At one point in “The Social Network,” Facebook founder-to-be Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) insists, “I’m not going back to ‘Caribbean Night’ at AEPi (the Jewish fraternity).” Here’s Eisenberg’s take on that line –as well as his own Jewish background – as told to Journal Arts & Entertainment Naomi Pfefferman Magid.

Naomi Pfefferman Magid:  When your character says he’s not going back to “Caribbean Night” at AEPi, it seems he is saying, he doesn’t want to be relegated to just his own specific subset at Harvard, but wants access to the Harvard elite.

Jesse Eisenberg:  I would hesitate to read that subtext into that line.  Certainly he’s not denying being a Jewish person; but I think he’s more interested in creating a level playing field and I don’t think he liked that club because it was boring, not because it had any religious affiliation.  It’s certainly not a denunciation of his background.

NPM:  What did you do for the high holidays?

JE:  On Yom Kippur I fasted but I was in Los Angeles; unfortunately I wasn’t with my family.

NPM:  You’ve mentioned that your girlfriend’s family is more observant than your own –her stepmother is from Uzbekistan so she has more of a tie to the traditions.  Do you visit her relatives on the holidays?

JE:  We occasionally go there or we go to a temple in New York called CBST (Congregation Beit Simchat Torah), which is a lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender temple.

NPM:  Why there?

JE:  It’s really the most amazing thing:  I mean they hold the holidays at the Javitz Center because 20,000 people come.  It’s really an incredible place, and it’s run by this incredible woman now named Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum.  Her sermons are just so remarkable, regardless of how religious you are or in the case of that temple, what your sexual orientation is.  She has the most inspiring speeches.

NPM:  In “The Social Network,” you play a very complicated person who does things that could be described as unethical or at the very least, morally ambiguous.  What old-school Jewish values could have saved your character from himself?

JE:  That’s a nice question.  I wish I knew more about old-school Jewish values.  I was raised in a family where we became increasingly secular.  My dad is a sociologist who teaches a class in ethics, and ethics are often framed in a religious setting.  But for my family and me we kind of framed ethical questions in a secular way, so it’s hard for me to point to what would be attributed to Jewish culture.

NPM:  How do you justify your character’s behavior, in your own mind?

JE:  Ethics are so relative.  I mean my character prioritizes the maintenance and expansion of his creation, Facebook, above all else, so his moral compass prioritizes Facebook….We might have an uncomfortable reaction to Mark’s relationship with Eduardo Saverin (his Facebook co-founder and former best friend) but if you look at it from my character’s perspective, Facebook is so much more important than a college relationship.  Then you view Mark’s actions as not only morally on the level but necessary for the company.

NPM:  You have a long-term Jewish girlfriend.  In the movie, one of Zuckerberg’s friends remarks that he prefers Asian-American women because “they’re hot, they’re smart, they’re not Jewish.” Is there the myth of the non-Jewish goddess even at Harvard?

JE:  I’m not in that scene – I come in right after [the other character] says that.  I don’t think my character would say that.  I don’t think he looks at it that way.  I wouldn’t have known how to parse that [dramatically], because I didn’t feel that was natural for my character nor did the writer because he didn’t put me in the scene, so I was kind of happy it wasn’t my line. 

FROM MY PREVIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH JESSE EISENBERG

NPM (from an interview earlier this year about “Holy Rollers,” in which Eisenberg plays a troubled Chasidic Jew): You dropped out of Hebrew school at 11 and declined to have a bar mitzvah because you didn’t feel connected to the kind of suburban Judaism where the party was more important than the ritual.  You finally did have a bar mitzvah at Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights while researching your part in “Holy Rollers.”  What was that like?

JE:  I didn’t realize what a bar mitzvah is, because where I grew up it was about getting checks and having this big party.  I didn’t realize that a bar mitzvah is actually a potentially quick and simple process – the actual bar mitzvah, not the hoopla surrounding it.  So yes, actually having a bar mitzvah was maybe a 15-minute procedure; it was wrapping tefillin, reading the prayers. 

NPM:  Did you feel more like a man afterwards?

JE:  (laughs) Not immediately but maybe an hour or two later.

NPM (from a 2009 interview about “Adventureland,” in which Eisenberg plays a sweet but self-aggrandizing writer): How did it come about that you visited your Jewish family’s ancestral home in Poland several years ago?

JE:  In New York City I see my [Polish-born] aunt every week, which I’ve done for six years.  She’s 97 now.

NPM:  What a nice Jewish boy.

JE:  It sounds like it, doesn’t it? (laughs).  My aunt was born in Poland actually and we talk about it all the time.  I’m fascinated with genealogy so I said to her, if I do this movie, “The Hunting Party (2007),” in Bosnia, I promise you I will go to your house where you were born in Poland, which is in this tiny village.  Because she’s 97 I thought she would appreciate a picture of this house she hadn’t’ seen since she was 8.  She came here in 1912.

NPM:  As a result of World War I?

JE:  Yes, her father was sent here to avoid the draft; and a few years later the family came.  So I thought she would be over the moon, but it seemed like she didn’t really care when I showed her the pictures; she said, ‘Oh, it looks the same.’  The house was in this tiny town, and it took like three days to get to and I got into a car accident and had to pay the Polish [authorities] in cash.

NPM:  It sounds like a road trip out of Jonathan Safran Foer’s [Jewish-boy-searches-for-his-roots] novel, “Everything Is Illuminated.”

JE:  Right.  I didn’t see the movie, but I read the book.

NPM:  You’ve played so many characters who happen to be Jewish.  Do you ever worry about being typecast? 

JE: No.  Every actor in the world is kind of trapped by their own bodies and mannerisms and you could look at that as a positive thing—that that’s what you bring to a character—or as a limiting thing, as though that’s all you can bring to a role. But it’s still better to look at it as a positive thing.

NPM: In “Zombieland,” you play a rather nervous slayer of the undead.  What was the most unusual zombie your character encountered?

JE:  It was a Chasidic Jewish zombie.  I think you can see him briefly in the movie.

More on “The Social Network” at Hollywood Jew:

The Social Network’s Other Jewish Star: Andrew Garfield

Mark Zuckerberg can’t handle his own spotlight

Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook to get girls (just not Jewish girls)

When CNN commentator Rick Sanchez appeared on Pete Dominick’s satellite radio show yesterday, he said a few things I predict he’ll regret.

First, he called Jon Stewart a “bigot”. Then, when Dominick suggested that Stewart is Jewish and therefore understands being a minority, Sanchez scoffed, insisting that people “a lot like Stewart” (Jews) run CNN and other networks. Touchdown for Team Jews Dominate The Media.

According to the Huffington Post, “the conversation began with Sanchez decrying ‘elite, Northeast establishment liberals’ who ‘deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier.’

Sanchez said: “I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot.”

Dominick, who is a radio host on Sirius, a CNN commentator and a former warm-up comic on “The Daily Show” pressed Sanchez on his assertion.

Mediaite has a great recap of the conversation:

Dominick: How is he a bigot?

Sanchez: I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I’m so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine.

Dominick: What group is he bigoted towards?

Sanchez: Everybody else who’s not like him. Look at his show, I mean, what does he surround himself with?

A few minutes later, Sanchez takes back the word “bigot,” changing it to “prejudicial” and “uninformed.” Later in the interview, Dominick brings up the fact that Stewart is Jewish, so is a minority himself. Sanchez laughs this off:

I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

Sanchez is right about one thing: the majority of American Jews are not oppressed. But, despite their achievements in this country, Jews are still a minority—a very tiny percentage of the American population and the world. And even though today a large number of Jews find themselves in positions of power and influence, that hasn’t come without centuries of oppression, struggle, near-extermination and ultimately, hard work. Let’s not forget the Holocaust didn’t happen 2,000 years ago; it occurred in the mid-20th century. But instead of celebrating a triumph of survival followed by moral purpose, Sanchez’s tone implies it is somehow wrong that Jews are powerful, as if to say, ‘let’s not feel bad that the Jews burned in ovens—they run CNN!’ As if power could ever banish the scars, remove the tattoos, or heal the deep collective wounds of the past. Seriously, Sanchez needs to sit through a Passover seder.

As we’ve seen in recent months, any insinuation of Jewish media domination explodes across public discourse like Fourth of July fireworks. Even though the notion of domination is quite silly since in today’s media world there are more diverse and competing voices than ever before. But let’s just say a disproportionate number of Jews hold positions of power in media: What’s so terrible? Is it making Jews more Jewish? Is it encouraging mass conversion to Judaism? Is it bringing Israelis and Palestinians any closer to peace?

No: It’s bringing you “Mad Men” and “Modern Family”, “The Daily Show” and “The Social Network”. And it’s also given Rick Sanchez a soapbox on one of the most watched news networks in the world. Shame on those Jews.

Well that didn’t take long.

Earlier today I suggested Rick Sanchez would regret his angry comments about Jews, and I was right: TVNewser is reporting that CNN issued a statement saying: “Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.”

This comes after Sanchez appeared on Pete Dominick’s satellite radio show yesterday calling Jon Stewart a “bigot” and suggesting that Jews don’t deserve oppressed minority status because they dominate the media.

If Sanchez had made an objective comment like, “Even though small in number, the Jews are disproportionately powerful in the media industry” than that might have come off as rational. But the comments he made were mean-spirited, coming from a place of anger and resentment that stems from his own perceived failings. You can’t be a “news” anchor after succumbing so completely to your own subjectivity—and that’s why he was fired.

Check out my earlier post with a transcript of Sanchez’s remarks here.

Marcus J Freed is a studio-trained yogi, yeshiva-trained educator, published author, BBC broadcaster and classically-trained actor.  Marcus has developed a quartet of powerful one-man plays about the Biblical kings:  ‘King David’s Greatest Hits’, ‘Solomon: King, Poet, & Lover’,  ‘Elijah: First Action Hero’,  ‘The Madness of King Saul’ and ‘King David’s Greatest Hits’. Co-written with Dr Raphael Zarum, CEO of the London School of Jewish Studies, Marcus has performed these witty and creative plays around the world. Formally trained at the prestigious Webber Douglas Academy for Dramatic Art, Marcus’ other acting work has included commercials, tv and film in the UK. An innovative educator, Marcus has also developed Bibliyoga®, a system for accessing Jewish spiritual wisdom through the body. Bibliyoga engages the body, mind and spirit through a combination of dynamic yoga postures while engaging in sacred Jewish texts. It is yoga with a Jewish twist, and Marcus teaches regular classes in Los Angeles, promoted through JConnectLA and Jewlicious Festivals. He is also the USA & Canada director for Yoga Mosaic, the network for Jewish yoga teachers. Marcus has toured in over 20 countries performing his plays and teaching Bibliyoga.  He enlightens his followers on a weekly basis with his Bibliyoga “Kosher Sutras” emails. To discover more, visit About Read More »