On Oct. 7, 2023 Jonah Platt was rehearsing for the West Coast premiere of the play “The Engagement Party” at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood.
It’s a play about a friendly gathering that devolves into a slew of accusations over a missing engagement ring. Tempers flare and bridges are burned, possibly forever. It is very much a metaphor for how Platt and the Jewish community would navigate the many layers of tension about the Israel-Hamas war and Judaism itself over the next two years.
This would end up being Platt’s last acting role since October 2023
A year later, the parallels were hard to ignore. The 2024 Presidential election caused a fracturing in the Jewish community about Israel, about the U.S., about memory, about being Jewish. Just like in “The Engagement Party,” the family felt broken, the air filled with accusations and a fleeting trust. People who once assumed they understood each other were suddenly unsure of where anyone stood.
On Oct. 7, Platt was in the middle of that run. Since then, he says “I haven’t spent much time pursuing performing opportunities. I’ve been really consumed by Jewish advocacy.” Oct. 7 divided everything.
Platt is a husband, a father and part of a family in the public eye. Six weeks earlier, he had buried his lifelong friend from the Sinai Akiba Academy, Marc Becker. At Becker’s shiva, Platt said, “Marc had room for everyone in his heart. His hand was forever outstretched.” When the attacks happened, Platt felt pulled toward work that could hold tension instead of escape it.
Two months later, in December 2023, Platt sat on a Jubilee “Middle Ground” panel with an Israeli artist, an Oct. 7 survivor and two Jewish creators. Across from them were four pro-Palestinian advocates. It was an early, fierce debate on social media about the war.
Thirty-six minutes in, Platt tried to frame the room in human terms. “One side has their story, their truth, their lived experience, the other has the same, we don’t have to convince the other to see it the exact same way,” he said. “We just have to see each other and acknowledge that we’re both in this situation … and treat each other like human beings and find the way out of it.”
The pushback came fast.
By summer 2024, Platt eased away from looking for the next role and started shaping a project built around long conversations. The months after the attacks were full of arguments, pressure, fear and confusion. He wanted a space where people could talk without trying to win.
He built “Being Jewish with Jonah Platt” around a simple structure: an opening monologue, a guest, and enough time to think.
The guest list grew fast: actor Skylar Astin (“Pitch Perfect”) was the guest on the first episode, helping Jonah explain why this show exists at all; TikTok star Montana Tucker came on to talk about fame, family and what it meant to speak up about Israel during the 2024 election; Rabbi David Wolpe, who has known the Platt family for over 30 years, wrestled with Platt about “shortcut empathy.” More and more prominent guests showed up: English comedian David Baddiel, and author Dara Horn, then Auburn Men’s Basketball head coach Bruce Pearl — who falls on the opposite side of the political spectrum compared to Platt. Actor Jason Alexander stepped into a raw conversation about hostages and public pressure. Van Jones, the first non-Jewish guest, spoke as a Black ally who has spent years thinking about the bond and the gaps widening between the two communities.
“Van is, to my mind, the number one ally the Jewish people have,” Platt said. “He’s unbelievable. And I’ve learned a lot from him both in our episode and in real life and my numerous interactions with him. He’s definitely a teacher of mine … in the ways the black community thinks about the Jewish community or doesn’t think about them … and also in how to be a leader and then to inspire people.”
Platt is still regularly seen on stage, but in different settings. He hosts community events, gives talks and sometimes sings at the end of his own episodes. He credits his formative years in high school for his fluency in handling audiences on the fly.
He looks back at his acting career with affection, but without much longing. “There are aspects of it that I think of fondly, but don’t necessarily miss,” Platt said. “I’m just so fulfilled by what I’m doing now.”
What he does not miss is waiting for permission. “While I was doing the acting and the entertainment stuff, something I missed really desperately was leading,” Platt said. “It was really difficult in my entertainment career … I never got to call my own shot about anything, let alone lead a team and inspire people and mentor and make folks better at what they do. I love all that stuff, and now I get to do that. And so that alone has been super rewarding and a really wonderful trade off.
“Honestly, if it’s between the day-to-day grind of auditioning for stuff, praying somebody gives me a chance and running a team of people, half of whom I only know because they reached out to me and said, can I be a part of what you’re building? It’s totally worth it.”
The Journal asked several Israel Information Influencers based in Los Angeles what they would hope to read in a cover story about Platt. The first question was always about his older brother, Ben, and his own public condemnations of Israel. In our interview, Platt did not run from the topic, but was also careful not to turn it into a family spectacle.
“I’ll just speak generally, so not myself specifically, but something that many people can relate to is there is someone in your life, whether it’s a relative or a colleague or a friend or whatever, who you do not see eye to eye with on the Israel issue or maybe any issue affecting Jews at all,” Platt said.
He drew a line between casual acquaintances and the people who matter. “To the degree that is an important person in your life … if it’s somebody you care about and in all other circumstances would want to have a good relationship with, I think you got to prioritize the relationship,” he said.
What has allowed him to do that in personal relationships is “having face-to-face, calm, compassionate, lowered stakes conversations, lengthy conversations, like four-hour conversations,” Platt said. Those talks do two things.They allow him to “really check the temperature of this person and where they might be coming from. … I then can sort of see for myself, okay, they don’t want to wage jihad on me,” he said. “They’re not that. They just have this unfortunate sort of misunderstanding out of propaganda and ignorance. And at least now I see where it comes from and I understand where they stand as a person on this, and I can release a little something in my heart.”
He is blunt about the limits of any one conversation. “We’re not going to solve the Middle East,” Platt said. “Somebody will message me, what are we going to do about this person? And I’ll say, it doesn’t matter, that one person believing A, B or C [has no] bearing on anything, unless you’re talking about a political leader or a world leader or something. No one person’s opinion on the Middle East or Jews is moving the needle … So we just have to chill out, keep the relationship first.”
If nothing changes, he said, that can still be a kind of answer. “After you’ve had this talk, if they’re not moving the needle at all on it, it’s something you don’t need to keep talking about,” he said. “And maybe that means that person isn’t as close to you as they could be, and that’s okay. And we have to be okay with that. It’s better to keep them in your life. It’s not an all or nothing situation.”
The Four Cs
The clearest window into his method came in a monologue at the start of episode six of “Being Jewish” with actor Jackie Tohn (“Nobody Wants This”), when he described a night at Cosme in New York.
He sat at the bar next to a woman who opened with politics before he even sat down. “Before I had even pulled out the chair, she asked, Where are you from? I said, ‘California.’ And she goes, ‘So you’re a liberal.’ … This was before my ass hit the seat. I said, ‘I’m Jonah.’ And just like that, we were off to the races.’”
They shared an entrée and a long, improbable conversation. Out of that night, he laid out what he calls his “Four Cs” for difficult conversations:
Curiosity.
“C number one stands for curiosity,” he said. “This one is probably the most important. If you want any hope of success, you must enter conversations with a sense of genuine curiosity. You have to want to hear and understand other people’s ideas and ways of thinking.”
Calm.
“C number two is calm,” he said. “You must enter the discussion from a dispassionate place of low stakes. If you’re too worked up, it’s already over. The fate of the free world does not rest on you making or defending your point.”
Camaraderie.
“C number three, camaraderie,” he said. “Allow yourself to be tickled rather than prickled by the outrageous notions of your partner. Laugh, smile, share an entrée … The open, dispassionate sharing of ideas should be a fun exercise in human connection.”
Compassion.
“And last, but certainly not least, C number four, compassion,” he said. “You must be operating from a baseline assumption of shared humanity and good faith. That whatever ideas someone may have, it is their own life experience that has led them to this point, not some nefarious plot or mental health breakdown.”
He stressed that this does not apply to every person in every setting. “Of course there are people with whom a conversation of this nature may not be desirable or even possible,” Platt said. “After all, it takes two to tango.” But for the people in your life who matter, he sees these tools as a practical baseline.
“At the end of the day, most of us want the same things,” he said. “Security. Opportunity. Prosperity. The chance for a better tomorrow for ourselves, our families, and our communities. Right? Lead from that.”
Jonah grew up watching his mother, Julie Platt, move through Jewish life in public and private. Julie spent her childhood in Wichita, Kansas, often one of the only Jewish students in her class. In their joint podcast episode, she describes the shock of arriving at Camp Ramah in Ojai. (Jonah is also a Camp Ramah alum). “I mean, everywhere I turned were Jews my age,” she said. “I just couldn’t get over it. I got to have friends my age who were Jewish.”
Camp led to decades of leadership. Julie eventually served as Chair of the Jewish Federations of North America and became a central figure in efforts to secure Jewish institutions, push for better Holocaust education and invest in young adult programming.
Jonah does not see his podcast as following in her footsteps, but the pattern is visible: Jewish identity as a source of duty, not only background. Still, she was the final episode of the first season of the podcast and one of the last before the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks.
Platt said that his mother describes his show to people who don’t indulge in podcasts as “a clear, wide-ranging look at Jewish life with guests who care about Israel, Torah, culture and responsibility.”
Jonah grew up watching his father, producer Marc Platt (“Philadelphia,” “Legally Blonde,” “La La Land” among his credits), work on stories that tried to say something about the world, not just pass time. That sense of weight shows up in how he thinks about guests, topics and tone. He is not chasing viral moments. He is looking for work that holds up when people listen again.
They maintained a home where Shabbat dinners, synagogue life and charity work were the expectation. It was a home where creativity was encouraged quite a bit. He also knows that not every Jew grew up with such support, which shapes how he talks about “Jewish unity.”
“What Jewish unity should mean is the understanding … it’s like the aliens are coming,” Platt said. “Is planet Earth going to get over its bull and band together to fight the aliens, or are they going to keep fighting each other and make it easy for the aliens?” For him Jewish unity “means a recognition of we have some really big fish to fry and we all have the same fish to fry,” he said. “And it would really behoove all of us to at least agree on that and be able to work together on that. And we don’t all have to agree on everything. I mean, we never will, and we’re all living our Jewish lives very differently. But if we can get to a place of mutual respect and communication, that to me is Jewish unity … we’re all rowing in the same direction, even if it’s at different speeds and it looks a little different.”
“If we can get to a place of mutual respect and communication, that to me is Jewish unity … we’re all rowing in the same direction, even if it’s at different speeds and it looks a little different.”
He is blunt about how far we still are from that. “We are really siloed,” Platt said. “We are not communicating, we are not working together, we are not together. And that’s the most important thing … we just don’t even speak to each other enough to agree.”
Platt has three children now, the youngest born in June of this year. His oldest is six and a half. His oldest son has already joined him on the podcast in a recurring segment he calls “L’dor V’Adorable.”
Parenting, Platt said, has sharpened the same muscles he uses in public conversations. “As any parent can tell you, every day is an exercise in patience,” he said. “I think I was already a pretty patient dude, and having kids, I’m at my patience peak because that’s the way to effectively parent, right?”
Knee-jerk reactions, he said, show “you’re not listening really to what’s being communicated by the other person,” he said. “You’re just sort of lost in your own immediate emotion and reaction to it as opposed to stopping and going, well, let me think about that for a second. Let me consider it and then respond.”
He tries to bring that same pause into online and offline arguments about Jews and Israel. “The way in which I try to parent in that way is very much how I try to engage online and in conversation,” he said.
Sometimes his kids’ questions are strange and blunt. “My son asked me the other Monday night, if you were going to get cut in half, which half would you want to keep, the top half or the bottom half?” Platt said. “I just answered … I said I think the top half. He was like, yeah, I think the top half also.”
“Being Jewish” is hard to cut into 10-20 second clips that go viral on TikTok. Platt recognizes that but still refuses to pander to the algorithm and trade discourse for viral hysteria. “We’re in where we’re catching people in 30-second clips, there’s so much depth and thought to everything that I’m doing and every opinion that I lay out,” Platt said. “And if I err there, I’ll rescind it or I’ll change it.”
He said people often do not know what to do with someone who refuses all-or-nothing tests. “People don’t always know how to deal with somebody who’s comfortable holding multiple truths and saying, I’m happy when this team does A, B, and C, and I don’t like when they do D and F, and I’m happy when that team does A, B, and C, and I don’t like when they do D and F,” he said. “It’s not all or nothing stuff. I’m just so not all or nothing, whatever is what’s up, I’m all about.”
He sees the same thing in Jewish discourse around identity and observance. “There are many Jews today who are happily assimilated and looking for ways to integrate their Jewishness into a modern American secular life and society, and nobody’s wrong there,” he said. At the same time, he hears Orthodox friends who, in his words, “really seemed to not have an understanding of who and what those people are.”
“All that says to me is like, man, we are not talking to each other,” Platt said. “We are not communicating, we are not working together, we are not together.”
The Mission for the Next Quarter-Century
Looking ahead, he took a breath and laid out two goals. “What I think the next 25 years of Jewish life needs to prioritize is inclusivity,” Platt said. “That means Jews including other Jews, it means Jews looking at how to interact and commune with both non-Jews and intersectional Jews.”
“What I think the next 25 years of Jewish life needs to prioritize is inclusivity. … That means Jews including other Jews, it means Jews looking at how to interact and commune with both non-Jews and intersectional Jews.”
He pointed to projects he has already started. “I’ve done a number of, well now I’ve done two sort of projects with trying to bring together Jews, Latinos and J-Tinos, and I’m planning one next year for Asians, Jews and Jewish Asians,” he said. “I’ve done plenty of stuff with Black Jews. Those intersectional Jewish groups I think get sort of way under-supported.”
A word that Platt keeps bringing up is inclusivity. There’s no one right way to be Jewish,” he said. “And I think as a community we’re not doing a great job at that.”
The second piece is about how Jews see themselves. “Getting folks to flip that switch from the fear-based mindset. I need to keep my head down, I need to blend in, I need to hide the Jewish star, I need to apologize for my success,” Platt said. “And ditch that and flip the switch to, I’m proud of being Jewish. I have a lot of respect for myself as a Jew. I celebrate our accomplishments and I’m going to take up space as a Jew in the public square and normalize that Jews are here, we’re not going anywhere and we have much to offer.”
Platt sees this way of thinking as paramount for the survival and thriving of the Jewish people. “Not only is that the right way to be in life and the best for everybody, it also happens to be, I think, the only real antidote for anti-Jew hate,” he said.
Platt still thinks like a performer. He still loves a live room, a laugh, a clean turn of phrase. The difference is that now the set list is Jewish life, not a musical score. “Being Jewish” continues to release episodes on a weekly basis. There is already so much healthy discourse on the show that he knows it will eventually become a book.
“Yes, I definitely have it in my head to do a book that I’m just desperately looking to have the time to focus on and have not found that time yet,” he said. “But I hope to find it in the near future. But yes, that’s definitely in my mind.”
For now, he is staying with the work in front of him: the podcast, the events, the inbox full of messages from listeners trying to figure out how to stay Jewish in public without tearing each other apart.
He does not claim to have the answers. He is building a place where people can talk without destroying each other. For this moment, that is the job. And people are showing up for it. ■
