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Friends, colleagues and fans remember Rabbi Harold Kushner, whose voice ‘will continue to resonate’
(JTA) — Rabbi Harold Kushner was often identified as the author of “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People,” when the correct title of his best-selling 1981 book is “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” The book was never meant to provide a definitive solution to the age-old question of theodicy — why God permits evil or suffering — although he proposed an answer.
Instead, the book was, like Kushner’s rabbinate, a call to action. As he told an interviewer in 2013, “An idea that is probably more emphasized in Judaism than in any of the Christian traditions is to minimize the theology and maximize the sense of community.” That is, when bad things happen to good people, it is a religious community’s responsibility to offer them the compassion and solace they crave in the form of chesed, or acts of loving-kindness.
When Kushner died Friday at age 88, it led to an outpouring from readers, friends and colleagues who experienced that compassion and solace first hand, or felt they knew him through his writing. Beyond that first book, which sold millions of copies worldwide, Kushner was an admired rabbi at the Conservative Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, taught at several universities, and wrote over a dozen books.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency collected a number of the responses that appeared online and solicited others. A sampling of reminiscences about Kushner appears below.
Rabbi Mark Cooper, Riverdale, New York: My rabbinic career began in 1985 when I became associate rabbi to Rabbi Harold Kushner at Temple Israel of Natick. Fresh out of rabbinical school, there was much to learn and experience in order to fully embrace the demanding role of being a congregational rabbi. As I look back on the six years I spent with Harold, I can’t imagine a more nurturing or supportive start to my rabbinate.
Harold showed me what an excellent sermon looks and sounds like (not that most rabbis would ever be able to come close to the quality of homiletics that he possessed), how to use humor to connect with a congregation, how to console someone who has suffered a tragedy, and how to work with lay leaders and volunteers. He created space for me to experiment and grow in a congregation he had spent years building. And he did this always with a gentle kindness that came naturally to him.
Harold saw me not as a solution to his busy schedule, and not as someone to do the legwork he was now unavailable to do. He saw me as someone he could teach, someone to help shape and direct to be the kind of rabbi he knew others would be proud of. Harold befriended me, invited me to get to know him, and I quickly came to feel that he genuinely cared about me, about my wife Amy, and about the children we began to raise while in Natick.
(Cooper spoke at Kushner’s funeral on Monday in Natick; above are excerpts from his remarks.)
Mary Jo Franchi-Rothecker, Ontario, Canada: When I read “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” in 2008, I was able to start thinking and analyzing about recent, extremely challenging events in my life. I lost my father in late 2007, lost my 20-year legal career and was in a financial nightmare. Rabbi Kushner’s writing (I went on to read “Overcoming LIfe’s Disappointments”) gave me hope, insight and a path to “being my best self.” I am forever grateful.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights: Rabbi Kushner was the rabbi of the shul where I grew up. By the time I was there, he was already famous, and mostly not in the day-to-day running of the shul, but he and his wife Suzette were almost always there on Shabbat, sitting quietly in the back (and of course he would give powerful sermons on the High Holidays, which even the teenagers would come in to hear). And he was an important mentor for me throughout. When I was in college at Columbia, we loved to compare notes on the core curriculum (which hadn’t changed that much in between) and then we had many conversations as I made the decision to go to rabbinical school, and as I made my way through and beyond. He truly modeled what it meant to be a rabbi, and his voice — both for those of us fortunate enough to hear it directly and the millions who read his books — will continue to resonate.
Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles: I always learned from Rabbi Kushner and he was very kind to me and I had wonderful exchanges with him, but the thing that most impressed me was this: When I was on book tour, the same drivers would take other authors in various cities. So I heard about the conduct of various authors, especially when they were unkind to the drivers, as too many were. Yet over and over again people would ask me if I knew Rabbi Kushner and say how unfailingly kind he was to the drivers, the hotel clerks, to everyone. I felt proud and grateful to have such a representative of our people, and we will all miss him very much.
Michael and Zelia Goodboe, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida: I praise God for the goodness of Rabbi Kushner. I am Catholic, but I have come to value Judaism even to the point of attending (with my wife) classes at a Miami synagogue to get to really know Judaism, because of the good rabbi’s influence. Some people are just blessings in this crazy world. He was truly among the Righteous who left the world in much better shape than he found it! We have lost a great person.
Rabbi Eric Gurvis, the Mussar Institute, Sherborn, Massachusetts: I literally learned of the death of my colleague and teacher, Rabbi Harold Kushner, while quoting him during a graveside funeral last Friday. As I began to share his words, the funeral director let me know that he had died earlier in the day. I paused, collected myself and continued to cite his teaching.
My journey intersected with Rabbi Kushner on numerous occasions, the first while I was serving as rabbi in Jackson, Mississippi. A member of my congregation brought him to speak to a group from across the Jackson community. “Who Needs God,” still among my favorites of his books, had just been published. He was so gracious and kind to this young rabbi he’d just met. He always was.
Fast-forward to my time in Newton, Massachusetts. I had invited Rabbi Kushner to speak at my congregation. I don’t even remember what topic we had agreed upon. His talk came just days after a tragedy in our community, in which four middle school students were killed in a bus crash on a school trip. He asked me, “What would you like me to do?” I replied, “I am so grateful you are here. Please be you, and let us be lifted by whatever you wish to share with us.” And it was so, as it has been for so many of us over the years of his teaching, preaching and touching.
Rabbi Vanessa Ochs, professor of religious studies, University of Virginia: It was Rabbi Harold Kushner who taught us, in his thought-changing book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”: “I don’t know why one person gets sick and another does not. … I cannot believe that God ‘sends’ illness to a specific person for a specific reason.”
As we know, Jews do not interpret the Torah in a literal way. While the Torah’s God sends down punishment, Kushner’s interpretation of God does not. Kushner’s God does not punish us to teach us lessons. His God does not give us only as much as we can handle. Bad things happen. We have terrible losses. They just happen.
So where is God when we are grieving? For Kushner, this is certain, and his theology is compelling: God is with us when we grieve. God is with us when our communities organize to support us as mourners (and beyond) and when total strangers hold us up with random acts of kindness.
Rabbi Ron Kronish, Jerusalem: Rabbi Harold Kushner played an important role in my life and the life of my family more 40 years ago. In 1977, when our second daughter was born with a form of dwarfism, my wife Amy and I went to visit him and his wife Suzette in their home in Natick, Massachusetts. We were living nearby in Worcester at that time. That was a short time after their son, who was a boy with short stature, had tragically died.
Rabbi Kushner welcomed us warmly into his home and counseled us with empathy and compassion. He didn’t make us feel that he was going out of his way to meet with us or that he was meeting with us just because I was a rabbinic colleague. He was simply understanding, gracious and accommodating.
I can say that the spiritual and practical advice that he gave to us stayed with us for many years. We have always been grateful for it.
By the way, our daughter with short stature grew up to be a wonderful human being and a great rabbi-educator at the Heschel High School in New York City. Coincidentally, one of her former interns, who is now a teacher at the school, is Rabbi Kushner’s grandson! So the legacy continues to be a part of our family.
Rabbi Noam Raucher, Los Angeles, California: After reading “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” I remember being excited to meet Rabbi Kushner. As the president of Hillel at Hofstra University at the time, I was responsible for escorting Rabbi Kushner through campus before his speaking engagement.
That was a big day at Hofstra, too. The men’s basketball team had made it to the 2001 NCAA tournament, and we were playing UCLA in the first round. As we walked through the student center, Rabbi Kushner heard the students cheering on our team and asked if we could stop to watch the game with them on television.
We stood in the back of a sea of student bodies, who would jump and shout with every shot made or blocked. I watched Rabbi Kushner as he watched the game. He stood there, tall and attentive, with his hands clasped behind his back. He had a grounding peacefulness about him. Every time the crowd grew animated, he just stood there, stoic and watching it all for the sheer enjoyment of being present for the experience.
That image stands out as I think about all the commotion I have, or will, face in my life. There will be successes and failures. Rabbi Kushner taught me to appreciate being here for all of it.
Irving Pozmantier, president, Pozmantier, Williams & Stone Insurance Consultants: For several years, it was my privilege and honor to serve with Rabbi Kushner on the board of directors for List College of the Jewish Theological Seminary. His brilliant mind was matched only by his personal warmth which made every meeting an uplifting experience. On a few occasions, we shared taxi rides to the airport during which we had an opportunity to share information about our lives and experiences. Each of those personal talks left me with feelings of gratitude for the opportunity to know someone of such innate decency and kindness. When my first wife died, he was one of the first persons to call and offer condolences. His incredible ability to express compassion was never more meaningful.
Jim Rigby, pastor, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas: What some critics of religion do not realize (understandably) is that people like Rabbi Kushner are trying to help dying and traumatized people make sense of their lives. It is a good thing to be scientific, but if someone is actively dying or traumatized we must enter their worldview to be helpful.
Reason and science are marvelous goals, but they can feel strangely irrelevant to someone lost in a waking nightmare. Before a terrified heart can hear an important truth it must first be healed of its fear. For me, religion has been the art of cave diving into someone else’s nightmare, learning the language of their heart, and then cheering them on as they climb out of their own private tomb and into the common light.
I will never forget sitting in a pastoral care class taught by seminary professor Will Spong (the brother of the late John Shelby Spong, bishop of the Episcopal Church). One of the students had debunked the simplistic religion of a dying patient. Suddenly, Dr. Spong began to shake like Jeremiah in an earthquake. Will’s face turned beet red and he shouted at all of us, “Don’t you dare kick out someone’s crutch unless you’ve got something better to replace it with!”
My life as a heretical minister began that year of chaplaincy. I realized theology born of abstraction was like a personal life jacket that kept me from entering the depths of another person’s fears and uncertainty. I could not descend into another person’s hell unless I could detach from my worldview and enter theirs.
What a gift it has been to be invited into peoples’ traumatic cocoons and to witness them sprouting wings that work in the real world. What a gift to be present when people discover a faith born of science, a hope born of realism, and a love unbounded by any religious creed.
Harold Kushner, Suzette Kushner and Dubi Gordon at Kibbutz Kfar Charuv in Israel. (Courtesy Gordon)
Dubi Gordon, Natick: Rabbi Kushner was my rabbi, teacher, advisor and dear friend. When I was Natick USY president, Rabbi Kushner was deeply involved and took pride that three of us became region officers in one of the most robust chapters in New England. When I helped establish a Judaic Studies program at UMass Amherst and founded Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in Western Massachusetts, he offered invaluable advice and encouragement.
Rabbi Daniel Greyber, Beth El Synagogue, Durham, North Carolina: As a congregational rabbi, I give copies of his book, “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough,” to high school seniors before they go off to college and I tell them the story of how my mom gave it to me and how it helped shape my life: endeavoring to live a life of meaning rather than chasing after wealth and things. I would not be a rabbi today were it not for his wisdom.
When I published my own book, I sent him a copy and asked him if he would give me an endorsement for the back cover. He told me he would be honored to read it, but that he hardly ever gave endorsements and was an especially “hard grader” on books that tackled the question of suffering. In the end, he demurred but sent me a long email with praise and constructive advice. It felt like knowing a Supreme Court judge had taken the time to read and respond to something you wrote. That correspondence is a great treasure and honor.
Rabbi Ysoscher Katz, chair of Talmud, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School: If you study the biography of Moshe Rabbeinu, you notice something surprising in the Talmud. In the Bible, Moses is presented as a jurist; the “law” animates and inspires him. The Talmudic Moses is less of a jurist and more of a theologian, grappling with Judaism’s theological unanswerables.
Personally, I prefer the Talmudic version.
Judicially, his legal philosophy has been supplanted by Rabbinic jurisprudence; biblical “law” has little significance for contemporary jurists. His theology, on the other hand, is as relevant today as it was during the time of the Exodus. The things that perplexed him then still confound us today, many centuries later.
We are told that in every generation there is one person who is imbued with a streak of Moses’ spirit and is charged with carrying on his legacy. In our generation that person was Rabbi Harold Kushner — at least as far as the theological aspect of Moses’ persona is concerned. He too, like Moses, was deeply plagued by the theodicy question, grappling and struggling with it throughout this life.
In traditional yeshivot one is taught that in Talmudic discourse the question is more important than the answer. The sophistication and passion of the inquiry proves that one has truly mastered the material.
That is Rabbi Kushner’s legacy: the anguished question of “Why?!” Why, Hakadosh Baruch Hu, do you allow bad things to happen to good people? How could you?
The validity of Kushner’s “solutions” to this perplexing question can be debated ad nauseam, but the power of his anguished Abrahamic cry — “Is it possible that the judge of the universe would condone injustice” — will outlive him, living in perpetuity as a clarion call to his survivors to do our utmost to eradicate the injustices (natural and man-made) that plague our world.
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Ari Emanuel has written a memoir and no one is safe — not even his brother
Roll the Calls: A Memoir
By Ari Emanuel
Knopf, 432 pages, $35
It must be exhausting to be super-agent Ari Emanuel: rising before dawn for a workout regimen, ingesting live worms to consume bacteria, and then placing hundreds of daily phone calls to clients and network honchos. It is, frankly, exhausting just to read about it, notwithstanding the clever, staccato narrative by (uncredited) ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer.
The point of it all, Emanuel keeps insisting in Roll the Calls, is not the dollars.
“Money isn’t the thing that makes me get up at 4:00 a.m.,” he says. “I’m just not sure yet what that thing is.”
Perpetually on the precipice of bankruptcy, he takes bold entrepreneurial risks to survive in an industry wracked by labor discontent, cutthroat infighting and technological change.
The goal, if there is one, seems to be simply to win — to bend everyone around him to his will. And, for the most part, he does. From the mailroom, Emanuel has ascended to the summit: executive chair and CEO of TKO and executive chairman of WME Group, “two companies,” his biographical blurb says, “that sit at the center of sports, entertainment and culture.”
Emanuel is probably best known as the model for the abrasive Ari Gold, the talent agent played by Jeremy Piven in the HBO show Entourage (2004-11). The show’s protagonist, Vincent Chase, is loosely based on one of Emanuel’s clients, the actor Mark Wahlberg. Emanuel says that he could never bear to watch the series, but notes that it helped turbocharge his career.
In his telling, the entertainment-industrial complex is a transactional, amoral, brutish and (though Emanuel doesn’t use this phrase) testosterone-fueled world, where the key players are nearly all men. It seems impossible to imagine any woman getting away with — let alone prospering from — the unhinged, profanity-laced approach that has become Emanuel’s trademark.
Even in this milieu, there are, in his view, particularly loathsome players. Among them is Harvey “Scissorhands” Weinstein, whom Emanuel indicts for his slovenliness, bullying tactics and editorial interference. Even without a mention of the producer’s alleged track record of sexual harassment and assault, Emanuel’s assessment of Weinstein is withering. “Empty at his core,” Emanuel writes, “Harvey’s sole motivation is to thwart and mess with other people.”
Emanuel expresses contempt, too, for other bold-faced names, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, former chair of Walt Disney Studios and cofounder of the film studio DreamWorks, and Hollywood scribe Nikki Finke, with whom Emanuel had a codependent relationship. He takes on Donald Trump as a client, doesn’t vote for him for president, and drops him, without regret, when he wins and can no longer generate commissions. None of this necessarily makes Emanuel a reliable narrator.
The memoir begins with the word “rage,” which Emanuel observes is also the first word of Homer’s Iliad. The allusion sets Roll the Calls up to be similarly epic. But its angry protagonist is, at best, an antihero, and the stakes of his success surely are less than mythic.
What are the origins of Emanuel’s rage? He points to his lifelong struggles with dyslexia and the bullying and humiliation that resulted. The Emanuel family ethos was unsparingly competitive. In life, he learned, “loser gets fed to lions,” so “keep your fists clenched and your head on a swivel.” And roughhousing with his older brothers, whom he jokingly calls “two violent psychopaths,” may have left Ari bruised and resentful.
Both Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel, a prominent oncologist and bioethicist, and former Chicago mayor and prospective 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel are known for their combative personalities. Ari suggests that the family is tight-knit and loving. But one of the book’s quietly shocking reveals is Rahm’s mockery of his brother’s dyslexia when they share a stage during Chicago Ideas Week.
Emanuel argues that his anger, which can turn threatening, provides a bargaining advantage by intimidating adversaries. He cites a study showing “that angry negotiators had the edge.” In a bar, he calls out Michael Moore as an [expletive deleted] antisemite for views the director expressed about Israel; Moore denies the charge, they keep talking and Emanuel ends up with a new client.
“You’ve got to be a little psychotic in this town,” Emanuel argues. To succeed, “you need to show that you can color outside the lines, and that, once in a while, you might eat the [expletive deleted] crayon.” The memoir doesn’t delete the expletives.
Yet Emanuel understands the personal costs of his anger enough to have devoted years to psychotherapy aimed at moderating it. (The results seem mixed at best.) Emanuel also admits to a habit akin to stalking: calling potential clients, business partners and others constantly until they succumb to his sales pitch.
This incessant hounding landed him the mailroom gig at Creative Artists Agency, from which he quickly rose — until he departed, with allies, to start his own company. Similar persistence won him the business (and, later, friendship) of the famously curmudgeonly Larry David, who said, over lunch, that he would sign with Emanuel — if only the agent would stop calling.
After his first marriage (unsurprisingly) dissolved, Emanuel deployed his telephone tactics in courtship — not a method, one imagines, that would have worked for a lesser man. In Emanuel’s case, relentless pursuit led, after some drama and heartbreak, to his second marriage, to a much younger woman who had initially resisted his overtures.
None of this is to say that Roll the Calls isn’t worth a read, especially for anyone interested in an unabashedly jaundiced insider account of how Hollywood operates. The book is quick-paced, laugh-out-loud funny at times, and filled with acidic observations and gossip. It is also horrifying.
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NY Jewish Democrats defend Mamdani after Netanyahu calls him a Hamas supporter
(JTA) — Some top New York Jewish Democrats are defending New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him an “antisemite” and said he is “buddies” with Hamas.
Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, and the outsized role Mamdani played in it, were the culmination of escalating criticism of Mamdani from Israeli officials in recent weeks.
Mamdani is an avowed anti-Zionist who during his campaign to be the mayor had pledged to arrest Netanyahu. Over the summer, he conceded he didn’t have the power to do so, though he criticized the Israeli government over Gaza in the run-up to the prime minister’s visit.
But while his full-throated criticism of Israel has alarmed some local Jewish officials, many felt that Netanyahu’s attacks on Thursday from the U.N. plenum went too far.
“It’s scurrilous to suggest that the mayor voices support for Hamas,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who is Jewish, said Friday in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin, also a Jewish Democrat, has opposed Mamdani on some legislation related to protests outside houses of worship — a sensitive issue in the wake of protesters picketing outside synagogues that were holding Israeli real estate events. Menin said in a press conference on Thursday that Netanyahu’s remarks were “not helpful at all” because “we need to turn the temperature down.”
“This idea of what the prime minister said can really incite violence. We cannot have this,” Menin said.
Mamdani, an outspoken pro-Palestinian advocate, has condemned Hamas as “a terrorist organization” and has denounced antisemitic hate crimes committed in New York.
The mayor responded with a statement of his own, saying that Netanyahu “used his speech to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians.”
“Yet no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Mamdani said. The United States is not a party to the ICC and has no obligation to carry out its warrants on U.S. soil.
Netanyahu’s remarks at the U.N. General Assembly came amid a reelection campaign in which Netanyahu’s Likud Party has made Mamdani a villain. Hoylman-Sigal called Thursday’s speech a “political ploy” and a “deflection by someone who has a lot of domestic turmoil, political and otherwise.”
“Clearly, Netanyahu is fighting for his political life,” said Hoylman-Sigal, who is Jewish.
Netanyahu’s arrival in New York sparked a wave of demonstrations in Manhattan on Thursday, including multiple organized by Israeli expatriate groups who emphasized the Oct. 27 Israeli election date. Rallygoers chanted “Vote him out!” at a protest held by the Israeli anti-Netanyahu group UnXeptable.
Even before his visit, Gov. Kathy Hochul pushed back on comments Netanyahu had made. Calling Mamdani a “supporter of the Hamas monsters” was false and “hurt his own credibility,” Hochul said in an interview with the radio station WNYC earlier this week.
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, which is supportive of Netanyahu and has been harshly critical of Mamdani, called Netanyahu’s remarks “Churchillian” and his “greatest speech.”
“Importantly, he also called out Mamdani as a dangerous antisemite who has endangered Jews in New York City,” Klein said in a statement.
The U.N. speech came as Israeli officials have escalated their rhetoric against Mamdani.
Last month, Ofir Akunis, the Israeli consul general in New York, compared Mamdani’s support for the boycott Israel movement to Nazi Germany. A Mamdani spokesperson told JTA the comparison was “offensive, completely unhinged and detached from reality,” and said Akunis “should be ashamed of himself.”
The statement was Mamdani’s first time weighing in on the Israeli consul general, who had accused Mamdani of being directly responsible for anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city.
Republican City Council member Inna Vernikov, who is Jewish and a staunch Mamdani critic, took issue with the mayor’s response.
“When Mamdani cleans his own house, then he can criticize Jewish leaders,” said Vernikov, pointing to Mamdani’s wife’s anti-Israel views and his vetoing of a bill on protests around schools.
Brad Lander, the Jewish progressive and Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th congressional district, blasted both Akunis’ and Netanyahu’s attacks on Mamdani.
“Netanyahu and Akunis are cynically weaponizing accusations of antisemitism for their own narrow, selfish political purposes,” said Lander, one of Mamdani’s most prominent Jewish allies, in a statement to JTA. “They are making Israelis, American Jews, Palestinians, and the whole world less safe.”
Lander himself was the recipient of a Nazi Germany comparison when Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for New York governor, said that Lander “would be a camp guard in the concentration camp if he could.”
Hoylman-Sigal called the comparisons “outrageous,” and said that he is more worried about a rise in far-right parties, including Germany’s AfD.
“We should be very careful, no matter what our background is, to draw such extreme comparisons,” he said.
Phylisa Wisdom, who heads Mamdani’s office to combat antisemitism, told JTA that it is “appalling that some leaders have resorted to comparing their political opponents to Nazis.”
“We can and should disagree — sometimes deeply — but we must be able to do so without debasing public discourse,” she said.
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a group that leads outreach to non-Jewish community organizations, told JTA in an email that comparisons to Nazis should be out of bounds.
It is “particularly concerning given that our own community frequently, and rightfully, calls out those using dehumanization and/or making inappropriate Holocaust comparisons,” she said.
As a case in point, Spitalnick pointed to the Anti-Defamation League’s article on inappropriate Holocaust comparisons, which includes COVID-19 vaccine requirements and free speech complaints.
The ADL did not return a request for comment on Akunis’ Nazi Germany comparisons.
“Disagree with the Mayor on his policies or rhetoric — I certainly have — but comparisons like this are deeply offensive and wrong, in addition to undermining the very relationships and engagement necessary to ensuring Jewish safety in New York and beyond,” Spitalnick said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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‘Nobody Wants This’ star Adam Brody on Gaza: ‘Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide’
Adam Brody, the Jewish actor who plays a “hot rabbi” on the hit Netflix rom-com Nobody Wants This, called the war in Gaza a genocide in a new interview, making him one of just a few Jewish celebrities to speak out publicly against the Israeli campaign.
The comments came in an interview with GQ about Brody’s efforts canvassing for Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterms.
“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine,” he said. “It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago. I’m hopeful that another administration can really do some good and correct some of these policies that are helping that situation be as awful as it is.”
The claim of genocide in Gaza is heavily disputed. Several international bodies, human rights organizations and academic institutions have concluded Israel’s actions in Gaza since Oct. 7 fit the description, including a United Nations Commission of Inquiry. Other similar groups, like the International Court of Justice, have not applied the term.
Brody’s comments were surprising in part because he had previously kept his feelings about the war private, even as other leading Hollywood figures openly criticized it. He does not maintain a public social media presence, and he did not participate in pin-wearing campaigns or sign various petitions related to the war — an approach he indicated he might change going forward.
“I’m not wearing a pin, so I’m not inviting a certain question, and perhaps I should,” he said. “I really admire people who do. But 99% of what I’m asked about is about the show. I’m not trying to plead ignorance—here we are doing a political interview, so it makes sense that we wade into this territory—but I’ve never ducked a question, really, not a political question anyway.”
Brody — who came to fame in the 2000s as the teenager Seth Cohen on The O.C. — joins Hacks star Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride) as perhaps the most high-profile Jewish actors to publicly call the war a genocide. Other Jewish entertainment figures, like Mandy Patinkin and The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer, have criticized the war but stopped short of calling it a genocide.
Yet Brody’s comments are perhaps especially notable because of the character he plays on TV. In Nobody Wants This, Brody plays a rabbi dating a non-Jewish woman — introducing her to the beauty and foibles of Jewish faith and culture. Israel has been conspicuously absent from the show, with its creator, Erin Foster, saying she deliberately avoided geopolitics.
Season 3 of Nobody Wants This releases to Netflix October 22.
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