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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]My husband is Jewish and he rolled his eyes at the tremendous diversity in the Hebrew school scenes. While we understand and support representation in movies, it wasn’t realistic and to a certain extent co-opts what is a singular Jewish experience[/b]. (I’m Catholic so I don’t have a dog in this fight.)

He also pointed out that Jewish mothers spend a year+ planning the event (while the movie made it seem like they are thrown together, including shopping for the dress at the last minute).

I would have loved to see Sara Silverman or Seinfeld or another Jewish comedian make a cameo. Missed opportunity. [/quote]

I was very distracted by this. [/quote]
It's so sad that diversity throws off some posters. I love to see it in movies and it makes more people feel included.
We've watched it twice with groups of middle schoolers who could not get enough. Watching it the second time I caught more cute details that really cement this one as a quotable classic. I think it will be one they all watch several times.[/quote]

Diversity isn’t throwing off viewers.

Rather, actual Jewish people thought it was odd to see so much diversity at Hebrew school. The film centers around scenes at Hebrew school, which is a unique rite of passage for Jewish people.

Beyond being unrealistic—which is expected to a large degree with Hollywood films—it simply isn’t representative of *Jewish people* and their experience.

That’s legit criticism.

A few (adopted) Asian kids would have made sense. But black kids at Hebrew school? Latinos? Not a chance…especially in NJ.

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From a reform synagogue on the west coast and the Hebrew school is pretty diverse. There are Asian, black and hispanic looking kids, mostly through intermarriage. So I don’t see it out of the norm. [/quote]

In fact thinking about it there’s a teaching assistant in one of the Hebrew classes that is black and the another that has Hispanic heritage. [b]Not every Jewish experience is white focused[/b]. 
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But about 98% of Jews are white.  And we all know the reason for the multicultural cast wasn’t to provide a realistic representation of today’s Jewish population.  It was done for the same reason as every other movie shows diversity in roles where it doesn’t make sense, so as not to receive scathing criticism from the diversity police. [/quote]

But it doesn’t have to represent all Jewish people everywhere. It’s set in one diverse school in a diverse area. Other settings would look different. 
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+1 I am from NY and I definitely see non-White Jews. I'm not saying it's common, but it's also not shocking.

It was definitely pumped up in the movie, and I think that's a good thing. Through intermarriage and conversion- yes, the Jewish people can and will see more diversity. It's not the same thing as filming Africans in Roots.

I remember when Schitt's Creek came to a close, they did that documentary where they explained, "what if we just had a world where there is no such thing as homophobia? the world as it should be."

I think this is similar. I don't have an agenda to remove European bloodlines from Judaism, and neither do the creators of this move. But if they want to show a world where a Jewish American community has a lot of diversity and is proud of it, good for them.[/quote]
Conversion is not encouraged, mixed marriages are frowned upon 
Blood lines matter in Judaism. That might not fit the narrative of Hollywood but it is what it is 
Most Jewish communities are proud of being Jewish, not diversity [/quote]

There's so much to unpack where the decision to depict Jews as multiracial in this movie is concerned! Some comments from someone who hasn't seen the movie:

- There is the valid critique that the movie buys into the idea that showing Jewish people just being ethnically Jewish is insufficient. Antisemitism has had a serious racial dimension since the 19th century and it is entirely ahistorical to call us "white" even though Mediterranean people (on all sides of the Mediterranean) correspond to "white" appearance as it is understood in America today. In Europe we were not "white".

- Families have expanded to include other ethnicities through intermarriage, so plenty of American Jews have visible ancestry other than Jewish. But we are not actually witnessing the birth of a new ancestral community of Jews, and Jewish culture does think in terms of generation-to-generation peoplehood in a way that doesn't make sense when you just describe "Jewish" as a religion anyone can pick or choose.

- In the US, where the community is almost entirely Ashkenazi, those intermarried families are almost always also Ashkenazi because their Jewish connection is an Ashkenazi family member or conversion as part of an Ashkenazi congregation. Whatever else they may have going on, they are Ashkenazi Jews if their connection is halachic. [I would argue that if their connection is not halachic, they are technically mostly well-meaning impostors, though still family. But they don't get to define what Jews are or are not.]

- Sephardi Jews are also "white". The distinction between Ashkenazi and Sephardi is pretty recent as these things go. They are also descended from the Roman world's diaspora and branched off, like Ashkenazim, in the early Middle Ages. Mizrachi Jews might possibly look a little darker, depending on where their families spent the last two thousand years of exile and may even have been exiles since the Babylonian period. There's a range, but they don't necessarily look so different from other ancestral Jews. Someone mentioned Ethiopian Jews. Yes of course this ancestral group of Jews are black, but the community in the US is tiny, so you're not meeting them at Hebrew school most of the time.

- Someone else mentioned Argentinians. The Argentinians are almost entirely post-Pogroms Ashkenazi. Maybe Hebrew schools need to teach a little more diaspora history?

- Also, to PP above, I would say that Reform actively encourages intermarriage even if that's not how they would put it. They are rooted in the idea of Judaism as a religion, not a people. It's a pretty un-Jewish idea. 
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