Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish academic, surveys his kingdom, and covets his neighbor’s wife, in A Serious Man, set in 1967 in St. Louis Park (a.k.a. St. Jewish Park), a Minneapolis suburb.
After the film debuted in Minneapolis, Joel and Ethan Coen spoke to the Minneapolis StarTribune about growing up in St. Louis Park.

“Everybody's interested in where they grew up,” said Ethan Coen. “As you get older, you get more interested in it as opposed to fading away.” “It's hard for us to imagine a story unless we have a real specific sense of where it's taking place,” said Joel. And there's no place they know better. Minnesota is “totally part of our identity,” Ethan said. “The combination of being Jewish—specifically Minnesotan—is big and important.” “An actor's body and voice are what they have to work with,” Joel added. “Being from Minnesota is what we have to work with.”

What follows are snapshots of a few Jewish communities, most of which are just waiting to produce a filmmaker like Joel or Ethan Coen to tell their own, singular stories. (That is except for the next one, which is where the Coens hail from.)