Why Jewish Artists and Entertainers Should Never Be the Last to Know

It was a revelatory week for at least two Jewish artists who, improbably, were taken by complete surprise.

Artists customarily profess to be apolitical, sealed off by imagination, guided by muses and not doctrines. Life is just an extension of a movie set, a blank canvas, a blinking cursor. Such purity, they say, often leaves them feeling blindsided by the harsher realities of, well, reality.

This was the predicament in which Jewish-American comedian Sarah Silverman and German-Jewish singer Gil Ofarim apparently found themselves.

A steadfast Israel basher, Silverman, speaking seriously on her podcast, registered genuine shock that the members of the Squad, whom she adores and regards as “kick-ass,” never have a negative word to say about the terrorist group Hamas. Worse still, the four crusading sisters of the antisemitic left were among only nine House members who opposed America replenishing Israel’s arsenal of Iron Dome.

Silverman noted that the Iron Dome protects Israeli citizens. It is categorically not a weapon. To oppose Iron Dome is to revel in dead Jews.

After years of mocking her own people, and even the Holocaust, and with a sister who is a rabbi in Israel, Silverman finally reached this late-arriving epiphany: “It just really proves … people only like Jews when they are suffering.”

Ofarim was standing in line, checking in to the Westin Hotel in Leipzig, Germany, when he realized that everyone behind him was being called to the front desk while he waited for over an hour. Finally, he stepped out, approached the desk and questioned why he was being ignored. Two staffers replied, “pack in your star,” referring to his visible Star of David, and he would then be welcome as a guest at the hotel. Later, on Instagram, holding back tears he said, “Really? Germany in 2021.”

Yes, Gil, really. Have you not been paying attention to the daily lives of Jews in France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and yes, even among your own Jewish-German compatriots? And Sarah, how unbreakable did you envision your sisterly bonds with the Squad to be, like-minded in every way, except, of course, for their hatred of Jews—including you?

Silverman must have forgotten what happened to the two Jewish founders of the Women’s March, who abandoned the movement when other leaders blamed them for the slave trade. Other progressives took notice, and followed suit. The Dyke March in Washington, D.C. banned anything with Jewish or Israeli symbols. The Gay Pride March in Chicago disallowed any flag bearing the Star of David, even if it was an LGBT pride flag.

This past May, Jews who marched in disproportionate numbers for Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) realized that their solidarity was not reciprocated. Anti-Zionist thugs harassed and beat Jews in Los Angeles, Miami and New York, coinciding with Israel’s incursions against Hamas for launching over 4,000 rockets at Israeli civilians. BLM leaders were notably silent—the Lives of Jewish and Israeli civilians, apparently, didn’t Matter.

The BLM betrayal of Jews didn’t end there. Black actors, rappers, football and basketball players unleashed a torrent of antisemitic tropes while also lionizing Louis Farrakhan. So much for Jews controlling the entertainment industry.

Last week, one of Silverman’s fellow stand-ups, Dave Chappelle, introduced this movie plotline: Aliens who once lived on Earth, voluntarily leave the planet, are treated horribly elsewhere, then return to Earth to claim it as their own. The name of the movie: “Space Jews.” Later in his act he mentions another movie with the same title, this one about a former slave who ends up owning slaves and treating them with even greater brutality than what he had endured.

Two canards in the same bit: Jewish world domination; and Jews behaving like Nazis.

It didn’t appear as if Chappelle delivered these lines for laughs. Hardly anyone did laugh—not even nervously. Apparently, he was looking for a different kind of punchline.

It doesn’t help when Jews incorporate the same rehashed material dating back to the “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” into their own acts. Do they not realize that among the cultural elite, antisemitism goes in and out of fashion? Nowadays it is trending ominously. Having progressive bona fides earns no Jew a pass. Showing disrespect for themselves and Jewish history makes no one exempt from a future pogrom.

Having progressive bona fides earns no Jew a pass. Showing disrespect for themselves and Jewish history makes no one exempt from a future pogrom.

Seth Rogen announced that he had been “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel while growing up in Vancouver.” Jon Stewart, when he hosted The Daily Show in 2014, mocked Israel’s existential and moral dilemma in its wars with Hamas. Natalie Portman refused to visit Israel to accept an award. She sided instead with the BDS movement, which seeks the destruction of Israel, her birthplace.

Are these celebrities all so sure that anyone would hide them should there be another roundup of Jews, like what happened to their people a mere 80 years ago? Ironically, as a teenager, Portman played Anne Frank on Broadway. Did she have no idea what the play was about?

The Holocaust is the ultimate object lesson that no Jew should be so naive as to overlook. Primo Levi wrote that “the best [among us] all died.” He specifically meant the artists and intellectuals—those either too cultivated, or possibly oblivious, to recognize what was burning in those smokestacks.

After the Holocaust, all surviving Jews, no matter where they lived, were placed on notice. You can be complacent, but never say you weren’t warned. America’s southern border is today wide open to Central Americans and Haitians. The eastern border of the United States was once impenetrable for Jews trying to avoid the Nazi slaughter.

After the Holocaust, all surviving Jews, no matter where they lived, were placed on notice. You can be complacent, but never say you weren’t warned.

Believing in the benevolence of nations and the caretaking of friends should always be a hard sell for Jews. Until the reemergence of Israel, the Jewish experience with safe havens was a dreary and rare happenstance.

Artists today can’t seem to keep quiet. Sharing opinions, especially if uninformed, is straight out of central casting. Routinely they take to Twitter to demonstrate their moral standing and political savvy. All too happy to defund the police while entrenched in fortresses in Pacific Palisades. Occasionally, Israel is accused of ethnic cleansing or libeled as an apartheid state.

Followers of the mindless, mindlessly press “Like.”

Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was a Jewish artist. At a recent event hosted at the Forum on Life, Culture & Society, one of his songs, an avowedly political one, “Everybody Knows,” was a reminder that artists, especially Jewish ones, should never be the last to know.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. His work has appeared in major national and global publications. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio and appears frequently on cable TV news programs. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself.”