Jewish group attacks Film Academy’s diversity efforts

More than 260 Jewish entertainment figures — including actors David Schwimmer, Julianna Margulies and Josh Gad, and producers Greg Berlanti and Marta Kauffman — signed an open letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Tuesday, criticizing the organization for excluding of Jews. as an underrepresented group in its diversity efforts.

In 2020, as part of its diversity initiative, the academy issued a set of standards recognizing a number of identities as “underrepresented,” including women, LGBTQ people, an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, or people with cognitive or physical disabilities.

Religion is not among the categories considered.

These initiatives will become part of the standards needed for a film to compete in the Best Picture category starting this year. To qualify, a film must have at least one of its leads or a major supporting cast from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. The academy has said this includes actors who are Asian, Hispanic, Black, Indigenous, Native American, Middle Eastern, North African, Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

“An inclusion effort that excludes Jews is both steeped in anti-Semitism and misunderstood,” said the letter, which was organized by the Hollywood Bureau of the group Jew in the City. “It erases the Jewish people and perpetuates myths about Jewish whiteness and power, and that racism against Jews is not a major problem or is a thing of the past.”

The letter added that Judaism was not only a matter of faith, but also an ethnicity.

It is not the first time in recent years that the academy has been criticized by the Jewish community. When the organization opened its long-awaited museum in Los Angeles in 2021, the contributions of Jewish immigrants like Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, who were largely responsible for founding the Hollywood studio system, were barely recognized. In response, the academy said it would open a permanent exhibition dedicated to the birth of Hollywood and the Jewish filmmakers who founded it. The exhibit, called “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Film Capital,” debuts May 19.

According to Allison Josephs, the founder and executive director of Jew in the City, the letter has been in the works since the summer, months before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, when the new academy standards were discussed.

“It feels like a really big mistake not to acknowledge that we are perhaps the most persecuted group of all time,” she said in an interview.

The academy declined to comment.