The Jerusalem Post - The Jerusalem Post Magazine
Gen Z and ‘other fake woke liberals’
An author’s book tour blows up with protests against his Israel activism
Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein, of the Am Shalom synagogue in Glencoe, Illinois, looked out on the more than 300 people sitting in front of him and Brett Gelman on a recent Tuesday night. “Raise your hand if you were at Brett’s bar mitzvah,” the rabbi said. About 20 people did. “Ah,” said Gelman, wearing faux-leather pants, a long white sweater, and a single earring. “Now that was the one thing that kept me from killing myself! That was my only good day in junior high, my bar mitzvah. I was deluded enough to believe I had friends.”
Gelman’s book tour for his tales of anxiety, titled The Terrifying Realm of the Possible, was not going the way it was planned initially. He had pulled a decent crowd at the Jewish Community Center in New York (which was planned from the start), but the Book Stall in Winnetka backed out in February, as did Book Soup in Los Angeles and Book Passage in San Francisco.
The problem, two of the stores said, was safety: They could not provide the level of security such a controversial figure required. Book Passage went a step further and said Gelman had made “intemperate” remarks against “ethnic and social groups” but declined to cite examples. Gelman said the cancellations were driven by protester intimidation and antisemitism – and then he changed plans.
On a normal book tour, he would have been asked questions about Hollywood, and then have read a little from The Terrifying Realm of the Possible, a funny, caustic, dark set of thinly autobiographical stories about neurosis. It shows the clear influence of Woody Allen and Philip Roth, and as Gelman explained before the event, “it’s very much about showing Jewish pride in neurosis.”
BUT HAMAS attacked Israel on Oct. 7, taking hundreds of hostages and killing over 1,000 Israelis, and then Israel responded by attacking Hamas in Gaza.
Gelman took to social media and loudly supported Israel – though not its government or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He said he was not anti-Palestinian or against Islam, but certainly anti-Hamas. He said advocating for Jews was not asking for a Palestinian genocide.
He called out Gen Z and “all you other fake woke liberals” for not reading enough history.
He leaned prominently into pro-Israeli activism, making a speech at the March for Israel on the Washington Mall in 2023, visiting Israel several times in recent months (his fiancée, Ari Dayan, is Israeli American) and appearing on the Israeli TV show Eretz Ne’ederet (“Beautiful Country”), satirizing Western protests. He said that many of the protests against Israel amounted to antisemitism.
And, in turn, backlash on social media accused him of equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, soft pedaling the death of Palestinians, and turning a blind eye to both Palestinian evictions and a historical treatment of Palestinians that many consider apartheid.
And that’s how a tour for a little book of stories led to private security teams placed at either side of the stage, and an officer from the Cook County Sheriff’s office standing at the back while a rabbi asked what you meant when you told an interviewer that you “woke up from being woke.”
“I don’t know anyone who actually uses that term who’s truly woke,” Gelman replied. “If you were truly woke, you wouldn’t be antisemitic and pervert analytic thinking to defend Islamic Jihad – you wouldn’t equate Islam with radical Islam! That’s being very asleep.”
He also said the same way that Jews have inherited centuries of trauma, “the rest of the world has inherited antisemitism – both genetically and psychologically. I believe that.”
ACROSS THE country, institutions and bookstores have canceled appearances by Israeli and Palestinian authors. In January, protesters with Writers Against the War on Gaza broke up a PEN America event featuring comedian Moshe Kasher and actress Mayim Bialik, who has also been a vocal supporter of Israel.
“The other option would have been to retreat and not address this at all,” Gelman said. He said it’s entirely possible that his book gets overshadowed, and he can live with that.
He gets daily online threats. “[Dayan] and I take our death threats with our morning coffee,” he said. “Aggressive attacks, saying I support genocide. That’s the best thing of what I hear. They attack personally, my appearance, my career... It’s a means of intimidation. This is their moment; but I don’t see them. I am doing something out in the world, and this is what they are doing?”
He said he’s definitely lost friends in the film and TV industry, but he’s not aware if his activism has cost him future work. Not yet, anyway.
Still, he said, he calls his agent frequently to ask if he’s OK, if everything’s fine. He joked that he’s exhausting to be around.
Gelman has written a Sundance film (Lemon, 2017) and for Adult Swim; he acted on Mad Men, The Office, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and alongside Will Ferrell in The Other Guys.
He said he’s always wanted to be “like the multi-rounded Jewish artists who were my heroes, who acted, wrote, directed, authored.” With Seinfeld in the past and the end of Curb Your Enthusiasm
looming and the cancellation of Woody Allen, Gelman fears the decline of Jewish anxiety as a wellspring of comedy.
“You hear that Jews need to move away from the Seinfeldian,” he said, “but we need to lean in. That’s Jewish excellence, artistic excellence. Why be so ashamed?”
Rabbi Lowenstein asked if he’s surprised how quiet Hollywood has been about Israel. “Hollywood has always been a tremendous disappointment,” Gelman laughed.
He said that as inspiring as Angels in America was to his development as an actor, he’s “not very happy with [author Tony] Kushner,” who has told interviewers Israel’s actions “looks a lot like ethnic cleansing.”
On the Oscar speech by Zone of Interest
director Jonathan Glazer, in which he said, “We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” Gelman said that Glazer never mentioned Hamas or the Israeli hostages and was an antisemite and a ”self-hating Jew.”
Gelman’s appearance at Am Shalom was his biggest book event so far.
To the protesters, he replied: “Thanks for helping me sell books. [Without the backlash] a lot less people would have known about this book.”