Adam Brody, who stars as Rabbi Noah Roklov in Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This,” recently made waves with his comments on the situation in Gaza, prompting criticism from a real-life rabbi who was a consultant on the show.
When asked about his stance on Israel and Gaza in a recent interview with GQ, Brody said, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine. It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago.”
Brody’s remarks caught the attention of Rabbi Steve Leder, a Los Angeles-based rabbi who served as a consultant on the first season of “Nobody Wants this.” Leder, who advised production on the show’s portrayal of Judaism and Brody’s role as a rabbi, posted a video to Instagram slamming the actor for his “flippant” remarks.
“The flippancy was adding insult to injury, in my opinion, and needed to be addressed,” Leder told Fox News Digital about why he posted the video to social media. “That is a word and that is a geopolitical situation that warrants anything but flippancy.”
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Leder emphasized that the word “genocide” has a specific definition and that Brody’s use of it to describe what happened in Gaza was inaccurate. He quoted the United Nations’ definition of genocide, which says the term is meant to describe a situation in which specific acts are carried out “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
“Israel’s war is against Hamas. It is not against a nationality, it is not against an ethnicity, it is not a race, it is not against a religion,” Leder told Fox News Digital. “There are many nationalities, ethnicities, races and religious people of various faiths living in Israel, comprising Israel’s neighbors, and Israel has not and would not attack anyone for any of those reasons.”
The rabbi said that his main issue with Brody’s remarks was that the actor presented his opinion as fact.
“This is where I felt that Adam Brody went terribly wrong. He presented an opinion as a fact. And that is a mistake for any of us who are in the public eye,” Leder said.
In the show, Brody plays a rabbi who falls in love with an agnostic woman played by Kristen Bell, which is loosely based on the real-life romance between “Nobody Wants This” creator Erin Foster and her husband, Simon Tikhman.
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Brody is far from the first Jewish celebrity to decry Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.” Hannah Einbinder of “Hacks” and “Broad City” star Ilana Glazer have also been vocal critics of Israel.
Leder told Fox News Digital that “they can say whatever they want as long as they acknowledge it’s an opinion and not a fact.”
The rabbi explained that in Brody’s case he felt compelled to respond because of the role he played in the production of “Nobody Wants This,” which was deeply tied to Jewish representation on screen.
Another element that added to the controversy over Brody’s remarks is the fact that he plays a rabbi and has introduced many to Jewish culture through that role. Leder said it made the situation “doubly heartbreaking.”
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“Actors are not their roles, and we all understand that, they’re acting. But in the minds of the public, in the mind of much of the pubic, it’s sometimes hard to separate those two things,” he said. “And when you have someone who is imagined — and I use that word deliberately — imagined to be an authority presenting opinions as facts, it’s doubly painful.”
Leder said public figures should stay away from discussing topics that they don’t know enough about. In the video he released shortly after Brody’s interview with GQ, Leder said, “If you know nothing about something, you should say nothing.”
