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Dave Chappelle isn’t the first to suggest that Jews run Hollywood. Here are the origins of the trope.
(JTA) – On “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, Dave Chappelle really wanted his audience to know there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood.
“I’ve been to Hollywood, this is just what I saw,” he said during his widely dissected monologue. “It’s a lot of Jews. Like, a lot.”
While suggesting that it might not be fair to say Jews run the industry, the comedian said that coming to that conclusion is “not a crazy thing to think.” Chappelle’s “SNL” episode drew a season-high 4.8 million viewers when it aired on NBC (eclipsing Jewish comedian Amy Schumer’s own hosting stint the week before), and his monologue had more than 8.1 million views on YouTube as of Wednesday.
The Anti-Defamation League was quick to denounce Chappelle’s act, calling it antisemitic. Other prominent Jews have followed suit.
“I was very disturbed to see him speaking, to millions of people, a lot of antisemitic tropes,” Pamela Nadell, a professor at American University who researches antisemitism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
But Chappelle, who was himself riffing on recent antisemitism controversies involving Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, wasn’t exactly breaking new ground by insinuating that Jews run Hollywood. The trope has been a part of show business since its earliest days — when, in a literal sense, Jews did run Hollywood. Or the studios, anyway.
Nearly every major movie studio was founded in the early 20th century by a group of first-generation secular Jews who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. Carl Laemmle (Universal), Adolph Zukor (Paramount), William Fox (Fox), Louis B. Mayer (MGM), and Benjamin Warner (Warner) were all Jewish silver-screen pioneers, laying the groundwork for the size and scale of the industry to follow.
But the industry has diversified greatly in the century since, with studios largely swallowed up by corporate behemoths. And while individual Jews may be overrepresented in an industry that has long welcomed and rewarded them, the rhetorical danger, Nadell said, comes in conflating a large Jewish presence in an industry with ownership and control of that industry.
“Jews remain active in Hollywood in a variety of roles, but it would be impossible to say that they run Hollywood, that they own Hollywood,” she said.
“Whenever the Jews enter into any kind of position where they might have influence over people who are not Jewish, then all of a sudden it’s seen as some kind of conspiracy.”
Conspiracy theories dogged Jews in Hollywood from the industry’s beginning. Because so many Jews were in control in Hollywood in its early years, Joseph Breen, who for decades ran the industry’s Production Code office and tried to make movies palatable to Catholic morality groups, blamed “the Jews” for sneaking sex, violence and moral depravity into the movies.
But their rise to the top of the still-young motion picture industry wasn’t because they were a part of some secretive cabal; it’s because, historians say, Hollywood provided a low barrier to entry for enterprising businessmen, and was lacking the antisemitic guardrails of more established industries.
“There were no social barriers in a business as new and faintly disreputable as the movies were in the early years of [the 20th] century,” historian Neal Gabler writes in his landmark 1988 book “An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood.”
In the book, Gabler notes that the movie business, which evolved out of other professions like vaudeville and the garment industry where Jews had already found a toehold, lacked “the impediments imposed by loftier professions and more firmly entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out.”
As such, Jews (particularly recent immigrants) were able to thrive in show business in a way they couldn’t in most other industries. Once they were in, family ties or the general phenomenon of affinity groups often led to them elevating other Jews in the industry: For example, prolific Jewish producer David O. Selznick, whose credits include “Gone With The Wind,” “Rebecca” and a huge string of other hits in the 1930s and ’40s, spent many years at MGM, run by his father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer.
Areas like the film, garment and publishing industries were attractive to Jews, Nadell said, “because there were so many other sectors of the economy where they were barred from.”
But in exchange, Hollywood’s prominent Jews had to effectively extinguish their Jewishness.
Yearning to assimilate into American society, the Jews who ran these studios were beset on all sides by antisemitic invective — first from Christian groups like the Legion of Decency, then by anti-Communist groups, both of whom accused Hollywood’s Jews of conspiring to undermine American society with their loose morals.
As such, the Jewish studio heads largely refrained from making any movies about Jewish themes, or snuffing out antisemitic content even within their own films, or otherwise exerting their influence in any obviously Jewish way, even as many of the Golden Era of Hollywood’s most acclaimed writers and directors (Herman Mankiewicz, Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor, Billy Wilder) were also Jewish. “Gentleman’s Agreement,” the landmark 1947 film about antisemitism, didn’t have any Jewish producers, directors or major stars (though some of its credited writers were Jewish).
Famously, Hollywood’s Jews also went out of their way to avoid offending Hitler during the Nazi era, continuing to do business with Germany and largely avoiding featuring Nazis as villains in the prewar years.
Director Steven Spielberg speaks at the Academy Awards in Hollywood, Feb. 9, 2020. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
With the demise of the studio system in the 1960s, Jewish creatives ranging from Mel Brooks to Steven Spielberg to Natalie Portman no longer had to hide their identity from audiences, but instead made it an essential part of their public personas. Earlier this week, in a New York Times interview, Spielberg acknowledged that Hollywood was a welcoming place for Jews when he arrived as a young filmmaker.
“Being Jewish in America is not the same as being Jewish in Hollywood,” he said while promoting “The Fabelmans,” a loose retelling of his own Jewish upbringing. “Being Jewish in Hollywood is like wanting to be in the popular circle and immediately being accepted as I have been in that circle, by a lot of diversity but also by a lot of people who in fact are Jewish.”
Still, such ethnic affinity has often been deemed conspiratorial. “Hollywood is run by Jews” and “owned by Jews,” Marlon Brando declared in a 1996 interview with Larry King, further claiming that Jewish studio executives prevented antisemitic stereotypes from being depicted on screen while allowing stereotypes of every other minority group “because that’s where you circle the wagons around.”
(Despite this outburst, which prompted intense backlash from Jewish groups, Brando was known for having close relationships with Jews and demonstrating a strong understanding of Jewish theology and culture throughout his life, and apparently spoke Yiddish quite well.)
This general air of suspicion around Jews in show business has continued into the modern day, as evidenced by Chappelle and West’s comments. In the tweets that precipitated the collapse of his businesses, West singled out Jewish producers and managers in the entertainment industry he had affiliations with, echoing how believers in antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control tend to fixate on Jews in leadership positions outside of the public eye.
Attorney Allen Grubman, left, and rocker John Mellencamp speak onstage during the 37th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Los Angeles, Nov. 5, 2022. (Amy Sussman/WireImage)
Ignoring the many industry leaders who are not Jewish, such conspiracy theorists tend to focus on the successful managers and lawyers in Hollywood who are, including Jeremy Zimmer, Ari Emanuel, Allen Grubman — and Harvey Weinstein, whose decades of sexual abuse, scorched-earth targeting of his accusers and eventual downfall are the subject of the new movie “She Said.”
And in a similar fashion to Brando, Chappelle suggested that there is a double standard in talking about ethnic groups, with jokes about Jews being seen as taboo in a way that jokes about Black people and other groups are not: “If they’re Black, then it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob. If they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should never speak about it.”
At the same time as Jews in and out of the industry are fighting such perceptions, they are also pushing for greater visibility. The unveiling of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles last year almost entirely omitted Jews from Hollywood’s founding narrative, leading to backlash from Jews in the industry and, ultimately, the guarantee of a new permanent exhibition space focusing on Jews.
And there was one other way in which the Chappelle episode hearkened back to the age-old dynamics of the relationship between Jews and Hollywood: “Saturday Night Live” executive producer Lorne Michaels, who presumably allowed the monologue on the air, is Jewish.
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The post Dave Chappelle isn’t the first to suggest that Jews run Hollywood. Here are the origins of the trope. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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In Oct. 7 blame game, former Shin Bet chief sues Netanyahu ahead of elections
(JTA) — The bitter battle that has raged between Israel’s security and political establishments over who bears responsibility for the failures ahead of the Oct. 7 attacks is kicking into high gear as Israel prepares to hold its first election since the Hamas invasion in 2023.
This week, former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar upped the stakes by filing a defamation lawsuit against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The premier has blamed the intelligence head for the failures leading up to the attack even as many in the security establishment have pointed the finger at Netanyahu. Bar in his lawsuit lists a litany of occasions Netanyahu allegedly ignored or rejected advice that might have prevented the attacks.
In the run-up to the national vote on Oct. 27, Israeli media have been preoccupied with reports of intelligence that was purportedly shared with top government officials ahead of the attacks. What Netanyahu knew about the Hamas threat before the invasion — and when he knew it — has become a central issue in the campaign and a line of attack for his political rivals.
Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party and Netanyahu’s leading challenger, said in response to the lawsuit that “Netanyahu was warned and did not act,” and that he would not allow Netanyahu to “evade the truth.” Opposition leader Yair Lapid said that “Netanyahu can no longer claim that he didn’t know,” while Yair Golan, leader of the left-wing “The Democrats” party, said Netanyahu’s responsibility for “the worst massacre in Israel’s history is direct and clear.”
A range of political and security leaders who were in charge at the time have assumed responsibility and left their posts: Among them are Bar, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and military intelligence chief Aharon Haliva.
Not Netanyahu. He has rejected accusations that he is responsible for the failures even as he has prevented the establishment of a state commission of inquiry to investigate those responsible. He has argued that such a commission, whose members would be appointed by the president of the Supreme Court, as is traditionally the case in Israel, would be biased and would not enjoy public trust.
Beyond blaming the security establishment, Netanyahu has also sought to shift responsibility onto political rivals and previous governments. He has pointed to the actions, or failure to act, of political opponents, including Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Benny Gantz, when they held senior positions, as well as Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, as factors that contributed to the Oct. 7 massacre.
In the lawsuit itself, Bar accuses Netanyahu of “trying to rewrite history and completely evade his responsibility for the events of Oct. 7.” The filing sets out a series of alleged warnings Bar gave Netanyahu before the attack, as well as Netanyahu’s alleged refusal to adopt Bar’s recommendations for offensive action in the months leading up to the massacre.
The lawsuit details more than a dozen instances in which Bar allegedly warned of Hamas’ growing strength and its intentions to attack Israel, alongside repeated recommendations that Netanyahu take more aggressive action against the group.
Among the warnings cited in the lawsuit, Bar said he presented Netanyahu in January of 2023 with his assessment that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar wanted a multifront campaign against Israel.
In February, Bar allegedly sent Netanyahu a personal letter warning that terrorist organizations saw an opportunity to act and that the combination of Israel’s internal divisions and instability in the Palestinian arena could bring the country closer to a “perfect storm.”
In July, Bar said he told Netanyahu directly that he was conveying a strategic warning of war.
In September, he allegedly warned that Hamas wanted to escalate the conflict during October.
Netanyahu responded to the lawsuit in a post on X, addressing one specific claim in the filing: that he had never given Bar his personal phone number.
“Ronen, are you serious? You had my red phone number and could have called me immediately, as all heads of the security establishment do,” Netanyahu wrote. “How many lives could we have saved if only you had called in time.” Netanyahu has claimed recently that had security officials awoken him earlier on Oct. 7, he would have somehow stemmed the attack.
Bar’s suit also alleges that he consistently recommended initiating offensive operations against Hamas, including a “preemptive strike” and targeted killings. According to the lawsuit, Netanyahu strongly opposed those recommendations because he wanted to keep Hamas as a secondary concern. Bar also said Netanyahu reprimanded him for dealing with “strategy.”
“The defendant had been in a state of slumber for many long months beforehand and refused to wake up despite the alarm bells the plaintiff sounded in his ears incessantly,” the lawsuit alleges, alluding to Netanyahu’s plaints that he was not awoken early on Oct. 7. “The gap between the professional warnings and recommendations the plaintiff presented to the defendant and the response the defendant gave them is beyond comprehension.”
The defamation claim focuses in particular on a post Netanyahu published on X late last month, in which he claimed that Bar “knew about the real danger” in the early hours of Oct. 7 but chose not to wake him or take other preventive measures. Netanyahu accused Bar of trying to shift responsibility for “all of Ronen Bar’s failures and crimes” onto him.
In a press statement after filing the suit Wednesday, Bar called Netanyahu’s post a “blood libel” and announced that he was suing for 3 million shekels ($968,500) in damages and seeking a correction of Netanyahu’s statements.
Bar repeatedly emphasized in the lawsuit that he was not seeking to absolve himself or the Shin Bet of responsibility for the failures that led to the Oct. 7 massacre. Rather, he said, the suit was a response to Netanyahu’s attempt to “shift the responsibility exclusively onto Bar.”
“I waited quietly for three years for the establishment of a commission of inquiry that would finally expose the Shin Bet’s work, alongside its failures, in the face of an ongoing blood libel,” Bar said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In Oct. 7 blame game, former Shin Bet chief sues Netanyahu ahead of elections appeared first on The Forward.
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When ‘Nuke Jews, Save Lives’ note was left at the Center for Jewish History, its message was a window into antisemitic thinking
As hate manifestoes go, this one was terse: “Nuke Jews, Save Lives.”
Our security team at the Center for Jewish History, where I serve as president, recently discovered a notecard bearing this hateful message by our front entrance, just blocks from Union Square in Manhattan.
The Center for Jewish History was created a quarter century ago to help scholars research the Jewish past and disseminate that knowledge to the public. An institution that is sometimes likened to the national archives of Diaspora Jewry, the Center houses more than 65 million documents and artifacts painstakingly collected by its distinguished partner organizations. Countless books and articles on Jewish history have been published using this archival source material, all pursuing the goal of historical understanding.
This hateful note was a direct rebuke to our mission and a window into antisemitic thinking. The declaration confirmed antisemites’ tendency to see their hatred as virtuous. By claiming that “saving lives” was their ultimate goal, the author sought to avoid any suspicion of ulterior motives. Hitler did something similar in Mein Kampf, writing that by combating the Jews he was “fighting for the work of the Lord.”
The historical record also teaches that while the charges brought by antisemites against Jews vary considerably, they serve a consistent function. Whatever threat Jews are accused of posing – whatever the reason why “lives” need to be “saved” – the accusation channels society’s deeper fears. These fears often differ between the left and right political positions, but they converge in the antisemite’s belief that a solution rests with solving the Jewish “problem.”
Jews have traditionally believed that understanding history can solve the problem of antisemitism. From antiquity to modernity, Jews have penned eloquent, historically informed rebuttals to antisemitic accusations, believing that public opinion can be swayed by truth. Whether Flavius Josephus’s reply to the hostile claims of the Egyptian scholar, Apion, in the first century C. E. or the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith’s response to the Nazis in the 1930s, history shows that Jews have consistently sought to defend themselves through rational argument.
The Center for Jewish History is no different. We regularly organize public programs on a range of topics in the interest of fostering knowledge and dialogue. Of late, out of necessity, we have been sponsoring events that address the history of antisemitism.
Shortly before the hateful note was left on our doorstep, the Silicon Valley investor, Michael Moritz, was in conversation with The New York Times Company CEO, Meredith Kopit Levien, about his new book, Ausländer, which movingly chronicles the tragic story of his German Jewish family in the Nazi era. The book also raises discomforting comparisons about Jew hatred yesterday and today.
The event was a bittersweet affair. While we were gratified that our fully packed auditorium validated our institutional mission, the conversation’s main takeaway – that what was old is new again – was sobering.
That feeling was further compounded when we encountered the words, “Nuke Jews, Save Lives,” one week later. We could easily have thrown up our hands in despair at the futility of our mission. That, of course, would have served the antisemite’s goal.
Antisemitism’s impact is akin to that of the heckler’s veto. By wielding crude, simplistic slogans in the spirit of Der Stürmer’s tagline, “The Jews Are Our Misfortune,” antisemites use hate asymmetrically to undermine cultural and intellectual traditions assembled over centuries.
Antisemitism validates the core idea of Brandolini’s Law – that the work needed to refute calumnies dramatically exceeds the work needed to disseminate them. It calls to mind Edmund Burke’s remark in Reflections on the Revolution in France that “rage and phrensy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.”
But my money is on archives.
The 65 million documents housed at the Center do not just numerically exceed the four hateful words left on our doorstep many times over. They testify to the authority of archives. Ever since they were invented in antiquity, archives have wielded tremendous power. Not for nothing does its Greek root, “arch,” denote “ruler” (as in “monarch”).
When belief in truth is challenged by a flood of lies, the archive offers a redoubt. It guards the facticity of history so that people of good faith can defend themselves against their enemies.
The campaign against antisemitism is complex and requires arguments and allies, resources and resolve. It cannot be won easily and may never be won decisively. But one thing is for sure: it cannot be won without facts. In this latest war, the archive can serve as an arsenal.
The post When ‘Nuke Jews, Save Lives’ note was left at the Center for Jewish History, its message was a window into antisemitic thinking appeared first on The Forward.
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NPR investigation finds evidence of widespread fraud at mall kiosks tied to Israeli skincare brand
They are a common feature at American shopping malls across the U.S.: skincare kiosks staffed by charming Israeli salespeople. For American Jews, they can be a place to practice your Hebrew, greet expats or play Jewish geography.
But for hundreds of shoppers, an experience that began with a smile and a free sample at one of those kiosks ended in thousands of dollars of unauthorized credit card charges, according to an investigation published Monday by NPR.
Drawing on court documents, online reviews, consumer complaints obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with more than 50 customers, NPR linked the apparent fraud to Mazal Group, a conglomerate of dozens of skincare brands owned by Eli Weingarten and Daphna Oded Weingarten, an Israeli American couple who live in the Los Angeles area.
Many of the company’s alleged victims were elderly, disabled or otherwise vulnerable to exploitation, NPR reported.
NPR reported instances of overcharging and forced purchases at thousands of independent kiosks, stores and spas selling Mazal products around the country. An elderly man with dementia in Michigan was unknowingly charged $42,000 for skincare products and devices, NPR reported; in Hawaii, a disabled woman wrote in a complaint to the state that a spa salesperson took her walker, and refused to let her leave for hours until she spent $2,600, NPR said.
A similar pattern was uncovered by the FBI at Mazal-connected kiosks a decade ago — which the agency referred to as a “credit card overcharge scheme.” That investigation culminated in more than a dozen guilty pleas and prison terms for two store owners, Shai Cohen and Omer Gur. Today, the company contracts with some 2,000 stores worldwide, according to a former employee quoted by NPR, though the exact number is unknown.
Mazal Group, which is headquartered in Chatsworth, Calif., responded to NPR’s questions by shifting responsibility for the overcharging onto individual store owners — but as the story was about to be published, the company terminated its own business license. Today, their headquarters bears the logo of Innovation Brands Inc., a company founded by the Weingartens in 2024.
Mazal ran dozens of skincare brands, including Voupre, Avinichi, Introstem, CbGäRDN, Venofye, Lionesse and Orogold Cosmetics.
Though the kiosks are independently owned — sometimes bearing the name of those brands — NPR obtained documents showing Mazal Group’s aggressive pricing recommendations, sometimes with markups of more than 100 times the wholesale cost.
For example, the company suggested selling Voupre’s Cannabis Caviar Transforming Mask for $3,000 — 130 times the wholesale price of $23. Luxury skincare brands rarely stretch the suggested retail price to even 20 times the wholesale cost, according to a retail expert quoted in the article. The products themselves would not have any price tag on them, making it easier for customers to be overcharged at checkout, former employees told NPR.
But NPR also said the makeup itself was a flawed product whose labels may have falsely advertised their contents. Lab testing paid for by NPR showed that a Mazal anti-aging cream called Voupre Anti-Aging Rescue Solution that claimed to contain Vitamin A and Vitamin E appeared to have neither.
Another element of the investigation involved immigration fraud. According to former employees, many kiosk salespeople were Israelis in the U.S. on tourist visas — a direct violation of the terms of the visa, which forbids performing labor or services for pay. When an NPR reporter posing as a prospective employee messaged a recruiter to ask whether it was okay if she only had a tourist visa, the recruiter reportedly said yes.
Mazal Brands could not be reached for comment.
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