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‘Spinning Gold’ movie departs from Hollywood stereotypes about Jewish music producers

(JTA) — In the hit show “The Sopranos,” veteran actor Jerry Adler plays mob-adjacent Jewish businessman Hesh Rabkin, who made a fortune in the music business decades earlier. In a first season episode, Hesh is confronted by a rapper seeking “reparations” for a late Black musician who he says Rabkin didn’t pay fairly for a hit record.

When Hesh responds by bragging that he wrote the hit songs he worked on back in the day, Tony Soprano corrects him: “A couple of Black kids wrote that record, you gave yourself co-writing credit because you owned the label.”

The greedy Jewish music mogul has been a common trope, from the acclaimed work of Spike Lee to the rants of Kanye West. “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” a 2003 parody of music biopics, made fun of the trope itself by making the record executives into Hasidic Jews, led by Harold Ramis. (They were depicted as friendly and not so greedy, and the film’s writers, Judd Apatow and director Jake Kasdan, are both Jewish.)

The new movie “Spinning Gold,” which opened in theaters last week, tells the real-life story of Neil Bogart, the founder of Casablanca Records and a top music executive of the 1970s. It breaks from the mold of most other music biopics in a couple of key ways: The protagonist is a music executive, not an artist or a group, and the music mogul character — in this case, another Jewish one — is not treated as a villain.

The Jewish Brooklyn native whose given name was Neil Scott Bogatz helped promote bubblegum pop and early disco, signing artists such as Donna Summer, Gladys Knight, Cher and the Village People. A notable rock signing was Kiss. In one scene of “Spinning Gold,” the Bogart character (played by Jewish actor Jeremy Jordan, who starred in the Broadway hit “Rock of Ages”) implies to Kiss’ Gene Simmons that he signed the band, in part, because Simmons’ and guitarist Paul Stanley’s real names are Chaim Witz and Stanley Eisen. He relates to them, the film argues, as fellow Jewish guys who hailed from the outer boroughs of New York City. Bogart died of cancer in 1982. 

The movie covers a long span in Bogart’s life and career, and it shows him struggling for many years before striking gold by shepherding Donna Summer’s single “Love to Love You Baby” to hit status. Timothy Scott Bogart, the mogul’s son and the film’s director, did not want to depict Bogart as an unambiguous hero. In the story, the elder Bogart is shown cheating on his first wife with the woman who would become his second, and the film also makes clear that his record label was heavily in debt for many years. It does sometimes show him at odds with the talent, such as when the members of Kiss complain to him that their career hasn’t taken under Bogart’s tutelage. 

“I don’t know that I looked at it as protagonist or antagonist, I think he was a bit of both,” Timothy Scott Bogart told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

“But I do think the character of the executive, in general, has been a much-maligned character… certainly in the music biopic world,” he added. “And that’s not who Neil Bogart was.” 

He added that the personal relationships between his father and the label’s artists were always valued. He remembers his family going on vacation with Donna Summer, and Gladys Knight and members of Kiss being at his home. 

The younger Bogart, who previously produced the 2019 Vietnam War drama “The Last Full Measure,” said that rather than relying on any book or article, he constructed the film based on interviews he did with his artists, executives and others involved in the story over several years. 

Jews have been part of the business side of the American music industry for most of its existence, in part because of the way they were shut out of many professions in the first half of the 20th century. Music executive Seymour Stein, who passed away this week after a long career of working with the likes of Madonna and The Ramones, said in a 2013 interview that “music is something Jews were good at and they could do. All immigrants into America tried their hand at show-business.”

Some executives in the early days of the music industry — Jewish and non-Jewish — did exploit their artists, doing everything from underpaying Black artists to denying them songwriting credits or royalties. Moguls of the past with reputations for doing so included Herman Lubinsky of Savoy Records. Others, like the recently deceased Stein and Milt Gabler of Commodore Records, had better reputations. Historians have differing opinions on specific individuals. 

Neil Bogart is shown with The Isley Brothers in June 1969. (Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

“There is a scholarly controversy between those who look at the moguls and say that they exploited the [Black] musicians and those who say that they encouraged and made possible Black success in music,” said Jonathan Sarna, the professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. “Both use the same data, but some point to the money Jews made and others point to the musicians that Jews discovered and promoted.”

Spike Lee drew fire for his depiction of fictional Jewish music executives Moe and Josh Flatbush (played by John and Nicholas Turturro) in his 1990 movie “Mo’ Better Blues.” 

“In the history of American music, there have not been Jewish people exploiting black musicians?” Spike Lee said in his defense to New York Magazine in 2006. “In the history of music? How is that being stereotypical?”

Other “bad guy” examples include Paul Giamatti’s Jerry Heller in 2015’s “Straight Outta Compton” and David Krumholtz’s Milt Shaw in 2004’s “Ray.” “Cadillac Records,” from 2008, starred Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess, the Jewish founder of the legendary Chess Records who, the film implied, gave his mostly Black artists Cadillacs, but not always the money they were owed. “Get On Up,” the 2014 biopic of James Brown that starred the late Chadwick Boseman, cast Fred Melamed as famed Cincinnati mogul Syd Nathan (a mentor to Seymour Stein); journalist RJ Smith criticized the film for depicting Nathan as a “bumptious racist.”

Actor Seth Rogen discussed the trope in his 2021 memoir “Yearbook.” He tells the story of running into comedian Eddie Griffin, who at a late point in his career had been struggling to get movie roles. Griffin told Rogen to “tell your Jews to let other people make some movies!” 

Rogen called this “insane because he’s really ignoring the fact that if there’s one thing that Jewish people are NOT above, it’s making money producing things that are fronted by Black people. Anyone who’s ever seen a biopic of any Black musician knows the character I’m talking about, and he’s usually very appropriately played by my dear friend David Krumholtz.” (Krumholtz played one of the Hasidic producers in “Walk Hard.”)

“It’s certainly true that, in the post-war U.S. music industry, Jews were more likely to be producers and impresarios than performers. And, given the importance of African-Americans in the post-war U.S. music industry, that inevitably created a particular kind of relationship with certain Jews in the music industry,” sociologist and music critic Keith Kahn-Harris told JTA.

“That relationship starts to be put under scrutiny and under strain from the late 1960s, as the civil rights coalition started to fall apart and people of color began to assert their agency,” he added. “It’s also true that the post-war music industry was an unregulated space with an almost-normative pattern of exploitation of performers. Put all that together and you have all the ingredients for significant African-American-Jewish tension. Plus, the rapacious Jewish impresario sits easily with ingrained antisemitic stereotypes.” 

“Spinning Gold” isn’t the only counterexample to the trend in film. In last year’s Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” the Jewish label honcho character, Clive Davis (played by Stanley Tucci), is treated as a benevolent guiding light. In that case, Davis was among the producers of the movie.

“Jewish promoters, like all music promoters, were and are first and foremost business people selling a product. Their goal: promote a performer to reap income. The performers have obviously a different stake in the transaction, although both depend on the other,” said Hasia Diner, an American Jewish history professor at New York University.

“If the hero of the film is the performer then her/his perspective is the focus and almost by definition the promoter’s perspective has to reflect the antagonist encounter. Does that merit being called antisemitism? Not in my estimation. By doing so it undermines real antisemitism. It also ignores the inherent business transaction involved,” Diner said.

How can filmmakers navigate this? 

“With great care,” Kahn-Harris said. “It does mean paying attention to how such a portrayal can be accurate and not feeding on deeper antisemitic stereotypes. There’s no one way of doing this. It requires care and attention to the historical record.” 

—
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Sacred fasting meets Ozempic

Millions of people worldwide – as many as 1 in 8 adults in the U.S. – are on GLP-1 medication, such as Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Zepbound, for treating diabetes or for weight loss.

These drugs are adding a medical twist to religious observances that involve fasting, such as the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, which will be observed from sundown on Sunday until nightfall on Monday. Traditionally, fasting on Yom Kippur means forgoing food and water for about 25 hours, which can strongly affect a person’s metabolism.

Other religious traditions include different types of fasts. For example, Muslims who fast during Ramadan neither eat nor drink from dawn to sunset, but they break their fast each night. Christian and Hindu traditions also include dry fasts as well as partial fasts, such as Lent and Navratri, in which people avoid certain foods.

As a specialist in obesity medicine, I work with many patients who take GLP-1 drugs. Most people can safely fast for Yom Kippur or other religious or cultural observances. But depending on their circumstances, they may need to plan ahead, take certain precautions and be clear on when it’s medically advised that they break their fast.

Common GLP-1 side effects and fasting

GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Zepbound mimic a natural gut hormone– glucagon-like peptide 1 – that lowers your blood sugar by triggering insulin release when your blood sugar is high. These drugs also slow how quickly food passes through the stomach, which reduces appetite to aid in weight loss.

GLP-1s have some common side effects that can occur in anyone taking them, including nausea, vomiting, dizziness, constipation and dehydration. Fasting may exacerbate them, especially in people who are prone to an upset stomach. GLP-1 side effects are also more common when a patient is increasing their dose, which usually happens monthly as tolerated until they reach their full dosage.

That’s why, if you’re planning to fast for Yom Kippur, it’s best to avoid starting a new GLP-1 medication or increasing the dose of your medication sooner than two weeks or so before the holiday.

GLP-1 drugs work by simulating a gut hormone produced in the body, spurring the release of insulin and slowing down digestion.

Timing your dose

If you take GLP-1 drugs as weekly injections, which is the most common way of dosing these medications, you should stick to your schedule even if you plan to fast. These drugs stay in your system during the entire week, so moving or skipping that weekly dose right before fasting can interfere with their effects on blood sugar or weight loss.

If your weekly injection falls on Yom Kippur, you can generally go ahead and administer it as scheduled. Some patients do report increased nausea on their injection day – if that happens to you, you may wish to delay the injection until after the fast, if you’ve cleared it with your doctor.

Patients who inject GLP-1 drugs daily may need to adjust the timing. For patients taking these medications for diabetes treatment, it may make sense to do the injection right before the meal that breaks the fast or to hold off until after the fast. This helps reduce the risk of stomach side effects, which can occur when these medications are taken on an empty stomach.

More recently, many patients have switched to oral GLP-1 medications. These pills must generally be taken on an empty stomach with a small amount of water, at a set time before taking any other drugs or any food or beverages.

Because fasting for Yom Kippur includes abstaining from drinking, taking the pill as directed may involve breaking the fast. That means you’ll need to decide in advance whether to take the medicine before the fast begins, after the fast ends or on an alternative schedule. It’s best to avoid simply skipping the daily dose scheduled for Yom Kippur and taking a double dose after the fast.

Skipping the dose won’t be harmful if you’re taking the medication for weight loss. But if you have diabetes, skipping it could dangerously elevate your blood sugar. And doubling the dose later could lead to serious side effects, such as pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas that can lead to hospitalization.

Diabetes versus weight loss

If you’re using GLP-1 medications solely for weight management, fasting for 25 hours should not pose serious issues beyond stomach upset. In rare cases, though, combining these drugs with fasting can stress the pancreas enough to cause pancreatitis.

Fasting on GLP-1s carries the biggest risks for diabetic patients. That’s because GLP-1 medications are often used alongside other drugs that work primarily by lowering blood sugar, which raises patients’ overall risk of a blood sugar crash.

The greatest concern is in patients taking a GLP-1 medication together with insulin or drugs that stimulate insulin production, such as sulfonylureas. The GLP-1 medication itself may not cause a drop in blood sugar. But because it suppresses appetite and lowers glucose levels, these other medications can magnify the risk of low blood sugar during a prolonged fast.

If that’s your situation, talk to your doctor about whether you can adjust the timing, dose and type of insulin you take and reduce your dose of sulfonylurea in order to fast safely.

In general, people who have Type 1 diabetes or poorly controlled diabetes are strongly advised not to fast – as are people who:

  • Experience frequent or severe drops in blood sugar.
  • Have hypoglycemia unawareness – an absence of warning signs for high blood sugar.
  • Are managing diabetes during pregnancy.
  • Have severe kidney disease with a high risk of dehydration.
  • Experience severe gastrointestinal side effects from GLP-1 medications.
Not overeating along with drinking plenty of water beforehand is helpful for anyone fasting – but crucial for people on GLP-1 medications.

From prefast prep to the post-holiday meal

Regardless of what GLP-1 medication you take and for what indication, if you plan to fast you’ll need to do some pregaming, monitor how your fast is going and be mindful of how you break it.

  • First, if you are unsure about anything, talk to the clinician who is monitoring your GLP-1 drug treatment so you can decide together whether fasting is safe for you and whether your situation requires any special precautions.
  • Before fasting, it’s important to eat a normal meal that includes protein and to avoid both overeating and undereating. Overeating is never recommended when on GLP-1 medications, and undereating can set you up for more side effects during the fast. Although GLP-1 therapy can substantially reduce appetite, patients should avoid skipping the prefast meal entirely.
  • GLP-1 medications don’t just decrease appetite – they can also suppress the body’s natural thirst signals. So before your fast begins, aim to stay hydrated to prevent getting dehydrated while fasting.
  • If you are diabetic, make sure you fast under close guidance from your doctor – and make sure you are checking your blood sugar during fasting. Using a glucose monitor is a good idea, particularly if you are taking insulin or other glucose-lowering medications. The goal is for your blood sugar to remain within your usual daily nonfasting range.
  • Be ready to break your fast right away if you start feeling dizzy, confused, faint, nauseated or acutely ill, or if your blood sugar dips too low or spikes too high. These symptoms are dangerous and need to be addressed immediately. Stash a rapid source of carbohydrates – even just some glucose tablets or a few hard candies – within reach so you can access them quickly if needed.
  • Finally, plan a gentle, balanced meal to break the fast rather than an unusually large meal, which may provoke nausea, abdominal pain, reflux or vomiting. It’s generally best to avoid higher-fat foods, too, since they can slow down digestion.The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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A comedian went viral for saying he supports Israel onstage — he wasn’t even there

Menachem Silverstein’s High Holidays were interrupted by what he calls a beautifully ironic “monkey paw situation.”

“Like any good Jewish comedian, I’m in Rosh Hashanah services praying to God for a little bit of a boost in my career, for something to go viral, for something to hit,” Silverstein, a 30-year-old comic in Los Angeles, told me. “I turn my phone after hag. I have about 40-plus messages from people being like, ‘What the hell’s happening? Is this you?’”

Friends were sending him links to a video of a crowd leaving a theater in the middle of a standup set. The caption overlaid on the clip said, in English and Arabic, “audience walks out after comedian backs Israel.” On an X post with more than 2 million views, an account named “Truthseeker” identified the comic as Silverstein.

Silverstein knew immediately the video was of the Laugh Factory in Chicago, a venue he last played this summer. He had no memory of the crowd walking out — a traumatic experience for any standup. In fact, as he took a closer look at the video, he realized it wasn’t even him onstage.

“My most viral thing was not showing up to a comedy club, which is hilarious in itself,” said Silverstein, who estimates across platforms the clip has been seen more than 10 million times. “If I would have known, I would have missed more shows.”

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By the time Silverstein was clued into his virality, it was too late to contain the disinformation.

Alex Jones picked the clip up, commenting, “It’s got one guy in a yarmulke. He literally says, ‘If you don’t support what Israel is doing in this war, leave.’”

No such statement is made in the clip. There’s no guy in a yarmulke, only a man in a dark t-shirt who appears to be blindfolded. This didn’t stop news outlets like Palestine Chronicle and the 1.1 million follower Global Reports Instagram account from running with the story.

Someone captioned the original clip — now deleted — indicating the comedian stated their support for Israel, leading to a mass exodus. From there, Truthseeker identified Silverstein as the comic, based, Silverstein believes, on a joke he retired about three years ago.

“Basically, the joke was, ‘Hi, my name is Menachem. I stand with Israel. It’s not political; they’re just the only people that can pronounce my name.’”

Grok and other AI models reinforced the claim that Silverstein was the person in the clip. But the real reason for everyone leaving their seats was something much less loaded: a prank.

David Fuhrer, president of the Laugh Factory said, based on an account confirmed by the Chicago Laugh Factory’s head of operations, that the video was from a Sept. 10 performance of a regular show called “What Could Go Wrong?,” in which practical jokes are played on comics.

“In this particular case, we had a comedian named Kieron Harrell and we blindfolded him and put headphones on him,” Fuhrer said. “They walked the entire audience out into the lobby as a joke so he had an empty room he was performing to.”

Fuhrer said it had “nothing to do with antisemitism or people walking out on Menachem.” He doesn’t know who repurposed the video, only that it had gone viral.

“It’s a shame because he’s a wonderful person and a great performer and a part of our family here.”

If you go to the “What Could Go Wrong?” Instagram, you’ll see a better image of the real comic, Harrell, who looks nothing like Silverstein.

A better look at the comic from the clip. Screenshot Instagram

Daniel Cassilagio, who produces “What Could Go Wrong,” captioned the images of the performer, saying the show was “so good that it was used as a geo political [sic] disinformation campaign.”

Cassilagio wrote on Instagram that the clip was recorded, uploaded without the producers’ knowledge and “then virally shared by what are most likely bots from China.”

People who don’t check their sources have “been harassing both the comic that was on stage, and a comic from LA who I’ve never even heard about or met,” Cassilagio wrote on a post that, judging by its 166 likes, has far less visibility than the fake account. “He wasn’t even in Chicago at the time.”

Silverstein told me that, while he added around 200 followers, he’s been inundated with hateful comments and his reach has dropped as people have been reporting his account. If you search his name now, the top hits are for his nonexistent scandal. When he’s looking to play clubs, he’s concerned that bookers will see he “walked a crowd” and deny him a slot.

Beyond the made-up controversy, there’s not much about geopolitics in Silverstein’s act. His material includes jokes on fatherhood, being 5’9” (“a Jewish 6’2”) and some well-deserved ribbing of Kanye West. In videos, he can be seen circumcising a baby carrot.

In an age when performers like Macklemore and Jerry Seinfeld have been canceled for their views on Israel and Palestinians, Silverstein sees a new frontier in his experience.

“It used to be you watch a podcast or watch a stand-up clip, clip someone out of context, post it, and get them canceled,” he said. “Now they’re getting away with just posting a random thing, putting your name on it, and then people believe it.”

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‘Run, hide, fight’: Synagogues make threat preparedness part of High Holiday services

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky plans to open his Yom Kippur sermon this year in an unusual way: with an emergency evacuation plan.

It’s how he opened his Rosh Hashanah sermon, too.

“I mentioned [that] people should understand where the exits are,” Kanefsky said. “I mentioned what our plan is, God forbid, if we need to evacuate the children in the youth program — that we have volunteers for that.”

Kanefsky, senior rabbi at B’nai David-Judea Congregation in Los Angeles, acknowledged that the reminder to prepare for the worst could be “potentially a little bit jarring” on the holiest days of the year. But with synagogues on heightened alert, he said, it felt unfortunately necessary.

“It’s just part of our lives right now,” he said. “That extra measure of vigilance.”

Extra security measures at synagogues are nothing new. Since the 2018 shooting that killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, Jewish institutions have invested heavily in infrastructure, personnel and training to counter the threat of violence. But this High Holiday season, several synagogues are taking the unusual step of integrating emergency preparedness into the services themselves, whether through verbal instructions like Kanefsky’s or written plans handed out alongside prayer books.

A flyer distributed at Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto outlines a three-point plan in the event of an attack: Run, hide or — as a last resort — “Be prepared to defend yourself.”

“Remember: Your actions before police arrive may save your life,” it reads in all-caps.

In August, the Jewish nonprofit Secure Community Network released a safety card that synagogues can customize with their own evacuation maps then place in their pews. While a range of scenarios could prompt a building evacuation, like a fire or earthquake, the card focuses on reacting to an attack.

It includes instructions for how to make a tourniquet to stop bleeding and tips for fleeing or fighting “the shooter.”

And at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, a flyer advising congregants to run, hide, or fight in the event of an attack was placed on every other seatback during Rosh Hashanah.

“It brought home the potential dangers in a way I hadn’t seen before,” Frances Dinkelspiel, a member of Congregation Emanu-El, told the Forward. “You’re going in for services. You’re opening your heart. There’s a sense of community. You’re embracing one another. And then there’s this piece of paper that’s reminding you: Don’t relax too much.”

Kanefsky said he felt a responsibility to his congregation to provide safety instructions, noting that the High Holidays may attract out-of-town visitors unfamiliar with the building.

But he also acknowledged that such warnings “can take away from the spiritual mood that we’re working so hard on building,” he said.

Kanefsky said he tried to make the announcement as unobtrusive as possible — giving the instructions in what he called “a spiritual and emotional envelope” by thanking the synagogue’s security team and framing preparedness as “part of the devotion to one another and our devotion to God.”

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Michael Masters, Secure Community Network’s CEO, said the High Holidays present an elevated security risk at synagogues compared with other times of year. Even basic preparedness measures, like knowing where the exits are, can make a meaningful difference in a threat situation, he said.

He cited the ramming attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, in March as a prominent recent example. Seconds after the assailant drove a truck filled with explosives through a building entrance, a security guard opened fire on the vehicle; after the vehicle caught fire, the campus was safely evacuated.

“The guard was there, and he was well trained, and he did an amazing job, as did law enforcement,” Masters said. “But the faculty and the staff and the students were all trained as well.”

Dinkelspiel emphasized that she feels safe at her synagogue, which has a modern security system and bollards around the sidewalk to prevent cars from driving onto the property. But that sense of safety, she said, was part of what made the flyer so unnerving.

“After all these security measures the congregation has,” Dinkelspiel said, “there was still this reminder on this flimsy piece of paper that Jews can be attacked at any time.”

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