Published: 6 October 2023
Last updated: 12 March 2024
From Midge Maisel to Sunny Sandler, Hollywood gives an image of Jewish life that is uncomfortably and inaccurately opulent.
Portrayals of wealthy Jewish families spending big on lavish affairs — such as the characters in Adam Sandler’s latest movie, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah — present a distorted picture of American Jews and their financial need, according to the analysis, released Monday by a partner of the Jewish Funders Network that is focused on poverty.
“People are still very surprised to hear that 20% of the Jewish community is experiencing poverty,” said Rachel Sumekh, the Jewish Funders Network’s project executive for TEN, formerly known as the National Affinity Group on Jewish Poverty. “One of the reasons why our narrative is outdated is Hollywood and the media, and what Jewish stories they tend to tolerate.”
The analysis and its recommendations add to a growing discourse about Jewish representation that so far has focused largely on whether it is appropriate for non-Jewish actors to portray Jewish characters, as well as on the depiction of Orthodox communities. TEN’s report weighs in on those questions but says that another dimension of how Jews are portrayed also deserves attention.
Titled The Case of the Missing Narrative: Hollywood, The Media and Jewish Poverty, the survey finds that poor and working-class Jews are underrepresented in these fields relative to their prevalence in real life. It argues that greater representation of them could lead to more widespread recognition of Jews who are financially struggling.
The analysis compiles 85 films and 104 TV shows about Jewish themes, most from the last 15 years, and categorizes them according to their depiction of the Jewish characters’ wealth. A separate study looked at depictions of Jews in the news media.
The report about Jewish poverty and wealth on screen was written by Mik Moore, a media strategist who was once an executive at the progressive nonprofit Jewish Funds for Justice.
