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Jerry Seinfeld grew to become a mic-cradling, cereal-eating, “did-you-ever-notice”-ing avatar of American Jewish life with a openly shrugging persona: a merry indifference to weighty materials as a comic and in his megahit TV present about nothing, as petty and apolitical as he appeared to be.
Now — off-camera, at the very least — Mr. Seinfeld seems to have reached his post-nothing interval.
Since the assaults of Oct. 7 in Israel, and thru their bloody and unstable aftermath in Gaza, Mr. Seinfeld, 70, has emerged as a strikingly public voice towards antisemitism and in assist of Jews in Israel and the United States, edging warily towards a extra forward-facing advocacy position than he ever appeared to hunt throughout his a long time of fame.
He has shared reflections about life on a kibbutz in his teenagers, and in December traveled to Tel Aviv to satisfy with hostages’ households, soberly recounting afterward the missile assault that greeted him in the course of the journey.
He has participated, to a degree, within the form of superstar activism with which few affiliate him — letter-signing campaigns, earnest messages on social media — answering merely not too long ago when requested concerning the motivation for his go to to Israel: “I’m Jewish.”
And as some American cities and school campuses simmer with battle over the Middle East disaster and Israel’s army response, Mr. Seinfeld has confronted a measure of public scorn that he has hardly ever courted as a breakfast-obsessed comic, intensified by the extra vocal advocacy of his spouse, Jessica, a cookbook creator.
This week, because the couple and their youngsters appeared collectively on the premiere of Mr. Seinfeld’s new film (“Unfrosted,” about Pop-Tarts), Ms. Seinfeld attracted consideration for one more cause: She promoted on Instagram, and mentioned she had helped bankroll, a counterprotest on the University of California, Los Angeles, the place clashes with pro-Palestinian demonstrators have turned violent.
Among some activists on that aspect of the divide, disdain for the Seinfelds had been constructing for months.
“Genocide supporter!” protesters shouted at Mr. Seinfeld on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in February, as he left a “State of World Jewry” handle given by Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion editor and author whose media firm, The Free Press, has been championed by Ms. Seinfeld.
In some methods, the couple’s decisions since Oct. 7 mirror the tensions tugging at many American households on this polarized second, as they negotiate the bounds of how a lot to say and do about their political views within the open.
A consultant for Mr. Seinfeld referred an inquiry to Hindy Poupko, an govt at UJA-Federation of New York who is aware of Ms. Seinfeld via Jewish philanthropic work. “The overwhelming majority of New York Jews have a powerful emotional connection to Israel,” Ms. Poupko mentioned. Seeing Mr. Seinfeld go to the households of hostages in Israel, she added, “has been an extremely highly effective supply of consolation to our group.”
Yosi Shnaider, a relative of a number of hostages who met with the Seinfelds in Israel in December and shared his household’s story, recalled Mr. Seinfeld as supportive and reserved, listening greater than he spoke.
“I’m placing myself in his place,” Mr. Shnaider mentioned in an interview, including that Mr. Seinfeld won’t have recognized “precisely what to ask.” “His spouse requested me what she will do. I instructed them I simply need them to maintain the story alive.”
Mr. Seinfeld, who’s scheduled to ship a graduation handle at Duke University this month, has tended to be personal about his private beliefs, onstage and in any other case. His namesake tv present usually banished political introspection. His standup act has favored proudly inessential observations about driving, courting and air journey — workaday zingers to which residents of all political stripes are equally susceptible.
Since “Seinfeld,” he has spoken most expansively concerning the artwork of comedy itself, framing it as a morally impartial pursuit whose highest purpose is to make individuals chuckle. (Mr. Seinfeld not too long ago made headlines for suggesting in an interview with The New Yorker that “the acute left and P.C. crap” had hampered comedy.)
The shifts in Mr. Seinfeld’s public bearing after Oct. 7 have been modest, if nonetheless perceptible. He stays far much less outspoken on the topic than different celebrities and comedians, akin to Amy Schumer. But for a determine lengthy held up, like few others in leisure, as a generational narrator of the American Jewish expertise, even a cautious exploration of his id has been notable.
In one current interview — a part of a promotional tour for the Pop-Tarts film — Mr. Seinfeld mentioned he felt “very near the wrestle of being Jewish on this planet.”
He has additionally stopped himself in need of full-scale sermonizing.
“I don’t preach about it,” he instructed GQ final month. “I’ve my private emotions about it that I talk about privately. It’s not a part of what I can do comedically, however my emotions are very robust.”
Mr. Seinfeld’s views of Israel appear to echo these of many Jews his age. Growing up on Long Island, he attended Hebrew faculty and have become a bar mitzvah the 12 months he turned 13, a consultant confirmed. That was the 12 months of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, which prompted a sea change in American Jewish consciousness, establishing assist for Israel as a pillar of American Jewish life.
By distinction, American Jews who got here of age for the reason that Nineteen Eighties or Nineteen Nineties haven’t recognized firsthand an Israel that was a regional underdog. And the youngest American Jews, a predominantly progressive cohort, could solely bear in mind an Israel led by more and more right-wing governments below Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been the prime minister almost with out interruption for the previous 15 years.
Leonard Saxe, a professor of Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, mentioned Mr. Seinfeld’s instinctive solidarity towards Israel was typical for his or her era.
“We grew up worrying about Israel and its survival,” Mr. Saxe mentioned, “and seeing Israel because the refuge for Jews from all over the world.”
Some knowledge factors, even earlier than Oct. 7, have advised a deeper curiosity from Mr. Seinfeld in his Jewish id.
When an Instagram put up from Ms. Seinfeld, advising followers on find out how to discuss antisemitism, went viral in 2022, Mr. Seinfeld reposted the message (“I assist my Jewish associates and the Jewish individuals”) and saluted its “nonaggressive” simplicity and energy.
But for some with heat recollections of “Seinfeld” — and searing opposition to the Israeli response to Oct. 7 — the comic’s actions since that day have been disappointing.
Wajahat Ali, a author and commentator who has been sharply essential of the Israeli authorities and Hamas, advised that Mr. Seinfeld’s assist for Israel carried extra weight given his prior standing as a “famously apolitical man who couldn’t muster any concern or care about what was taking place on this planet.”
“That was a part of his aesthetic,” Mr. Ali mentioned. But now, he added, Mr. Seinfeld had chosen to talk up as a wildly prosperous man from “a cocoon of privilege” amid “a brutal struggle” he doesn’t condemn.
Surely, Mr. Seinfeld sees it in a different way. His public feedback have largely averted geopolitical specifics, dwelling little on the alternatives of the Netanyahu authorities or potential situations for a cease-fire.
And he can nonetheless sound hesitant even in current discussions concerning the Jewishness of “Seinfeld” — which an NBC govt as soon as described as “too New York, too Jewish.”
Prompted in an interview final month with The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick (“There was a component of, ‘We can’t be too Jewy,’” Mr. Remnick advised), Mr. Seinfeld didn’t linger on the theme.
“Not too Jewy. We skimmed on the floor sometimes,” Mr. Seinfeld mentioned, including: “Maybe we talked about a bar mitzvah one time, possibly. I don’t know.”
Another memorable plot arc, in a Season 8 episode that first aired in 1997, was maybe extra instructive: The fictional Jerry’s dentist has transformed to Judaism — largely, Jerry suspects, to get away with telling transparently hacky jokes about Jews.
Troubled, Jerry seeks knowledge at a church confessional.
“This offends you as a Jewish particular person?” the priest asks him.
“No,” he says. “It offends me as a comic.”
