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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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The post ‘Spinning Gold’ movie departs from Hollywood stereotypes about Jewish music producers appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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What Happened, Megyn Kelly?
Megyn Kelly hosts a “prove me wrong” session during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Dec. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin O’Hara
Megyn Kelly is one of the leading voices in the American right-wing media landscape.
The former Fox News host’s podcast draws millions of listeners, and is one of the highest-ranked news podcasts in the United States.
But with that influence has come a noticeable and troubling shift in her approach to Israel.
In less than a year, Kelly has gone from a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people to someone who downplays antisemitism and suggests Israel wields disproportionate influence in American politics.
A few examples illustrate the change:
- In November 2022, Kelly referred to far-right figure Nick Fuentes’ meeting with then-former President Donald Trump as “absolutely disgusting” and “deeply, deeply wrong.” Yet in November 2025, during a conversation with Ben Shapiro, she defended Tucker Carlson’s decision to platform Fuentes.
- In June 2025, Kelly lauded the American bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and emphasized longstanding US opposition to a nuclear Iran. Nine months later, she described the joint Israel-US operation as “Israel’s war.”
- In November 2022, Kelly called rising antisemitism “disturbing” and forcefully condemned anti-Jewish hate. By December 2025, she accused Jewish figures like Ben Shapiro and Bari Weiss of “making antisemites,” while downplaying the role of figures like Tucker Carlson in amplifying such rhetoric.
- In June 2025, Kelly framed an attack on a gathering of Jews advocating for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, as a likely terror incident tied to broader antisemitic violence. But after a Lebanese man attacked a Michigan synagogue in March 2026, her only responses were reposting a claim about the attacker’s family — omitting their Hezbollah ties — and a brief reference to him as a “naturalized citizen from Lebanon.”
So, what changed?
Kelly’s shift appears to have begun in July 2025, when she claimed that Israel was making itself “the villain of the world” during an appearance on Piers Morgan’s show.
A month later, she interviewed then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who argued that Israel exerts undue influence over the US government and that American politicians are “bought and paid for” by AIPAC. Kelly stopped short of endorsing Greene’s claims of “genocide” in Gaza, but still maintained her support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
In September 2025, Kelly cited Max Blumenthal, regarding the death of Charlie Kirk and Israel, lending credibility to a figure widely associated with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Since then, the pattern has intensified. As noted above, Kelly has defended Tucker Carlson’s platforming of antisemites, declined to confront antisemitism on the right (claiming her focus is the “left”), and increasingly suggested that Israel exerts outsized control over US foreign policy.
This change appears driven by both political and personal factors.
Within the American right, an ongoing dispute between traditional foreign policy hawks and “America First” isolationists has intensified — especially since the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September 2025.
Israel has become a central fault line in that divide.
On the isolationist side, this debate has increasingly overlapped with the normalization of extremist and antisemitic rhetoric seen in figures like Tucker Carlson and others who platform voices that demonize Israel and Jews.
This retreat from foreign engagement, combined with flirtations with antisemitism, is particularly pronounced among younger right-wing audiences drawn to figures like Carlson and Candace Owens.
Against this backdrop, Kelly appears to be recalibrating.
Rather than shaping her audience, she is following it, moving from tentative criticism to increasingly sweeping claims.
Yet she has not fully embraced the conspiratorial rhetoric of Carlson or Owens. Instead, she acts as a bridge shielding more extreme voices while refusing to challenge them.
That makes her less an extremist than an enabler.
There are also more personal incentives at play. As noted by Ben Shapiro, Kelly has a history of adjusting her positions to maximize engagement, reflecting trends within the right rather than shaping them.
Her podcast is managed by Red Seat Ventures, which also produces Tucker Carlson’s show and other right-leaning content. Breaking with those figures could carry professional costs.
Taken together, Kelly’s shift appears driven by audience capture, relevance, and incentives, not principle.
And when a major media figure operates that way, it raises serious questions about the integrity of American political discourse.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Yes, It Should Be Spelled ‘Anti-Semitism’ — and Yes, It Matters
Jewish Americans and supporters of Israel gather at the National Mall in Washington, DC on Nov. 14, 2023 for the “March for Israel” rally. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
With everything happening right now — bombs thrown in New York City; synagogues and Jewish schools shot up in Michigan, Toronto, and the Netherlands; Israelis beaten in nearly every European country — one would think that semantic arguments would be the last thing we’re engaging in.
But we’re Jews; we do like to argue. And even pro-Israel millennials were raised on the post-modern falsehood that words can be manipulated to suit personal agendas.
It all started with the forbidden hyphen, which refused to conform to social media norms. Hashtags are sacred on social media. And hashtags are anti-hyphen — sorry, #antihyphen — so anti-Semitism had to be smushed up and millennialized: “antisemitism.”
If you dare to spell it correctly, you will receive long tirades on how conformity will set you free.
Never mind that non-conformity is at the essence of who we are as a people — and all free societies. And that when French anti-Semites began throwing Holocaust survivors out of windows and poisoning Jewish kids’ food, the perpetrators didn’t shout: “No hyphen!”
In the old days, we would call these types of theoretical arguments “academic” — essentially, meaningless. It’s quite ironic, actually, given that so much of academia is now meaningless. But we’ve now moved past meaningless to actually harmful.
The newest post-modern fascism I mean fashion is to not just remove the hyphen from anti-Zionism but to smush it up into: antizionism.
It is so disrespectful to the word Zion, which of course means Jerusalem (Tziyon), and to Zionism, which means the return of Judeans to our homeland, that many of us find it hard to even look at these post-modern configurations.
But by unlinking the term to anti-Semitism, post-modernists have also allowed it to be redefined by anyone with an anti-Semitic agenda. At a minimum, this could lead to a course called something like “Zionism vs. anti-Zionism,” and we all know how factually accurate that will be.
The post-modernists argue that we need to say that anti-Zionism is a hate movement. Leaving aside the fact that anti-Semitism says precisely that, I would even be willing to indulge a little of this nuttiness if the primary source of today’s anti-Semitism was still coming from the Soviet Union.
The Soviets did a great deal of damage, and not just by promoting the warmth of collectivism. In addition to creating the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with Egyptian Yasser Arafat in 1964, the Soviets first introduced the oppressor/oppressed narrative into our universities, failing to mention of course that Russia has been (and is) one of the greatest oppressors throughout history.
But the truth is, the bulk of today’s anti-Semitism on the left — both in and out of academia; both here and in Europe — is not coming from Marxists. It’s coming from Islamists. Many people who immigrated here came from countries where anti-Semitism was part of the formal education system, and also the informal one. It’s taboo to say that these days — even though a look at the “anti-Israel” marches on the streets of the West shows this dynamic — but ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away.
Arab Muslims who were living in Eretz Yisrael before 1948 — before the fulfillment of Zionism — opposed Jews living on any piece of the land. That’s why there is no “Palestinian state” today. Because while the UN granted one in 1947, the Palestinian Arab population and five Arab armies rejected that. Instead, they tried to kill every Jew in Israel, and take all of the territory for their own. You never hear the fact that they turned down a Palestinian state in any discussion about the Middle East these days.
The anti-hyphen warriors claim to be merely calling out a hate movement. But by giving it a new name they’re legitimizing it. We still need to “name the movement,” they vehemently demand.
Okay. It’s called anti-Semitism. It’s the world’s oldest hatred. Spelling it incorrectly doesn’t lessen the hate or mitigate the violence that always follows. It just takes our eyes off of the escalating situation. No doubt Islamists can’t believe their good fortune.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. A different version of this article appeared in The Jewish Journal.
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After Ukraine and Iran, NATO Must Change
A Turkish army personnel walks as they search a field after a piece of ammunition fell following the interception of a missile launched from Iran by a NATO air defense system, in Diyarbakir, Turkey, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Sertac Kayar
The war with Iran — along with the Ukraine war — have exposed wide cracks in NATO. The political and economic realities have changed dramatically since the birth of NATO, and more so after the end of the Cold War.
Institutions, especially these multinational ones, are never quick to react to the changes around them. And they are also, like every bureaucracy, resistant to change. Eventually, they serve no purpose but the glory of the past and the employment of the bureaucracy itself. And that is exactly where NATO could find itself if reform doesn’t happen.
At the end of the Cold War, Russia, slowly emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union, presented itself as a great economic opportunity. European NATO members bought into the new economic-security architecture of the continent that consisted of two pillars: energy from Russia and security from the United States.
Europe was to be in the middle, reaping the benefits from the cheap oil and gas from Russia and spending far less on defense than the US.
A military alliance like NATO assumes each member is, regardless of its size, economy, and military capabilities, willing to put its citizens in harm’s way when war is the only option left.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has shown that this is not the case. Most NATO members admit that Russia is the biggest threat to Europe and NATO. They publicly declare that Ukraine is just the first step in Russia’s strategy to reclaim its previous glory (and territory), and the status of a superpower.
Yet, they repeat the assertion that under no circumstances will NATO, or any European troops, participate directly in the hostilities. True, Ukraine is not a NATO member, but NATO has shown Europe’s desire to avoid war at all costs. If a country like Poland or Estonia, both NATO members, was attacked by Russia, does anyone believe NATO would actually engage Russia in direct combat?
The blame for this abdication of duties lies, at least partially, with the United States. When NATO was created, Europe, devastated by the war, was in no position to match even remotely what the US could offer to the alliance. The United States assumed the burden in money and fighting force.
Europe has recovered and prospered since that arrangement. The reality changed, but the division of labor in NATO between the US and its European members did not. The United States never, until President Donald Trump came into office, pressed the point forcefully or publicly. NATO did contribute to the War in Afghanistan, but its small participation is not enough to confront the very real threats of Russia and this new century.
The story repeats itself in the war with Iran. The oil and gas from the Middle East is important for energy-hungry Europe. Although the amount of European oil that passes through the Strait of Hormuz is low, the percentage of imported jet fuel is high — and the war affects the market overall.
Yet the United States finds itself begging NATO members to participate in opening the Strait. Iran, with its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, with its fanatic anti-Western ideology, and control of the energy routes, is a strategic threat to NATO European members. But the United States finds itself, along with Israel, dealing with the issue.
Some NATO members may still join the fight. It will be great to see some help coming, but the cracks in NATO are irreparable. The conflicts of the 21st century are showing that NATO is hopelessly divided. It is no longer a military alliance, but a bureaucratic machinery pretending to be a military force. NATO must be a coalition of the willing, not just of the participating.
A superpower, no matter how powerful, needs dependable alliances. The United States cannot continue leading the world alone. NATO in its current form does not provide security to either side of the Atlantic. The respective goals are different. Yet the United States and Europe need each other. Perhaps, another alliance should be created in place of NATO, consisting of the countries willing to engage the enemy.
It does not matter if the alliance is smaller. What matters is that the new group of countries shares the same vision and resolve. NATO was never the goal. It was the means. And so should whatever comes next.
The author lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. He is a founding member of San Francisco Voice for Israel.