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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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Israeli ambassador meets with France’s Marine Le Pen, extending outreach to Europe’s far-right
(JTA) — Israeli Ambassador to France Joshua Zarka held a meeting on Wednesday with far-right French leader Marine Le Pen, marking the latest instance in a recent trend of Israeli outreach to Europe’s nationalist right.
The meeting, which was not publicly announced by either leader, was confirmed by the Israeli embassy to the French outlet Le Parisien. It was unclear what the pair discussed.
The meeting between Zarka and Le Pen, who is the former president of France’s far-right National Rally party, comes over a year since Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that the country would lift its longstanding boycott of far-right parties in Sweden, France and Spain.
Israel continues not to engage with far-right parties in Germany, and Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, who has invited leaders of parties with a history of antisemitism to conferences he has organized in Israel, has cited the Alternative for Germany party as an example of one that had not adequately shed its antisemitic roots.
National Rally was founded as the National Front in 1972 by Le Pen’s father, Jean Marie le Pen, who frequently espoused racist and antisemitic rhetoric and was convicted of Holocaust denial in 1987.
The party has since tried to distance itself from its antisemitic history, with its current leader, Jordan Bardella, visiting Jerusalem last March for the country’s International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, where he delivered the keynote speech.
Diplomatic relations between Israel and France have soured in recent years, with French President Emmanuel Macron voicing public criticism of Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza and formally recognizing Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Last May, Le Pen shot back at Macron after he said during a television appearance that “what Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is doing today is unacceptable” and “a disgrace.”
“I find this statement unworthy of the President of the French Republic,” Le Pen responded. “He keeps increasing his criticism of Israel, perhaps because he is incapable of providing a solution to facilitate the fight against Islamist fundamentalism.”
While Le Pen has long voiced her support for Israel, last week she threw her support behind Macron’s proposal to include Lebanon in a regional ceasefire, which Israel has previously opposed.
“It is our country’s duty to protect Lebanon, its people, and its sovereignty,” wrote Le Pen in a post on X. “This country is once again a collateral victim of the tensions in the region, suffering massive bombings on its capital. I support France’s proposal to include Lebanon in the framework of the regional ceasefire.”
Israeli leaders have pushed back on Macron’s requests and refused to allow the country to be involved in direct talks between Israel and Lebanon, which was formerly a French mandate.
“We’d like to keep the French as far away as possible from pretty much everything, but particularly when it comes to peace negotiations,” Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, told reporters earlier this week following ceasefire talks between Israel and Lebanon on Tuesday.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a 10-day ceasefire.
Le Pen has also been critical of the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, telling Le Parisien last month that Trump “clearly did not fully appreciate the impact of his intervention.”
Le Pen is currently awaiting a July court ruling that will determine whether she can run in France’s presidential election next year, following her conviction last year for misusing European Parliament funds for political purposes.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Italian opposition leader Elly Schlein, whose father is Jewish, backs Giorgia Meloni in Trump split over Israel
(JTA) — Until this week, Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, was allies with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and adversaries with Elly Schlein, Italy’s opposition leader.
Now, Meloni is at odds with Trump and Netanyahu, her fellow conservatives in the United States and Israel, and getting a boost from Schlein, a liberal whose father is an American Jew.
The causes of the breach: the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, and the pope.
Schlein threw her support between Meloni after Trump attacked her for defending Pope Leo XIV, who said on Friday that “God does not bless any conflict” and that Christians should never be on the side of those who drop bombs. The criticism triggered a strong response from Trump, who said on Sunday that the Catholic leader was “terrible on foreign policy” and accused him of “catering to the radical left.”
That did not go over well in Italy, where about three-quarters of people are Catholic. In a statement Monday, Meloni came to Pope Leo’s defense, calling Trump’s remarks “unacceptable,” and adding, “The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and proper that he call for peace and condemn all forms of war.”
The break between Trump and Meloni marked a notable public rift between the two leaders, as Meloni has long been one of Trump’s closest political allies in Europe. The rift deepened the next day, when Meloni announced that Italy had ended its defense agreement with Israel, marking another significant shift in the right-wing government’s international relations.
“In light of the current situation, the government has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of the defense agreement with Israel,” Meloni told reporters in Verona, adding, “When there are things we don’t agree with, we act accordingly.”
Trump wasn’t happy that Meloni had rebuffed his pressure to join the Iran conflict and said as much on Wednesday on Fox News.
“She’s been negative,” Trump said. “Anybody that turned us down to helping with this Iran situation, we do not have the same relationship.”
Enter Schlein and a rare moment of cross-party unity in Italy.
Schlein has led Italy’s Democratic Party since 2023. She has said she is “very proudly the daughter of a Jewish father,” the American-Italian scholar Melvin Schlein, and that she has faced antisemitism even though she herself is not Jewish.
Her father grew up in New Jersey and lived on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, one of the communities ravaged on Oct. 7, 2023, during the 1960s. He has joined his daughter in criticizing Netanyahu but told an Italian paper that while she believes in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he does not. The relative of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, he also has said he is concerned about rising antisemitism in Europe — and that while he generally shares his daughter’s politics, he is concerned that some on the left have joined with the right in adopting antisemitic ideas.
On Wednesday, speaking in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Schlein, said she wished to express her “strongest condemnation” of Trump’s “attack on Meloni for having dutifully expressed solidarity with Pope Leo.”
She also emphasized her own opposition to the Iran war.
“I want to reiterate that Italy is a free and sovereign country, and our Constitution is clear: Italy repudiates war.” Schlein said during her speech to a standing ovation. “No foreign head of state can allow himself to attack, threaten, or disrespect our country and our government. We are adversaries in this chamber, but we are all Italian citizens and representatives of Italians, and we will not accept attacks or threats against the government and our country.”
Schlein had welcomed the suspension of the defense agreement and called on Italy to “stop obstructing” the suspension of the Association Agreement between Israel and the European Union, which governs trade and political relations between the entities.
This week, a petition by the European Citizens’ Initiative to end the agreement reached the required 1 million signatures needed to trigger a formal review by the European Commission.
“We, along with other progressive forces, have been calling for this for some time, because the dignity of this country is also measured by its respect for international law,” Schlein said.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry dismissed the suspension. While Italy is the third-biggest arms exporter to Israel, following the United States and Germany, it only accounted for 1.3% of Israeli arms imports between 2021 and 2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“We have no security agreement with Italy. We have a memorandum of understanding from many years ago that has never contained any substantive content,” the ministry said in a statement. “This will not affect Israel’s security.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Our pioneering Reform synagogue has shrunk, but remains as vibrant as ever
To the editors:
As President of Temple Beth-El of Great Neck, I read Lauren Hakimi’s recent article “A pioneering Reform synagogue makes way for a booming Iranian Jewish community,” with both appreciation and concern. While the piece captures certain facts, it presents our congregation primarily through the lens of decline and demographic change. In doing so, it misses an important story.
Yes, we are preparing to sell the building that has been our home for decades, and our membership is smaller than it once was. But Temple Beth-El today is a vibrant, diverse, and deeply engaged congregation. Even a cursory look at our calendar would have shown the depth and breadth of the activities — worship, study, Israel engagement, social action and adult education — taking place at TBE.
Size is one measure of a synagogue’s success, but it is far from the only one. Even on that front, this story is incomplete. The sale of our building is not simply a response to changing numbers; it is a strategic step that will allow us to align our physical space with our mission and ensure long-term sustainability. This is a story not of retreat, but of reinvention. Further, after the sale, Temple Beth-El will be one of, if not the, most financially secure synagogues on Long Island.
We are proud of our role in the larger Great Neck community, and we cherish our values more than any building. Temple Beth-El has long been a strong voice for social justice, as Hakimi notes in mentioning our past hosting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Today, we carry that legacy forward in our current work with interfaith food pantries and supporting undocumented immigrants.
These aren’t just social activities; they are religious imperatives. Hakimi notes that she herself received her COVID vaccine at TBE. When we opened our doors as a vaccine hub, we were not just providing a service — we were advancing our values by practicing the preservation of life for the benefit of our entire Great Neck family.
Finally, we are concerned that the reporter’s conclusion — “This is the most compelling thing anyone has told me for this story: that even Orthodox Jews benefit from having a Reform synagogue for a neighbor” — is misleading. We are proud to be good neighbors in a diverse community. But our purpose is not to justify our existence to others — it is to serve our congregants and all who seek a Judaism that is liberal, inclusive and engaged with the world.
Great Neck is not a zero-sum game of demographics, but a rich mosaic. Our synagogue’s commitment to a liberal, inclusive, and socially active Judaism is as essential to our town today as it was at our founding in 1928.
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