WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE JEWS IN HOLLYWOOD?
Since October 7, many Jews have noted that the Jews in Hollywood have been largely hesitant or unwilling to denounce the Hamas massacre, address the hostage crisis, or talk about the skyrocketing violent antisemitism in the Diaspora. Other Jewish Hollywood figures have entirely -- and very publicly -- adopted a pro-Hamas narrative, despite the fact that half of the world’s Jews live in Israel and the evidence documenting Hamas’s genocidal antisemitism is extensive.
For an industry with so many Jews, and for an industry that is so historically Jewish, this may seem shocking or surprising. This is also especially disappointing given that while a number of recent films deal with the Holocaust, Hollywood largely seems unable to acknowledge the current antisemitism threatening us at this very moment. In other words, Hollywood profits off our trauma but does nothing to better our situation -- or even makes it worse. The reality, however, is that this is neither shocking nor surprising. This behavior is actually part of a larger historical trend.
While there have always been many Jews in Hollywood, for reasons which will be outlined in slide four, Hollywood is an industry catered to a non-Jewish audience. The Jews in Hollywood have always walked a thin line so as not to offend the sensibilities of non-Jews. Jewish stories and Jewish advocacy, which Jewish-owned studios once avoided entirely, now must be reduced to whatever level is deemed tolerable enough for everybody else. Jewish enough so that it’s quirky, but not so Jewish that it’s uncomfortable.
THE CONSPIRACY THAT JEWS RUN HOLLYWOOD
I’m sure you’ve heard it before: “the Jews run Hollywood.” This, of course, is yet another iteration of the antisemitic conspiracy that Jews run any given number of industries to manipulate for our own nefarious motives -- from banking to the media to the American government.
This category of antisemitic conspiracy dates to the Middle Ages, though of course, conspiracies about Jews and Hollywood are much newer, originating in tandem with Hollywood’s beginnings as an industry in the early 20th century.
It’s indeed true that most major Hollywood studios were founded by Jews, but the idea that Jews did so out of sinister motives -- rather than out of creativity and a need for economic survival -- stems entirely out of antisemitism. During the early years of Hollywood, American film censor Joseph Breen began accusing “the Jews” of using films to push sex, moral depravity, and violence on American audiences.
Jewish-owned studios in early Hollywood faced tremendous pressure from conservative Christian and anti-Communist groups, which consistently accused Jews of using Hollywood to undermine American values.
THE REAL STORY
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews migrated en masse from Eastern Europe to the United States. While the conditions in the United States were much better than those they’d left behind in Europe, Jews still faced economic and employment discrimination. One of the biggest obstacles for Jews were restrictive university quotas, which prevented them from receiving the necessary education to pursue professional careers such as medicine.
To make ends meet, Jews resorted to making their own opportunities. Some started as peddlers and later became shopkeepers. Others migrated west — to Hollywood. In fact, Hollywood was born when a Jewish man, Sam Goldwyn (born Shmuel Gelbfisz), joined his brother to make one of the very first feature films in 1914: The Squaw Man.
Many Jews joined Hollywood in search for employment that they couldn’t find elsewhere, but there was a significant effort to diminish the Jewishness of the early film industry, both to appeal to non-Jewish audiences and to satisfy censors. For example, Jews worked under “white” pen names and films purposefully avoided Jewish stories.
During this period, Jews in Hollywood were determined to assimilate, but nevertheless, stereotypes about Hollywood and its Jewishness persist to this day.
Despite the fact that not a single person in attendance at the Academy Awards made any “Zionist” statements whatsoever and only one person (to my knowledge) -- Yaron Varsano, Gal Gadot’s husband -- wore a yellow hostage ribbon pin, thousands of commenters on Twitter expressed shock that No Other Land won “Best Documentary” in “a room full of Zionists” or in an industry allegedly “controlled by Zionists.”
Could it be that by “Zionists” they mean...Jews?
A HISTORY OF DE-JUDAIZING JEWISHNESS
From its earliest days, there has been a large Jewish presence in Hollywood. But also from its earliest days, these Jewish actors, filmmakers, producers, and more have been very much aware that the overwhelming majority of their audience is not Jewish. For this reason, they’ve historically downplayed their Jewish identity to whatever level is considered tolerable to the non-Jewish world.
For example, in the 1910s and 1920s, Jewish actors in Hollywood worked under “white” pen names. From the 1920s-1950s, Jewish actresses got rhinoplasties in what almost amounted to a rite of passage, to erase any ethnic features that might be considered too “Jewish.”
In the 1930s, Hollywood studios -- many of them owned by Jews! -- acquiesced to the demands of the lucrative German movie market and Jewish employees were systematically removed from their jobs, so as not to offend Nazi sensibilities. According to rabbi and historian Isidoro Aizenberg, Hollywood “even agreed to establish guidelines governing the films’ themes. In all future movies Jews could not be featured, Germany was not to be slighted, Nazis were not to be criticized, and Hitler was not to be mentioned. References to anything Jewish or the appearance of Jewish actors was forbidden. Finally, Germany appointed its own censor in Hollywood.”
WHEN HOLLYWOOD JEWS WENT INTO HIDING
In the late 1940s to mid-1950s, the American government, under Senator Joe McCarthy, enacted an anti-communist campaign known as “McCarthyism” or the “Red Scare.”
While openly anti-communist, the campaign also had heavy antisemitic undertones, with some arguing that it was overtly antisemitic, both given many of McCarthy’s comments and because the campaign disproportionately targeted Jews.
Ten Hollywood personalities, known as the “Hollywood Ten,” were cited for contempt of Congress and blacklisted from Hollywood. Six out of the ten — screenwriter and director Herbert Biberman, screenwriter Alvah Bessie, screenwriter Lester Cole, playwright and screenwriter Albert Maltz, screenwriter Samuel Ornitz, and John Howard Lawson — were Jewish.
That’s because the proponents of McCarthyism wished to “make an example out of Jewish Hollywood.”
During this period, many Jews in the industry received antisemitic harassment via the mail.
The Hollywood Ten blacklist lasted 12 years. The Jews who stayed behind in Hollywood did so under non-Jewish pen names.
HOW JEWISH IS OKAY?
As mentioned earlier, Jews in Hollywood have historically had to walk a very thin line, particularly when telling Jewish stories, so as not to offend their non-Jewish audiences. Consider, for example, Holocaust movies, today a very popular theme in Hollywood, though this wasn’t always the case. Up until 1978, Hollywood avoided the subject almost entirely, considering it “too depressing” and -- yep -- too Jewish to be of general interest (as opposed to general World War II movies, which everyone was very much into).
Nevertheless, today, the vast majority of Holocaust films feature the stories not of Jewish Holocaust victims, but rather, those of saviors or even perpetrators (Schindler’s List, The Zookeeper’s Wife, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Zone of Interest, to name a few). This over-emphasis on saviorism actually seems to have distorted general understandings of the enormous level of non-Jewish complicity during the Holocaust; in reality, less than 0.01% of the population in Nazi-occupied Europe at the time are considered Righteous Among the Nations, those who risked their lives to help Jews during the Holocaust.
Jewish stories -- pertaining to the Holocaust or not -- that would force non-Jewish audiences to hold a mirror to themselves are very few and far between.
Since the earliest days of Hollywood, there has been a concerted effort to diminish the Jewishness of the film industry to make it more palatable for non-Jewish audiences.
The origins of this phenomenon date back even further. In the early 20th century, Jewish women in vaudeville would change their last names to sound less “ethnic.” It’s true that there are many Jews in Hollywood; after all, the American film industry was essentially started by Jews. However, that “Jewish representation” hasn’t been very Jewish.
Some examples of Jewish whitewashing in Hollywood include:
- Casting non-Jewish, generally white characters to play Jewish characters
- Reducing Jewish characters to stereotypes
- Jew-coding characters without explicitly stating them as Jewish
- Depicting a one-dimensional, whitewashed, assimilated version of the Jewish experience
- Ignoring the diversity of the Jewish community
- Casting white people as Jews while passing up Jewish actors because they look “too Jewish” or have Jewish-sounding names
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