(JTA) — There was already some buzz around “An American Pickle,” the biggest Jewish movie of the year, before the movie’s star Seth Rogen made comments about Israel that seemed to set the Jewish internet on fire.

In the new movie, Seth Rogen plays Herschel Greenbaum, a Jewish immigrant who is preserved in pickle brine for 100 years and emerges to meet his app developer great-grandson Ben, also played by Rogen, in modern hipster Brooklyn.

The movie seems to exist in a world where Israel doesn’t exist — Herschel Greenbaum fell into the pickle brine before Israel was founded and B...