Hollywood's Jews Split Over Ruffalo
Paramount says his Gaza post traded in antisemitic tropes.
Mark Ruffalo called Paramount's incoming owner an "oligarch" running "an apartheid system of oppression" in Gaza. Paramount said the post traded in antisemitic tropes: "Jewish wealth, media control, secret technology and sinister global power." About 170 Hollywood figures, Joel Coen and Joaquin Phoenix included, defended him. 1
Zohran Mamdani's Office of Mass Engagement has a Crown Heights Hasid running constituent services. Uri Fraenkel, a career city civil servant, blew the shofar at a Borough Park Judaica shop with the mayor ahead of the High Holidays. A local rabbi called him "a very humble guy... very genuine." 2
Sixty to seventy members of a Spanish ultranationalist group threw Nazi salutes at a Madrid anti-migration rally. Núcleo Nacional's spokesperson called it a tribute "to our ancestors"; the group has separately blamed "the international Jewish-American financial elite" for exploiting Spain. Spain's Jewish federation counted over 200 antisemitic incidents there last year. 3
Hero: Dennis Baum. The AfD's leading candidate in Sunday's Saxony-Anhalt election, Ulrich Siegmund, built his campaign around nostalgia for Simson mopeds, a brand Baum's Jewish family founded before the Nazis seized it. Baum's response: "We find any association with the AfD repulsive and an insult to our family name." He called the party antisemitic outright. 4
Villain: Hans-Thomas Tillschneider. Asked about the Nazi era ahead of that same election, in a state home to about 1,100 Jews, the AfD's deputy chairman said: "All of that happened a long time ago and no longer affects us in the here and now." His party polls near 40%, enough for an outright majority if smaller rivals miss the threshold. 4
Today is 24 Elul, a week before Rosh Hashanah. Sixty-one years ago this week, Germany opened the trial of SS guards who ran the Sobibor death camp, the first camp built for one purpose: killing on arrival. 56
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