As a comedian and on his hit TV show, Jerry Seinfeld is the personification of American Jewish life, with his microphone-grabbing, cereal-eating, brazen-shrug personality that says, “Did you notice?” It became. In other words, as a comedian, he is cheerful and indifferent to heavy content. Nothing about him was as boring or apolitical as he seemed.
Now, at least off-camera, Mr. Seinfeld seems to have reached a post-Nothing phase.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and the bloody and volatile aftermath in Gaza, Mr. Seinfeld, 70, has become a prominent public figure speaking out against anti-Semitism and supporting Israeli and American Jews. has emerged as a leading voice and has taken a cautious stance against anti-Semitism. It was a more positive advocacy role than he had previously sought in his decades of fame.
He shared reminiscences about life on a kibbutz as a teenager, traveled to Tel Aviv in December to meet with hostage families, and soberly described the aftermath of a missile attack that struck him during the trip.
Although he has participated to some degree in the kind of celebrity activism most people associate with him, including letter signings and earnest messages on social media, he recently said when asked about his motivation for visiting Israel: answered. “I'm Jewish.”
And as some American cities and college campuses smolder with conflict over the Middle East crisis and Israel's military response, Mr. Seinfeld is offering a kind of entertainment that the breakfast-obsessed comedian has rarely experienced. facing public scorn. His wife, Jessica, is a cookbook author.
This week, when the couple and their children appeared together at the premiere of Mr. Seinfeld's new movie (“Unfrosted,” about Poptarts), Mr. Seinfeld was in the spotlight for another reason. He promoted it on Instagram and said he helped. Clashes with pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a counter-protest at the University of California, Los Angeles, turned violent.
Among some activists on this side of the divide, disdain for Seinfeld had been growing for months.
“Supporter of genocide!” Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion editor and writer who has defended the media company Free Press, told Mr. Seinfeld on Manhattan's Upper East Side in February. Protesters yelled at Mr. Seinfeld after he left his speech on “World Jewish State.'' By Ms. Seinfeld.
In some ways, the couple's choices after Oct. 7 reflect many in this moment of polarization, as they negotiate the limits of how much they can say and do about their political beliefs in public. It reflects the tensions gripping American families.
Seinfeld's representatives referred the investigation to Hindi Popko, a New York UJA executive who knew Seinfeld through his Jewish philanthropy. “The majority of New York Jews have a strong emotional connection to Israel,” Popko said. Seinfeld's visits to hostage families in Israel were “an incredibly powerful source of comfort to our community,” she added.
Yossi Schneider, a relative of several of the hostages who met with the Seinfelds in Israel in December and shared family stories, said the Seinfelds were supportive and unassuming. He recalls that he was a person who listened more than he talked.
“I put myself in his shoes,” Schneider said in an interview, adding that Seinfeld may not have known “exactly what questions to ask.” “His wife asked what I could do. I told them I wanted to keep this story alive.”
Mr. Seinfeld is scheduled to give a commencement address at Duke University this month, but he has tended to keep his personal beliefs private on stage and elsewhere. His TV show of the same name generally banished political introspection. His stand-up act has espoused proudly non-essential observations about driving, dating, and plane travel. In other words, it is a daily stimulus to which people of all political backgrounds are equally susceptible.
He speaks most extensively about the art of comedy itself since “Seinfeld,” framing it as a morally neutral pursuit whose primary purpose is to make people laugh. . (Mr. Seinfeld recently made headlines in an interview with The New Yorker in which he suggested that “the far left and the PC crap” were holding back comedy.)
The change in Mr. Seinfeld's public demeanor since Oct. 7 has been modest, if still perceptible. He is less outspoken on the issue than other celebrities and comedians such as Amy Schumer. But even this careful exploration of his identity is remarkable for a man who, like most others in the entertainment industry, has long been noted as a generational narrator of the American Jewish experience. It was something.
“I feel very close to the struggle of being a Jew in the world,” Seinfeld said in a recent interview as part of his promotional tour for the film “Poptarts.”
He also stops short of serious preaching.
“I don't preach about it,” he told GQ last month. “I have personal feelings about it, and we discuss it privately. It's not part of what we can do as a comedy, but my feelings are very strong.”
Mr. Seinfeld's views on Israel appear to be in line with those of many Jews of his generation. Raised on Long Island, he attended Hebrew school and became bar mitzvah the year he turned 13, his representative confirmed.That is 1967, the year the Arab-Israeli War broke out. The war brought about major changes in American Jewish consciousness and established support for Israel as a pillar of American Jewish life.
In contrast, American Jews who came of age after the 1980s or 1990s have no direct knowledge of Israel, which was a regional underdog. And America's youngest Jews, a largely progressive group, only remember Israel, led by an increasingly right-wing government under Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been prime minister almost uninterrupted for the past 15 years. Maybe not.
Leonard Sacks, a professor of Jewish studies at Brandeis University, said Seinfeld's instinctive solidarity with Israel was typical of his generation.
“We grew up worrying about Israel and its survival,” Sacks said, “and thinking of Israel as a haven for Jews around the world.”
Some data points suggest that even before October 7, Mr. Seinfeld was deeply concerned about his Jewish identity.
In 2022, when Mr. Seinfeld's Instagram post advising his followers on how to talk about anti-Semitism went viral, Mr. “I support it'') and its “non-aggressive'' simplicity and power.
But for some with warm memories of “Seinfeld” and ardent opponents of Israel's response to Oct. 7, the comedian's actions since that day have been disappointing. .
Wajahat Ali, a writer and commentator who has been harshly critical of the Israeli government and Hamas, said that given his previous position as “a well-known apolitical figure who never attracted any concern or interest,” He suggested that his support for Israel was even more significant. what was happening in the world ”
“That was part of his aesthetic,” Ali said. But now, he added, Seinfeld has chosen to speak out as a millionaire from a “cocoon of privilege” in the midst of a “brutal war” that he does not condemn.
Seinfeld certainly has a different view. His public comments largely avoided geopolitical details and said little about Netanyahu's government's choices or the terms of any prospects for a ceasefire.
And he still seems hesitant in recent discussions about the Jewish nature of “Seinfeld.” An NBC executive once described it as “too New York, too Jewish.''
Prompted by an interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick last month (“There was an element of 'we can't be too Jewish,'” Remnick suggested), Mr. Seinfeld did not linger on the subject.
“It doesn't look Jewish. We were skimming the surface sometimes,” Seinfeld said, adding: I don't know. “
Another memorable plot arc, in a season 8 episode that first aired in 1997, was perhaps more instructive. The fictional Jerry the dentist converted to Judaism. Jerry suspects that the main reason for this is to get away from making overtly vulgar jokes about Jews.
Troubled, Jerry seeks wisdom in the church confessional.
“Does this offend you as a Jew?” the priest asks him.
“No,” he says. “That's offensive to me as a comedian.”