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The real Jewish history behind Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ and the WWII rescue mission that inspired it
(JTA) — While the United States swung its door shut to most refugees during World War II, a young American in France saved thousands, including some of the 20th century’s defining artists and thinkers — such as Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt — from the Nazis.
The rescue mission of Varian Fry, which went largely unrecognized during his life, is the subject of Netflix’s new drama “Transatlantic,” launching Friday from “Unorthodox” creator Anna Winger.
Starring Cory Michael Smith as Fry, the seven-episode “Transatlantic” aims to recreate his operation in Marseille after the Nazis defeated France and before the United States entered the war. Winger has injected several imagined romances, war efforts and characters into the fictionalized series, including one posed as Fry’s lover, named Thomas Lovegrove (played by Israeli Amit Rahav). Although Fry’s son has said that he was a “closeted homosexual,” no such person is known to have existed.
Winger believes these inventions will invite Netflix viewers to learn more about the true story.
“The people who lived through these stories are dying out,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “My job is to bring this to a wide audience, to people who don’t know anything about it.”
The story behind the series
The real Varian Fry, a 32-year-old journalist and suit-clad Harvard graduate, showed up in Marseille with $3,000 taped to his leg and a list of 200 names in August 1940.
After France surrendered to Germany, Fry was among 200 Americans — including journalists, artists, museum curators, university presidents and Jewish refugees — to create the Emergency Rescue Committee at the Hotel Commodore in New York. This group was concerned with Article 19 in France’s armistice with Germany, which required French authorities to surrender any individuals demanded by the Germans.
The private relief organization drew up frenzied lists of anti-Nazi intellectuals who were trapped in France. With the help of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the ERC obtained some emergency visas and sent Fry to lead the rescue efforts in Marseille, a port city in the southern, unoccupied part of France.
What he found there was impossible to manage alone. His mission began in his room at the Hotel Splendide, where long lines of refugees waited in the morning before he woke up and at night after he went to bed. They sometimes walked straight into his bedroom without knocking, Fry wrote in a letter to his wife shortly after he arrived.
Gathering a small devoted staff, including Frenchmen, refugees and American expatriates, Fry moved his office to Rue Grignan and later Boulevard Garibaldi. Outside of Marseille he rented the Villa Air-Bel — colorfully recreated in “Transatlantic” — to house eminent writers and eccentric Surrealist artists waiting for visas.
The group developed legal and illegal branches, with the cover organization offering humanitarian relief while a behind-the-scenes operation flouted the law to help refugees escape. Using Marseille’s lively black market, the staff found hiding places, forged documents and bribed officials. Bil Spira, a Jewish Austrian-born cartoonist, forged passports for the ERC. (He was caught and deported to Auschwitz, but survived.) Resistance fighters Hans and Lisa Fittko devised an escape route to Spain, guiding refugees across the Pyrenees mountains on foot.
By the time he was forced out in October 1941, Fry’s shoestring operation had enabled 2,000 Jewish and other anti-Nazi refugees to flee Europe, including such towering artists as Chagall, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp, and intellects such as Arendt, Heinrich Mann and André Breton. It has been estimated that 20,000 refugees made contact with the rescue center in Marseille.
Fry’s illegal efforts made him plenty of enemies from his own country, who accused him of interfering with American neutrality in the war. He angered the state department, officials at the American consulate in Marseille and ERC members in New York. In August 1941, he was arrested by Vichy police and sent back to New York.
Fry died in 1967 at the age of 59. Only a few months earlier, he had received the Croix de Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration of merit — and the only official recognition in his lifetime. In 1994, he became the first American honored by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, as Righteous Among the Nations.
The Emergency Rescue Committee merged with another relief organization and became the International Rescue Committee in 1942. It is still in operation today and currently led by a Jewish CEO, former British politician David Miliband.
What’s in the show, and why some are against it
Some of Fry’s colleagues are fictionalized in “Transatlantic,” including the Jewish Berliner Albert Hirschman (Lucas Englander), who would become an economist in the United States; the Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs); and the Jewish Austro-Hungarian activist Lisa Fittko (Deleila Piasko). American diplomat Hiram Bigham, who gave Fry crucial help and even hid writer Lion Feuchtwanger in his home, is also a character in the show.
Throughout the seven episodes, rescue missions swirl around a series of fictional love affairs. In addition to Fry’s relationship, a triangle unfolds between Hirschman, Gold and the fictional American Consul Graham Patterson. (There is no evidence that Gold romanced either with her comrade or with any American consul in Marseille.) Lisa Fittko has an affair with the fictional character Paul Kandjo, who organizes armed resistance to Vichy.
Gillian Jacobs as heiress Mary Jayne Gold. (Anika Molnar/Netflix)
Several wartime plot points are also invented, including a prison break at Camp de Mille and Gold’s collaboration with British intelligence.
The degree of fictionalization has angered some people close to the real history. Pierre Sauvage, president of the Varian Fry Institute, called the show’s trailer “shocking.” Born in 1944, Sauvage survived the end of the Holocaust in the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, although his Jewish parents were turned down by Fry’s overwhelmed committee. He became close friends with some of Fry’s fellow rescuers in their later years, including the late Gold, Hirschman and Fittko.
“Are there any red lines?” he said. “Can one fictionalize at will, with no concern for the reality of the story, for the false impression that people will get — and for the way it affects the private lives of the families of people portrayed?”
Sheila Isenberg, who documented Fry’s operation in her book “A Hero of Our Own,” has described the series as a “travesty.” Thomas Fischer Weiss, a child survivor who attempted Fry’s escape route through the Pyrenees at 5 years old, also said the historical events needed no embellishment.
“I think you should tell it straight,” he told the JTA.
The legacy of the ‘troublemakers’
Sauvage believes that if Fry and his associates were alive today, they would like to be remembered for their convictions.
“These were people who were sort of in your face,” he said. “People who knew clearly what they felt and expressed it. They would often describe themselves as troublemakers. Mary Jayne [Gold] said about Varian that he was an ‘ornery cuss’ — it took orneriness to stick to your guns.”
That orneriness was critical at a time when many Americans were apathetic to the plight of European Jews — a 1938 poll in Fortune magazine found that fewer than 5% believed the United States should raise its immigration quotas for refugees. By the summer of 1941, it was too late to open the doors. The German policy of expelling Jews had changed into extermination.
According to Sauvage, America’s refusal to accept more refugees had something to do with that shift.
“The Nazis could legitimately come to the conclusion that the world wouldn’t do anything about the murders and wouldn’t really care all that much,” he said. “What the Varian Fry mission symbolizes is people who cared.”
Varian Fry with Miriam Davenport in the first offices of the Centre Américain de Secours in Marseille in 1940. Davenport, a friend of Mary Jayne Gold, also worked in the rescue effort but is omitted from “Transatlantic.” (Varian Fry Institute)
After their year in Marseille, the rescuers settled into more ordinary lives. Hirschman became an economist with appointments at Yale, Columbia and Harvard. Lisa Fittko ended up in Chicago, where she worked hard in import-export, translation and clerical jobs to earn money, eventually joining protests against the Vietnam War. Gold divided her time between New York City and a villa on the French Riviera.
They all remembered the rescue mission as their finest hour. Speaking with Sauvage, Gold called that year “the only one in her life that really mattered.”
A refugee story for troubled times
Fry’s rescue mission inspired Julie Orringer to write “The Flight Portfolio,” a 2019 novel that became the basis for “Transatlantic.” Orringer was captivated by the image of a young man arriving in Marseille, idealistic and unprepared for the depth of anguish he would find.
“The task was way too big,” she told the JTA. “He realized quite early on that he was going to ask for help, that he was going to have to turn to others who had deeper experience. And in collecting this group of incredible individuals around him, he assembled a kind of collective mind that really could make a difference under the very difficult circumstances that he faced.”
She believed that Fry left an example for the inexperienced. “If you‘re the kind of person who wants to take action on behalf of refugees, but doesn’t know how to do it, ask for help,” she said.
Winger, a Jewish Massachusetts native who has lived in Berlin for two decades, conceived of making a series about Fry in 2015. Germany saw an influx of more than a million migrants that year, most of them fleeing Syria’s horrific civil war. She optioned Orringer’s book in 2020.
“I thought a lot about the fact that people like us — artists, Jews, both — had to leave Berlin as refugees, but now there were so many people coming to Berlin as refugees,” said Winger.
Then, just as she started filming “Transatlantic” on location in Marseille, a new war broke out in Europe.
“The war in Ukraine started three days into the production and there was a whole other wave of refugees coming to Berlin,” she said. “Suddenly we were making it in another refugee crisis.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit close to the show, whose cast and crew hail from across the continent. Winger’s cinematographer is married to a Ukrainian woman. In Berlin, she saw thousands of refugees crowding into the central train station, some without shoes, food or plans for shelter.
“I think it gave us all a strong sense of purpose,” said Winger.
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‘Halloween meets Israeli chutzpah,’ as holiday grows beyond American expats in the Jewish state
Israeli cellphones have been pretty busy lately, given Tuesday’s monumental national election. There were the constant robocalls and daily text surveys leading up to Election Day. And with the scramble to form a coalition now underway, Israelis are glued to their phones, waiting for news alerts and debating every possible scenario in various group chats. But around Tel Aviv, hundreds of parents have an extra WhatsApp group to manage: the one dedicated to their neighborhood’s trick-or-treat event, set to take place this Saturday night.
“Can we change the date for Sabbath observers?” one mother asks.
“Halloween is always October 31st,” someone responds.
“I don’t think anyone here cares about the actual date,” another chimes in.
There are dozens of questions about where to buy candy in bulk, along with frantic costume emergencies. “Our order won’t make it! Does anyone have a witch costume for an 8-year-old?”
“We are so excited,” one parent writes. “This is our first time. Can someone explain how it works?”
Over the last decade, Halloween in Israel has grown from a small gathering of American immigrants into neighborhood-wide celebrations across Tel Aviv and other big cities. Bars and clubs now host annual spooky soirées, and costume shops that once depended almost entirely on Purim sales have added a second busy season in late October. And on Saturday night, thousands of children are expected to take to the streets for some classic trick-or-treating — with an Israeli twist.
The birthplace of Halloween b’Aretz remains its epicenter: Tel Aviv’s Old North neighborhood. The area has long been an enclave of both young families and English-speaking immigrants, a combination that helped transform the unfamiliar Halloween ritual into an annual local tradition.
The first trick-or-treat event was organized in 2015 by expat mothers Smadar Barak and Eliza Duenow, whose children were missing an American Halloween. It began with just 10 families spread out across the Old North. Within four years, that number had jumped to more than 100. And it was no longer just English speakers. Israeli friends and classmates had begun asking if they could join “American Purim.” Participation exploded as other neighborhoods began hosting their own Halloween-themed events.
But over time, many of the original families, including both organizers, returned to the States. The whole thing might have fizzled out completely had it not been for Noa Rudik, a young mother on extended maternity leave, who often ran Jewish holiday events for neighborhood families.
“A community candle-lighting for Chanukah. A kibbutz-style Shavuot celebration in the park. I saw that families, like mine, were hungry for opportunities to be together,” Rudik says.
Somehow, she ended up on an email list from Duenow, who was organizing a group pumpkin order and carving activity. Born and raised in Israel, Rudik had very little exposure to Halloween, but she was immediately enchanted. After taking her kids to the pumpkin carving, they eventually joined the trick-or-treaters. “In those early years, we didn’t have access to all of the Halloween supplies, so everything was very homemade — the costumes, the decorations, which I love. Plus, what kid doesn’t want to run around all night collecting candy?”
Beyond her own family’s enjoyment, Rudik understood the holiday’s potential for community building. “It doesn’t get any more communal than Halloween,” she points out. “Rosh Hashanah. Passover. You can celebrate those holidays just within your own family. Many people do. But for trick-or-treating, you literally cannot do it without your neighbors.”
Rudik and a few others eventually took over for Barak and Duenow and opened it up to the entire community. Today, the original WhatsApp group has close to 1,000 members, and nearly every Tel Aviv neighborhood hosts its own event. While the early trick-or-treaters sometimes had to endure strange looks as they traipsed from house to house in their costumes, these days you can feel the spirit of Halloween across the city, as the sidewalks fill with pint-sized ghosts and goblins.
Not everyone is on board with the Pagan-rooted holiday, though. Last year, Israeli pop star Miri Mesika sparked a public debate over Halloween and Jewish identity when she pointedly told an interviewer that her daughters would be waiting until Purim to dress in costume. Rudik has also sensed some reluctance on the part of the Tel Aviv municipality to support trick-or-treating, even though it typically helps fund her other events. Efforts to promote the activity through local schools were also met with objections from some parent representatives, leading to a compromise: each could decide whether to pass the invitation along to their class.
Occasionally, Rudik hears from more traditional families who are hesitant or have decided not to participate. “But otherwise, the response has been overwhelmingly positive,” she reports. “Most people do not even think about the religious aspect or the fact that it’s not ‘our holiday.’ They just see it as an opportunity to be creative, to spend time with friends, and to come together as a community.”
All of which involves some pretty complicated logistics. Even with the holiday’s growth in popularity, most residents don’t hand out treats, so America’s door-to-door model won’t work. In the early years, participants shared addresses, apartment numbers and even door codes with each other. But as the group grew, the prospect of giving hundreds of strangers access to their buildings became less appealing. Some families moved their candy stations downstairs; others divided up, with one parent taking the children around while the other stayed home to distribute candy, as they often do in the States. For years, families navigated with a Google map of participating homes. Last year, a tech-savvy neighborhood parent designed a custom trick-or-treating app that will now be available across the city.
“Start-up Nation does Halloween,” Rudik jokes.
The guiding principle is that anyone collecting candy should also help provide it. Some families put up elaborate decorations and stick around to distribute treats; others leave a simple help-yourself bowl by the door. Those who can’t host typically arrange to buy candy for someone else’s house, which gets coordinated through the Whatsapp group the week before.
“We go by the honor system,” Rudik says. “We trust people to figure out a way to contribute. And there is always plenty of candy for everyone.”
But just in case, Rudik spends much of the night manning a centrally located emergency candy station, dispatching reinforcements to households that are running low.
After more than a decade, the festivities usually run pretty smoothly, though the growing number of Israelis has brought with it a learning curve.
“I really love that this started with Americans,” Rudik says. “I think it lends a legitimacy that would not necessarily be there if a bunch of Israelis just decided to start trick-or-treating. But it has definitely changed shape over the years.”
“Halloween meets Israeli chutzpah,” she calls it. Like any cultural tradition, trick-or-treating comes with its own etiquette that isn’t necessarily obvious to newcomers.
“Usually parents would be responsible for making sure their kids follow the rules. But we realized parents themselves didn’t necessarily know the ins and outs. Most of us didn’t grow up on this,” she points out.
One year, after families complained that older children had emptied their unattended candy bowls, Rudik and her fellow organizers visited neighborhood schools to talk to the kids and sent parents reminders on WhatsApp.
“In the days before Halloween, we really urge everyone to review the rules with their children: just take one candy, leave enough for others. Be good neighbors.”
This year’s turnout is expected to be their biggest yet, Rudik says, with several hundred families registered in the Old North alone. It follows a string of quieter celebrations, beginning in 2020, when the pandemic kept everyone inside.
“I think we did something over Zoom,” Rudik says, rolling her eyes.
Then came the quietest year of all: 2023. Less than three weeks before Halloween, on Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel’s southern border, killing more than 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage.
“It wasn’t even a question,” Rudik recalls. “It was just obvious to everyone it would be cancelled. Nor was it specific to Halloween. No one was in the mood to celebrate anything. We were just engulfed in grief.”
The following year, the organizers went ahead with a toned-down version.
“The war wasn’t over, there were still hostages in Gaza,” she says, “but we also felt like we wanted to give the children some sense of normalcy. We asked people not to do anything too gory or scary — no blood or body parts or skeletons — and everyone really respected that. It was a pretty muted night.”
Last year, Israeli Halloween was back in full force, with one new addition: an adults only party, which Rudik also co-organized and will be bringing back this year as well. “Most of us didn’t get to celebrate Halloween as kids,” she says, with a smile. “So we are just making up for lost time.”
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Jewish Democrats head to the polls frustrated with their party. Will they still help flip control of Congress?
For decades, Jewish voters have been among the Democratic Party’s most loyal supporters, though Republicans have made some inroads in recent elections. Now, with early voting underway and the midterms just days away, Jewish voters could help decide control of Congress in what may signal a broader change.
After a heated primary season, Republicans see an opportunity and signs of a potential shift their way. They hope growing Jewish frustration with Democrats over antisemitism and support for Israel will translate into votes in closely contested races.
Democrats need a net gain of four House seats and four Senate seats to take control of both chambers. But the Democratic Party’s advantage among Jewish voters on the generic congressional ballot has fallen from 49 points to 13.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten recently highlighted a sharp decline, for example, in Democratic support among Jewish voters in New York. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s lead among Jewish voters has narrowed from 51 percentage points in 2022 to just 13 points this year.
In Michigan, Jewish Democrats remain divided over their party’s Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, who has intensified his criticism of Israel in recent weeks. Last weekend, a PAC supporting the El-Sayed campaign faced online backlash for a TV ad that showed a couple blaming Israel aid for the high price of groceries.
But whether that frustration will lead Jewish voters to stop supporting Democratic candidates is another question.
Two national surveys conducted this year show Jewish voters remain firmly in the Democratic camp despite the declines. A September poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 71% of Jewish voters planned to support Democrats for Congress, compared with 23% who planned to support Republicans. Another survey, conducted by GBAO Strategies, found Democrats with a 67%-26% lead among Jewish voters.
The Jewish Electorate Institute poll also found that Jewish voters were nearly equally concerned about rising antisemitism within both parties.
Still, with control of the House and Senate at stake and several close races, even a small shift among Jewish voters could make a difference.
Republicans see an opening in Michigan
Michigan offers perhaps the clearest test of the battle over the Jewish vote.
The Republican Jewish Coalition is spending $2 million to target approximately 50,000 Jewish voters, primarily in Oakland County, home to some of Michigan’s largest Jewish communities.
Sam Markstein, RJC’s spokesperson, said in an interview with the Forward that the campaign includes digital advertising, direct mail, text messages, phone calls and door-to-door canvassing in communities such as Bloomfield Hills, West Bloomfield and Southfield, where former Rep. Haley Stevens performed strongly in the Democratic Senate primary.
It’s the group’s largest general-election investment, after its super PAC, the RJC Victory Fund, spent $3.9 million against Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, an Israel critic, in the GOP primary earlier this year. Massie lost by nine points.
El-Sayed’s nomination has divided Jewish Democrats because of his criticism of Israel and his response to the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield that some Jewish voters interpreted as justifying the attack. He later apologized for the remarks. Some Jewish Democrats are publicly supporting former Rep. Mike Rogers, saying El-Sayed has to assuage concerns in his outreach and in public comments.
Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in Michigan. But the stakes are high, with polls showing a dead heat between El-Sayed and Rogers. In 2024, Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers by fewer than 20,000 votes. A relatively small shift among Jewish voters could prove crucial.
In his closing statement during the last Michigan Senate debate, Rogers appealed directly to Jewish Democrats “who are afraid for their children, when their daughters can’t wear their Star of David walking across Michigan’s campus” to support him. “You’ll have a home with us,” Rogers said. At a rally last Sunday, Trump once again accused Democrats of disloyalty, saying that Jewish voters backing El-Sayed “should be ashamed of themselves.”
Markstein predicted that “you could see a Republican carry the Jewish community in Michigan for the first time in decades.” He suggested there’s an “acceleration of Jewish voters” out of the Democratic Party after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the subsequent rise in antisemitism. But Markstein also acknowledged that the change may be gradual.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen overnight,” he said. “I do think they’re going to be much more open-minded and be a lot more ticket-splitting in the future.”
The RJC plans to examine precinct-level election results rather than relying solely on exit polls, Markstein said, to measure whether Jewish voters are moving toward Republicans.
Jewish Democrats fight to hold their voters
The Jewish Democratic Council of America is also mounting its largest midterm voter outreach effort, hoping to prevent Jewish dissatisfaction with Democrats from turning into Republican votes.
While its advertising budget is significantly smaller than the RJC’s, JDCA is relying heavily on direct voter outreach.
JDCA said it is spending more than $300,000 on digital advertising specifically targeting Jewish voters, aiming for more than 4 million ad impressions by Election Day.
Its advertisements include campaigns against Rep. Mike Lawler in New York, Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton in Texas and Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio. Other ads target younger Jewish voters in six states and 20 competitive House districts.
The organization has also mobilized more than 715 volunteers, who have made over 640,000 direct Jewish voter contacts through phone banks and canvassing; they’ve also recruited 32 campus fellows to help organize voters.
Halie Soifer, JDCA’s CEO, accused Republicans of exploiting Jewish fears about antisemitism.
“In the closing weeks of this election, Republicans are invoking fear as a political tactic, tapping into Donald Trump’s culture war,” Soifer wrote in an email to supporters. She accused Republicans of using antisemitism and Islamophobia to divide voters rather than addressing economic concerns. “It’s going to backfire,” she said.
“Democrats aren’t perfect, but Republicans under Trump aren’t the answer,” Soifer added.
The battle beyond Michigan
Beyond Michigan, Republicans are also trying to persuade Jewish voters to reject mainstream, pro-Israel Democrats, arguing that the party has moved too far to the left in an effort to satisfy the progressive wing.
One major test is New York’s 17th Congressional District, where Jewish voters make up an estimated 20% of the population. Although the RJC is not making a major investment there, other groups are spending heavily in one of the country’s most competitive House races.
The incumbent Republican congressman, Mike Lawler, has maintained close relationships with the growing Hasidic and Orthodox communities in Rockland County and parts of Westchester County and made Israel and antisemitism central issues in his campaign. The Democratic candidate, Cait Conley, an Army veteran and former national security official, is also a strong supporter of Israel. She has condemned antisemitism and publicly criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statement marking the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack.
In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish, faces Republican Rep. Mike Collins in another competitive race.
Ossoff has faced criticism from some Jewish supporters over his votes to block certain weapons sales to Israel. In a recent debate, Collins criticized Ossoff for supporting El-Sayed, describing the Michigan Senate candidate as “the guy that hates Israel.” Ossoff has accused his opponent of ties to white nationalism, a charge Collins rejected.
But that dissatisfaction with Ossoff has not necessarily translated into support for his Republican opponent. Georgia state Rep. Esther Panitch, a Jewish Democrat who has criticized Ossoff’s Israel positions, is supporting his reelection.
J Street, the liberal pro-Israel organization, is spending nearly $500,000 to support Ossoff as part of a $3 million digital advertising campaign across five competitive races. Unlike JDCA and the RJC’s Michigan campaign, J Street’s advertisements target the general electorate, not specifically Jewish voters.
Tali deGroot, J Street’s vice president of political and digital strategy, said J Street is working to elect a “pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-democracy majority.”
Florida offers another test of the Jewish vote.
In the newly drawn 25th Congressional District, Jewish Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, an outspoken supporter of Israel, is facing Republican Scott Singer, the former mayor of Boca Raton who is also Jewish. The district’s new boundaries favor Republicans, with Trump carrying the area by nine percentage points in 2024.
Moskowitz has frequently criticized antisemitism within his party and clashed with progressives over Israel. The outcome of this close race could show whether a Jewish Democrat with strong pro-Israel bona fides can win a Republican-leaning district. The GOP’s leading House super PAC recently canceled a planned $6 million advertising campaign in the district after major political forecasters shifted the race to “Lean Democratic.”
Florida’s Senate race between Republican incumbent Ashley Moody and progressive Democrat Angie Nixon offers a broader, though less competitive, test of the Jewish vote in a state where Jews make up an estimated 3% to 5% of the population.
Together, these races could show whether Jewish voters are judging Democratic candidates by their own positions on Israel and antisemitism or by the direction of the party as a whole.
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Two years after a judge’s order, a Spanish dictionary still defines ‘Jewish’ as ‘miserly’
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES — Two years after an Argentine judge ordered a Spanish dictionary to drop a definition of “Jewish” as “miserly or usurious,” the institution responsible for the dictionary has yet to comply — frustrating the Jewish groups that brought the case.
The definition reflects a long history of associating Jews with greed and moneylending, a stereotype reinforced by literary figures such as Shakespeare’s Shylock and by centuries of anti-Jewish prejudice. The Royal Spanish Academy, the Madrid-based language-standardization institution that is ignoring a September 2024 order by a federal judge here, has defended its dictionary as a record of how words are used, including pejorative meanings.
Jewish groups argue that preserving the definition perpetuates an antisemitic trope.
“We understand that the dictionary reflects how some people use language, but it is also true that many people learn through the dictionary,” Ariel Siedler, a member of the Latin American Jewish Congress (CJL) who monitors online discrimination, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month. “That is why adding that definition seems negative. The aim was to avoid reinforcing discrimination, which would be perpetuated through the dictionary.”
The 2024 order came a month after CJL and DAIA, Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella organization, filed a criminal complaint against Santiago Muñoz Machado, the academy’s director, and other officials. It accused them of “inciting hatred against the Jewish community through the discriminatory definition of the term ‘Jew’.”
When the ruling came down, Muñoz Machado told EFE, the Spanish state-run news agency, that he would examine the ruling even though it is unenforceable in Spain, out of respect for the Argentine courts and the CJL’s parent body, the World Jewish Congress.
“It is a judge’s ruling; therefore, we receive it with the utmost respect — all the more so given that the petitioners behind it include the World Jewish Congress,” he told EFE. Nonetheless, he said then, he still held to what he had told the CJL in 2023, when he responded to the Jewish body’s direct request to remove the definition.
“If the [academy] defines ‘Jew’ as ‘miserly,’ it is because that’s how people use the word,” he said. He emphasized that dictionaries document language rather than invent it, and that deleting a definition would not necessarily prevent people from using the expression.
The academy’s online Dictionary of the Spanish Language lists five meanings for “judío” (Jew/Jewish). The first definitions are “Hebrew,” a person “who professes Judaism,” a “native of Judea, a country of ancient Asia” and “belonging or relating to Judea or the Jews.”
The fifth describes it as a person who is “miserly or usurious.”
In 2021 — the year the CJL first complained to the academy — it began to add that this usage is “offensive or discriminatory,” according to IEDRA, a website that tracks Spanish language usage.
English-language dictionaries routinely include antisemitic meanings of “Jew” while also noting that such usage is offensive.
Defenders of the Spanish academy’s dictionary said the work’s educational role should prevail. “The dictionary serves to explain and understand. Without collecting the various meanings that a word can have, it would be impossible to properly read ancient or modern texts,” Arturo Pérez-Reverte, an academy member and a Spanish novelist, told El Pais in 2024, when the Argentine court issued its ruling. “The RAE dictionary is not the normative police of the language, but the notary that draws up a record of how the language was used and how it is used now.”
There is a precedent for the academy removing an offensive definition. Spanish lawyer Borja Luján Lago in 2023 got the academy to modify the entry for the word “lawyer,” which included the definitions “talkative” and “chatty.” Panama’s Jewish community, hearing of his success, tapped Luján Lago to persuade the academy to remove the offensive “Jewish” definition. More than 20 Jewish groups in the United States and Latin America signed onto the effort.
Based in Madrid and founded in 1713, the academy is the leading authority on the Spanish language, coordinating linguistic standards with 22 other academies, mostly in Latin America.
Approximately 636 million people worldwide are Spanish speakers, according to the Instituto Cervantes’ 2025 report. The countries with the largest Spanish-speaking populations include Mexico (138 million), the United States (65.5 million), Colombia (53.1 million), Spain (48.9 million) and Argentina (47.5 million).
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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