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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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How Billy Wilder and B&H Dairy birthed ‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’
Noah Segan’s crime thriller The Only Living Pickpocket in New York has drawn comparisons to NYC auteurs Spike Lee, Elaine May and John Cassavettes. While the writer-director is far from anxious about these influences, he notes another, less obvious touchpoint: a Billy Wilder comedy.
“There’s a line in The Apartment, where the very kindly Jewish neighbor doctor says to Jack Lemmon’s character, after he’s been through all of this meshugas with his apartment,” Segan, wearing a shirt that reads “I [Image of a heart-shaped pretzel] New York,” said in a Zoom interview.
The neighbor advises Lemmon’s befuddled, hyper-gentile character to “be a mensch.” In explaining what it means, he says, “just be a person.”
In Pickpocket, Harry Lehman (John Turturro), the titular gentleman thief, calls his neighbor across the hall a mensch for looking out for his wife. Her response: “I’m just being a person.”
While the film, about what happens when an old-school filcher accidentally lifts a high-tech MacGuffin, has its share of grit and cynicism for an increasingly impersonal, online world, its open-hearted menschlikeit shines through.
I spoke with Segan about the film, his sophomore feature after his 2022 Jewish vampire romp Blood Relatives, about Yiddish, B&H Dairy and whether Turturro is the GOAT of non-Jewish actors playing Jews. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you arrive at this idea of an ode or elegy to a Luddite New Yorker?
I looked in the mirror. (Laughs) I’m sort of a Luddite New Yorker — at heart. But a realist, I guess.
It started with a character. It started with Harry. You go, “OK, what is he going through? How is he functioning? What are his challenges?” And then you go, “Oh man, this guy is New York. And this can happen in New York. And I’m from New York.” You’re looking for patterns, you’re looking for the thing that works for you — but is it a chicken and the egg? Is it New York? Is it Harry? Are they the same thing? But once you get those two aspects, the rest of it can blossom naturally.
Your embodiment of New York is an old Jewish guy.
The embodiment of me is an old Jewish guy! (He fishes out a chai necklace from under his collar.) I got my little chai. Represent for the Forward.
In your previous film, Blood Relatives, you were a Jewish vampire. You said in an interview you were thinking about the fear of “otherness.” I’m wondering if there’s something in that choice of making Harry Jewish. Someone with community, but kind of on the margins. Obviously, in New York we don’t think of ourselves as being marginal, but maybe it’s indicating a change.
I think for the first film, part of the conversation was how to discuss otherness through both a realistic lens: that of a Jew, and through a cinematic lens, that of a vampire. The more you think about things like blood libel, the more you think about things like how Jews were murdered, all of that colors that dynamic. In Pickpocket, it’s a little bit different because Harry isn’t really an “other” he is one of. Not just because there are lots of Jews in New York, but there’s lots of everybody in New York!
I think that New York is often unified less based on religious and racial lines, much more so on socioeconomic lines, which of course is something this movie talks about.
Part of the texture there is Yiddish as a kind of lingua franca. We have Giancarlo Esposito and Lori Tan Chinn — older, non-Jewish characters. They all use it. I know we all say “schlep,” but I teach kids at City College, they don’t all know the word “mensch.” Is that a disappearing part of New York for you, in the same way Harry is recognizing his obsolescence?
To me, it’s not a disappearing part because I run into it all the time, and I think most New Yorkers know a little bit of Yiddish, just like most New Yorkers know a little bit of Spanish and that’s how you get by.
You’ve spoken of the Jewish-Italian handshake, a principle in casting that lets Robert DeNiro play Ace Rothstein and James Caan play Sonny Corleone. I have long maintained that John Turturro is probably the greatest living non-Jewish portrayer of Jews.
I think the idea with John is that he embodies New York to such a degree, that he truly does get to do any version of a New York character. This is a guy who just is New York, and so if you let him be a New York-coded character, it is what it is. It is whatever it needs to be. That man knows more about Philip Roth than anybody I’ve ever met, which makes me feel like that makes him definitely an honorary Jew.
Harry’s doorpost has a mezuzah and he goes to visit his daughter and there’s a wreath on the door. I was wondering about that bit of set dressing.
The mezuzah on the door — it’s like painted over. The idea that it had been there a long time was really important to me. That this is a matter of fact of one’s life. There is probably a question of how much Harry’s culture and religion influenced his daughter, who he left at a young age, and her choices to identify or not with that. Obviously, who knows who she married and how they practice. There are Jews who feel jolly and put a wreath on their door, so there’s no rule about that. But I do think that it is safe to say that there were historic, cultural, ethnic identifying aspects that Harry did not pass on. And that is part of the tragedy, of course, of leaving one’s family.
Did you shoot the film before the death of the MetroCard, and do you think Harry would have been able to figure out OMNY? I feel like the transition from tokens might have been difficult for him.
The transition from tokens was definitely difficult for him. We still had MetroCards when we shot the movie. I think it was a combo. But he doesn’t have a phone to tap! So what’s he gonna do? He’s gonna get an OMNY card and load it up? I mean, I guess that’s sort of like having a MetroCard.
The other day my phone died, so I just used my credit card. So you could do that in theory.
I don’t know if Harry has a credit card.
He deals in cash.
I think what he’s doing is he’s just waiting for somebody to open the emergency door for him. And then he passes them a couple bucks.
How do you think he would feel about Mamdani and the Knicks championship?
I don’t know if Harry votes. I think he likes to stay off the rolls. The more off-the-grid he could be, the better. But I do think that he would be very pleased about the Knicks. I don’t know if he’d be as pleased as John is. But I think he would be very pleased about the Knicks.
We feel that the days of Harry and his analog life are numbered, but there’s also a glimmer of hope when we see him mentoring a younger guy in the old ways of the five-finger discount.
All hope is never lost, especially in New York. New York is a hopeful place. Because it is sarcastic and cynical and has a sense of humor and it’s very fast. People think that that somehow makes it not an optimistic or hopeful place. But no. New Yorkers are the most resilient people on earth — that’s why the all the Jews move here!
Any there other Jewish tidbits that you’re not going to get a chance to to speak about with the general press?
You picked up on B&H right?
I don’t know if I did!
The first scene with Harry, he’s having his matzo brei at B&H.
Oh! I wasn’t thinking of B&H Dairy. I was thinking of B&H Photo.
There used to be a whole cottage industry of these places that that showed up at the turn of the century called B&H, and people go, “Well, why is it called B&H.” It’s Baruch Hashem. It wasn’t anybody’s name. It was just like, ‘Well, I guess thank God we opened up a store.’
(Author’s Note: Regrettably, in the case of the dairy establishment, this tidbit, while widely believed, appears to be apocryphal; the founders of B&H, who catered to Yiddish actors on Second Ave. were named Abie Bergson and Jack Heller and gave their initials to the enterprise.)
B&H is such a great example of New York because it is still kosher. It is still signed off on by a rabbi. The rabbi puts the stamp on it. Remains kosher. It is run by a Catholic Polish lady, her Muslim-Egyptian husband, and the head chef is Mexican. And if you buy the T-shirt, the T-shirt says “Challah por favor.”
It is a great New York, multi-ethnic, multicultural institution, and I’m very proud that we got to shoot there.
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A synagogue and Jewish-owned shops damaged in French riots
(JTA) — PARIS – Jewish-owned shops in Marseille were set ablaze and a synagogue in Paris was vandalized as part of widespread property damage caused by riots across France Saturday and Sunday, according to the Jewish Community Protection Service.
It is too early to assess the full extent of the riots protesting the rising cost of living and the damage they’ve caused, but various elements in the media have described them as civil unrest and chaos.
From Lille in the north to Marseille in the south and in the major cities in between, media estimate that nearly 800,000 people took to the streets and some 2,000 shops were vandalized or looted. Public buildings were set on fire, and hundreds of people or more were injured, including 150 police officers, with thousands arrested.
The riots followed a student uprising that blocked entrances to high schools across the country in recent weeks. Palestinian flags and keffiyas have been a recurring motif in most of the violent protests, acts of vandalism and looting.
But according to SPCJ, known as the Service de Protection de la Communaute Juive in French, there was no evidence that Jewish institutions or businesses were deliberately targeted.
Vandals broke into the Ohalei Yaakov synagogue in Paris’ 19th district overnight between Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday morning, members of the Jewish community discovered that their temporary place of worship had been broken into. The permanent synagogue building is currently undergoing renovations.
Inside the sanctuary, prayer books, tefillin, and various objects — taken from boxes and cupboards — were found scattered on the floor. The rabbi’s office was also searched. Despite the mess, the Torah scrolls appeared to be unharmed.
According to a member of the synagogue committee, the incident primarily points to an attempted theft. The suspects may have been looking for money, but nothing was believed to be missing.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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How much will Trump’s endorsement help Netanyahu?
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Within minutes of President Donald Trump endorsing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a post on Truth Social Sunday, Netanyahu’s campaign team had released a 30-second clip showing all the times Trump has lavished praise on the Israeli leader over the past few years.
With polls showing that Netanyahu and his governing coalition are slipping in their struggle to retain power in the upcoming Oct. 27 election and lag behind the opposition bloc, an endorsement from the president of the United States is a powerful statement.
But is it enough to tip the scales?
“I don’t think it will change anything,” said Ilana Shpaizman, a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
Of course, she said, “Netanyahu will say this is the proof that I’m a leader and all that, and I can speak to Trump … But so what? His followers already know that and they believe in him. They don’t need the endorsement.”
Those who oppose him, Shpaizman continued, “know that Trump forced him (Netanyahu) to accept the ceasefire in Gaza and accept the hostage deal, and that Trump runs the show around Iran. So they also don’t need the endorsement either,” Shpaizman said.
Some pundits speaking on Israeli news outlets criticized Trump for “interfering” in Israel’s election, while others put it down to the fact that Trump does not want America to return to fighting Iran alone if Netanyahu, who is hawkish on Iran, is replaced by someone less willing to act militarily. If Netanyahu loses, that is a scenario that could play out.
“This is the first time ever that the president, at least publicly, endorses a candidate in Israel’s election,” Bushinsky, a political commentator and former adviser to Netanyahu, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Bushinsky said he remembered Netanyahu complaining about U.S. intervention in previous elections in 1999 and 2001, when presidents less enamored of him were in office. He even pushed for an initiative that would block foreign funding for election campaigns.
Now, Bushinsky said, “I guess he is not complaining,” adding that the endorsement serves Netanyahu in two ways.
First, it signals that Trump thinks that Netanyahu is the most suitable guy for the job. Second, it puts Netanyahu’s election campaign back on track, refocusing attention on an issue where Netanyahu is strong – Iran.
“It lets him say ‘I can now finish a job, and I can finish a job with Trump,’ and ‘without Trump or without me, the job will not be finished,’” said Bushinsky.
He said that in the last few days, the political debate had pivoted to other issues such as Ashkenazim vs Sephardim, the draft law and the contentious efforts by the outgoing government to overhaul the judiciary.
“This [endorsement] is the ultimate campaign boost for Netanyahu,” Bushinsky said.
But that boost might not be enough.
Most of the polls taken in recent days show the opposition bloc led by former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot pulling ahead of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, but give neither bloc enough seats to gain the necessary 61 of 120 seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to form the next government.
“I think this might give Netanyahu one more seat, one more mandate, but not more than that,” said Bushinsky.
Prof. Tamar Hermann, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research, said that the timing of Trump’s support for Netanyahu in this election race had come both “too late and too early.”
“It’s too late because people have already decided electoral preferences. They may shift within each bloc, but will not move between the blocs because of this,” she said. “And it’s too early because there are nine days to go to the elections, and we can already see other American leaders spilling some cold water over what he said, even on the Republican side of the aisle.”
This criticism, Hermann continued, will be transmitted to Israeli voters, and they will see that Trump is facing a huge battle in the upcoming midterm elections.
“The image of President Trump has deteriorated significantly since April 26, when he started the negotiations with Iran,” she said, pointing to one of the IDI’s recent public opinion surveys that found the president’s popularity had plummeted after he stopped the war with Iran without totally removing the threats against the State of Israel.
According to that poll, the Israeli public’s confidence in Trump as someone dedicated to Israel’s security fell from around 70% to just 42%.
“In my view, the endorsement will not make a big change,” Hermann added. “It will just strengthen Netanyahu’s political supporters, who will see it as a sign that he is still the internationally known figure that even the president of the United States is endorsing.”
She concluded, “The meaning of endorsement in Israel is totally different than in the United States … we are not that used to this kind of move, and it will not make people change their minds.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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