‘Sure,’ I responded, girding myself for something offensive or tone deaf. They looked up at me, trying to figure out how to phrase it. Finally, they let themself speak…

‘Can you explain to me where Jews come from?’ They stared at me expectantly as my mouth betrayed the barest hint of a smile. It’s a simple question, but one that belies a frighteningly common lack of basic understanding of Jewish history, identity, and culture.

Believe it or not, I am asked questions about my Jewishness far more often than I am asked questions about my transness. Perhaps it’s the circles I move in, as most of my friends are queer folks who are either trans themselves, or at least very trans-literate. I’m also a good person to ask. On top of, you know, being a Jew, I wrote my thesis paper, in part, on Jewish ethnogenesis and identity.

While I have of course experienced transphobia in my lifetime, including rather merciless bullying as a child as well as the expected slurs and verbal assaults, I have experienced more extreme and violent antisemitism in my life; bomb threats and suspected arson at local temples, swastika graffiti, being verbally accosted in a restaurant on Christmas, having strangers spot my Hamsa, or the Magen David that was passed down to me by my grandfather and take that as an opening to spew their hatred, and I could go on and on.

People tend to be quite surprised when I express this reality of my life. And I do recognize that I have privileges today that spare me from the worst of transphobic violence; I am often, though not always, white-assumed, and I am typically cis-assumed. These are realities of my life that protect me and cannot be ignored or unaddressed.

However, my larger point is that one of my identities is considered unequivocally marginalized, while many continue to brush over antisemitism as a non-issue despite its meteoric rise over the last decade in the U.S. As David Baddiel so clearly elucidated, it’s the ‘Jews don’t count’ of it all.

This point of view extends to the way we are portrayed in media.

Recently, it was announced that Kathryn Hahn would be playing Joan Rivers in an upcoming biographical series about her life. Quickly, Sarah Silverman waded into the argument over Hahn’s casting, rightly pointing out the clear double standard that in this era where there are greater and greater calls for authenticity, Jews don’t count. Soon after, it was announced that Claire Foy, another non-Jew best known for playing the Queen of England, would be playing Sheryl Sandberg in an upcoming film based on the book An Ugly Truth. 

Hahn and Foy join the ranks of Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Rachel Brosnahan as Midge Maisel, Michael Keaton as Ken Feinberg, Vanessa Kirby and Ellen Burstyn as Martha and Elizabeth Weiss, Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, and the list goes on and on. In fact, it’s almost become a rule that Jews are not played by Jewish actors, which compounds the misunderstanding of who we are.

In my work as a trans media consultant, we often talk about the small percentage of the U.S. population that is trans, and even more importantly, the percentages of cisgender people who personally know a trans person. The reason why these statistics are important to keep in mind is that when people don’t know a trans person personally, and then see inaccurate trans representation on screen, they have no real world baseline to compare it to. This exacerbates transphobia.

Approximately 2.5% of the U.S. population is Jewish. It’s ironic that oftentimes our population is vastly overestimated. I have my theories as to why. There is, of course, the reality of Jewish contribution to American culture. However, because of the adoption of Jewish texts in Christianity and the development of Islam being closely tied to the history of the Jewish diaspora in the Arabian Peninsula, Jews become narrative characters in two of the world’s largest universalist religions (as opposed to Judaism, a particularist spiritual movement that is only concerned with the Jewish people as an ethnic and national identity).

People are comfortable with Jews as a parable. I mean, a whole religion was developed on this foundation. Non-Jews enjoy when we are a mirror for society to hold itself up to, to understand and see its ills. Oftentimes, as Dara Horn pointed out in her book People Love Dead Jews, this functions best when we are dead; a relic. Because then we can be whoever the world wants us to be.

In fact, I see it all the time. Every Christmas season, I see a litany of posts saying ‘Jesus was…’ and nearly universally the words that complete this sentence are not, ‘a Jew’… the only ethnic identity that Jesus indisputably was. What I find interesting is that I often see it posted by the same people who are dead-set on the concept of universal Jewish whiteness. This in turn is often an argument only conveniently invoked by non-Jews when they want to argue that they don’t need to care about antisemitism. Ironically, it’s another role we get cast in to make non-Jews feel better about their own world-view: Jews as a mirror. And when the representation they see is Vanessa Kirby in a large manor house pretending to be the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, it’s no wonder people feel this way.

These are prime examples of this dynamic. And it creates a disconnection point in popular imagination between ‘the literary Jew,’ who teaches the world a lesson about themselves, and real live living Jews who are currently experiencing the highest levels of antisemitism in this country since the first half of the 20th century. And confronting this antisemitism in the here and now, which would need to start with a basic understanding of who we actually are, would upset the balance of whatever morality play we’ve been cast in by others. Then this silence helps perpetuate the hatred and allows it to flourish.

Add socially ingrained casual antisemitism into the mix, as opposed to overt antisemitism like the white-supremacists marching in Charlottesville chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’, and it’s a toxic stew. For example, a person I know well was sued by a man for ‘wrongful termination’ after he fired him for stealing a lot of money from his business. Of course, firing someone for stealing from you is hardly wrongful. This person I know counter-sued. After depositions were filed, it was decided that it would be a jury trial. This person was then advised by his lawyers to settle, because the man who stole from him was a white Christian, and the jury was ‘unlikely to trust the word of a Jewish doctor.’ No wonder we’re rarely trusted to tell our own story. 

But herein lies the problem. And it’s the same problem that I spoke of when it comes to trans representation. Because we are such a small percentage of the population, most people’s first encounters with us are either in biblical stories, or they are in media. Stories have a unique power, as does accurate representation. We’ve seen massive shifts in perceptions of LGBTQ people thanks to shifts in how we are portrayed in film and television. But when it comes to my other identity, we barely register in the discourse.

And so the problem that Sarah Silverman brought into the spotlight stretches beyond the disparity in opportunity, which is certainly a problem. When Jews are misrepresented in media by non-Jews doing their best caricatures of us, it enshrines us as a character in someone else’s passion play rather than human beings and a living culture that is still here. It perpetuates misunderstanding of who we are. And when our population is so small, it becomes impossible for many people to have real life living breathing Jews that they know to hold these representations against.

This isn’t just problematic. It helps to perpetuate antisemitism in all of its mutations.

So I sit across from my friend and I say, “Well, to answer that question, I need to go back to about 1600 B.C.” I watch as their mind explodes a little bit. 

I tell them about the various historically-based theories of our ethnogenesis. I explain the consolidation of Jewish national identity at the dawn of the 1000s B.C. I talk about the Romans, and Bar Kokhba. I talk about Beta Yisrael. I talk about Shammai and Hillel and the origins of rabbinical Judaism. I talk about The Crusades, The Inquisition, and Sephardi Pirates; Sabbatai, Chassidism, and Haskalah; Pogroms, the Dreyfuss Affair, and of course The Holocaust; Farhud, Operation Magic Carpet, and Operation Solomon. I talk about the diversity of the American Jewish experience, where intermixture with other ethnic groups has often strengthened our community and made it better. 

But most of all, I talk about Jewish pride and Jewish resilience, and the fact that while people still try to tell us who we are, we refuse to be defined by others.

Media matters. It especially matters for marginalized people. And we are marginalized people. One only needs to look at the last few years; we’ve had multiple deadly shootings, stabbings, arsons, physical assaults, car attacks, and murders motivated by antisemitism. The claim that we’ve assimilated to the point that hatred of our community is a non-issue falls apart with the barest interrogation. Jews deserve all of the same consideration and care that any other marginalized group does.

It is high time that we are allowed to wrestle ourselves out of someone else’s narrative, and instead, with clarity, honesty, and the lived experience that only Jewish artists can bring to our own stories, have the chance to tell our own. After all, our histories live in our blood, from generation to generation. 

The post The Jewish (Casting) Question appeared first on Jewcy.

While Josh Gad is perhaps best known for voicing Olaf, the lovable/grating (your mileage may vary) snowman in Frozen, he’s most often cast as somewhat annoying, nerdy types. His big break was for originating the role of the weirdly nebbish Elder Cunningham in The Book of Mormon (seriously, why do so many Jews play the geeky Mormon character in that show?). He’s a physical “type,” to be sure— but there’s an unfortunate overlap between a short, round Jewish man with curly hair and bumbling characters onscreen. His next role, however, is a step away from that— and he’s excited about it.

Gad is one of the stars of Marshall, the upcoming Thurgood Marshall biopic telling the story of a young Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) while he works as a lawyer for the NAACP. The film revolves around Marshall’s role as the defense lawyer for Joseph Spell, a black chauffeur accused of sexual assault and attempted murder by Eleanor Strubing, a Greenwich, Connecticut socialite. Gad plays Sam Friedman, a local Jewish lawyer who’s never handled a criminal case who is tasked with teaming up with Marshall to defend Spell. The two men build a defense together while contending with both anti-black and anti-Semitic views.

(The real Friedman was important to both the case and this movie; his family was instrumental in passing the film’s script— co-written by a Connecticut Jewish lawyer who knew Friedman, as a matter of fact— into the right hands to get it produced.)

Gad spoke with Buzzfeed News about the film, and the conversation turned to the importance of Jewish Representation on screen. Gad talked about how refreshing this project is when most Hollywood creatives (especially the Jewish ones) shy away from making characters “too Jewish.” He is excited that Marshall takes the opposite response and really leans into Friedman’s Jewish identity.

“It was so important to illustrate how important faith was to this man, even if he didn’t wear his faith on his sleeve,” said Gad.

Early in Marshall, Friedman tries to hide his Jewish faith, believing that if he keeps his head down and doesn’t make too much noise he can get by without experiencing discrimination. He, unlike black men, has a chance to assimilate. Thurgood Marshall makes him realize that he can’t avoid oppression, that the case that they are fighting affects him, too. It’s a moral awakening, and one that it’s powerful to see a Jewish actor portray.

Gad may look the nebbish (because of continuing stereotypes), but it doesn’t mean he has to play bumbling shlemiels the rest of his career. This film is primarily about African American history, of course, but it also shows an example of Jews who chose to help others in a mutual struggle, rather than strive for personal comfort in American society.

Marshall comes out this Friday, October 13. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer below:

Image via Open Road Films

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If your local comic book nerd is upset today, it’s not because of Logan (no, that’s actually supposed to be good!). It’s because Magneto has been linked with Hydra.

If your eyes glazed over, no worries— Magneto is an all-important comic book character, sometimes villain, sometimes hero, and Hydra is a Big, Evil, Secret organization that has roots back in Nazi Germany. And what happened specifically? To promote an upcoming comic release, Secret Empire, Marvel has released a cover featuring Magneto as a member of Hydra.

Yes, that’s all that this is about… so far. It’s not clear if this cover indicates that the Master of Magnetism is actually joining the ranks of Hydra, or if it’s just a visual metaphor— as in, no one is safe! Who could possibly be a double agent? It could be the last person you expected! (And yes, Magneto would be the last person you’d expect.)

Fans were overall upset when Marvel was revealed that good ol’ Captain America was secretly a Hydra Agent— after all, Steve Rogers himself is in part a Jewish metaphor, invented for the purpose of punching Hitler in the face. And Cap wasn’t even the first time a Jewish-coded character was unfortunately linked with the fascist international conspiracy (remember Senator Stern?).

But Magneto is on a whole other level— he’s explicitly Jewish, a Holocaust survivor, and no friend of Hydra up to this point (Oh, look, here’s a multi-part blog detailing all of the many, many times Magneto hated the Red Skull’s gross Nazi butt).

The writer of Secret Empire is Nick Spencer, who has insinuated on Twitter that this is really a marketing ploy, but he is the same author who made Cap a Hydra agent, so anything’s possible. Marvel knew what they were doing with this cover (drawn by Dan More); shock value was the point. Who knows how far that might extend?

Regardless, fans on social media are giving Spencer a piece of their minds.  They’re mad.

Secret Empire premieres next month, and certainly Marvel hopes that your rage brings you to a local comic book store to pick up a copy and find out if Magneto is, in fact, Nazi-adjacent now. In any case, they get free publicity in articles like this one.

Image by Dan Mora

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The National Museum of American Jewish History hosts a residency program called OPEN for Interpretation that invites a diverse array of artists and thinkers to contribute their perspectives on the Jewish American experience. Emmy-nominated filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain and UC Berkeley artist and robotics professor Ken Goldberg are the current artists, and last night they premiered their short film, The Whole Cinemagillah, their best effort to capture Judaism in America as shown in film and television over the course of the past century. Clip ideas and submissions were – and still are – welcome for this truly collaborative project. Jewcy had the chance to speak with Shlain and Goldberg as they prepared for the big night.

Jewcy: How did you become involved with OPEN for Interpretation and the National Museum of American Jewish History?

Shlain: I met Josh Perelman [Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions & Collections at the museum] at the Future of Storytelling conference a few years ago, and he asked us to do this artist-in-residency program. We did a film together ten years ago called The Tribe that explores the American Jewish experience through the history of the Barbie Doll. We came to the museum and saw an exhibit about the history of Jews in film and TV and Vaudeville, and we knew we wanted to work on this.

Goldberg: The museum is new and elegant. It’s chronological on multiple floors tracing the letter from George Washington to modern times. OPEN for Interpretation invites artists in from outside to provide some sort of response – cabaret to photograph to anything else – that engages with their exhibit to open it up for new interpretations.

Jewcy: Had you seen other films or books that covered this topic?

Shlain: When we first came up with the idea to do it, we found so many articles and a couple books, but nothing like a montage all together of most of the clips that we thought would be very compelling to see. So much written, but not visualized.

Goldberg: We found a lot of great clips of these Jewish moments but hadn’t found anyone who had put them together.

Shlain: There was no comprehensive list. There were plenty of lists like The 10 Best Jewish Moments in TV, but not one exhaustive list.

Goldberg: We were very conscious that for a lot of young people, the digital generation, their attention span is geared around something that only lasts about 10 minutes. We wanted to make something compact to get conversation started.

Shlain: There was something powerful about the way the way Jews are represented and represent themselves in this 12-minute gestalt. We wanted the whole pastiche, the evolution of representation.

Jewcy: What was the most surprising clip you received?

Shlain: The clip of Frank Sinatra from The House I Live In. Towards the end of making it, someone found this clip from his movie about anti-Semitism which I just didn’t expect to exist.

Goldberg: I had never seen The Believer with Ryan Gosling. Looking back, I found that to be incredibly riveting and powerful.

Jewcy: Were you pleased with all of the clips and recommendations you received, or were you hoping to find something more?

Shlain: As a woman, I found most of the woman characters very stereotyped, whereas the men were very nuanced. In the end, it couldn’t be 50/50 screen time – there was so much more for men. This is an evolving project. There is a booth at the museum where people can add their own favorite moments, and a Facebook where we’ve gotten over 20,000 people participating. We hope to add to this and make a new version.

Goldberg: We didn’t want to have a bias, or come at this with an axe to grind. It’s actually a really complex tapestry that’s opened up a lot in the past 20 years.

Shlain: The first film we showed is from the 1920s. It’s interesting to see how much we’ve revealed of our true selves in the past 100 years. Back then, it was very veiled and hidden. Seeing that evolution is very interesting.

Goldberg: In 2012, the book The New Jew in Film talks about a “Jew-aissance.” It’s a perspective on the stereotype. We get both irritated and insider pleasure from the stereotype – we can reclaim it.

Shlain: It’s like how Jews can tell jokes about Jews, but others can’t.

Jewcy: What is your favorite clip, and why?

Shlain: that’s like asking for a favorite child. I will never forget seeing Private Benjamin when he lists all of the 10-15 things about him that are very Jewish and then says, “I’m Jewish.” Then in the next scene they’re having sex.

Goldberg: The Believer was originally very long as part of the film, now it’s not even in there. He does a prayer and then goes into an amazing monologue, but as the film got shorter and shorter, it didn’t fit.

Shlain: We loved it so much it didn’t even make it into the movie! The more we cut down the clip, the less it was contextualized. We couldn’t do it justice unless we spent three minutes on it.

Jewcy: What’s next?

Shlain: We’re excited to start entering it into film festivals. We had a lot of fun with that when we did The Tribe. In terms of film, that’s a good question. We’re taking a nice break. I just had another film come out a month ago called 50/50: Rethinking the Past, Present, and Future of Women + Power that explores the history of women in power.

Goldberg: On Sunday, I’m hosting 200 people for a robotics conference. [laughs]

Jewcy: Is there anything else you would like Jewcy readers to know?

Shlain: Our film website has all the info on it. You can’t watch the movie on it, but it’s a call for entries. To watch the movie, come to the museum! Soon, we’ll have other plans to share.

Learn more about the film’s premiere at NMAJH.

Image via Facebook.

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Lord, I have been waiting for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This isn’t only because it’s the first installment in a new series set in the Harry Potter universe, a chance for me to empty my wallet on my childhood and adolescent passion because J.K. Rowling will not let me rest, but also because this movie teased the real possibility of Jewish characters, for the first time in the franchise, either through main characters or the fact that the film’s setting is 1926 Manhattan.

So, nu, anything? Well (minor spoilers)… looking for Jewishness in Fantastic Beasts becomes sort of a maddening game.

For example— meet Jacob Kowalski. A Jewish actor (Dan Fogler), and a character name that could easily be Jewish… or Christian Polish. A WWI veteran, factory worker, and aspiring baker, he does reference his grandmother’s (to whom he refers to non-ethnically as “Grandma”) ponchke recipe (the secret is orange zest, FYI), and while that is the Yiddish word for sufganiyah (a jelly doughnut these days associated with Chanukah), it’s also a pronunciation of its Polish cousin, pączki (made with lard, so a no-go). But was that a challah we see he’s baked? Unclear. Inconclusive at every turn.

Or, take the Goldstein sisters, confirmed by Rowling to be distantly related to Harry Potter’s Jewish classmate Anthony Goldstein (also only confirmed as Jewish on Twitter). That seems pretty straightforward. But alas, neither actor who plays a Goldstein sister is Jewish herself, and there’s no reference to their heritage onscreen. Queenie (my new favorite character in anything ever, by the way), does make a mean strudel. And we can see from Porpentina’s ID badge that her middle name is Esther— that’s good news (could Queenie really be a Malka?)! But no other bones are thrown, and a brief flashback to the Goldstein parents suggests no foreign accent, suggesting the family has been in America at least a couple of generations.

And how would Jewish wizarding families have immigrated to America? Did they live in the shtetl and face violence as Jews? As wizards and witches? Does it seem a bit obsessive weaving through tiny details of one work to try to discover a deeper canon of character backstories? Welcome to being a Harry Potter fan. And does it seem silly to kvetch about historical accuracy in a movie about witches and wizards? Maybe to you, but Rowling has always wanted to portray a society that lives secretly alongside our own, and of all the changes to make to historical accuracy, why whitewash it?

In any case, I am still open to J.K. Rowling’s take on all of this (how do Jewish magical people in the Old Country live in two different marginalized communities?). And it looks like I’m going to be waiting for the next movie, at least.

But at least as a Jew I had the chance to try to play heritage detective. People of color wouldn’t even be able to do that.

Well, that’s not strictly true. The wizarding community onscreen was diverse. While the main characters skewed white, in addition to the president of American Wizardry being an African American woman, American witches and wizards are extremely diverse, not only racially but of the cultures they seem to represent (the costumes for this film are amazing).  So how did filmmakers miss the memo that New York City was diverse in 1926 as well?

Between 1920 and 1930, Manhattan’s population was more than a third foreign-born. The African population, while a minority, was sharply growing (it passed ten percent in that decade). There were nearly two million Jews living in New York City around this time,  nearly half of which were in Manhattan, especially in Harlem and the Lower East Side (this film has scenes in both locations, to no avail).

Despite Manhattan then being a city of immigrants, especially Jews, and diverse overall, we just see a lot of white men in fedoras and white women in cloche hats. We don’t hear anyone non-magical speak anything but English (though the various New York accents are a-mazing). Despite the vividness of the scenery and costumes, the people are surprisingly… bland.

The first scene in the film featuring non-wizards takes place on a boat. Only white people, and Newt Scamander has been travelling to non-European countries lately, but hey, maybe he took the ship from England. The second missed chance is when he goes into a bank— well, it seems fancy, and those places were certainly discriminatory. But then one scene after another, and nada. I managed to spot one non-white Muggle (excuse me, no-maj), in the entire film. I spotted one woman with a head covering who might have been Orthodox, and this includes a scene that takes place on Orchard Street. Yes, all the storefronts we briefly see are in English. Weird.

J.K. Rowling, if you’re reading this, if I have one request, it’s that Queenie and Jacob get together in the next movie or two, and that at their wedding (at the latest!) we see that they’re a Jewish couple. Also, more non-white characters. Please and thank you.

Image of Queenie being fabulous via YouTube.

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Who doesn’t love an anti-hero? Sure, they’re not paragons of virtue. They may lack basic morals. They hurt a lot of people, including their loved ones, and you wouldn’t want to know them in real life… but they make for great TV.

Now, in UnReal and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, women get their chance, not just as those boring housewives who care about the welfare of their family (ugh), but as harm-causing protagonists in and of themselves.

They happen to be Jewish, too.

“Happens to be Jewish” describes the main character of UnReal. Her name is Rachel Goldberg, she’s played by Shiri Appleby…That’s about it, to be honest. In an interview with Tribe Magazine, Appleby says, “Judaism isn’t a focus of the show… but Rachel is definitely a Jewish girl. You see the relationship with my mother… and in the second episode, I say, ‘Sheket b’vakasha [Quiet please].’”

Not exactly in-your-face representation. Perhaps that’s better since Rachel does reprehensible things. Her job is to create drama—essentially, to destroy people— for Everlasting, a reality TV show that is legally not The Bachelor. Her greatest asset is emotional acuity. She moves like Othello’s Iago, earning people’s trust, finding their insecurities, and orchestrating their breakdowns. She compels her victims to ruin their own lives on nationally broadcast television, and they don’t realize until it’s too late.

According to co-workers, Rachel’s skills come from her own instability (self-destructive tendencies, ambiguous personality disorder, requisite toxic relationships). It’s heavily implied that Rachel’s mental and emotional problems are caused by her mother, a psychiatrist who used “treatment” to control and abuse Rachel. Unfortunately, that’s the relationship with her mother that Appleby was referring to when she talked about the show’s Judaism.

UnReal is astoundingly on Lifetime, not HBO. The ensemble consists of beautiful women, not tough Jersey mafiosos.  Instead of a drug empire, Rachel has a mushy romance show, complete with horse-drawn carriages and ball gowns, but the UnReal writers openly aspire to the heights and depths of  The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad—and the critical consensus is, UnReal reaches them.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a musical comedy, so its tone is considerably lighter tone than UnReal’s. Rebecca comes off as cringe-inducing, not dangerous. Her vulnerability and often-addressed mental health issues make her relatable. However, away from the quirky charm, it’s easy to see how toxic Rebecca is. In any other show, Rebecca would be the, well, crazy ex-girlfriend. Here, she’s our protagonist—and it works, thanks to show creator/lead actress Rachel Bloom’s performance and the show’s willingness to address certain issues openly and with nuance. The narrative neither completely absolves nor condemns Rebecca Bunch’s actions, and the same is true of Breaking Bad and Walter White.

Like UnReal‘s Rachel, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Rebecca Bunch is an excellent manipulator and a consummate liar. (She’s a lawyer after all, ha ha.) When she runs into a long-ago summer camp fling, he mentions he’s moving to California, so she abandons her New York job and follows him, playing it off as a coincidence. Then, she insinuates herself into his life and wins over his friends with her helpfulness and and supposed altruism. Feigned compassion might be an occasional trick for male anti-heroes, but it’s Rachel’s and Rebecca’s M.O.

Unlike in UnReal, there’s no coyness about Rebecca’s heritage. The  career-driven, Ivy League-educated New York-based lawyer isn’t just coded as Jewish; it’s explicit. Not surprising, considering Rachel Bloom’s YouTube videos include “Chanukah Honey” (a parody of “Santa Baby”), and “You Can Touch My Boobies,” about a boy fantasizing about his Hebrew school teacher.

In one episode, Rebecca squares off against her lifelong rival. Their “JAP Rap Battle” is as densely packed as Hamilton’s “Cabinet Battle,” so listing all the Jewish references would be too much. Some noteworthy ones include:

• “Shebrews from Scarsdale”
• “Translating for the goys” what “shondeh” means
• “Sheket bavaka-shut the hell up.”
• “Should we shake hands/And erase the hate/Created by our mothers pitting us against each other/ for accolades and grades/ We were egged on like Seder plates.”

Apparently there’s no escaping the Jewish mother stereotype. Rebecca’s mother, Naomi (played by Tovah Feldshuh) made an earlier appearance in the Christmas episode (natch). Upon arrival, Naomi repeatedly demands to use the bathroom while criticizing Rebecca’s weight, apartment, job, home decor, appearance, and life choices. When Rebecca tries to respond, Naomi chastises her for interrupting.

At the end of the episode, Rebecca confronts her mother and says,  “If I ever have a kid, I will only care if they’re happy.” Naomi responds, “‘Happy?’ What’s ‘happy?’ …Our people are not about happy. We’re about survival. That is why I’m glad that you stood up to me. Because that means, when the Cossacks come, you can fight back.”

It’s far from a moment of redemption, it doesn’t quell the problematic Jewish mother stereotype—it may even exacerbate it— but these shows are not about feel-good moments or palatable role models. They’re about women who are as troubled as iconic male anti-heroes.

Rachel Goldberg first appears sprawled on a limo floor in a rumpled “THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE” T-shirt. It’s a tone-establishing, tongue-in-cheek visual: can feminism look like a dirty Jewish woman who does profoundly un-heroic things?

In a world full of Heisenberg t-shirts, yes.

A final note: I would be journalistically remiss to not mention Girls, so here I am, mentioning Girls.

Image credit: Rachel Bloom on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, via YouTube

The post Jewish Anti-Heroine Double Feature: ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ and ‘UnReal’ appeared first on Jewcy.

There have been multiple heroes to take on the mantle of the Flash, but this one is Barry Allen, the man with super-speed who still can’t catch a break (seriously, he has an entire section of his Wikipedia page entitled “Tragedy“). Playing Allen is Ezra Miller, a Jewish actor with an eccentric persona and beautiful face who is perhaps best known for his roles in We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (congratulations on appearing in a shorter-titled film, Ezra).

Multiple sources invited to visit the Justice League set report witnessing the scene in which we first meet Allen, imbued with a sense of humor who apparently describes himself as a “very attractive Jewish boy.” (His skills, he claims, include web design and playing the viola.)

That’s it. No Holocaust sob story. No forced references to Chanukah. Just a young man whose secret identity is not his Jewishness. It’s unusual, and refreshing, and a step up from Marvel, though there is still the risk the line won’t make the final cut of the film.

Please, producers, editors, whoever has this decision in their hands: Keep the reference.

An interesting note about this decision is that Barry Allen is not a traditionally Jewish superhero (there have been a few theories, but really weak tea). Rather than, say, accentuate Superman’s Jewish metaphor, this franchise is simply adding a Jewish character to its universe, perhaps partially based on casting. Considering neither the director nor writer are Jewish, it’s an interesting choice.

Honestly, this film has the odds stacked against it being good (mostly because of prior DC films/director Zack Snyder’s track record), but at least the combination of diverse casting (including Jason Momoa and Ray Fisher) and multi-ethnic characters looks promising.

Also, Miller won’t be the only Jewish actor in the film; Gal Gadot and Jesse Eisenberg will reprise their respective roles as Wonder Woman and Lex Luthor from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (and Wonder Woman’s solo feature film comes out only a couple of months before Justice League).

So here’s to 2017, and, perhaps, Justice League. You’re only a year away.

Image credit: Nick Step via Flickr

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYcx43AmAyY

Here’s the thing: It gives one great hope that one can be, say, an academic, and be portrayed in a film by Rachel Weisz. This isn’t to denigrate Lipstadt’s appearance or Weisz’s acting abilities; they just really don’t look alike. Still, at least Weisz is actually a Jewish woman portraying a Jewish woman.

This got me thinking: Who plays Jewish women in biopics, and what do they look like? I dove down the worst kind of rabbit hole: Wikipedia.

In a list of biopics (film or TV), Jews don’t tend to come up often; we’re a minority, fine. But (with the exception of Holocaust movies, ugh) Jewish women seem to be a rarity, and have films depicting their lives and accomplishments far less frequently than men. Furthermore, the women more often tend to be “glammed up” with their casting. It’s easier to be an accomplished actor without outlying attractiveness if you’re a man, and this is especially clear in biopics.

Male Jewish real-life folks on screen have a range of portrayals— in recent or prominent films depicting Jewish men, we’ve had Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram, Vincent D’Onofrio as Abbie Hoffman,Kevin Spacey as Jack Abromoff, and Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman. None of these men (actors or subjects) read immediately as heartthrobs, and none of the actors are Jewish. Or, you can have schlubby-coded Jewish men play these roles (very recently, Jonah Hill has portrayed Michael Finkel and Efraim Diveroli).

Occasionally, you can have heartthrobs portray Jewish characters: take Allen Ginsberg, who’s been portrayed by both James Franco  and Daniel Radcliffe (both of Jewish descent).

So what of the ladies?

It’s so hard to find real Jewish women portrayed on screen, particularly as the leads, and especially if you remove Holocaust victims and Biblical characters (enough Christian-made films about Esther. Please).

Somewhat recent Jewish women on film include:

• Keira Knightley as psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein— Jon Stewart once aptly said of Knightley that she “acts with cheekbones so improbable they were probably sprinkled with God Dust,” though to be fair, this film also cast Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, so, an upgrade all around.
  
• Helen Mirren has played Ayn Rand. I’m not even going to touch how ludicrous that is.
  
• An upcoming HBO series about the Madoffs (Bernie is Robert De Niro) has Michelle Pfeiffer as Ruth Madoff.

Note that all of these woman are both Hollywood standards of attractive, and also not Jewish. Once again, there are exceptions; Natalie Portman plays Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an upcoming film, and she’s a Jewish actor. And Gertrude Stein has been played by a range of wonderful actors not cut from the Hollywood glamor mold, both Jewish (like Miriam Margolyes) and Gentile (like Kathy Bates). But honestly, the sample size is too small to get any reliable patterns, which in and of itself is telling.

And so, keep an eye out for my next piece: A list of ideas for Jewish female actresses that could easily star in biopics, and ideas for  who they might portray. We need more examples, period.

In the meantime, please comment below, or tweet Jewcy with your own ideas.  Try to keep both actor and subject of Jewish descent, and if possible, avoid movies about sex symbols,  therefore repeating casting the same three gorgeous Hollywood actors. As in, try to resist casting Mila Kunis as Hedy Lamarr, as great as that might be.

Images via YouTube

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So, we decided to fix that. Here are other fascinating Jewish women ripe for depiction on screen, and ideas for Jewish actors that could easily star in these projects:

1. Clara Lemlich— Ever heard of the New York shirtwaist strike of 1909? It was Lemlich who brought the bubbling conflict to a boil, in an extremely climactic (dare we say cinematic?) speech (in Yiddish!) at a labor meeting that convinced the crowd to strike— a high point in her long career advocating for workers’ rights.

Who should play her: Clara actually has a pretty close resemblance to Hailee Steinfeld, and the Oscar-nominated Actor showed in True Grit that she can play a young person who has been made mature beyond her years from hardship.

Heck, Steinfeld could also play Rose Schneiderman, who coined the phrase “bread and roses,” and was somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum (she had a female partner for much of her life). Gertrude Stein was not the only queer Jewish woman, people!

2. Shulamith Firestone— Firestone’s story has all the makings of a great film, from her transformation from Yeshiva girl to secular artist, to her powerful, sometimes controversial work in the feminist movement, to her struggles with mental illness.

Who should play her: Lola Kirke. Kirke is perhaps less well-known than her sister Jemima (a star of Girls), but she’s had some pretty hefty roles already, including in Gone Girl. Put her in a pair of round glasses and watch her go.

3. Rosalind Franklin— Franklin‘s scientific career was in some ways tragic, partially due to her tragic death at age 37 of cancer, and partially because of her relegation to obscurity despite the hugely important work she did in exploring the molecular structure of DNA (these days, there is even some controversy on whether or not Watson and Crick appropriated her work).

Who should play her: Mara Wilson. You may be going, “Wait, Matilda?” But Wilson has a vibrant (if intentionally indie) career today, as a writer, comedian, and, yes, actor. She’s still got it, and with a convincing British accent, this would be a chance to shine. (Also, she has an amazing Twitter).

4. Doña Gracia Nasi— Remember when the child of Inquisition survivors rose up to become one of the most successful merchants in Renaissance Europe? Remember when she used her fortune to rescue Jews from Portugal, build Jewish communities, and support Jewish scholarship? No? Well, then the time for a biopic is ripe. (She actually appears as a character on a Turkish TV show, but that’s not nearly enough.)

Who should play her: Neve Campbell is of Sephardic heritage, a good age to play Nasi, and has the acting chops. If Campbell can handle the Underwoods on House of Cards, she can handle the Inquisition. Campbell is actually a practicing Catholic, but she identifies ethnically as Jewish, and this would be an interesting twist in playing a woman whose family had once faked a Catholic conversion to survive.

5. Me and all my friends— This is just an excuse to cast Jenny Slate as anyone I know, and maybe anyone you know. I don’t know who’s going to end up famous enough for a filmed account of their life, but Slate is brazenly Jewish enough, funny, has a sensitive side (Obvious Child is amazing) and really feels like a peer. Slate for life.

We conclude with a special shout-out to commenter Greg M., for suggesting:

Like the meet cute Rom Com “Hannah + Martin, The Hannah Arendt Story” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Martin Heidegger, a right-leaning morally ambiguous philosopher and Alison Brie as Hannah Arendt, a foxy student of moral issues. They Kant help themselves from falling in love!

Sign us up.

Images from Wikipedia

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‘What is this that God hath done unto us?’—Genesis 42:28

It is well known within the Marvel comics universe that Magneto is Jewish. While hinted at vaguely since his inception, Magneto “came out” of the shul in the 80’s, and his Jewry has been, if not forefront and center, then at least a constant undertone to his character ever since. Indeed, much of Magneto’s hatred and mistrust of humanity could—and has been—traced to the loss of his family as a child at the hands of the Third Reich. Numerous references in the comics—including a self-titled standalone run focused on Magneto’s bildungsroman in Hitler’s Germany—make sure that readers don’t forget this central aspect of the sometimes villain/sometimes anti-hero’s backstory.

Even the movie trilogies (both original and new) make a point of mentioning Magneto’s heritage (though not nearly well enough), perhaps due in part to the Jewishness of Bryan Singer, who has been involved in all six films, directing four of them. What seemingly appears as a victory of ethno-religious diversity, upon further examination, begs the question: how does Marvel, and pop culture at large, view the Jew?

Due to their wild—if somewhat varied—success, the portrayal of Magneto by the movie franchise is the image most X-Men fans have of the “master of magnetism.” A sufferer of loss, Magneto is bent on assuring the safety and supremacy of mutantkind, led by his Brotherhood, no matter the cost, even at the expense of the lives of humans and mutants alike. His ethnocentric militarism, perhaps not dissimilar to the Israelites’ tribal conquest of the Promised Land, acts as a foil to his rival and (former) best friend Charles Xavier’s pacifism and Christ-like love and hope in humanity. This creates a dichotomous narrative wherein Christian coding exemplifies and equates compassion and pacifism with Christ, while Jews are maligned by (Christian) interpretations of God in the Old Testament as a vengeful, distant force. It excludes a whole realm of pathos from the Jewish psychology and enforces a negative, inherently anti-Semitic association between Jews and cruelty.

Evidence of this can be seen in Magneto’s storyline, across which a Moses metaphor, with a little stretching, can be neatly laid: a common man turned leader, promising to free mutants from the bondage and tyranny of humankind, who leads his followers through multiple bloody conflicts until they reach their Israel: the island sanctuary of Genosha. Though sometimes convinced to work alongside the X-Men for the greater good, Magneto remains—at least in the movies—opposed to and highly skeptical of Xavier’s philosophy, mainly due to his willingness to harm humans in his quest for liberation. This Jewish reading of Magneto, however, is a purely extrinsic viewpoint, which the movies do not at all portray or promote. Instead, Marvel movies see the Jew as one thing only: one who suffers.

The most striking reference to Magneto’s Jewishness, if due not to its gravitas then to its frequency, is the somewhat hackneyed “Holocaust Survivor” trope, which both movie trilogies embrace in nearly identical scenes. Magneto, a young boy, is torn from the arms of his mother at the gates of Auschwitz (beneath the rain, of course), and while screaming and reaching back for her, his burgeoning powers twist and warp the barbed-wire fence that now separates them. His survivorhood is referenced later, either through pointed language or shots of tattooed numbers on his forearm, to ensure the viewer does not forget that Magneto lived through the Holocaust.

Any reference to Magneto’s Jewishness or Judaism (save for a few brief frames of a Chanukah flashback) are nonexistent. Though more attention has been paid to Magneto’s heritage within the comics, this coverage has been inconsistent, with scattered examples spread across decades and multiple creative teams. The references are there, but only for those willing to search.

Now, this distortion for one of Magneto’s primary aspects could be forgiven, seeing as X-Men is not a self-designated Jewish comic (despite the Jewishness of its two creators), except for the fact that this excessive hearkening to Magneto’s survival of the Shoah reinforces this idea that a Jew can be reduced to an overplayed image of an emaciated victim in striped pajamas. What it does is create a narrative of victimhood, through which, and only through which, a character’s Jewish identity is given voice. This is not to suggest that audiences need a flashback of Magneto studying Torah (though what a delight that would be), but what is required is nuance when it comes to the portrayal of Jews as complex, individual characters and not simply emotional clichés used to prop up or promote some tired understanding of an entire people as victims.

What it ultimately boils down to is (mis)representation. Dissenters are wont to point out that little if any mention is ever made of the Christian-hood of any of the other X-Men, and while this is true, by dint of our existence in a Christian centric society (within which the X-Men also exist) it is assumed that unless explicitly stated otherwise, all characters are Christian (or straight, etc.). Pointing out Magneto’s heritage matters because his is a background that so often goes unnoticed and unrepresented in mainstream media, but what matters more is how it’s represented. In both of his movie iterations, Nightcrawler’s Catholicism is subtly stated by brief scenes showing him praying, clutching a rosary, or making the sign of the cross. When confronted with overwhelming odds, his religion acts as succor for his soul, a shelter and support, all without being heavy handed.

The sole instance of Magneto speaking to God comes as an anguished crying out as he clutches the dead bodies of his recently murdered wife and child. Though this remains within the vein of traditional Judaism, where questioning God is not only common but oftentimes encouraged, the intent of the scene is most likely not to portray Magneto as a man succumbing to the pressures of the world while wondering aloud why the Almighty would burden him with these hardships. Rather, it only adds flare to the anguish of an already tortured man. Magneto does not overcome, he suffers.

Were this only an instance of poor or unimaginative character development, it would be bad enough, but the insidious truth of the matter is that Magneto is a snapshot of how pop media views the Jew. While there are certainly exceptions that prove the rule, for the most part, Jews are seen as two-dimensional caricatures, only interesting as victims to be saved or avenged. Think of the Jewish children in Au revoir, les enfants, whose impetus in the film is to be befriended by Catholics and yet still carted off to the concentration camps. Or the Bear Jew in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, who, by dint of his ability to actually fight back, must surely be a Golem, a construct of Jewish folklore. But Jews are more than victims and our stories more varied and complex than the narratives of suffering others wish to place upon us. Representation matters to be sure, but how we are represented matters just as much. A cast filled with stereotypes accomplishes little and harms more than it helps.

It’s time Marvel embraces the Jewish heritage of its characters and realizes that a Jew can do more than survive Auschwitz.

Alex Franco is a Georgia-born writer currently geeking out in Paris.

Read also: Hey, Marvel, Where Are Your Jews?

How Superman Stopped Being Jewish, And Why He’s Coming Back

Images: David Yardin and John Byrne for Marvel comics and via Wikimedia

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