Jonah Platt: The Incredible Story of Muslims and Jews Visiting Auschwitz Together

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “Hollywood is about as left and progressive a community as there is in this country. And unfortunately, part of the box you have to check in that very left, super progressive space is being anti-Israel and being pro-Palestine in an anti-Israel way,” says Jonah Platt.

Platt is a jack of all trades in the entertainment industry—an actor, director, producer, and singer. In the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis led by terrorist group Hamas, he launched the podcast “Being Jewish.”

He recently visited Auschwitz, the largest German death camp, alongside over a dozen Muslims. He went with the organization Sharaka, which builds on the work of the Abraham Accords and educates Middle Easterners and other Arabs and Muslims around the world about the Holocaust.

“Some of these people came on this trip at great personal risk. If you’re coming from Pakistan to hang out with Jews in the middle of this Israel-Gaza war, I mean, you could be in real, physical danger. Some people—they couldn’t be in any photos and their identities had to be kept secret to protect them,” says Platt. “There were Jewish slaves [at Auschwitz], working out in that kind of rain in threadbare pajamas, starving to death, and having to do physical labor and be shot if they didn’t keep up. And meanwhile, I’m freezing in the cold, but I get to go on a warm bus and get a hot meal after this.”

In this episode, we discuss how to navigate being Jewish and Zionist in a society that is becoming increasingly hostile to Israel.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

***Disclaimer: One of the producers for American Thought Leaders participated in the Sharaka program to Poland on an all-expenses paid trip.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Jonah Platt, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Jonah Platt:

Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Happy to be here.

Mr. Jekielek:

Hot off the presses, top of The Epoch Times homepage, Trump meets with Syrian leader, urges him to join Abraham Accords. Your reaction? 

Mr. Platt:

In theory, on paper, it’s amazing. It really depends on the execution and the details of how that will play out. But look, the quickest way to peace in that region is normalization and stability. We want to play the game with the West, we want to be open for business, we want stability. The better. I mean, it’s really an impressive advance, and I hope that it sticks. I hope it’s for real, but time will tell.

Mr. Jekielek:

What in your mind would be an expression of, you know, kind of an effective execution?

Mr. Platt:

So the stipulations that the Trump administration has put out are, you know, you’ve got to kick out all the foreign terrorists. You’ve got to make sure that you get rid of your internal terrorists, that you’re supporting Israel. There are all these different sorts of stipulations and taking care of ISIS in the land so that American troops don’t have to do that anymore. If those things are met and met truly in good faith and not on paper or for a minute, then that’s the real deal. 

And I don’t know how America intends to keep an eye on those developments and ensure they’re actually happening and not just, “Oh, we’ve got this.” But if they do and it’s real, it’s an amazing thing. And you can see from the other Abraham Accord countries, only good things come from this, only more financial development and trade and all the good things that come with being a player at the table with the rest of the world. 

Mr. Jekielek:

So tell me a little more about that. Of course, I was amazed when the Abraham Accords actually happened. Huge developments, a lot of initial good things happening right away, flights happening. But in terms of this development, tell me about it because I haven’t been following that closely.

Mr. Platt:

Yes, where you’re mostly seeing the positive developments are business-to-business, country-to-country kind of things. Like you said, the flights are open, and there’s business development happening. Iran launched that missile strike. Like Saudi Arabia and the UAE [United Arab Emirates], these are now players at the table. These are people who can offer support to America and Israel and weigh in and try to work as a coalition to create stability in that area. 

Whereas, before, they weren’t there. There was no presence. And having more of these powerful nations invested in just creating stability, that’s better for everybody. And now there’s also work that needs to be done on the people-to-people level. So now that the doors are open to this communication, people are coming together and you’re getting it from the bottom up as well to create real bonds. 

Mr. Jekielek:

The Abraham Accords figure into how I decided to invite you onto this show. I was at the Religion Communicators Council Awards. We had won a couple. And you also had won one of these Wilbur Awards for your podcast, a particular episode of Being Jewish. And so at the same time, my producer was actually in Poland on this remarkable trip where it turned out that you were as well. So you know what, when this confluence of events happened, I figured okay it’s time. I love that when that happens. Well, so explain to me a little bit about this trip and what you were doing.

Mr. Platt:

Right. I mentioned the people-to-people piece of the Abraham Accords. There’s an organization called Sharaka, which means partnership in Arabic, and they are the first of its kind in the wake of the Abraham Accords. They have begun programs to bring Muslims from Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, to Israel and to, as you said, Poland to see Auschwitz. And so I was there with your producer for March of the Living, which is an event that happens every year on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which was a brave, defiant moment in Jewish history, which is Yom HaShoah now, which is Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

People march the 1.2 miles from Auschwitz I, which is sort of the administrative area, to Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, which is where the prisoners were enslaved and killed and gassed, which is the opposite of what the actual death marches were when the Germans knew the Russians were closing in. They marched the prisoners in the freezing snow from Auschwitz II to Auschwitz I, so they could burn as much of Birkenau down before the Soviets arrived and cover their tracks. So they had to clear it out. 

So people go now and do the opposite and say, “Here we are. We are survivors.” And a lot of people after that trip will then go to Israel, which is sort of like, this is where we were. This is where we are. I didn’t get to go to Israel, but I did get to be in Auschwitz with 20 Muslims from Morocco, Pakistan, Jordan, Bahrain, Lebanon, Yemen, really an amazing eclectic group, Syria. And it was really an incredible experience for me. 

I really thought I was invited by Sharaka because I do a lot of bridge building in my work. I think that’s really key, not just for the Jewish community, but for humanity. Like we need to be talking to each other. And so they know that that’s my work. They brought me along, and I thought I was going to sort of teach these 20 Muslims about Jewish life and what American Jewish life is like. And I did do that, but really I learned so much from them. 

And I was so pleasantly overjoyed to see how many moderate Muslims there are who are just like you and me, just happened to live in Morocco and smoke more cigarettes than we do, but are compassionate, you know, well-educated, intelligent, moderate, modern people who want better relationships and want more understanding. I mean, some of these people came on this trip at great personal risk. 

If you’re coming from Pakistan to hang out with Jews in the middle of this Israel-Gaza war, I mean, you could be in real physical danger. Some people we had to, you know, they couldn’t be in any photos, and their identities had to be kept secret to protect them. And that they want to understand the truth about Jews and connect in that way so deeply that they’re willing to put themselves at risk in that way was very moving for me and really just a beautiful experience.

Mr. Jekielek:

That’s absolutely fascinating. I want to dig into that a little more. Just on the Auschwitz-Birkenau side, I often tell people Auschwitz was the concentration camp, Birkenau was the death camp.

Mr. Platt:

Right. Basically, at Auschwitz, they still killed people there too, but it was more, it started for Polish prisoners, like political prisoners, if you will. A lot of people were executed there, but not in the mass gas chamber way that they were in Auschwitz II.

Mr. Jekielek:

Right. More firing squad and torture, you know, the easier ones than the conversations. Presumably, you’re talking about the conversations you were able to have with people.

Mr. Platt:

It’s funny because in the Jewish community, we’re always saying—and rightfully so—you know people don’t know what Jews are. They don’t know who Jews are. Most people on planet Earth will never meet a Jew. Your main touch points if you’re not connected to the Jewish community are what you see on the news, which right now is mostly Israel bombing civilians, is what it looks like on the news, and what you see in the movies and TV, which is mostly Seinfeld or ultra-Orthodox jewelry dealers. The same really is true of Muslims, and there’s 2 billion of them. So your stereotypes that you had were challenged immediately. 

And I didn’t even know I had them, really. And they, you know, I recognized it immediately. Like as soon as we were together, I could feel a, let’s say, a very slim, thin wall like, “Do I need to be cautious here?” Because, you know, how safe am I to be fully openly Jewish and American? Like, how connected can we get here? And I felt that right away. And I saw it in myself. I was like, wow, you have this little wall up with these people sort of that you’ve never met. And because I noticed it right away, I was able to drop it right away. And it was beautiful. I mean, there was a moment when we were on the bus. That’s where all the magic happens, right? 

You go to these different sites and you’re looking at the tourist things and learning, and then you get on the bus together. And that’s when you really get to talk and get to make connections. And the Moroccan contingent, led by this 21-year-old Sufi sheikh—the youngest sheikh in the world. He has millions of disciples and travels all over. He sort of led this outbreak of song, some Muslim sort of religious song, but was being sung not in a so prayerful way, but in a celebratory, sing-songy way. And I just felt like I was back in like Jewish sleepaway camp on the bus singing Hebrew songs. 

First of all, Hebrew and Arabic are cousins. Some of the words are literally the same word. “Shalom aleichem” and “as salam alaykum” are the same thing. So I’m hearing words I recognize, the melody, the enthusiasm. In Hebrew, we call it “ruach.” It’s like spirit. And it felt so familiar and so normal and so joyful. And I felt so at home with them. And the conversations we had were incredible. and, you know, it’s different with everybody.

I don’t want to overgeneralize; the conversation I had with, you know, an ex-anti-Semite was different than one I had with a 20-year-old French Moroccan girl who’s a student in France and teaching herself Hebrew because she is so fascinated and so in love with sort of the Jewish way of life. So just the fact that I would meet a 20-year-old Moroccan girl who speaks Hebrew was amazing. 

Mr. Jekielek:

So how knowledgeable were the people on the trip from the Islamic countries about the Holocaust and the realities of it? 

Mr. Platt:

Very little. I mean, they were aware; they knew what they were getting into. They knew they were coming on this trip to go to this site and that the Holocaust was a thing. But, for example, I mentioned that I spoke to a Yemeni ex-anti-Semite. He was very powerfully and carefully indoctrinated his whole life that the Holocaust didn’t happen, but very little detail was known about the Holocaust. 

And again, in the communities where they come from, there’s a ton of just straight Holocaust denial, that it didn’t happen, or it wasn’t that many, because they’re literally being taught that. I mean, it is very clearly indoctrination. So once they came and got to see it for themselves, that was a very meaningful part of the trip—seeing it land on these people and them really comprehending the scale and the devastation. People decided that this group of people should be absolutely wiped out. Man, woman, child, elder—you’re all getting killed. 

And seeing people grapple with that and really take it in was very meaningful. And I hope it’s something they take back to their communities and talk about and help disseminate around them because it’s vital. I mean, misinformation is maybe the most potent weapon against Jews and Israel and Western values that we’re seeing right now.

Mr. Jekielek:

What did you do other than, you know, which sites did you visit?

Mr. Platt:

Yes, so we spent about 24 hours in Berlin to start, which was sort of like a scene-setting moment. So we saw the Brandenburg Gate, went outside the Reichstag building, and went to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which is this really sort of haunting collection of slabs of concrete, almost like a maze that’s just sort of meant to disorient you. Very powerful. 

We met with the Israeli ambassador to Germany, who was interesting to hear from, and we met someone from within the German government who’s sort of their liaison for fighting anti-Semitism. We got to hear from him, and then we went to Krakow, which is where we were based out of in Poland, and the bulk of that stop was Auschwitz. So we went twice. 

We went for the March of the Living, which you don’t really get to explore too much. It’s, you know, everybody gets set up, you march, and then it’s kind of over. And it was pouring, pouring rain, like the hardest rain that I’ve been outside in for a very long time, which was sort of fitting. And for me, it really sort of grounded me in where I was in the history, thinking about how there were Jewish slaves there working out in that kind of rain in threadbare pajamas, starving to death, and having to do physical labor and be shot if they didn’t keep up. 

And meanwhile, I’m freezing in the cold, but I get to go on a warm bus and get a hot meal after this. So we did that. Then we came back the next day and were able to do an immersive three- to four-hour visit where we really were taken around with a guide and got to see everything that’s on display there and go into the gas chambers and to the barracks and see and understand really the horrors that went on there. And then the final night, we had an amazing experience. We went to Shabbat dinner, which, you know, every Friday night Jews celebrate Shabbat. It’s the day of rest, and Jewish holidays go from night to night instead of morning to morning. 

So it starts Friday, and I went to the JCC [Jewish Community Center] in Krakow, which is run by an American guy from New York who now lives there and is, you know, leading that community, and that was incredible. Shabbat is already amazing, because you’re just bringing people together to take a pause from the regular work week and be present together and be grateful for what you have and just be with one another. So to be at a Shabbat dinner with, you know, 20 Muslims, a handful of Jews, and then the people from the JCC. 

So we had some Polish people there, we had a Ukrainian refugee who works there, a couple more Americans, just a real coming together of all, and some Israelis, some Iraqi Jews. It was a really cool melting pot. And the joy that erupted there, like we broke into song and dance a number of times, both in Arabic and in Hebrew. And it was just an amazing expression of brotherhood, joy, and togetherness there. So that was a really beautiful way to end the trip. 

Mr. Jekielek:

How does this fit with the Abraham Accords? Maybe it’s not obvious, right?

Mr. Platt:

Well, I mean, so Morocco, Bahrain—those are Abraham Accord countries. Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan—these are the kind of countries that we would hope would join this coalition. Hopefully, Lebanon is soon to follow as well. But really, it’s just about bringing Jews and Muslims together and creating that connection. And again, you know, if those accords are really going to mean something, it can’t just be the business-to-business side or the government-to-government side. There has to be the people-to-people connection. Otherwise, what’s it all for? So it was really meaningful, and I’m really grateful that I had the opportunity to be part of it.

Mr. Jekielek:

So the podcast that you got the award for, and presumably, that’s part of the reason why you were invited to come on the trip too, because you had this podcast.

Mr. Platt:

Oh, yes. That’s certainly how most people in this world know me now, is through the podcast.

Mr. Jekielek:

Right. Well, so how did that come about? It’s relatively new. I saw you had Van Jones on; that was the clip that they showed at the awards ceremony. Tell me about it. 

Mr. Platt:

Yes, so it came about really in the wake of October 7th. I was already doing some Jewish advocacy online. Mostly my career has been in entertainment; acting, writing, singing—all of those things. So I built somewhat of a platform for that, and I began using it to speak about Jewish things and Israel things and current event things and culture things within the last couple of years. But once October 7th hit, it went into overdrive. I often think of this Mark Cuban quote. “Don’t follow your dreams, follow your effort.” 

And while in my head, my dreams were sort of Hollywood, I found that I was pouring all of my time and energy into Jewish advocacy and responding to October 7th, trying to provide clarity on what was going on. On October 10th, I did like a two-hour live Q&A on Instagram, just bringing me your questions. Let me help you understand what’s going on here. I was surprised by how many people, especially within the Jewish community, were so uninformed about the big picture of what was happening. And I just wanted to get involved in that. I was putting out fires in real life and online, all different kinds of things—very reactionary. 

And a couple of months into that, I was like, all right, I want to get back to sort of my preferred lane of Jewish advocacy, which is empowerment and celebration and normalization of taking up space in the public sphere as Jews and being proud of that. And so the podcast was my way to do that. I was able to expand on the ideas I’d already been discussing on social media in shorter off-the-cuff videos and posts. 

Now I can take as much time as I want to discuss a different idea each week, which is how I open my episode. Just things I’m thinking about in the space, in the culture—mostly related to Jewish stuff, but sometimes not, just sort of where we are right now. And then I also wanted to normalize Jewish people, notable Jews and non-Jews who I have on the show, like Van Jones, having conversations about Jewish stuff and showing that we can do this. It’s normal. It’s not scary. It doesn’t have to be controversial or political just because it’s a Jewish discussion. 

I think a lot of people are afraid, “Uh-oh, if I talk about Jewish stuff, it means, it’s going to be a lightning rod for politics,”but it doesn’t have to be. And it’s not lame. It’s not academic. It’s not uncool, which I think a lot of Jews have that fear that like, oh, it’s not cool to talk about Jewish stuff. So I wanted to model that. I wanted to provide an environment for these notable Jews and non-Jewish allies to talk about this stuff because they don’t usually get the opportunity to really be honest and go deep and have meaningful conversations about their own identity in this way. 

Usually, if you’re a, you know, if I have an actor on the show, they’re getting asked about the movie that they just shot. They’re not getting asked, what did it feel like when you were shooting that movie in the wake of October 7th and having to navigate being on a cast of people who might have different views than you? Like, we get to get into that kind of stuff. 

Mr. Jekielek:

There seems to be quite a schism in the, you know, Jewish community around the issue of October 7th and the response to it. 

Mr. Platt:

I would say there is a schism. I don’t know if I’d call it quite a schism because it still is a very small minority of the Jewish community that holds deep anti-Israel sentiment. Many of those who do, do so mostly out of a lack of understanding and education and were already estranged from the community and didn’t feel that Israel was, you know, an integral piece to their connection to being Jewish. They were already sort of outside, and so it sort of makes sense that their allegiance is to the community in which they spend their lives, which is not necessarily the Jewish community. 

But for the most part, the vast majority of Jews around the world are very much aligned in their support of Israel. And a lot of the anti-Israel sentiment, again, that you hear from Jews is much more rooted in being anti the current government than it is necessarily about Israel itself. And when you sort of try to have conversations about Israel itself. Honestly, they don’t really know enough of the details to have a meaningful conversation there. They just know they don’t like seeing Gazan children getting bombed on their phones. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, hopefully, nobody likes to see that.

 Mr. Platt:

But when you don’t know anything else but that, all you know is, well, whatever makes this happen, according to this video, I want that to stop. And it seems like it’s Israel’s fault that this is happening. That has to stop. And they have been made to feel, or whether they’ve been made to feel or erroneously assume that this is sort of the requirement, they feel they can’t criticize the government and still be accepted in the pro-Israel community, which is, of course, not true at all. 

I had a conversation recently with somebody who would probably put themselves in the anti-Israel camp, and they kept saying how there wasn’t room for that conversation. And I kept asking, who have you tried to have that conversation with that wouldn’t let you discuss that? Because I have anti-Netanyahu conversations with pro-Israel Jews every day. I mean, it’s like the main topic of discussion. 

So I think it’s really about disengagement. I mean, they’re just sort of in their own echo chamber where, what does that really mean? That means it’s their community and in their community everyone’s sort of on the same page. No one’s trying to really have tough discussions because they’re not equipped to because they don’t know enough about it. And so they just sort of go with the flow and that flow happens to be somewhat anti-Israel. 

Mr. Jekielek:

As you mentioned earlier, in Hollywood you’ve spent, you know, a lot of your life there and certainly your formative years. Your father was the producer of the recent Snow White film, right?

Mr. Platt:

Among many others.

Mr. Jekielek:

A lot of, among many others. I’m just mentioning that one because that had a lot of headlines around it, specifically around Rachel Zegler’s comments and how much that contributed to the film failing and so on. You actually commented on this back then. 

Mr. Platt:

To be fair, it’s not that I commented on it. I think there’s actually a misunderstanding.  I spoke at an event the other night and she was like, you took down your tweet about the blah, blah, blah. I was like, I didn’t tweet about this. You know, I didn’t try to stick a flag in the ground. Somebody came onto my Instagram on a video of Tiffany Haddish, the actress talking about her connection to being Jewish and like came at me about this Snow White thing. And I just responded to her. It was like one of the two million comments I’ve ever written on Instagram, and that one is what blew up. 

The issue is when you are the face of a corporate entity or a commercial enterprise, it behooves you as a professional not to bring any personal politics into that space, because there are many, many, many people who have put their heart and soul into this commercial enterprise and just want it to stand on its own without anything else getting tossed onto it. And when you do that, you’re saying whether you mean to or not, that your personal priorities or politics are more important than the good of this cooperative project that many people are invested in. And that’s really what I was trying to speak to.

Mr. Jekielek:

Although it does seem that in Hollywood these days, it’s a pretty common thing for people to do, right? To bring their personal politics. 

Mr. Platt:

I would say what’s more common is to bring their personal politics when it’s about them. If it’s your spotlight and it’s on you because of you, that’s one thing. When the spotlight’s on you because of the project you’re in, and then you talk about yourself, that’s a different story. And that’s what can jeopardize the project. 

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re kind of, you know, you’d argue you’re kind of using it to put yourself up on, give yourself more.

Mr. Platt:

Whether it’s intentional or not, that’s the effect is, hey, we’re here, we’re talking about, you know, sneakers and you’re all of a sudden bringing in abortion rights. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. Now people who have issues with abortion rights, they’re not going to buy the sneakers. And like, why can’t we just talk about sneakers? Look, Hollywood is about as Left and progressive a community as there is in this country. And unfortunately, part of the box you have to check in that very Left, super progressive space is being anti-Israel and being pro-Palestine in an anti-Israel way. 

And when everyone in your community is saying, this is what’s important to us, it’s hard to not also feel that way or also not want to please that community and show them that I’m with you. Unfortunately, you know, these are actors. It is not their job to understand global geopolitical conflicts or be historians. And so, you know, they’re weighing in on something that is being talked about and they’re being asked to weigh in on it while being wildly underqualified to do so, but because they have these platforms and because people are looking up to them, they feel they’re obligated or even entitled to say something. When you accept your award for it, if you want to say something, then the stage is yours. But otherwise, don’t insert yourself. Let the product be the product.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, now I’m thinking about this recent Harvard report on anti-Semitism. 

Mr. Platt:

We did a video about that. 

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s kind of shocking, and I, you know, expect a lot of shocking things, right? And this is kind of their official report. But it seems to me like the hotbeds of progressivism are, and ended up being hotbeds of anti-Semitism too. And I’m wondering if you’ve thought about this. 

Mr. Platt:

Oh, yes. I mean, this is sort of one of the key challenges that we’re facing now is how to combat that. And what’s happening is on college campuses, they’re very literally being taught this binary pressed narrative and being told this is how you must view the Israel Middle East conflict through this lens, that Israel are white European colonial oppressors, and Palestinians are a brown oppressed minority. 

I just interviewed a senior at Columbia for my podcast, and she’s a Middle East studies major. And the first requirement class she has to take, this is what they teach very literally, like this is the framework you will use to look at the rest of the course. So when you’re getting, you know, the course on the Middle East specifically? Yes, a course on the Middle East. I forget the name of the course itself, but it was the one requirement that all Middle East studies majors had to take. 

And so that’s a really hard thing to fight when 17, 18, 19-year-olds are literally being taught, this is how the world works. This is how you should view history. This is how you should view society. And that’s the lens that they’ve got. And so they’re looking at everything as black or white. There’s no nuance. There’s no depth. There’s no two sides to a story. There’s one and you’re the good guy or you’re the bad guy. And so there’s this weird, like, almost fetish to get close to being the oppressed. 

You like want to be connected to the oppressed people because those are the good guys, which is why you see so many young college students who have absolutely no connection to this conflict whatsoever getting involved on the anti-Israel side, because it puts them in the good guy chair, at least the way that they’ve been taught about it. And it’s deep and systemic and pervasive on college campuses. The anti-Israel forces have been spending billions and billions of dollars pumping money into these schools, setting up professorships and curriculums. 

I was reading something just yesterday, you know, Trump was offered this $400 million plane from Qatar. American universities have been accepting billions of dollars from Qatar for decades, which is just as bad, if not more so. And so we need to look at those things as being the same. And the universities that have done that should be under the same level of scrutiny and shock and dismay as one would be at seeing a president take a gift from a terrorist-supporting country.

Mr. Jekielek:

Or allow it, I guess you’re saying, because I guess technically it would be the US military, which would be getting the jet. 

Mr. Platt:

But then it goes to his presidential library. And from what I’ve read, even to just outfit it and make sure it’s not bugged and make it operational is going to take like two years and millions of dollars. Be a serious project. And then he only gets to use it as a president for a year, and then it just goes into his private collection. So not much benefit to the American people there.

Mr. Jekielek:

Obviously, Jews, this is generally known: Jews have played a major role in developing Hollywood. And yet, Hollywood, you know, we’re talking about hotbeds of progressivism. I mean, Hollywood, I can’t almost think of a, you know, more of an example than that. Do you think that’s odd?

Mr. Platt:

If you look back at the way Hollywood was founded, I mean, it was very literally invented by Jews. At that time, in the early 20th century, you know, the big aristocrats and businessmen of America didn’t want anything to do with movies. It was seen as sort of a lower form, you know, everything else is being kept from the Jews, so this industry of this new movie thing, they were like, “Oh, we don’t care. You guys can do it; it’s beneath us anyway.” 

So you had all these Eastern European immigrants coming in and creating Hollywood. I mean, if you hear the name Samuel Goldwyn, which is like a famous film studio, his real name is Szmuel Gelbfisz, and he changed his name when he got to America. Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had some other Yiddish-sounding European name. 

So from the very beginning, Jews were hiding their Jewishness in the building of Hollywood. And I sort of get it for them because it was less about hiding Jewishness and more about, “We’re American now. We’ve left the old country behind. We’re American. We’re American businessmen. We want to be taken seriously and be part of the fabric of this country.” 

But that essence of occluding your Judaism to be embraced by the culture is baked into the DNA of Hollywood. And so even though Jews were, very literally in those days, running Hollywood because that’s the only people making it, it’s not like you saw 100 Jewish movies on screen; there were none. You know, they would put their sort of Jewish ethos on screen, which is why so much of American culture sort of has baked-in Jewish comedic storytelling sensibilities, but rarely in Jewish storytelling or through Jewish characters.

And so I think when you sort of fast-forward to today, a lot of that is still there, where you have Jews in Hollywood; they’re not running it the same way anymore. There’s a lot of them, and there are plenty of non-Jews running it too. But the ethos, again, is to sort of make it be American and not the Jewish part of it.

Mr. Jekielek:

Except for Seinfeld, of course.

Mr. Platt:

Except for Seinfeld, of course. But also, you know, Seinfeld, like here’s an example: the character of George, who is Greek on the show, was written as a Jewish character. I mean, it’s Larry David, basically. But the network was like, “Well, we already have Jerry; we can’t have another Jewish character.” So he was Greek. So like, even in Seinfeld, there’s a little bit of the like, “We can’t be too Jewish,” even though the show is created by two Jews and was meant to represent two Jewish voices. So it’s all sort of baked in. 

And Hollywood, you know, wants to be the—it is the sort of projection of who we are as a culture. And it wants to be inclusive and project the diversity of this country, which I think is a good thing. But it goes too far when it becomes just about, you know, “What do we look like? And what are we projecting?” And not just, “How are we representing the culture that we have?” And it’s much more about sort of a mandate or an agenda, which I think you’re seeing people are getting a little bit tired of. 

People want quality content, and they want organic representation. They want it. I mean, movies that are diverse and have diverse stars are very popular, and we’ve never had more diversity on screen, which is great. We have stars of all stripes. Amazing. But if the only goal is, “We gotta put a person of color in this movie,” people can—they’re starting to feel that. You can sense that. And people don’t want that. 

Mr. Jekielek:

And the Snow White film, I certainly—I haven’t seen it, to be fair, okay, so I can’t comment from having seen it. But from what people have told me who aren’t, you know, particularly gunning for criticism, I’ve been told that it kind of epitomizes that trend that you’re just describing in a lot of ways, aside from the Rachel Zegler comments.

Mr. Platt:

It’s tricky, because she’s lovely in the film. The timing was tricky for Snow White because I think part of what’s played into it is there’s been a lot of live-action remakes. And so there’s a little bit of fatigue there. And there’s been a lot of, “Let’s change the gender,” or “Let’s change the racial profile to be more contemporary and diverse.”

Mr. Jekielek:

Why do you think it failed?

Mr. Platt:

I think for a couple of reasons. I mean, as I mentioned, I think there’s remake fatigue. I think there was some sort of anti-woke fatigue. And then also, all these different outside political issues kept dinging it. There is what she brought to the film. There are a lot of people who, just because Gal Gadot was Israeli, wanted nothing to do with the movie, who were anti-Israel. There was controversy around the dwarves: “Are they going to be played by actors? Are they going to be CGI? Is there proper representation?” There was a stink about that. So with this poor movie, just like all these confluences of sort of negative factors around it all worked together to get in the way.

Mr. Jekielek:

So one of the things that strikes me about your podcast is, you know, not only might it be helpful for Jews of different political orientations to understand each other and different perspectives on highly contentious issues, but also for people from outside. I’m very close to a number of people of various, let’s say, political orientations that are Jewish, and I’m close to the whole culture. So I didn’t even maybe fully realize how alien the whole culture might be to many people.

Mr. Platt:

That’s one of the main things that I try to express when I do speaking engagements for Jewish communities around the country: we wildly underestimate how little people understand and know Jews and what they are and who they are, including within the Jewish community. I think because Jews have been so assimilated and there’s been this sort of golden age in the West for the last couple of decades, we haven’t had to really think about it so much. 

But what we’re seeing now is there’s this core misunderstanding that Jews are a group of rich white Europeans who believe the same thing. And so if that’s your belief, it allows you to demonize Jews in a lot of ways, because what’s the worst thing right now that you could be? A white colonial imperialist, wealthy oppressor. They’re part of the homogenous white majority, even though literally the majority of the world’s Jews are not even white presenting. The majority of Israel is not white presenting. 

So it’s, again, another just total falsehood. There are plenty of Jews who I’m sure like don’t even want to be having this conversation. They just want to be who they are and live their life. But unfortunately, because of the explosion of anti-Jewish racism that we’re seeing all over the West, we kind of have to answer this moment and speak to it, and we have to meet the challenge.

And also, when you’re talking about, “Oh, it’s just a religion,” Jews are a people. The closest sort of comparison is like a Native American tribe. We’re bound; we were a tribe; we are a tribe. There just aren’t really any other social groups that are tribe-like that still exist today, but we all come from the same group, and it’s a people that share a history, that share a common homeland and an orientation to that land and agricultural practices and religious practices around that land. We share a common language, we share an oral history, we share traditions and customs, and we share a religion. It’s just sort of one facet of it. 

Mr. Jekielek:

So some do because some reject the religion part, right?

Mr. Platt:

That speaks to it even more, right? My DNA, when I do a DNA test, which I’ve done, it says 100% Ashkenazi Jew. So whether I believe a single thing about the religion, I’m a Jew, whether I like it or not. So it’s just—there’s so much more to it than, “Oh, we all believe in this one thing.” It’s not like Christianity where you can just pick it up and put it down. If I say, “Okay, I don’t believe in Jesus,” I’m not a Christian anymore. 

I can say, “I don’t believe in God,” or “the holidays.” I celebrate nothing. I’m still a Jew. And so if people have that understanding, it would change the entire conversation, I think, in a really meaningful way. And it’s just—it’s too bad that what’s being propagated is a very clear lie, a non-fact about who Jews are.

Mr. Jekielek:

Where can people find your podcast, “Being Jewish” and frankly, all of your work?

Mr. Platt:

The podcast, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt, you can get on audio on any of the podcast platforms you use: Apple, Spotify. We’re on YouTube at the Being Jewish podcast. We’re also on TV; we’re on Jewish Broadcasting Service, JBS, which people can find on cable or Roku or Firestick. Then we put out a lot of stuff online on social media; at Jonah Platt on Instagram, on X, at Being Jewish podcast on Instagram, and at Being Jewish on TikTok.

Mr. Jekielek:

Jonah Platt, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. 

Mr. Platt:

Thank you, Jan, so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.