Jewish poverty, a damaging taboo
I’m the director of the first documentary in cinema history on the Jewish poor who are more numerous than most think. Unfortunately, I am still struggling to convince others of how crucial it is to talk about this subject openly.
I’m not Jewish, and neither are the cameraman and editor I recruited via Google. It was just a project that seemed interesting and important to us.
Years ago, I was happy to interview Malcolm Hoenlein, one of the most influential Jewish people in the world, giving examples of the work of charities taking care not only of Jewish people but also of Bedouin populations in Israel.
So here I was with a subject rarely if ever depicted in the media; and with great potential to question antisemite stereotypes. Yet, our press coverage early on has been much more limited than we hoped, and it took a huge amount of effort to draw some attention to this topic, with disappointing results. For instance, we still didn’t manage to get coverage from any US Jewish media outlet and didn’t get screened at any Jewish film festival.
In my home country, France, where, as anywhere else, approximately 20% of Jews are living in poverty, our work started to get better coverage following dramatic attacks against Jews. As you may remember, 4 people were killed by a terrorist in a kosher grocery store in January 2015, while Jews had been assaulted in Créteil one month earlier.
It seems to me that highlighting Jewish poverty and questioning the cliché that “Jews have money” is the best way to fight antisemitism — much more than sterile meetings around themes such as “Racism is bad, let’s do something, by the way where are my croissants ?”
After the Paris attacks, politicians pledged to work harder against the rise of antisemitism; but they still neglect to talk about Jewish poverty, even when I relentlessly try to call their attention. I also contacted many associations but didn’t get any support from them.
In the film industry, French actress Audrey Dana was the only one who mentioned our work. That’s it. I constantly read personalities complaining on the rise of hate. Yet they never get back to me. Meanwhile, writing op-eds against hate from Beverly Hills or Saint Germain des Prés never reduced racial tensions in the real world.
In the meantime I’m trying to find support elsewhere. Since my documentary is in English and was shot in New York, I thought it would be easier to find support in the US.
Well, 0 US Jewish media mentioned it. Same in Germany, Canada, UK, Poland, Austria…
I don’t exactly understand how anti-semitism can be fought by putting under the carpet the main stereotype on Jews ?
I was lucky enough to have one of the most influential people in the world to tweet about my work: Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter and Medium:
To my big disappointment, this helping hand didn’t open a single door.
We even had Steven Pinker tweeting several times on our work, even in French! :)
After years of struggling, we decided to put our documentary online https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1764350056847610080
We had a small and diverse profile of helpers: Jordan Peterson, Frédéric Taddei, Yanis Varoufakis, Georges Salines, Yves D’Amécourt, Rabbi Wolpe, Guy Kawasaki… And you ?
If you too are fed up of hearing that all Jews got money (which wouldn’t be a crime after all), please do not hesitate to share.
