I love Jesse Eisenberg.
From his wunderkind roles in Roger Dodger and The Squid and the Whale to his twitchy performances in The Social Network and The End of the Tour — and interviews with me and so many others — he’s always been a jolt of energy. Rarely does a celebrity work so hard to give such an honest answer, or slip in such a hilariously dry joke.
But I’ve been mystified by Jesse Eisenberg too. With A Real Pain — which stands a good chance of winning Oscars for screenplay and supporting actor on Sunday — Eisenberg has made a film about the Holocaust. Yet on the awards circuit he has seemed conspicuously reluctant, to say the least, to utter a word about current antisemitism, steering far from the subject even in long interviews on The Daily Show and Fresh Air.
In fact, he doesn’t even seem to see the Holocaust as a particularly Jewish-centric event. “I think my family does not think in a kind of tribal way. And so I think, like, the takeaway from the Holocaust would probably be something more along the lines of, you know, goodness, look what people can do to each other rather than, look what people do to Jews,” he told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “That’s certainly my take on the world and certainly my parents’ take on the world.”
When I returned to covering Hollywood last year after several years of primarily reporting on other subjects, I told friends how grateful I felt to be back. After occupying spaces where talk of Jewish identity wasn’t always welcome, what a relief, I said, to occupy a world that was. This is, after all, the place of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and UJA galas and the Shoah Foundation (if not necessarily, as was all too clear several years ago, of an inclusive Academy museum). Jews in this industry would feel comfortable talking about contemporary Jewish issues, many of which had particular resonance after October 7, 2023, right?
And yet discomfort is what I’ve encountered. When Ye unleashed a torrent of antisemitic posts and then went on a national stage to sell swastika merchandise two weeks ago, a handful of Jewish entertainers spoke up, according to a prominent pro-Jewish account’s thread: Charlie Puth, Isla Fischer, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Savage, Michael Rapaport, of course David Schwimmer. All commendable. But more noticeable was how many didn’t react. It took an Israeli provocateur deepfaking many of them protesting Ye to get Scarlett Johansson to say something — and that was to decry the deepfake.
One celebrity featured in the video was Adam Sandler. Sandler has done more than almost any other actor to endear Judaism to a wide audience with “The Chanukah Song” and films like Eight Crazy Nights and You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. Try to find a Jew over the age of 35 he hasn’t made feel empowered — “The Chanukah Song” is engineered to make us proud. Yet seeing the AI version of Sandler has reminded just how stone-cold silent the real one has been.
In a time when Jewish identity faces threats from so many flanks, very few high-profile people in entertainment — the same people often eager to lend their voice to other causes — seem compelled to come to its defense. And in a time when many unaffiliated Jews have privately begun to take a greater interest in their Jewish identity, their famous analogues in Hollywood have been much less willing to describe their own journeys. The rare expression has been in the vein of criticism; when Eisenberg paused in the Fresh Air interview to talk about Jewish identity it was in the context of how he “dropped out of Hebrew school” and didn’t like modern suburban bar mitzvahs because it celebrated a 13-year-old for “doing some great deed for the world by learning seven seconds of Hebrew.”
Too many Jewish entertainers seem unable to summon the curiosity, or courage, to engage with Jewish meaning or proudly identify as Jews. Instead when a newsy Jewish topic comes up they react the way one does when the middle-school English teacher calls on you about a book you haven’t read — put your head down and nervously count the seconds until they call on someone else.
In the past year anti-Jewish broadsides have come from all sides of the political spectrum, from Candace Owens, Jackson Hinkle and Andrew Tate unleashing hate on social media to demonstrators waving swastikas at American colleges. Elon Musk gave what looked like a Nazi salute at the inauguration; Steve Bannon just gave a Nazi salute at CPAC. I know, I know, it’s Steve Bannon; even Donald Trump doesn’t like him. But with all this clear-cut hostility, a condemnation wouldn’t seem to be so hard. And yet so few major Jewish celebrities are willing to muster one up.
There is “The Brigade,” a self-described “powerful network of impact leaders and influencers in entertainment and media, household A-list talent, publicists, producers, writers, marketers, agents, analysts, lawyers, and artists… dedicated to the future of the Jewish people worldwide.” (On Monday the group decried the controversial pins Artists4Ceasfefire would be handing out to Oscar attendees.) Hollywooders arguing on behalf of Jews is a welcome development. But they are doing so anonymously, which only underscores the problem. When did speaking out for Jewish causes become something to be done in the shadows?
No individual celebrity owes anyone anything, of course. Yet in a time of moral urgency for so many groups but especially Jews, antisemites are getting louder while those who would defend Jews are getting quieter. You hardly need an advanced history degree to see how dangerous that combination can be.
Debra Messing, who has produced a new documentary on (horseshoe-theory) antisemitism called October 8, has been one of Hollywood’s few intensely admirable exceptions, calling out anti-Jewish hatred with a fierce constancy over the past 16 months. (Rapaport, Amy Schumer and Jerry Seinfeld too, and often faced heckles for it.) Messing has established her fearlessness ever since she stood up at a pro-Jewish and pro-Israel rally in Washington D.C. in November 2023 and told the crowd “I know you feel alone and abandoned by people you thought were your friends. … I know because I do, too.” But it’s also worth asking why such behavior is so rare that it conjures intense admiration in the first place.
Some of the most definitive public statements of Jewish pride lately in fact have come from non-Jews, like the September 5 writer-director Tim Fehlbaum, who was unafraid to put in his 1970s-set movie a Jewish character that spoke openly about his difficulty in getting past the Holocaust and then more importantly in interviews spoke openly about that character.
On one hand this is a golden age for on-screen Jewish representation. While a study released in December by USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center’s Media Impact Project found that among 108 Jewish TV characters that aired between 2021 and 2022 only 18 percent of them referenced their Judaism, a number of high-profile instances have come through. In a post-Shtisl world we regularly see proud signs of Jewish identity in multiple venues, whether with the main character facing antisemitism in the 2023 best picture nominee The Fabelmans, postwar Jews undertaking a move to Israel in The Brutalist or the religiously conflicted Asher Wolk on ABC’s The Good Doctor (even if creators cringily felt the need to kill him off in an out-of-nowhere antisemitic attack late last season).
But actually making statements about being Jewish or condemning those who’ve made negative ones — actually stepping out from behind the safety of a production sandwich board? Call on someone else please.
The scope of the issue came home to me when in an interview ahead of an award show several months ago I asked Hannah Einbinder — who sings the Zionist anthem “Jerusalem of Gold” in her HBO special and had a menorah in the background of the Zoom — if she had experienced any change in being an out and proud Jew in the previous year.
It took about three tries and a lot of wounded looks and dissembling responses and publicists cutting in trying to get me to talk about something else. (“This is supposed to be a celebration,” one said, apparently oblivious to what the word means, let alone what it means to be either a journalist or a Jew.) Einbinder appeared extremely fearful of addressing anything about being Jewish at this moment. Finally and very tentatively she said, “I don’t think there’s been a change, no.”
Einbinder, who in the past has worn a Star of David on red carpets and spends large chunks of her standup act talking about being Jewish, seemed scared to acknowledge any change even in a time of normalization of the most vile antisemitic tropes around. (You can read some of the account here.)
Even as I write this emaciated Jews are being paraded in front of cameras to kiss the ring of their captors and Jewish children who had been kept hostage are being buried, evoking the same specter of horror A Real Pain comes to commemorate. Yet no one affiliated with it or so many other awards movies seems interested in noting the grim coincidence. And no, the relative infrequency of such events compared to the 1940s hardly justifies the silence; what do people think has kept such perennial evil at bay all these years if not conscientious outspokenness?
When the Oscars unfold Sunday, don’t expect many Jewish winners to talk about the perils Jews face or the importance of embracing Jewish identity; it would almost seem weird at this point if someone did. Even as it’s probable a Latino, Black or Asian winner will talk about what their identity means to them, as of course they well should. Jewishness is the one aspect of modern identity you just don’t mention.
Why this is, I don’t know. And to be honest, I’m not sure I care. Self-hatred, paranoia, indifference, insecurity about having one’s Jewishness called attention to — none of it really matters. Leave such explanations to the sociologists. What every Jewish or tolerant non-Jewish person should want to see is a whole chorus of people being unafraid to talk about what being Jewish means to them, and how unacceptable it is when that meaning comes under attack.
Because let’s face it: if you’re going to make a movie about a Jew in Poland or sing a song about Jews in Jerusalem, the least you could do is stand up and be counted as a Jew in Hollywood.
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