David "Noodles" Aaronson is a Jewish criminal who terrorized the streets where he grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, then a poor, densely populated neighborhood filled with Jewish immigrants, in the early 20th century.
Read more:
After leading a gang that illegally distributed alcohol during Prohibition, he disappeared in the 1930s, only to resurface in the 1960s, running a kosher diner alongside his close and stuttering friend Fat Mo.
Noodles is a fictional character, one of the greatest cinematic criminals of all time, who starred in the masterpiece Once Upon a Time in America, portrayed by none other than Robert De Niro.
In his long career, De Niro has played countless Italian-Americans like himself (Raging Bull, The Godfather), but also Irish criminals (Goodfellas), and yes, Jews, as in the case of Once Upon a Time. In Casino, he played Sam "Ace" Rothstein; in The King of Comedy, the loser comedian Rupert Pupkin; and in The Last Tycoon, a Jewish producer named Monroe Stahr.
The casting of an Italian in a Jewish role has not bothered anyone to date. But perhaps now, if the matter were to be reconsidered, one could ask the film's producer, a capable Israeli named Arnon Milchan, how he dared to entrust one of the greatest films ever made about the Jewish experience in America to an Italian director (Sergio Leone) and an actor of the same extraction. Actually, never mind; Milchan has bigger problems.
A long nose, Jews - it simply smells off
There was a famous Jewish-American no less iconic than Noodles, and also a real person - the great conductor Leonard Bernstein. The man who composed West Side Story is considered one of the greatest musical icons of the 20th century.
Bernstein is also the subject of one of the films vying for the upcoming Oscars, Maestro, directed and starring Bradley Cooper. The cinematic giants Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese are backing the production, and a small broadcasting entity called Netflix is handling the distribution.
With such names behind him, it's no wonder that the 48-year-old Cooper, who has already excelled in directing a melodrama set in the music world (A Star is Born with Lady Gaga), hopes and believes that Maestro will win him his first golden statuette - either as a director or as an actor, whichever comes first. There's just one small problem: everyone knows what Cooper looks like, and they also know that he's not Jewish.
In the first trailer for Maestro, we see a dreamy Cooper sitting back-to-back with British actress Carey Mulligan, who portrays Bernstein's love interest in the film. In the center of his face is a prominently protruding nose.
True, Bernstein also had a long nose (some would say very Jewish), but when you look at Cooper, it's hard to miss the fact that it's a prosthetic. One that, by comparison, makes even the artificial nose worn by Nicole Kidman in the movie The Hours (which also won her an Oscar) look refined.
So what if, by all indications, this is a loving biography of Bernstein, and so what if a warm Jew like Spielberg produced it? A long nose, Jews - it simply smells off.
The first to point out the problem, assuming there even is one, is Jewish television critic Daniel Fienberg. As early as last May, he was exposed to pictures from the set and pondered on his Twitter account, “How many pounds of latex would it take to make Bradley Cooper into an elderly Jewish man? Enough latex that somebody should probably find it a hair problematic.”
Fienberg subsequently raised another significant controversy. Bernstein's love interest in the trailer? Well, she was of Chilean-Costa Rican-Jewish descent, but is portrayed by the non-Jewish British actress Carey Mulligan.
Historian David Perry joined the choir in a CNN op-ed, according to which “any non-Jewish person putting on a fake nose in order to portray a Jew is colliding with a grim history.
From there, Fienberg began to detail all the examples of Der Stürmer-like caricatures of offensive Jewish stereotypes over the generations. Joining the fray was also the British actress of Jewish descent, Tracy-Ann Oberman, known to UK audiences from the soap opera EastEnders. She shared a lengthy post on her Instagram (but later took it down), in which she lambasted Cooper.
“If he needs to wear a prosthetic nose then that is, to me and many others, the equivalent of Blackface or Yellowface,” she wrote.
“All actors should be able to play any part with their skill. However, we are living in times where there is huge sensitivity and debate over ethnic and minority representation.” Ouch.
'Ben Kingsley to play Nelson Mandela?'
Oberman is not the only British actress providing Hollywood with suggestions for recasting films that have already been shot. The talked-about Golda, which has now been released in Israel and the United States, went through seven circles of hell more than a year ago with the release of the first images of Helen Mirren made up as Golda Meir in Guy Nattiv's film. The film had already been shot and was ready when British theater actress Maureen Lipman suggested last-minute changes, such as recasting the lead actress.
With “(the casting) I disagree, because the Jewishness of the character is so integral,” Lipman told the Jewish Chronicle without even watching the movie and seeing how non-Jewish Mirren nailed all of Golda’s finest nuances.
“I’m sure (Mirren) will be marvelous, but it would never be allowed for Ben Kingsley to play Nelson Mandela. You just couldn’t even go there.”
Perhaps one might be tempted to direct the question "Who even asked you?" to Lipman, an actress of a relatively lower profile compared to Mirren. But it's also fair to point out that she has given many interviews on the subject, proving that the issue does indeed spark interest. It's also worth mentioning that from the film's premiere at the Berlin Festival up to just recent weeks, there hasn't been a single interview with Mirren or with Nattiv that did not include this question.
An open wound in America
In an interview with Ynetnews’ sister publication Yedioth Ahronoth, Mirren noted that she had played Jewish characters several times in the past, including a Mossad agent, and that in her youth, she grew up on the concept of “color-blind casting.”
As Mirren concludes, a worthy discussion. The issue is that abroad, especially at the Berlin Festival where Golda had its world premiere last November, the question of legitimacy to play a Jew became almost the only one asked. All the discussion about Golda, the lessons of the Yom Kippur War, and the future of Israel, were submerged in yet another bitter debate on identity politics.
This is called "JewFace," and in English, the term is charged simply by its closeness to another word—"Blackface," which refers to whites in the 19th century who painted their faces with black shoe polish to mockingly impersonate Black people, or to Black people who were forced to apply the polish themselves to portray a darker, and usually more foolish, version of themselves, so that the racist audience in front of them would roll with laughter. There's also "Yellowface," which refers to Asians.
Israelis tend to automatically belittle American sensitivity to anything related to minorities and their representation, but before dismissing it, it's worth remembering that in the United States - where minorities make up almost 40% of the population - this is an open wound.
Contrary to the impression created by the last paragraph, Hollywood has not always been keen to showcase Jewish identity or Jewish heroes on screen, mostly leaving it to independent filmmakers who were not considered the mainstream
For ages, Black, Asian, or Hispanic characters were represented on the big screen only by white actors in black/ yellow/ brown makeup, often in a caricaturing or exaggerating manner. For example, the plot of the first talkie from 1927, The Jazz Singer, tells the story of the son of a cantor (Jewish star Al Jolson) from the Lower East Side who blacks up his face to impersonate a Black singer in the city's jazz clubs. It turns out that even a Jew can be "the exploiter," not just "the exploited."
Nevertheless, there's a fundamental difference between the cases. Unlike Blacks and Asians, Jews are not considered oppressed or underrepresented in the history of Hollywood—to put it mildly.
Historically, the studio owners were Jews, the screenwriters were Jews, and some of the great directors were Jews—Spielberg, Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, the Coen Brothers. Except for dark periods in the '40s and '50s when Hollywood panicked over being tagged "too Jewish," there's no shortage of stories about Jews in American cinema.
The number one spokesperson against JewFace
There are also plenty of stars who proudly identify as Jewish - from Kirk Douglas and Barbra Streisand to Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen. So, where does this sudden panic about the "correct Jewish representation in cinema" come from?
First of all, this is where nuances come in: Contrary to the impression created by the last paragraph, Hollywood has not always been keen to showcase Jewish identity or Jewish heroes on screen, mostly leaving it to independent filmmakers who were not considered the mainstream, like Woody Allen.
One has to hear, for instance, the tribulations that Jerry Seinfeld went through on his way to producing his mythological sitcom to understand that even in the '90s, television network executives (almost all of them Jewish) were panicked by his attempt to emphasize the fact that all the main characters in the series are kosher Jews. This slowly loosened as the seasons progressed and Seinfeld's control over the material grew.
The number one spokesperson against JewFace in Hollywood is the comedian Sarah Silverman, who incorporates quite a bit of crude commentary about Judaism and Jews in her skits. In her comedy, Silverman is completely uninhibited, but in this story, she is entirely serious - and even angry.
“There’s this long tradition of non-Jews playing Jews, and not just playing people who happen to be Jewish but people whose Jewishness is their whole being,” Silverman said. “One could argue, for instance, that a Gentile playing Joan Rivers correctly would be doing what is actually called ‘Jewface.’”
When asked to elaborate, she says “It’s defined as when a non-Jew portrays a Jew with the Jewishness front and center, often with makeup or changing of features, big fake nose, all the New York-y or Yiddish-y inflection. And in a time when the importance of representation is seen as so essential and so front and center, why does ours constantly get breached even today in the thick of it?”
Well, here's a slight irony: Since her angry podcast, Silverman has been cast in a supporting role in Maestro, and has remained largely silent on the question of what she thinks about her director's fake nose, and whether she demanded that he remove it or alternatively fire himself from the film.
Almost always British or WASP American actresses
But before attacking her personally, it's worth listening to another important nuance that Silverman raised, mostly concerning Jewish actresses. "There's a pattern here: when a Jewish woman is brave or loveable, she is never, ever portrayed by a Jewish woman!"
Silverman speaks from the heart; after all, she has been cast herself in countless Hollywood comedies as the "good friend," the loudmouth, the Jewish sidekick of the heroine. But when it comes to women in leading roles, who are supposed to portray proud, noble, beautiful Jews - it is almost always British or WASP American actresses who are cast, such as Rachel Brosnahan in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Felicity Jones as Jewish Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex, or Michelle Williams as Spielberg's mother in The Fabelmans.
Well, here's a slight irony: Since her angry podcast, Silverman has been cast in a supporting role in Maestro, and has remained largely silent on the question of what she thinks about her director's fake nose
The opposite is also true: famous Jewish actresses - Natalie Portman, Gal Gadot, Winona Ryder, Mila Kunis, Gwyneth Paltrow (who is half-Jewish) - almost never portray Jews in Hollywood. Portman, for example, portrayed Jackie Kennedy and Black Swans in American cinema, but in order to portray a worthy Jewish heroine she had to fly to Israel and direct a film starring herself in Hebrew: her beautiful adaptation of A Tale of Love and Darkness.
Gadot portrayed the Hellenistic Wonder Woman and will portray the Egyptian Cleopatra, and most of her characters are almost always of deliberately vague origin, so as not to upset the anti-Israel crowd (her character in Fast and Furious was said to be a former Mossad agent, but without any further reference to her Judaism).
In other words, the American audience likes Jewish actresses in the role of respectable non-Jews, and non-Jews as underemphasized Jews, and almost never gets a truly proud Jewish woman in the lead role. Barbra Streisand is a rare example of an actress who was proud of her Jewish identity and portrayed distinctly Jewish characters on screen, but is there any contemporary equivalent to her today? (And no, Amy Schumer doesn't really count).
By the way, the situation is much better among male stars: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, and of course Woody Allen are actors who proudly flaunt their Jewishness left and right, portraying proud Jewish heroes. The latest to celebrate all this "Yiddishkeit" is Sandler, with his Netflix hit You're So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, in which he also cast his own biological and very Jewish daughter.
But even in the case of male actors, there's no shortage of examples of non-Jews portraying Jews: Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments (Moses, really?), Tom Cruise in his amazing guest appearance in Tropic Thunder (bordering on antisemitic caricature), British Ian McKellen in his iconic role as Holocaust survivor Magneto in X-Men, Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful, and Paul Dano, Spielberg's father in The Fabelmans. Paul Newman, who portrayed the ultimate Zionist Ari Ben Canaan in Exodus, was half-Jewish in reality, so perhaps that's only half a sin.
Racism? 'It's just an annoying distraction'
The Israeli director Hagai Levi was forced to defend in interviews (and did so vigorously, while calling the claims "nonsense") his decision to cast Oscar Isaac in the role of a Jewish character in the mini-series Scenes from a Marriage. Isaac, a wonderful actor of Latino descent, specializes in portraying Jewish characters, for example in Operation Finale where he played a Mossad agent.
The latest to come under scrutiny in this context is the summer hit Oppenheimer, where the Jewish father of the atomic bomb, Robert J. Oppenheimer (who was a very secular Jew, as the film emphasizes), is played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy - who has nothing to do with Judaism.
On the other hand, even the phrase "come under scrutiny" is somewhat exaggerated: a few articles were written in British and American newspapers with boring titles like "Should Oppenheimer have been played by a Jewish actor?" (The short answer: no), a single grumbling op-ed in the Jewish Chronicle criticizing his casting and that of Mirren - and the world moved on.
Oppenheimer earned nearly $800 million at the box office and is considered a leading Oscar contender, where it will compete against the second non-Jewish portrayal of a Jewish epic on Bernstein.
And this is perhaps the main thing to remember about the "Jewish Casting Storm": Similar to many online "storms”, this is also a tempest in a teacup - or in a bowl of matzah ball soup - amplified by websites and culture magazines looking for a way to provoke their readers and get them to click on links like "Bradley Cooper Portrays a Jew, and Some People Are Not Happy About It!" Who's really not happy? A few bored Twitter users? A couple of culture critics? In the end, when the credits roll, the audience doesn't really care.
But even among the exaggerated and extreme claims, some insights and suggestions worth listening to arise: No, a white actor can't portray Mandela, just as a black actor won't portray Lincoln in a historical epic. And in Israeli cinema too - if today an Ashkenazi (European descend Jew) actor exaggeratedly portrays a stereotypical Mizrahi (Oriental Jews) character, as Topol did in Sallah Shabati - then there's a problem.
It's reasonable to assume that the practice of Arab characters being portrayed by Jewish actors, like Eli Yatzpan in Fictitious Marriage and the great Sasson Gabai in The Band's Visit, is less appropriate today. The world is changing, and not everything is "Political Correctness Gone Mad!!!" or "You've Killed Romance!!!"
There's no shortage of examples of non-Jews portraying Jews: Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, and British Ian McKellen in his iconic role as Holocaust survivor Magneto in X-Men
In summary, perhaps it's worth listening to people who actually knew Leonard Bernstein and were repeatedly asked this month to comment again and again (and again) on the "Nose/ Casting/ JewFace controversy." "It's just an annoying distraction," said Jamie Bernstein, the eldest daughter of the maestro and herself an actress and musician who has dedicated the last decades to his legacy. "People are waiting to get outraged about something and make a fuss."
The Anti-Defamation League has already given its approval to Cooper's film, stating that the depicted nose in no way constitutes an antisemitic act. But it seems that the statement by the Bernstein family, drafted by Jamie along with her siblings Alexander and Nina, nicely sums up this discussion. After highly praising Cooper and clarifying that his film is a "warm hug" to their father's legacy, they wanted to clarify. "Our father, Leonard Bernstein, truthfully had a big and beautiful nose. Bradley used makeup to resemble him, and we are totally fine with it. We are sure our dad would have been fine with it too."