orthodox. He lives in Brooklyn, he runs a Yeshiva in Queens, his name is Yehuda…
Oh, of course, I know him!
Exactly. I guarantee if we played Jewish geography…
We’ll find each other, for sure! I was just watching you in the seventh episode of the show and I totally recognized the menorah earrings you were wearing — I’m 90% sure I’ve written about them before!
Before I got on the show, my synagogue was doing a showing of “You’re So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” and everyone knows I’m queen of Hanukkah. My house outside, it’s like Hanukkah threw up all over the house. I blow up decorations. I have a collection of things you wouldn’t believe. So this friend of mine from the synagogue shows up and she says, “I bought these months ago, they were on clearance at Nordstrom,” and she hands me those earrings! I couldn’t tell her I was on a show, but I was like, I know where I’m wearing those. Immediately.
I love Hanukkah decor, it’s my favorite.
If you go on TikTok I do tours of the chazerai that’s around my house.
So full disclosure, I’ve never watched “The Circle” before.
I hadn’t either!
I was like, OK, let’s check out Deb at “The Circle,” this sounds great! And one minute in I was like, yeah this is not someone who is subtly Jewish. This is the real deal.
There is no subtlety to me in any single way, and I hope that shines through in every single episode.
It’s really working in your favor so far. But wait, if you’d never seen this show, how did you get on it?!
I hadn’t seen it, but my friend’s daughter who is family to me — I watched her grow up — she and her fiancé are obsessed with the show. So they called me when they were casting for the next two seasons and they said, we think you’d be fantastic on the show… She’s like, “Go to Netflix, watch a couple of season promos.” So I watch it and I said, “Why not?!” I’m in this stage of life where everything’s “why not!” But I watched all the seasons eventually, obviously.
That’s so sweet.
In episode two or three, there’s a sign that says “Mazel tov Maddie and Dylan!” Those are the kids who told me to go on the show! They got engaged right before I went to film the show in Atlanta!
So tell me a bit about your Jewish story, and your childhood growing up Jewish in Staten Island.
We have this running joke, my mom says she’s the most Jewish neshama [soul,] she’s so Jewish — but my mom is not in any way observant. But she’s very Jewish and very proud of being Jewish. We were raised to know we were Jewish. We lit Hanukkah candles; my grandparents came over for Passover and my grandfather would literally open up the Haggadah and go “Next year, Jerusalem, I want to eat!” She forced my brother to have a bar mitzvah for my other set of grandparents, which is funny. He’s a rabbi now. But the key to everything is we were sent to Jewish summer camps. We have Birthright but I think we need to have Campright — that solidified everything. So the joke she has is: How did I raise two Super Jews? Like my brother and I are both incredibly active, we do so much in our communities, we both are much more observant than my mother ever would have wanted for us. It’s funny how that happened.
So how did that work out for you, becoming more observant?
There is a weird backstory to that. I went down to see my grandparents my freshman year in Florida, this man sat next to me. He was Jewish, Modern Orthodox. We start talking the whole way down, there were no phones back then, and he actually said to me: “Promise me one day you’ll read the Torah.” I had to register for classes a few weeks later and in the Jewish Study section there was a course called Dynamics of Biblical Narrative reading… and that started a massive journey for me.
Wow, that’s bashert! Speaking of bashert, tell me about Phil/Phillow.
Phil and I met in grad school. [When we met] I had a big chai on my neck — I’ve always worn something on my neck that was Jewish — but he did not. I never got his last name, we were just trying to be friends. It wasn’t until months [later] when a mutual friend said to me, “How do you know Phil Levy?” and I went “He’s Jewish?!” and that changed all my views of him — now we could be more than friends. And now, here we are. [Deb does a really cute motion of putting her hands beneath her chin and smiling.]
How many years later is it now?
We’ve been married 29 years next month and we’ve been together 32 years. That’s why I had to take Phillow with me.
Wait, tell me about how Phillow came to be?
One of our friends was turning 60, and somehow these weird pillows came up on my feed. We bought them these pillows of themselves as his gift for his 60th birthday. So when I got on the show, I don’t even know what made me think it but I was like, I should make a pillow of Phil to take with me because I’m not apart from him ever! Of course, we had to make the weird one and that’s how it all began.
Has he watched you in the show?
Yeah, and I told him nothing! Not him, not my kids, not my mom. They’re as surprised as everybody else.
What have been some of the reactions?
No surprises. That makes sense. We’ve seen the menopausal rage woman. Yes. We’ve seen the crazy. We’ve seen that. We’ve seen when she cries. Phil’s joke is, “Now everybody knows what I live with.” He’s like, yes, that’s exactly what she’s like all the time.
She’s that b****.
I always say “There’s no such thing as non-refundable, no returns,” so whenever he needs to return something, I’m on it. So he uses that b**** all the time.
We all need that b**** in our lives to help us return stuff! Phil is so lucky!
We have a joke: He says that I do and say everything he wishes he could do and say, and he has made sure that I’m not in jail or bankrupt.
Tell me a bit about your children.
I talk about Jonathan in the show — he was my oldest and he had fentanyl poisoning, it was accidental. He had been in rehab, we tried to help him. And then, of course there’s Jason and Drew. Part of going on the show was [Jonathan]. I think he’s with me, and I think he would have loved this. I think, out of all three of them, he would have thought this was the funniest thing possible. That was part of why when I got on there I just thought, he’s got to be part of this. There’s no reason — like why am I being chosen to go on this? This makes no sense. And I really believe that somehow he’s a part of it.
That’s so beautiful. Did some of the contestants remind you of him?
Yeah, they do. The twins in particular remind me a lot of him. I think this was just meant to happen. The Jewish way of living is we live and we celebrate. We take with us the people [we’ve lost]. We don’t forget them, but we live.
I will say all of the mourning rituals really got us through. The Shiva, the Shloshim, going to Yizkor. The cycle of mourning and the communal mourning — it’s really healing. It helps you move forward.
It’s so grounding. It’s one of the most beautiful part of our religion, that’s so much about mixing grief and joy together.
So the other interesting thing is this was filmed… I was down in Atlanta, we hadn’t started filming yet. I was in seclusion, no phones, all I have is a TV and October 7 had happened. And all I could do is watch TV, and not everything had come out yet. So it’s two days after October 7 and we’re gonna start filming and I called my husband. I said, “How am I supposed to go in there?” I really questioned it, and I was very scared for my boys being on college campuses. The sad thing is, I knew what was going to happen. I knew it was going to get bad on college campuses. I was like, “Should I really be doing this?”
I only have two numbers memorized — my husband’s and my mother’s. I had to call my mom and say, “Can I have my brother’s number,” and I had to call my husband and say, “Can I have my rabbi at my synagogue’s number.” And what’s the joke? Two rabbis, seven opinions? They both said the same thing.
Wow.
They both said everything you’re saying is right, we think this is going to be [bad.] But you should go in and be who you are, because whenever this comes out, it will hopefully show people someone who despite knowing that things are about to get bad, is going to be a full proud Jewish person. And we may need to see that on our TVs. It’s so interesting that they both felt that way. And I thought, OK, that’s it, this is the best way I can help in this situation. And I went in and I did me and that was it.
I can only speak for myself but I’m working on all these October 7 one year anniversary roundups, that I can’t believe that I’m working on, and this was such a comfort to me to watch you in this show, Deb.
I’m kvelling. My heart is full because imagine two rabbis, an Orthodox and a Reform, said the exact same thing: “Be you… if you’re you, we’re gonna need that.” I actually haven’t gotten as much heat as I expected, which is so sad to say, because, I have. People write things but… I can’t tell you how many people, Israelis, tell me: Thank you for leaving all your posts on social media, thank you for not being afraid. And I think to myself, I’m not afraid of “keyboard terrorists.” Other people are in real danger right now.
Yeah, what’s the worst thing that could happen…
People write “die, b****,” and I go “report, block, delete.” Do they think it hurts my feelings?! Please.
Have they not seen the show? You can handle it! How did you work through your grief about October 7 as you were shooting this very joyful, funny thing?
So I didn’t have all the information yet, remember, everything had not come out in those first few days. Things were just starting to come out. I had a much more horrible visceral reaction after I got out and was able to actually hear the stories and what had actually taken place. I went in knowing it was bad, but I was unaware of the true extent. I just had to say to myself: This is going to be a great experience and if I’m myself, maybe it’s something people will be able to look at and say, she’s just being herself and she’s not afraid of whatever’s gonna come her way.
You come out as very caring and very human.
It was a great experience. I’m floored by the amount of work that goes into a show like this: decorating the apartment, even little things that I never thought about watching a show.
Your tiger apartment was amazing!
It was! And then there’s the fact that someone has to make sure we’re fed, that our battery packs are working… the amount of assistance just to make sure everything’s working correctly. I am just floored by it. It’s a pretty amazing job that they do, and maybe it’s the mom in me, but every single person who worked on the show, they were just the greatest and nicest people.
Is there anything else you want people to know about your connection to Judaism?
We have to be proud of who we are, and don’t let what’s happening stop you from being your joyful, Jewish self.
