Do Jews run Hollywood?American Film critic Neal Gabler explains that “the Hollywood Jews, seeking acceptance, respectability and assimilation, saw the medium of film not as a quick way to make a dollar, but as an art form. Through their movies, the Jewish patriarchs painted an idealized portrait of an American society to which they were paradoxically denied access. They could invest themselves, and they could raise their status.”
They had a hunger for assimilation and, in the face of resistance and exclusion, “the Jews could simply create a new country–an empire of their own, so to speak . . . an America where fathers were strong, families stable, people attractive, resilient, resourceful, and decent. He concludes by writing, “The 20th-Century American Dream was to a considerable degree depicted and defined by Hollywood.”
Choose one film or TV show you have recently seen that has Jewish characters and create a YouTube clip with a review exploring how the creation may help shape the way Jews are perceived and understood in your country.