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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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New York Jews Don’t Need Rhetoric; They Need Equal Justice Under the Law
Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as mayor of New York City at Old City Hall Station, New York, US, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: Amir Hamja/Pool via REUTERS
New York City’s new antisemitism czar, Phylisa Wisdom, has introduced herself with the language of inclusion: “expanding the communal table,” “pulling up additional chairs,” convening stakeholders, listening and learning.
But New York Jews do not need metaphors. They need clarity. They need enforcement. They need a city government willing to name antisemitism plainly and confront it without evasions — because the issue at stake is not communal symbolism. It is the most basic obligation of a liberal democracy: equal justice under the law.
Antisemitism in New York is not an abstract dialogue problem. It is not a misunderstanding that can be resolved through facilitated conversation. It is a civic emergency: assaults on visibly Jewish New Yorkers, threats against synagogues, harassment on public transit, and a permissive ideological environment — especially in elite progressive spaces — that treats Jewish identity as uniquely suspect.
The numbers alone should end any confusion. In 2025, the NYPD recorded 330 antisemitic hate crimes in New York City — more than all other bias categories combined, representing roughly 57 percent of all reported hate crimes. Jews make up about 10 percent of the city’s population but are targeted far more often than any other group. No other minority in New York is attacked so disproportionately and no other hatred is so often explained away.
And the crisis is accelerating. In January 2026 — Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first month in office — the NYPD recorded 31 antisemitic hate crimes, a 182 percent increase over January 2025. Jews were targeted, on average, once per day.
And the threat is not theoretical.
Orthodox Jews have been punched, kicked, and harassed in broad daylight simply for looking Jewish — attacked on sidewalks, on buses, and in subway stations. New Yorkers have watched video after video of Jews being targeted in the one city that claims, more than any other, to be a capital of pluralism.
On January 28, 2026, a car was deliberately rammed into the Chabad–Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, one of the most significant Jewish religious sites in the city. The driver was arrested at the scene and charged with multiple hate crimes; security was increased around Jewish institutions across the city in its aftermath. No one was killed. But the message was unmistakable: even the most iconic Jewish spaces in New York are targets.
This is the environment the city’s antisemitism office must confront. Yet so far, the public has been offered almost nothing beyond process language: listening tours, bridge-building, stakeholder engagement.
That is not strategy. That is atmosphere.
And it raises a deeper concern: the modern “czar” is often less a leader than a buffer — a bureaucratic layer designed to absorb outrage, issue statements, and manage optics while avoiding the harder institutional decisions that real enforcement requires. Cities appoint “czars” when they want to signal seriousness without exercising it.
The first question for any antisemitism czar is not: How many chairs are at the table? It is: What counts as antisemitism?
If the office cannot answer that, it cannot enforce anything. It cannot uphold the law. It cannot even speak honestly about what is happening.
But this question is not hypothetical. On his first day in office, Mayor Mamdani revoked the city’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism — the most widely adopted definitional framework for identifying when anti-Israel activism crosses into anti-Jewish hatred through demonization, double standards, or delegitimization. The definition has been adopted by over 1,200 entities worldwide, including 46 countries. And Wisdom herself has signaled agreement with Mamdani’s decision to discard it.
Without such a standard, the office is left without a diagnostic instrument. And the questions it must answer remain urgent:
Is “Globalize the Intifada” antisemitic? Is calling Zionists Nazis antisemitic? Is telling Jewish students they are foreign colonizers unless they renounce Israel antisemitic? Is treating the world’s only Jewish state as uniquely illegitimate antisemitic?
These are not academic puzzles. They are the daily realities of Jewish life in New York’s institutions.
To be clear: criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate in a free society. But the targeting of Jews as Jews — or the delegitimization of Jewish national existence — is not. A city that cannot draw that line is not combating antisemitism. It is managing it.
And here is the central danger of this moment: antisemitism is increasingly laundered through the language of justice. It does not always arrive wearing a swastika. It often arrives wearing the idiom of liberation, insisting that it cannot possibly be antisemitic because it locates itself on the “right side of history.” The most corrosive antisemitism today is the kind that insists it is morally impossible.
This is why definitional clarity matters.
The Jewish community has watched, again and again, as institutions respond swiftly to some forms of hatred while proceduralizing antisemitism into ambiguity. The result is moral incoherence: Jews are told they are protected, but only so long as they do not name what is happening too clearly.
That pattern is now visible on New York’s campuses.
At Columbia University, protest activity during the Gaza war escalated into harassment and intimidation so severe that a campus rabbi publicly warned Jewish students to leave campus for their own safety. That is not “difficult dialogue.” That is exclusion and fear, unfolding at one of America’s most prestigious universities.
Similar dynamics have appeared across parts of the CUNY system and other New York campuses: ideological litmus tests, demonization of Zionism as racism, and a climate in which Jewish students are told — implicitly or explicitly — that full belonging requires political renunciation.
A city serious about antisemitism cannot treat this as a mere communications challenge. It must confront the ideological ecosystem that makes antisemitism socially permissible again, especially among the educated classes.
There is also a basic credibility test. The Mamdani administration has repeatedly elevated figures who have trafficked in extremist rhetoric. His initial director of appointments, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, resigned within 24 hours after posts surfaced in which she wrote about “money hungry Jews.” A transition adviser, Hassaan Chaudhary, was flagged for calling Israel a “barbaric” nation. Another appointee, Alvaro Lopez, described people tearing down Israeli hostage posters as “heroes.” The previous head of the Office to Combat Antisemitism, Rabbi Moshe Davis, was abruptly fired and replaced with Wisdom; he told reporters he believes the administration found his identity as a “proud Zionist” incompatible with its direction. And Tamika Mallory — forced out of the Women’s March for lionizing Louis Farrakhan and reportedly claiming Jews bore responsibility for the exploitation of Black Americans — was appointed to Mamdani’s Committee on Community Safety.
And just this week, a New York City Health Department staffer, Achmat Akkad, was exposed for posting that “1 Israeli left in this world would be one too many!” and that “Jews that don’t support apartheid are safe. Zionists aren’t!” This from a city employee tasked with community engagement. It follows revelations that the city’s Health Department convened a “Global Oppression Working Group” that accused Israel of genocide while making no mention of Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The pattern is not incidental. It reflects an administration in which hostility toward Israel — and, increasingly, toward Jews who support or identify with Israel — is a background condition of employment rather than a disqualifying one. An administration that cannot vet its own staff for eliminationist rhetoric cannot plausibly present itself as the guardian against antisemitism.
New York does not need symbolic appointments designed to manage headlines. It needs leadership willing to draw bright lines — in hiring, in public language, and in enforcement — and to say clearly that those who flirt with eliminationist slogans have no place in city government.
New Yorkers do not need another figurative office. They need measurable commitments: a clear definition, explicit condemnation of eliminationist rhetoric, coordination with law enforcement and the Department of Education, and regular public reporting of incidents and prosecutions. Equal justice is not a metaphor. It is a duty.
Because antisemitism is not defeated through convenings.
It is defeated through moral seriousness: clear definitions, institutional backbone, consistent enforcement, and the courage to confront hatred even when it comes from one’s political allies.
That last part is crucial.
The most urgent antisemitism crisis in New York today is not a fringe rally in a distant borough. It is the normalization of anti-Jewish ideas inside the very institutions that claim the mantle of justice: universities, activist coalitions, cultural organizations, and parts of the political left that have decided that Jews — or at least Zionist Jews — are fair game.
If an antisemitism czar cannot confront that reality, then the office is emblematic by design and functionally useless.
New York City is the largest Jewish city in the world outside Israel. It should be setting the national standard for confronting antisemitism with seriousness and resolve.
Instead, it is offering rhetoric. The task is not to expand the table. The task is to ensure that Jewish New Yorkers receive what every citizen is owed in a constitutional republic: equal justice under the law.
A city that cannot define antisemitism cannot fight it — and a city that cannot fight it is telling its Jews that equal justice is no longer guaranteed.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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How We Should Respond to Attacks Against Jews: Be Ready to Respond with Strength
Arsonists heavily damaged the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, on Dec. 6, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Two Jewish men in California were recently attacked after being heard speaking Hebrew. A normal conversation in a native language suddenly became the trigger for violence.
For Jews, Hebrew carries far more than vocabulary. It holds memory, culture, prayer, and identity. It connects Jewish life today with thousands of years of history. When someone is attacked for speaking Hebrew, the attack is not about language. It is about the people speaking it.
I speak Hebrew every day. It is the language I grew up with and the language I use with my children. I speak it with friends and with members of the community. I do not lower my voice when I speak it in public spaces. Cultures survive because people carry them openly. A language that endured exile and persecution did not survive because Jews whispered it.
At the same time, reality requires clarity.
Jewish identity has again become visible in ways that sometimes attract hostility. Under those conditions, preparation is a responsibility.
I have been attacked more than once in my life. Those encounters did not end in tragedy because I had the ability to respond without losing control of the situation. Training changes how people behave under pressure. It allows a person to stay present and act with purpose.
That is the role of self defense training. It is one of the most basic life skills a person can develop. A person learns to swim in case they fall into deep water. A person learns to respond to medical emergencies in case someone collapses in front of them. Learning how to protect yourself serves the same purpose.
Jewish history has long understood this.
During the 1930s, Jewish communities in Europe faced violent attacks in the streets. Jewish athletes and community leaders began developing practical ways to defend themselves. Those efforts eventually became the foundation of Krav Maga, a system built to help ordinary people survive dangerous encounters.
The philosophy behind Krav Maga is straightforward. Avoid violence when possible. Respond decisively if violence becomes unavoidable. Return home safely.
Training produces another important effect that many people overlook. Individuals who feel capable of defending themselves often behave more calmly during confrontation. Awareness replaces panic. Confidence replaces impulsive reactions.
People who know how to fight often avoid fights.
My own willingness to protect myself and the people around me makes it harder to drag me into violence. Preparation allows restraint. The ability to act gives a person the freedom to choose when not to act.
Preparation is far safer than improvisation.
Jewish tradition often speaks about compassion and responsibility for others. These values are sometimes described as speaking the language of love. If we speak the language of love, we must also be able to speak the language of strength.
Strength protects the values that communities hold dear. Self-defense begins with protecting oneself, but it quickly expands to protecting family, friends, and neighbors. I cannot imagine watching another Jew or someone I love being attacked and doing nothing. That instinct is not about heroism. It is about responsibility.
Courage in those moments rarely comes from fearlessness. It comes from understanding that action and inaction both carry consequences.
Fear exists in those moments. I feel it when I see attacks like the one that happened in California. I think about my children. I think about Jewish communities that once believed they were fully secure in the societies around them.
What motivates me is not the absence of fear. It is the awareness that silence and hesitation often carry a higher cost over time.
For my children and for the Jewish community around them, shrinking our identity is not an option. Jews should be able to walk through any city and speak Hebrew freely.
Preparation makes that possible.
Self-defense does not encourage violence. It allows people to live openly without surrendering their dignity.
Speaking Hebrew should never require courage.
Until that reality exists everywhere, Jews must remain ready to protect what they love.
Do something amazing.
Tsahi Shemesh is an Israeli-American IDF veteran and the founder of Krav Maga Experts in NYC. A father and educator, he writes about Jewish identity, resilience, moral courage, and the ethics of strength in a time of rising antisemitism.
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I’m going to miss the ‘Marty Supreme’ press tour
Lately, the internet hasn’t been able to stop talking about Timothée Chalamet. First, an account clipped a dismissive statement he made during a town hall event about opera and ballet. The next was a video of him, in China, playing an elderly woman in ping-pong. Then, there was a clip of him serving tofu from a street stand using a ping-pong paddle.
All of these moments were absurd elements of his press tour for Marty Supreme. And every piece of this has been so fitting for Chalamet’s louche and chaotic ping-pong star, Marty Mauser that it almost feels as though he is still doing some sort of Method acting.
Fittingly, a lot of this press tour has made people mad.
Take the opera and ballet comment, in which Chalamet said that “no one cares” about those art forms. In context, he was stating an objectively true fact — indeed, opera and ballet are not popular mass entertainment. Out of context, however, he sounded like an anti-intellectual who hates the fine arts. Yes, Chalamet, who went to the renowned Manhattan performing arts school LaGuardia, and who comes from a family steeped in ballet.
“I’m just taking shots for no reason,” he laughed after dissing ballet.
This kicked off a truly absurd news cycle in which operas and ballets across the country projected “We Care” across their stages in response to Chalamet’s comments, used his name as a discount code for tickets to their performances or otherwise threw shade.
As this was unfolding, Chalamet was ignoring the drama to focus on what really matters. Which is to say he was in China playing ping-pong against elderly people who seemed to generally be kicking his ass. People presented him with gifts emblazoned with “Sweet Tea,” his nickname in China. In honor of that nickname, he drank some sweet tea. He cut tofu with a ping-pong paddle.
It’s just so pitch perfect. Mauser, in the movie, is charming, yes, but wildly arrogant. He also leaves a trail of injuries — both physical and emotional — in his wake all in the name of pursuing greatness. Chalamet is pursuing an Oscar. Potato, po-tah-to.
This year, the complaints about the opera and ballet comment are not the only things that have plagued the Marty Supreme Oscars bid. The movie has been catching strays in the general discourse that has grown since Oct. 7, with a whole host of viral posts accusing the film, which is very Jewish in feel but makes basically no mention of Israel, of being Zionist propaganda.
One could rail against this, point out all the ways it is both stupid and antisemitic. Like that Marty is a fairly despicable character so as far as propaganda goes, it wouldn’t be very effective. Or that making a movie by and about Jews doesn’t mean anything about a movie’s political message. Have people totally lost the ability to watch and interpret movies? Maybe Jewish stories are in just as much trouble as opera and ballet, though obviously in a different way. They are so constantly read as a metaphor for or commentary on Israel that people can no longer appreciate them for their own merits.
Chalamet, however, has simply been ignoring the noise and having fun. The actor has become somewhat famous for his oddball press appearances. Before Marty Supreme even came out, he dropped a nearly 20-minute long surreal parody of his own marketing tour, in which he spent a video call pitching his team on ideas such as dyeing the Statue of Liberty orange.
It’s an unusual strategy in an era of constant statements, apologies and explanations. Whether or not it will be successful we will find out this weekend at the Academy Awards. It wasn’t last year, when he made sports predictions during his press tour for A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic; Adrien Brody ultimately won for The Brutalist, a movie I still have not seen. (I want to, truly, but it is just so long.) Brody had a much more traditional press tour, giving interviews about the importance of his role, of the Holocaust, of art. He generally took himself very seriously in both his defense of his art, and of his Jewish identity and Jewish movie.
That’s all well and good, and probably appropriate for The Brutalist. But it’s far more fun to watch Chalamet play ping-pong against China’s elderly. And I think it’s a better way to handle the criticism, whether it’s about Zionism, Judaism or um, anti-opera-ism. Chalamet refuses to dignify his critics; he simply carries on enjoying himself. And I, for one, have enjoyed watching him do it. I’ll miss him when this press tour ends.
The post I’m going to miss the ‘Marty Supreme’ press tour appeared first on The Forward.