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How Jewish comedy found religion, from Philip Roth to ‘Broad City’
(JTA) — In the 2020 comedy “Shiva Baby,” a 20-something young woman shows up at a house of Jewish mourners and gently offers her condolences. When she finds her mother in the kitchen, they chat about the funeral and the rugelach before the daughter asks, “Mom, who died?”
While “Shiva Baby” explores themes of sexuality and gender, the comedy almost never comes at the expense of Jewish tradition, which is treated seriously by its millennial writer and director Emma Seligman (born in 1995) even as the shiva-goers collide. It’s far cry from the acerbic way an author raised during the Depression like Philip Roth lampooned a Jewish wedding or a baby boomer like Jerry Seinfeld mocked a bris.
These generational differences are explored in Jenny Caplan’s new book, “Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials.” A religion scholar, Caplan writes about the way North American Jewish comedy has evolved since World War II, with a focus on how humorists treat Judaism as a religion. Her subjects range from writers and filmmakers who came of age shortly after the war (who viewed Judaism as “a joke at best and an actual danger at worst”) to Generation X and millennials, whose Jewish comedy often recognizes “the power of community, the value of family tradition, and the way that religion can serve as a port in an emotional storm.”
“I see great value in zeroing in on the ways in which Jewish humorists have engaged Jewish practices and their own Jewishness,” Caplan writes. “It tells us something (or perhaps it tells us many somethings) about the relationship between Jews and humor that goes deeper than the mere coincidence that a certain humorist was born into a certain family.”
Caplan is the chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She has a master’s of theological studies degree from Harvard Divinity School and earned a Ph.D. in religion from Syracuse University.
In a conversation last week, we spoke about the Jewishness of Jerry Seinfeld, efforts by young women comics to reclaim the “Jewish American Princess” label, and why she no longer shows Woody Allen movies in her classrooms.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity
[Note: For the purpose of her book and our conversation, this is how Caplan isolates the generations: the Silent Generation (b. 1925-45), the baby boom (1946-65), Generation X (1966-79) and millennials (1980–95).]
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Let me ask how you got into this topic.
Jenny Caplan: I grew up in a family where I was just sort of surrounded by this kind of material. My dad is a comedic actor and director who went to [Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s] Clown College. My degrees were more broadly in American religion, not Jewish studies, but I was really interested in the combination of American religion and popular culture. When I got to Syracuse and it came time to start thinking about my larger project and what I wanted to do, I proposed a dissertation on Jewish humor.
The key to your book is how Jewish humor reflects the Jewish identity and compulsions of four sequential generations. Let’s start with the Silent Generation, which is sandwiched between the generation whose men were old enough to fight in World War II and the baby boomers who were born just after the war.
The hallmark of the Silent Generation is that they were old enough to be aware of the war, but they were mostly too young to serve. Every time I told people what I was writing about, they would say Woody Allen or Philip Roth, two people of roughly the same generation.
In “Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials,” Jenny Caplan explores how comics treated religion from the end of World War II to the 21st century. (Courtesy)
The Roth story you focus on is “Eli, the Fanatic” from 1959, about an assimilated Jewish suburb that is embarrassed and sort of freaks out when an Orthodox yeshiva, led by a Holocaust survivor, sets up in town.
Roth spent the first 20 to 30 years of his career dodging the claim of being a self-loathing Jew and bad for the Jews. But the actual social critique of “Eli, the Fanatic” is so sharp. It is about how American Jewish comfort comes at the expense of displaced persons from World War II and at the expense of those for whom Judaism is a real thriving, living religious practice.
That’s an example you offer when you write that the Silent Generation “may have found organized religion to be a dangerous force, but they nevertheless wanted to protect and preserve the Jewish people.” I think that would surprise people in regards to Roth, and maybe to some degree Woody Allen.
Yeah, it surprised me. They really did, I think, share that postwar Jewish sense of insecurity about ongoing Jewish continuity, and that there’s still an existential threat to the ongoing existence of Jews.
I hear that and I think of Woody Allen’s characters, atheists who are often on the lookout for antisemitism. But you don’t focus on Allen as the intellectual nebbish of the movies. You look at his satire of Jewish texts, like his very funny “Hassidic Tales, With a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar” from 1970, which appeared in The New Yorker. It’s a parody of Martin Buber’s “Tales of the Hasidim” and sentimental depictions of the shtetl, perhaps like “Fiddler on the Roof.” A reader might think he’s just mocking the tradition, but you think there’s something else going on.
He’s not mocking the tradition as much as he’s mocking a sort of consumerist approach to the tradition. There was this sort of very superficial attachment to Buber’s “Tales of the Hasidim.” Allen’s satire is not a critique of the traditions of Judaism, it’s a critique of the way that people latch onto things like the Kabbalah and these new English translations of Hasidic stories without any real depth of thought or intellect. Intellectual hypocrisy seems to be a common theme in his movies and in his writing. It’s really a critique of organized religion, and it’s a critique of institutions, and it’s a critique of the power of institutions. But it’s not a critique of the concept of religion.
The idea of making fun of the wise men and their gullible followers reminds me of the folk tales of Chelm, which feature rabbis and other Jewish leaders who use Jewish logic to come to illogical conclusions.
Yes.
You write that the baby boomers are sort of a transition between the Silent Generation and a later generation: They were the teenagers of the counterculture, and warned about the dangers of empty religion, but also came to consider religion and tradition as valuable. But before you get there, you have a 1977 “Saturday Night Live” skit in which a bris is performed in the back seat of a luxury car, and the rabbi who performs it is portrayed as what you call an absolute sellout.
Exactly. You know: Institutional religion is empty and it’s hollow, it’s dangerous and it’s seductive.
Jerry Seinfeld, born in 1954, is seen as an icon of Jewish humor, but to me is an example of someone who never depicts religion as a positive thing. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
“Seinfeld” is more a show about New York than it is necessarily a show about anything Jewish. The New York of Seinfeld is very similar to the New York of Woody Allen, peopled almost entirely by white, middle-class, attractive folks. It’s a sort of Upper West Side myopia.
But there’s the bris episode, aired in 1993, and written by Larry Charles. Unless you are really interested in the medium, you may not know much about Larry Charles, because he stays behind the camera. But he also goes on to do things like direct Bill Maher’s anti-religion documentary “Religulous,” and there’s a real strong case for him as having very negative feelings about organized religion which feels like a holdover from the Silent Generation. And so in that episode you have Kramer as the Larry Charles stand-in, just opining about the barbaric nature of the circumcision and trying to save this poor baby from being mutilated.
The few references to actual Judaism in “Seinfeld” are squirmy. I am thinking of the 1995 episode in which a buffoon of a rabbi blurts out Elaine’s secrets on a TV show. That was written by Larry David, another boomer, whose follow-up series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is similarly known for its irreverence toward Judaism. But you say David can also surprise you with a kind of empathy for religion.
For the most part, he’s classic, old school, anti-organized religion. There’s the Palestinian Chicken episode where the Jews are rabidly protesting the existence of a Palestinian-run chicken restaurant near a Jewish deli, and where his friend Funkhouser won’t play golf on Shabbos until Larry gets permission by bribing the rabbi with the Palestinian chicken. There, rabbis are ridiculous and can be bought and religion is hollow and this is all terrible.
But then there’s this bat mitzvah montage where for one moment in the entire run of this show, Larry seems happy and in a healthy relationship and fulfilled and enjoying life.
That’s where he falls in love with Loretta Black during a bat mitzvah and imagines a happy future with her.
It’s so startling: It is the most human we ever see Larry over the run of the show, and I believe that was the season finale for the 2007 season. It was much more in line with what we’ve been seeing from a lot of younger comedians at that point, which was religion as an anchor in a good way — not to pull you down but to keep you grounded.
So for Generation X, as you write, Judaism serves “real, emotional, or psychological purpose for the practitioners.”
I wouldn’t actually call it respect but religion is an idea that’s not just something to be mocked and relegated to the dustbin. I’m not saying that Generation X is necessarily more religious, but they see real power and value in tradition and in certain kinds of family experiences. So, a huge amount of the humor can still come at the expense of your Jewish mother or your Jewish grandmother, but the family can also be the thing that is keeping you grounded, and frequently through some sort of religious ritual.
Who exemplifies that?
My favorite example is the 2009 Jonathan Tropper novel, “This Is Where I Leave You.” I’m so disappointed that the film adaptation of that sucked a lot of the Jewish identity out of the story, so let’s stick with the novel. In that book, where a family gathers for their father’s shiva, the characters are horrible people in a dysfunctional family writ large. They lie to each other. They backstab each other. But in scene where the protagonist Judd describes standing up on the bimah [in synagogue] to say Kaddish [the Mourner’s Prayer] after the death of his father, and the way he talks about this emotional catharsis that comes from saying the words and hearing the congregation say the words — it’s a startling moment of clarity in a book where these characters are otherwise just truly reprehensible.
Adam Sandler was born in 1966, the first year of Generation X, and his “Chanukah Song” seems like such a touchstone for his generation and the ones that follow. It’s not about religious Judaism, but in listing Jewish celebrities, it’s a statement of ethnic pride that Roth or Woody Allen couldn’t imagine.
It’s the reclamation of Jewish identity as something great and cool and fun and hip and wonderful and absolutely not to be ashamed of.
From left, Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson and Seth Green in an episode of “Broad City” parodying Birthright Israel. (Screenshot from Comedy Central)
Which brings us to “Broad City,” which aired between 2014 and 2019. It’s about two 20-something Jewish women in New York who, in the case of Ilana Glazer’s character, anyway, are almost giddy about being Jewish and embrace it just as they embrace their sexuality: as just liberating. Ilana even upends the Jewish mother cliche by loving her mother to death.
That’s the episode with Ilana at her grandmother’s shiva, which also has the B plot where Ilana and her mother are shopping for underground illegal handbags. They spend most of the episode snarking at each other and fighting with each other and her mother’s a nag and Ilana is a bumbling idiot. But at the moment that the cops show up, and try to nab them for having all of these illegal knockoff handbags, the two of them are a team. They are an absolute unit of destructive force against these hapless police officers.
I think all of your examples of younger comics are women, who have always had fraught relationships with Jewish humor, both as practitioners and as the target of jokes. You write about “The JAP Battle” rap from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which both leans into the stereotype of the Jewish-American Princess — spoiled, acquisitive, “hard as nails” — and tries to reclaim it without the misogyny.
Rachel Bloom’s character Rebecca in “Girlfriend” self-identifies as a JAP, but she doesn’t actually fit the category. It’s her mother, Naomi, who truly is the Philip Roth, “Marjorie Morningstar,” Herman Wouk model of a JAP. So Bloom is kind of using the term, but you can’t repurpose the term when the original is still there.
So as an alternative, I offer up a new term: the Modern Ashkenazi American Woman. It’s very New York, it’s very East Coast, it’s very particular to a type of upbringing and community that in the 1950s and ’60s would have been almost exclusively Conservative Jews, and then may have become a bit more Reform as we’ve gotten into the ’90s and 2000s. They went to the JCC. They probably went to Jewish summer camp.
But even that doesn’t even really speak to the American sense of what Jewish is anymore, because American Jews have become increasingly racially and culturally diverse.
There is also something that’s happening historically with Generation X, and that’s the distance from the two major Jewish events of the 20th century, which is the Holocaust and the creation of Israel.
The Silent Generation and baby boomers still had a lingering sense of existential dread — the sense that we’re not so far removed from an attempted total annihilation of Jews. Gen X and millennials are so far removed from the Holocaust that they don’t feel that same fear.
But the real battleground we’re seeing in contemporary American Judaism is about the relationship to Israel. For baby boomers and even for some older members of Gen X, there’s still a sense that you can criticize Israel, but at the end of the day, it’s your duty to ultimately support Israel’s right to exist. And I think millennials and Zoomers [Gen Z] are much more comfortable with the idea of Israel being illegitimate.
Have you seen that in comedy?
I certainly think you can see the leading edge of that in some millennial stuff. The “Jews on a Plane” episode of “Broad City” is an absolute excoriation of Birthright Israel, and does not seem particularly interested in softening its punches about the whole idea of Jews going to Israel. I think we can see a trend in that direction, where younger American Jewish comedians do not see that as punching down.
You’re teaching a class on Jewish humor. What do your undergraduates find funny? Now that Woody Allen is better known for having married his adoptive daughter and for the molestation allegations brought by another adoptive daughter, do they look at his classic films and ask, “Why are you teaching us this guy?”
For the first time I’m not including Woody Allen. I had shown “Crimes and Misdemeanors” for years because I think it’s his most theological film. I think it’s a great film. And then a couple years ago, I backed off, because some students were responding that it was hard to look at him with all the baggage. He’s still coming up in conversation because you can’t really talk about the people who came after him without talking about him, but for the first time I’m not having them actually watch or read any of his stuff.
They have found things funny that I didn’t expect them to, and they have not found things funny that I would have thought they would. They laughed their way through “Yidl mitn fidl,” the 1936 Yiddish musical starring Molly Picon. I also thought they’d enjoy the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” and they did not laugh once. Some of that is the fact that Groucho’s delivery is just so fast.
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Despite Rule Changes, Israel Proved the Haters Wrong at Eurovision
Noam Bettan, representing Israel, performs “Michelle” during the Grand Final of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria, May 16, 2026. REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
The crowd in Austria booed when it was announced that Israel was in the lead, with only several countries remaining to receive audience votes, in this year’s Eurovision competition.
Noam Bettan’s song “Michelle” — in Hebrew, French, and English — was without a doubt the best song in the competition. But The New York Times had written a disgusting hit piece about how Israel spends a lot of money on its Eurovision entry, while not mentioning anything about the efforts and spending of other countries in the competition. Spain, Slovenia, Iceland, Ireland, and the Netherlands boycotted the competition.
It also made Jew-haters nervous that traditionally, the country that wins hosts Eurovision the next year — meaning that if Israel won, the competition could have come to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
Ultimately, Bulgaria was the surprise winner with the nonsense song “Bangaranga!” performed in English by Dara. It’s fun in a campy way, but seems more like a sketch song from a comedy show than a song that should win Eurovision.
Bettan’s “Michelle” showed off his powerful voice, and the song got bigger and better as it went on.
I thought that Finland had the second best song after Israel, with “Liekinheitin” performed by Pete Parkkonen with Linda Lampenius on violin. The country finished sixth. Australia’s Delta Goodrem impressed with “Eclipse,” in what was the third best song of the competition, though the country was awarded fourth place.
Countries in the grand finale were awarded a jury vote (by a panel of professionals) and the televote-countries got 12 votes if they were the top vote getter from another country, with other points if they were in a country’s top 10.
Those voting on their phone or online could not vote for someone from their own country. The rules changed from last year so that each person could vote 10 times, as opposed to last year’s 20. Some critics of Israel online hoped this rule change might limit Israel’s ability to have a strong finish. There was also a “Rest of The World Vote” factored in.
Israel was in the lead with a total of 343 points, 220 from the public and 123 from the jury. With Bulgaria getting 204 jury points, the announcer noted that Bulgaria would need 140 points from the public to be the winner. It received an inexplicable 312 public votes. The jury gave France 144 points, Poland 133 points, Denmark 165 points, and Italy 134 points — which some saw as possible bias against Israel, though Australia’s 165 points and Finland’s 141 points, may have been due to the actual merit of the songs.
With rumors flying that Bulgaria can’t afford to have the Eurovision show in their country, there was speculation online asking if Israel would host it next year — but that sadly will never happen.
Even though Bettan finished second, it was a clear victory, as the song was great, and Israel thrived despite the new rule changes that were put in place because the public complained about last year’s pro-Israel results.
Will Bettan’s strong finish change anyone’s mind about Israel? One never knows exactly, but it doesn’t hurt to have a handsome amazing singer shine on the global stage.
This marks the third consecutive year that Israel has had a great song and performer, and finished in the top 5. Last year, Israel came in second with Yuval Raphael’s “New Day Will Rise.” She received 297 public votes, the most of any competitor, but only 60 jury points, the fewest of any in the top seven. In 2024, Israel finished fifth with Eden Golan’s “Hurricane.” She received 323 points from public votes, the second most in the competition, but only 50 from the jury, the lowest number of any in the top 10.
Israel finishing second for the second consecutive year once again shows a country that beats the odds and shows greatness.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Even After a Terrorist Attack and Royal Commission, Australia Doesn’t Take Antisemitism Seriously
Demonstrators gather outside Flinders Street Station during a protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s state visit to Australia, following a deadly mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, 2025, in Melbourne, Australia, Feb.12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
This is not only an Australian story. Jewish communities across the diaspora are living through the same reality. People have been murdered. Jews have been attacked in the streets. Jewish institutions have been threatened and forced to operate under continuously heightened security. Students have been targeted on campus. Families have been made to think twice before being visibly Jewish in public.
The details differ, but the pattern is painfully familiar. Australia is part of a broader failure across the world to confront antisemitism with the seriousness it demands.
For more than two years, Jewish Australians have been told that antisemitism has no place here. We have heard statements of concern and promises that hatred will not be tolerated. But it is being tolerated.
This is no longer theoretical. Jewish children are continuing to hide who they are. Students continue to be intimidated. Synagogues, schools, and community institutions are operating under continuously heightened security. Families are asking whether Australia is still a place where Jews can live openly and safely.
Antisemitism has moved into ordinary life. It appears on campuses, in workplaces, online, in public spaces, and in the constant expectation that Jews explain themselves, apologize for themselves or remain silent.
Australia’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was established to examine the rise of antisemitism and its impact on Jewish Australians. A Royal Commission is one of Australia’s most serious public inquiries, with the power to hear evidence and make recommendations that should shape national policy.
That is why this moment matters. Jewish Australians are asking to be heard through the very process Australia has created. They are asking to be protected, and to see existing laws, standards and institutional policies enforced. They are asking for proof that the country understands what is being exposed, including when antisemitism makes Jewish life smaller, more guarded, and less secure.
But the Royal Commission is revealing something deeply uncomfortable. Even as Jewish Australians give evidence, much of the broader community is not paying attention. Worse, the process itself has drawn more antisemitism online and in person. When Jews speak about hatred and the response is more hatred, the problem is being demonstrated in real time.
This should alarm every Australian. When Jews describe antisemitism, they are accused of inventing it. When they report intimidation, they are told they are exaggerating. When they ask for protection, they are accused of seeking special treatment. When they call out hatred disguised as politics, they are told they are trying to silence debate.
Australia now faces a clear choice. It can keep speaking about antisemitism as a regrettable social issue, or treat it as the serious threat to public safety, social cohesion, and democratic values that it has become.
Universities remain one of the clearest examples of institutional failure. Too many Jewish students have had to walk past slogans that glorify violence, sit in classes where Israel is demonized beyond any reasonable academic standard, and navigate complaint systems designed to exhaust them rather than protect them.
The same applies beyond campus. Councils, schools, workplaces, sporting bodies, cultural institutions, and public venues all have a responsibility to ensure antisemitism is not normalized under the banner of politics.
Anti-Zionism, when it denies Jewish people the same right to self-determination afforded to others, or holds Jews collectively responsible for Israel, is not legitimate criticism. Israel can be criticized. But when that criticism becomes a demand that the Jewish state alone should not exist, uses Nazi comparisons, justifies terrorism, or treats every Jew as a proxy for Israel, it crosses a line too often ignored.
The test is whether Australia can stop enabling antisemitism. That means policing hate speech and intimidation, online accountability, proper security support for vulnerable Jewish institutions, and consequences for institutions that fail to protect Jewish Australians.
For too long, Jewish communities across the diaspora have been asked to explain the problem while others debate whether it is real. It is real. It is not only a Jewish problem. It is a warning sign for every democratic society.
Because in Australia, as across the diaspora, the question is no longer whether antisemitism exists. Jewish communities know it does. A Royal Commission now exists because the problem has become impossible to ignore. The question is whether our leaders, institutions and society have the courage to act before even more damage is done.
Michael Gencher is Executive Director of StandWithUs Australia, an international nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism.
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Amid Conspiracy Theories, Eurovision Proves Ordinary People Are Still Willing to Treat Israel Fairly
Noam Bettan, representing Israel, performs “Michelle” during the dress rehearsal 2 of the Grand Final of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, in Vienna, Austria, May 15, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
For many Americans, Eurovision requires a brief explanation. It is a massive annual international music competition involving dozens of countries across Europe and nearby regions, watched by hundreds of millions of people. And because much of the Arab world boycotted Israel culturally and politically after 1948 — excluding it from most regional sporting and cultural frameworks — Israel was integrated into European competitions instead.
Much like the situation where Israeli soccer teams must qualify for the World Cup through Europe rather than through the Middle East, Israel competes in Eurovision through the European broadcasting system.
For years now, Eurovision has followed the same ritualized choreography when it comes to Israel.
There are protests outside the arena. Activists demand Israel’s exclusion. Broadcasters openly question whether Israel should even participate. Some performers posture about morality and “complicity.” Social media floods with denunciations. Major media outlets, like The New York Times, publish innuendo-filled pieces implying Israel is somehow manipulating the contest through “soft power,” aggressive promotion, or shadowy mobilization campaigns.
And then the public votes for Israel at — or near — the top anyway.
The pressure campaign against Israel exploded after October 7, 2023, but the politicization predates October 7 by years.
Israel historically performed extremely well at Eurovision, winning in 1978, 1979, 1998, and again in 2018 with Netta Barzilai’s “Toy.” For decades, Israel was treated largely as a normal — if occasionally controversial — participant.
That changed during the 2010s, alongside the rise of intersectional activist politics, the normalization of BDS rhetoric in cultural spaces, and the growing effort to frame Israel as not merely controversial, but as uniquely illegitimate.
Netta’s 2018 victory was an early warning sign. The backlash quickly escalated from criticism of the song itself to claims that Israel should not host Eurovision (as all winners do) because the contest was supposedly “laundering apartheid.”
After October 7, the situation became impossible to ignore.
Israel increasingly received weak jury scores while performing dramatically better with the public vote. Ordinary viewers and elite opinion were diverging sharply.
That pattern repeated this year with Israel’s multilingual ballad “Michelle,” performed by Noam Bettan.
Last year, Israel’s “New Day Will Rise,” performed by Yuval Raphael — herself a survivor of the Nova massacre — triggered a frenzy of insinuations about “manipulated” voting after she finished second despite ranking only 15th with the professional juries.
This year, “Michelle” briefly surged into the overall lead during the public vote reveal but ultimately finished second as Bulgaria secured the win with far stronger professional jury support.
And once again, the reaction was not: “perhaps the public genuinely liked the song.”
Instead, Israel’s success is cast as both suspect and suspicious.
Apparently, Israel promoting its Eurovision entry is now evidence of sinister “soft power” — despite Eurovision itself being essentially one giant soft-power competition.
Countries spend heavily promoting themselves through Eurovision. The contest has always been part music competition, part tourism campaign, part national branding exercise, and part geopolitical theater in sequins.
Host countries market tourism and national identity through the contest. Governments support contestants. National broadcasters campaign aggressively. Diaspora and regional voting blocs have existed for decades and are openly joked about every year.
None of this becomes scandalous unless Israel succeeds.
Because increasingly, Israel is not treated as a normal country participating in international cultural life, but as a uniquely illegitimate presence whose success must always be explained away as manipulation, coercion, propaganda, or hidden influence — an impulse that mirrors classic antisemitic patterns.
In fact, many journalists now deploy this double standard so reflexively they no longer even recognize it.
But the deeper issue here is not really the Eurovision itself. It is the widening divide between institutional opinion and public sentiment.
The Eurovision voting system makes this unusually visible. Countries award separate “professional jury” votes and public televotes. Under Eurovision rules, countries cannot televote for themselves. Meanwhile, countries like Britain, France, Ukraine, Poland, and Romania possess diaspora populations vastly larger than the global Jewish population.
Yet when Israel performs strongly with the public vote, conspiracy theories immediately emerge.
The global Jewish population is roughly 15 million people — about half living in Israel, with much of the diaspora concentrated in the United States, where Eurovision remains relatively niche in mainstream culture. The notion that diaspora Jews are secretly overpowering Europe’s vastly larger voting populations through coordinated televoting campaigns collapses under minimal scrutiny.
The problem for many activists is not Israel’s Eurovision strategy. It is that the public itself keeps refusing to behave correctly.
The public keeps voting for the Israelis anyway — likely because Israeli entries are often among the competition’s strongest. And because many ordinary viewers probably recoil from the increasingly hysterical effort to turn Israeli artists into untouchables.
That effort has increasingly backfired.
Several left-wing European broadcasters and political actors spent years trying to pressure Eurovision organizers to ban Israel entirely. When that failed, some shifted toward symbolic boycotts and public distancing campaigns.
Yet despite the protests, the media pressure, the activist intimidation, and despite professional juries that increasingly appear politically or socially pressured not to reward Israel too generously, Israel still finished second again this year — propelled overwhelmingly by ordinary viewers.
That is the real story.
This does not mean European publics are uniformly pro-Israel. They are not. But many appear to recognize that the obsession with Israel is wildly disproportionate and often reflects something deeper than policy disagreement: hostility toward Jewish national legitimacy itself.
That distinction mattered even more after October 7.
Because while large segments of the Western media rapidly attempted to reframe Israelis from massacre victims into primary villains almost immediately after the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, millions of ordinary people watched what actually happened.
They saw civilians butchered in homes. Families burned alive. Young people massacred at a music festival. Women dragged into Gaza. Babies kidnapped. Holocaust survivors taken hostage.
And despite relentless efforts afterward to flatten chronology, causation, and moral categories, many people never fully accepted the demand that Israelis immediately cede to an assigned role as uniquely illegitimate global pariahs. That, for parts of Europe’s activist and media class, is the real scandal.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.