The Endgame

Newsletter #36 - Jewface

Port Medway, Nova Scotia, August 27, 2023

Jewface

There’s a movie (Maestro) coming to town soon about the conductor Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein, who was Jewish, is played by Bradley Cooper, who isn’t. Bernstein had a big nose, which Cooper doesn’t. In the film, Cooper wears a large prosthetic nose to look more like Bernstein. The film’s casting of Cooper and Cooper’s fake nose have upset some members of the Jewish community. This silly controversy has attracted more attention than it deserves.

Those who think Cooper should not have been cast as Bernstein say that only a Jewish actor should play a Jew. They say it’s cultural appropriation for a non-Jew to play a Jew. They say only a Jew can understand and properly depict a Jew. They say giving Jewish roles to non-Jews (sometimes called “sidelining”) is a form of antisemitism.

This confused grab-bag of arguments is foolish but not new. The Guardian reported in 2019 that a musical playing in London (Falsettos), about a dysfunctional Jewish family, was under attack for not casting Jews. “More than 20 Jewish actors and playwrights… signed an open letter, which said the producers demonstrated ‘a startling lack of cultural sensitivity and at worst, overt appropriation and erasure of a culture and religion increasingly facing a crisis’.… The letter used the term ‘Jewface’ to describe the casting of non-Jewish actors to play Jewish roles and said that ‘Jews are omitted from this important and necessary conversation’ about appropriation and representation in culture.” Similar objections have been made to the recent casting in biopics of Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Helen Mirren as Golda Meir.

Views like these are expressions of pernicious and dangerous identity politics. Using the concept of lived experience, one group rejects other groups and repudiates any attempt to communicate across identities. The concept of cultural appropriation is used to gut the fertile idea of interrelated and interdependent cultures and traditions. Identity politics rejects universalist ideas in favour of tribal loyalty. It subverts tolerance and promotes prejudice, the very thing it pretends to protest.

Okay, and what about Bradley Cooper’s fake nose? Febrile commentators have condemned this as “Jewface,” an antisemitic version of blackface. They say it’s another example of antisemites caricaturing Jews by portraying them with big noses. Does anyone take this seriously? Mark Harris (a Jew) writes in Slate, “Jews are an astonishingly heterogeneous people, physically, intellectually, politically, culturally, religiously, and experientially.” Heterogeneity makes Jews very hard to caricature. And, as Sharonna Pearl points out in Tablet, “There is no such thing as a Jewish nose.” 

These and similar misconceived controversies are possible because there is no clear definition of antisemitism. Such definitions as exist are weak and careless. They grasp unconvincingly for meaning and content. They are often formulated in a political context to serve a political purpose. They blur important distinctions, confuse issues, and inflame passions, sometimes intentionally. An international industry ferrets out and publicizes every instance, however trivial, of what is thought to be antisemitism. The whole mess is turbocharged by social media.

We need a different and better way of thinking about and responding to antisemitism. We need a sensible and precise definition and carefully calibrated responses when responses are required. Otherwise, time will continue to be wasted on silly squabbling and more people will get their dander up for no good reason.

(My new book, which discusses many of these issues, is Antisemitism: An ancient hatred in the age of identity politics.)

P.S. An Endgame reader in the UK writes to me about Newsletter #34: “I am , of course , an avid consumer of Endgame newsletters having first encountered Samuel Becket’s play in the swinging London 60’s, I think. The seminal line ‘I want a chocky Bicky’ (spelling uncertain) has acted as a signpost in my life over many subsequent decades. However, this message is just to remind you re: #34 that we of the Christian tradition have long had our very own ‘Exit Greeter’ to check our card. We call him St Peter.”