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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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The New Normal for Jewish Students: Security Checks and Police Presence
Cornwall House at King’s College London. Photo: C. G. P. Grey.
In February 2026, a university screening at King’s College London required an astonishing level of security: 30 police officers and 15 professional security personnel for 20 students and five members of the university’s staff.
The reason? A 47-minute film of raw footage from the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack was screened, showing what actually happened that day.
An earlier attempt by the local student Israel Society to hold the screening had been abandoned entirely because the university didn’t grant permission on security grounds.
Outside of the event, protesters from the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter chanted “Get the Zios off campus.”
Jewish students must operate behind visible layers of protection simply to gather, pray, eat, or learn together. Activities that were once routine campus activities now demand the same level of protection more commonly associated with high-profile political events, raising serious questions about what the campus “normal” has become.
As someone who has experienced this situation firsthand, the heavy use of security is not symbolic. It reflects real, credible threats of disruption and intimidation that have already forced events to be cancelled.
Jewish students now require visible police protection for activities that every other group takes for granted — a film screening, a cultural night, a Shabbat dinner. This is not discomfort; it is unequal access to campus life. The activism that claims to defend the vulnerable has instead made Jewish students the ones who need defending.
The reason stories like these keep happening is clear and uncomfortable: Anti-Zionism has increasingly become the dominant expression of discrimination and bigotry against Jews on campus. What commonly presents itself as “political criticism of Israel” quickly turns into intimidation, harassment, and exclusion regardless of any individual Zionist-identified individual’s views.
Universities that continue to outsource safety to police cordons while wringing their hands about “tensions” are simply managing symptoms. They are not addressing the root cause.
Chants that single out “Zios,” accusations of collective guilt, and the assumption that any Jewish event is somehow provocative have turned Jewish identity into a liability. This is not abstract theory. Jewish students report being chased, threatened, verbally abused, and physically targeted simply for being visibly Jewish or Israeli. Many now hide Stars of David, stop speaking Hebrew in public, or avoid Jewish spaces altogether to stay safe.
And what happened at my school is happening to students all over the UK. The Union of Jewish Students’ March 2026 national polling of 1,000 students found that nearly a quarter had witnessed behavior specifically targeting Jewish students for their religion or ethnicity. The poll also found that 77% of those who see Israel-Palestine protests regularly witnessed slogans or chants directly justifying the October 7 attack.
The pattern is consistent: hostility that begins with Israel is commonly expressed through hostility toward the nearest Jews who don’t actively identify as anti-Zionist, and those who attempt to humanise the Jews of Israel. The political rhetoric saying “it’s only about Israel” is just a disguise.
This situation is bad for Jewish students, but it is also corrosive for universities themselves. When institutions must essentially militarize everyday student activity to keep one minority safe, they have already failed their basic duty to provide an equal learning environment.
Free speech is not the issue here. Protest and legitimate criticism of any government must be protected. However, what should not be protected is the right to harass, intimidate, or exclude Jewish students under the guise of activism. Distinguishing between the two is a key element of the widely accepted IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.
Universities know what needs to be done. Our leaders have been telling them for years. First, enforce existing codes of conduct without hesitation whenever harassment or intimidation occurs, without selective blindness or “context” excuses that only apply to Jews.
Second, apply free speech rules equally. Disruption that prevents Jewish students from accessing events or education is not protected speech; it is a violation of rights.
Third, publicly rebuke the notion that pro-Israel events are inherently provocative. A Shabbat dinner is not a political statement. A screening of actual footage is not a provocation.
These activists will wrongly argue that enforcing such policies amounts to censorship. But in Western civilization, nobody is free to do whatever they want, regardless of their effect on others. They are free to voice their opposition, but not to impose it on others.
Curtailing this behavior is the minimum requirement for any university campus and a healthy community.
A “fortified” campus is not a solution — it is an admission of failure. Until universities confront the reality that anti-Zionism produces the same result as antisemitism, Jewish students will continue to need physical protection to live normal student lives.
The question is no longer whether this climate exists; it’s whether university leadership — including at King’s College — has the courage to act on it.
Alena Rakitina is a student of the University of Exeter and a CAMERA on Campus 2025-2026 Fellow. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.
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Rahm Emanuel’s Call to Treat Israel ‘Like Every Other Ally’ Gets History Wrong
Rahm Emanuel speaks during a media interview with podcast host Megyn Kelly. Photo: Screenshot
Rahm Emanuel’s recent declaration that Israel should henceforth be treated “like every other ally” was not serious strategic analysis. It was the sound of a longtime Democratic operative adjusting himself to the increasingly radicalized gravitational pull of his party’s anti-Israel wing.
The same political ecosystem now mainstreaming figures like Hasan Piker — a man who declared that “America deserved 9/11” and routinely traffics in hateful anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda to millions — is steadily dragging Democratic rhetoric on Israel into territory that would have been politically radioactive even a decade ago.
Like others making similar arguments, Emanuel’s slogan collapses under even minimal historical scrutiny.
When looking at the evidence, it’s clear that Israel is already treated unlike many American allies.
First, some allies, like NATO members, are entitled to American military protection and defense if they are attacked. When Israel fights wars, Israelis fight them. That distinction matters enormously. Yet people like Rahm speak as though Israel is uniquely coddled rather than uniquely self-reliant.
Emanuel — who somehow served as ambassador to Japan while apparently learning little from the experience about how American alliances actually work — recently stated that the US should stop “subsidizing” Israel’s military and stop providing “financial aid” through the Memorandum of Understanding framework, and that Israel should instead simply “buy what they want” like every other ally.
The aid framework Rahm now caricatures as “subsidies” and “financial aid” was never an act of American charity. It emerged from strategic bargains and overlapping interests that benefited Washington enormously.
A major turning point in that strategic bargain came in the 1980s with Israel’s Lavi fighter project — an ambitious domestically developed fighter program that many in Washington feared could become a genuine export competitor to the F-16.
American pressure to terminate the program was immense because, contrary to today’s woke-right and far-left parody of the alliance, Washington was not interested in an Israeli aerospace rival competing with American defense giants globally.
Under that pressure, Israel closed the program.
The result was deeper Israeli integration into American military platforms and supply chains — strengthening American aerospace dominance while locking Israel more tightly into the American defense ecosystem.
In other words, the architecture Rahm now dismisses as though it were unilateral charity did not emerge because Washington was engaged in philanthropy for Jews. It emerged because American policymakers concluded that the arrangement benefited the United States strategically, militarily, technologically, and industrially.
Almost all US military assistance to Israel is effectively spent in America on American systems built by American workers in American factories. Meanwhile, Israel became one of the most battle-tested laboratories for American military doctrine and technology anywhere in the world — missile defense, cyber operations, tunnel warfare, counterterrorism, intelligence integration, and urban combat.
American defense officials do not maintain these relationships because they are sentimental Zionists at the Pentagon. They maintain them because Israel provides enormous strategic value to the United States.
But the most absurd part of Emanuel’s slogan remains the slogan itself.
Because when Rahm says Israel should be treated “like every other ally,” he ignores the fact that Israel receives less benefits than many “other allies.”
Japan gets treaty guarantees. South Korea gets treaty guarantees and American troops on its front line – the DMZ. NATO states get the full weight of American deterrence and outsized military spending – compared to all other NATO countries, as the US accounts for roughly 70% of all NATO defense expenditures.
The Gulf monarchies host sprawling American military infrastructure protecting regimes that likely would not survive long without it.
Israel often gets lectures about “restraint” while fighting enemies openly committed to its destruction.
Israel gets told that the world’s only Jewish state — smaller than New Jersey and surrounded for decades by forces openly calling for its annihilation — should somehow behave like Holland while confronting enemies that behave more like ISIS with better public relations.
And through all of this, Israelis themselves still do the fighting.
That is the part the “subsidy” rhetoric always conceals.
When Hezbollah launches rockets into northern Israel, American Marines do not fight in southern Lebanon. When Hamas massacres Israeli civilians, American reservists are not mobilized into Gaza. When Iran openly threatens both the United States and Israel, American parents are not preparing their children for compulsory military service. Israelis are. That is not “special treatment.”
That’s why Emanuel’s rhetoric sounds less like strategy and more like ideological adaptation – the repositioning of a Democratic politician trying to survive a party increasingly shaped by activists who understand the Middle East primarily through slogans, intersectional dogma, and social media propaganda rather than military history or strategic reality.
For decades, American policymakers understood that Israel represented something uniquely valuable to the United States — a stable, democratic, technologically advanced regional power willing to fight its own wars without demanding or requiring American soldiers to die for it. Now figures like Rahm Emanuel speak as though this arrangement was some kind of American charity or a bad deal.
But it’s not — it’s a strategic partnership, and one squarely in America’s interest.
That consensus, however, is increasingly being subordinated to internal party pressures. The Democratic establishment’s attempts to placate the anti-Israel activist left will likely work about as well as it worked for Biden and Harris in 2024 — never anti-Israel enough to satisfy the far-left and Islamist activist ecosystem, but anti-Israel enough to alienate moderates, independents, and pro-American voters.
The party will soon likely decide if it should become outright hostile to voters — but history rarely rewards political classes that mistake ideological fashion for strategic wisdom. Rahm Emanuel should know that by now.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Sheila Reich, beloved LA Yiddish teacher, has died
שיינדל „שילאַ“ רײַך, אַ פּאָפּולערע לאַנגיאָריקע ייִדיש־לערערין אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס, איז לעצטנס אַוועק אין דער אייביקייט. זי איז געווען 80 יאָר אַלט.
איך האָב געקענט שילאַן במשך פֿון מער װי אַ פֿערטל יאָרהונדערט אָבער בײַ מיר האָט זי געהייסן בלויז שיינדל. ערשט הײַיאָר, אויף איר 80סטן געבורירן־טאָג האָב איך אױסגעפֿונען אַז בײַ אַלע אַנדערע האָט זי געהײסן „שילאַ“.
יאָרן לאַנג איז שײנדל געװען אַ ייִדיש־לערערין אין פֿאַרשידענע אינסטיטוציעס איבער לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס. איך אַלײַן בין קיין מאָל נישט געווען בײַ איר אין קלאַס אָבער מײַן װײַב טעמע האָט זיך יאָרן לאַנג געלערנט בײַ איר. אַלס לערערין איז שײנדל געװען אויסערגעוויינטלעך. אין אַ טיפּישן קלאַס זענען די סטודענטן געווען אױף פֿאַרשידענע ניװאָען, פֿון אַבסאָלוטע אָנהײבער ביז אַװאַנסירט. דאָך האָט זי זיך אָפּגעגעבן מיט יעדן אײנעם באַזונדער. ווי אַ רעזולטאַט האָט די ייִדיש־קענטעניש בײַ יעדן סטודענט זיך פֿאַרבעסערט.
װי איך אַלײן, און ווי אַ סך פֿון אירע סטודענטן, איז שיינדל געװען אַ קינד פֿון דער שארית־הפּליטה. זינט די קינדעריאָרן האָבן מיר בײדע גערעדט ייִדיש מיט אונדזערע טאַטע־מאַמע. (זי האָט אויך גערעדט ייִדיש מיט איר זון, אַבֿי.) פֿאַקטיש איז ייִדיש פֿאַר אונדז בײדן געװען די ערשטע שפּראַך. אַן אונטערשייד פֿון צען יאָר צווישן אונדז, איז שיינדל אין מײַנע אױגן געװען די עלטערע שװעסטער װאָס איך האָב נישט געהאַט. אין אונדזערע פֿיל שמועסן האָבן מיר גערעדט אױף מאַמע־לשון. חס־וחלילה מיר זאָלן רעדן אױף דער גױישער שפּראַך! אַזױ װי איך, האָט זי געקענט צענדליקער, אױב נישט הונדערטער יִידישע אױסדרוקן, שפּריכװערטער און חכמות. מיר האָבן אָפֿט זיך געטיילט מיט די אויסדרוקן און תּמיד הנאה געהאַט ווען מיר האָבן זיך דערוווּסט אַ נײַ ווערטל.
יאָרן לאַנג איז שײנדל אויך געװען אַ מיטגליד פֿון אונדזער לײענקרײַז אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס. טראָץ דעם װאָס זי איז געװען אַ ייִדיש־לערערין האָט זי זיך קיין מאָל נישט געהאַלטן העכער פֿון אונדז. . אָט זענען עטלעכע:
„זומער און װינטער ליגט אים אין מױל“ — אַ פּאַטאַלאָגישער ליגנער. דער ליגן בלײַבט אין זײַן מױל אַ גאַנץ יאָר.
„עס גײט מיר אן אַזױ ווי דער פֿאַריאָריקער שנײ.“
„איך האָב נישט אַפֿילו קײַן כּוח צו חלשן.“
„קושװאָך“ — „האָנימון“. איז דאָס נישט חנעװדיק?
שײנדל איז געװען אַן אשת־חיל, מיט אַ פֿינקל אין אױג. איך, צוזאַמען מיט די מיטגלידער פֿון אונדזער לײענקרײַז און די אָנצאָליקע סטודענטן במשך פֿון די יאָרן, װעלן שטאַרק בענקען נאָך איר. כּבֿוד איר אָנדענק!
The post Sheila Reich, beloved LA Yiddish teacher, has died appeared first on The Forward.