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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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In Michigan, a Black conservative group pushes Jewish and pro-Israel messaging
(JTA) — YPSILANTI, Michigan – A Black conservative group is distributing signs and paying for billboards in Michigan encouraging Black voters to support Jews and Israel, in the days before a contentious U.S. Senate race in which the Democratic candidate has struggled to shore up both voting groups.
The Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, has paid for a series of yard signs reading “Blacks and Jews Standing Together” throughout cities with high Black populations, including Detroit, Flint and Ypsilanti.
The nonprofit’s director, Star Parker, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an email their goal is “to remind black Christian voters of unique and special reasons to stand with Israel.”
Parker said CURE is also paying for billboards in the area reading “Self Defense is Not Genocide” and “Many Black Evangelicals Agree that Israel Has a Right to Exist.”
The signs and billboards do not name any candidates. But Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, has alienated many Jewish voters with his rhetoric on Israel and comments on Jewish safety.
He has also had difficulty shoring up Black support, another traditional Democratic constituency, with many Black Detroiters voting for his primary rival, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. That phenomenon has shifted somewhat in the race’s final days, with one poll commissioned by the Detroit News suggesting that 87% of likely Black voters would support El-Sayed.
Still, there can be distrust between Black and Arab communities as with Jewish and Arab populations. Sam Robinson, a Detroit-based reporter for a historic Black newspaper who has interviewed scores of Black voters in viral interviews, recently told the Columbia Journalism Review, “There’s a scarcity mindset that there are only so many resources and Arabs are somehow taking Black people’s share.”
Republican Mike Rogers, meanwhile, has courted Black voters as well as Jewish ones, with pro-Rogers ads highlighting tensions between local Black and Arab communities. A new super PAC linked to Rogers has spent heavily on ads stating that El-Sayed “has been disrespectful and dishonest with Black voters.”
CURE’s signs targeting Black voters appeared in the final week of the campaign. They followed an Oct. 22 interfaith roundtable in Detroit hosted by the organization, in which a local rabbi appeared alongside Black pastors to discuss the history of Black-Jewish organizing — a longtime alliance that has been shaken in recent years for a number of reasons.
Rabbi Aaron Bergman of Adat Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, participated in the CURE roundtable. Over email, he told JTA that politics was not meant to be the focus of the event.
“It was mostly about teaching about antisemitism, which I guess at this point in history is political,” Bergman wrote.
El-Sayed has focused much of his campaign’s homestretch on shoring up the Black vote, visiting Black churches and holding events with former President Barack Obama and senior U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a Black congressional leader. Driving up turnout in Black communities, usually one of the Democrats’ strongest constituencies, is viewed as key to his chances of taking the seat.
Stevens’ last-minute decision to endorse Rogers instead is a wildcard. Star told JTA she believed many “black Christian voters” would follow her lead.
“Their support for Israel needed a boost,” she said. “I believe this endorsement has taken Mike Rogers over the finish line with black voters.”
Yet there are signs that Palestinian rights may be a more animating issue among Michigan’s Black voters this year than in the past. Pro-Palestinian state Rep. Donavan McKinney, a democratic socialist, won his primary challenge against a pro-Israel incumbent in a majority-Black, Detroit-area congressional district in August. And during one Stevens primary campaign stop in Detroit, a Black community organizer directly confronted her over her support for Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In Michigan, a Black conservative group pushes Jewish and pro-Israel messaging appeared first on The Forward.
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New York Jewish leaders defend Democratic AG Letitia James from GOP challenger’s attacks
(JTA) — New York state Attorney General Letitia James and her Republican opponent Saritha Komatireddy are clashing over how to combat antisemitism ahead of Tuesday’s election.
The GOP challenger has frequently attacked James during the campaign over her handling of antisemitic crimes, but prominent Jewish leaders are rallying to defend the Democratic incumbent.
Komatireddy accuses James of turning a “blind eye” to antisemitic hate crimes as they grow more common in the state with the largest Jewish population.
A number of Jewish leaders have lined up to defend James’ record.
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement that he has seen James’ commitment to New York communities “firsthand.”
“When an Ethiopian-Israeli small business owner in Harlem faced hate, she rearranged her statewide schedule to stand with her, offered immediate support, and followed through personally,” Treyger said, referring to anti-Israel backlash that faced Tsion Cafe.
“From confronting antisemitism and discrimination to protecting public safety and celebrating Jewish life, she has remained accessible and responsive to community concerns,” he continued, praising “her unwavering leadership and partnership.”
As a City Council member, James’ district included parts of the heavily Orthodox Jewish Crown Heights neighborhood, and she has called herself an “honorary Lubavitch.” Crown Heights United PAC endorsed James for reelection last month.
As attorney general of New York state since 2019, James is the state’s chief legal officer, leading an office with more than 700 lawyers that conducts statewide criminal and civil investigations.
But as reported hate crimes against Jews across the state have increased in the past decade, Komatireddy, who was a federal prosecutor in New York for more than a decade, says the attorney general isn’t doing enough.
“The data shows that antisemitic hate crimes are surging in New York, and someone has to step in and do something about it, because our DAs are being ineffective in stopping that trend,” Komatireddy said in an interview with JTA, referring to district attorneys who generally oversee the prosecution of hate crimes.
James has rejected Komatireddy’s claims. A campaign spokesperson told JTA that she has “stood arm in arm with the Jewish community all throughout her career.”
“She’s gone after bad actors who preyed upon Jewish New Yorkers time and time again, and will continue to fight against antisemitism and hate in all its forms,” the spokesperson said.
Jewish Democratic politicians in New York are supporting James’ bid. Outgoing U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, City Council Speaker Julie Menin and six other Jewish Democratic officials endorsed James at a press conference last week, where they commended her support for the Jewish community.
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal praised her for combating housing discrimination against Hasidic families in Orange County and for stopping a Rockland County car wash from overcharging Orthodox Jews.
Menin thanked James for annually marching in the Israel Day Parade — an example, she said, of James “standing with the Jewish community when things are difficult.”
“I’m verklempt right now,” James said after Menin’s remarks.
But some Jewish figures and groups are backing Komatireddy as she attempts to become the state’s first Republican elected as attorney general in more than 30 years. Komatireddy has the endorsement of President Donald Trump, who called James “corrupt” after she brought a civil suit against him over inflated property values and called for her to be removed as special prosecutor in a Cornell University rape lawsuit.
Komatireddy told reporters that she would declare a “state of emergency on antisemitism” on Day One as attorney general — a plan that James told JTA can only be enacted by the governor, not an attorney general.
Asked how she would declare a state of emergency, Komatireddy said she meant that she would utilize a law that allows the attorney general “to step in and prosecute hate crimes when a district attorney has been ineffective in doing so.” Komatireddy’s promises to the Jewish community also include establishing buffer zones outside Jewish schools and synagogues using existing civil rights law.
Komatireddy’s tough-on-crime, tough-on-antisemitism campaign has resonated with some Jewish New Yorkers, and could be the catalyst for “a lot of defections from James to Saritha,” predicted Moshe Davis, who was executive director of the mayor’s office to combat antisemitism under Mayor Eric Adams.
“I think a lot of the Jewish community is taking to her message,” said Davis.
A poll conducted by Siena last month has James ahead 54% to 39%; James led by 6 percentage points in the New York City suburbs.
Rabbi Elie Weinstock, who leads Long Island’s Jewish Center of Atlantic Beach, told JTA that there is “a sense of unease” among Jewish voters regarding antisemitic incidents.
“I think the Jewish community wants to hear people who will say, ‘I’ve got your back,’ and I think whoever gives off that impression will do well in the Jewish community,” said Weinstock, who counts Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman among his congregants.
He added that people’s opposition to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat like James, “may guide Jews’ votes” to Komatireddy.
Komatireddy attended a service at Park Avenue Synagogue and posted a video in October of the congregation’s rabbi Elliot Cosgrove wishing her “every blessing on your campaign” from the bimah. In a text to JTA, Cosgrove clarified that, while the post was recent, her visit was in “winter/spring.”
“I don’t / didn’t endorse. I always warmly welcome visitors,” he wrote.
Jewish Insider reported in October that Komatireddy posted photos from a meeting on the street with members of a Black Hebrew Israelite church that has called Jews “imposters” and the “Synagogue of Satan.”
Komatireddy told JTA that this was “an impromptu meeting” on the street in Rochester, and that “once we found out who they were, we rejected the hateful views that the group espouses” and deleted the post.
In March, Komatireddy wrote a scathing piece for the New York Post accusing James of turning a “blind eye” to antisemitic incidents.
But Binyamin Krauss, principal of SAR Academy, a Jewish day school in the Bronx, said “That’s not my experience” of James. Krauss last week hosted the attorney general at SAR, where she spoke with students. He pointed to her “supporting the community” on Manhattan’s Upper West Side after two men were stabbed there over the summer.
“Obviously you can disagree with certain decisions, when to prosecute, what to prosecute, how to handle a certain situation — but I do not agree with that characterization,” said Krauss, who added that he is not endorsing any candidates.
Meanwhile, Davis said that “turning a blind eye” is “not necessarily how I would frame it,” but opined that “people want to see more.” He also said that James is “someone who’s always shown up, always been a friend” to Jewish New Yorkers.
Phylisa Wisdom, who leads Mamdani’s office to combat antisemitism and was executive director of the liberal advocacy group New York Jewish Agenda, told JTA that James “has been a committed advocate for New York’s Jewish communities for decades,” going back to her time on the New York City Council.
“Attorney General James has used the tools of her office to root out antisemitism and help ensure that everyone in the state, including Jewish communities across the five boroughs, can live safely and thrive,” Wisdom said.
The left-wing group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice did not endorse James but recommended her in its voter guide, which commended her for taking action against far-right Zionist group Betar over “an alarming and illegal pattern of bias-motivated harassment and violence designed to terrorize communities and shut down lawful protest.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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‘He made Black Jews not invisible anymore; he was the bridge’
Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr. rabbi and spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, and the Chief Rabbi of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, died Nov. 2 at the age of 74.
A cousin of Michelle Obama and an important leader for Black Jews in America, Funnye was raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and converted to Conservative Judaism. He held leadership positions in Chicago’s Jewish community and was a consultant to many cultural institutions throughout the United States.
“I’ve known him my whole life,” said Rabbi Tamar Manasseh said. “There is nothing that prepares you for this. I think it’s really important for people to know that he made Black Jews not invisible anymore. He was the bridge.”
“At that time it was not the priority for other Black Jews, but for him it was the priority,” Manasseh continued. “There were a million times that he was uncomfortable to one day bring comfort to us all.”
Funnye was born in 1952, in Georgetown, South Carolina, and attended Howard University. He received a B.A. in Hebrew literature and a rabbinic ordination from the Israelite Board of Rabbis, Inc., in Queens, New York, and a B.A. in Jewish studies and an M.A. in human services administration from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, in Chicago.
In 1995, Funnye, Michelle Stein-Evers and Robin Washington (an editor-at-large at The Forward) founded the Alliance of Black Jews.
Funnye became the first African American member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis in 1997, and was named Chief Rabbi of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, in New York in 2015.
He also served as a rabbi for congregations in Nigeria, Uganda, and other sub-Saharan African nations.
“Rabbi Capers Funnye was my ‘rebbe’ for connecting with the Black community and for understanding how important it is to bring the Black Jewish community to the very center of the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Asher Lopatin.
“I was inspired as he fought hard to gain acceptance as a full member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and then succeeded in getting full membership in the New York Board of Rabbis and opening up the New York Board of Rabbis to graduates of the Israelite Rabbinical Academy,” Lopatin said. “I will never forget his passion, his brilliance, his insight and his love for Judaism, the Jewish community and Israel. May his memory be a blessing.”
“It was an honor to welcome Rabbi Funnye and members of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis to become part of our rabbinic family. His steadfast commitment to group relations helped us to better understand the dynamics of the Black Jewish community,” said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis. “May we continue to perpetuate his legacy.”
“Rabbi Funnye has touched countless lives with his spiritual leadership, wisdom, and unwavering commitment to our congregation and the broader Hebrew Israelite community. His legacy of faith, service, and dedication will continue to inspire generations,” Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation wrote on its Facebook page.
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