\n<\/p>\n
Jerry Seinfeld became a mic-cradling, cereal-eating, \u201cdid-you-ever-notice\u201d-ing avatar of American Jewish life with a brazenly shrugging persona: a merry indifference to weighty material as a comedian and in his megahit TV show about nothing, as petty and apolitical as he seemed to be.<\/p>\n
Now \u2014 off-camera, at least \u2014 Mr. Seinfeld appears to have reached his post-nothing period.<\/p>\n
Since the attacks of Oct. 7 in Israel, and through their bloody and volatile aftermath in Gaza, Mr. Seinfeld, 70, has emerged as a strikingly public voice against antisemitism and in support of Jews in Israel and the United States, edging warily toward a more forward-facing advocacy role than he ever seemed to seek across his decades of fame.<\/p>\n
He has shared reflections about life on a kibbutz in his teens, and in December traveled to Tel Aviv to meet with hostages\u2019 families, soberly recounting<\/a> afterward the missile attack that greeted him during the trip.<\/p>\n He has participated, to a point, in the kind of celebrity activism with which few associate him \u2014 letter-signing campaigns<\/a>, earnest messages<\/a> on social media<\/a> \u2014 answering simply<\/a> recently when asked about the motivation for his visit to Israel: \u201cI\u2019m Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And as some American cities and college campuses simmer with conflict over the Middle East crisis and Israel\u2019s military response, Mr. Seinfeld has faced a measure of public scorn that he has rarely courted as a breakfast-obsessed comedian, intensified by the more vocal advocacy of his wife, Jessica, a cookbook author.<\/p>\n This week, as the couple and their children appeared together at the premiere<\/a> of Mr. Seinfeld\u2019s new movie (\u201cUnfrosted,\u201d about Pop-Tarts), Ms. Seinfeld attracted attention for another reason: She promoted on Instagram<\/a>, and said she had helped bankroll, a counterprotest at the University of California, Los Angeles, where clashes with pro-Palestinian demonstrators have turned violent.<\/p>\n Among some activists on that side of the divide, disdain for the Seinfelds had been building for months.<\/p>\n \u201cGenocide supporter!\u201d protesters shouted at Mr. Seinfeld on Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side in February, as he left a \u201cState of World Jewry\u201d address given by Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion editor and writer whose media company, The Free Press, has been championed<\/a> by Ms. Seinfeld.<\/p>\n In some ways, the couple\u2019s choices since Oct. 7 reflect the tensions tugging at many American families in this polarized moment, as they negotiate the limits of how much to say and do about their political beliefs in the open.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A representative for Mr. Seinfeld referred an inquiry to Hindy Poupko, an executive at UJA-Federation of New York who knows Ms. Seinfeld through Jewish philanthropic work. \u201cThe vast majority of New York Jews have a strong emotional connection to Israel,\u201d Ms. Poupko said. Seeing Mr. Seinfeld visit the families of hostages in Israel, she added, \u201chas been an incredibly powerful source of comfort to our community.\u201d<\/p>\n Yosi Shnaider, a relative of several hostages who met with the Seinfelds in Israel in December and shared his family\u2019s story, recalled Mr. Seinfeld as supportive and reserved, listening more than he spoke.<\/p>\n \u201cI am putting myself in his place,\u201d Mr. Shnaider said in an interview, adding that Mr. Seinfeld might not have known \u201cexactly what to ask.\u201d \u201cHis wife asked me what she can do. I told them I just want them to keep the story alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Seinfeld, who is scheduled to deliver a commencement address at Duke University<\/a> this month, has tended to be private about his personal beliefs, onstage and otherwise. His namesake television show generally banished political introspection. His standup act has favored proudly inessential observations about driving, dating and air travel \u2014 workaday zingers to which citizens of all political stripes are equally vulnerable.<\/p>\n Since \u201cSeinfeld,\u201d he has spoken most expansively about the art of comedy itself, framing it as a morally neutral pursuit whose highest aim is to make people laugh. (Mr. Seinfeld recently made headlines for suggesting<\/a> in an interview with The New Yorker that \u201cthe extreme left and P.C. crap\u201d had hampered comedy.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The shifts in Mr. Seinfeld\u2019s public bearing after Oct. 7 have been modest, if still perceptible. He remains far less outspoken on the subject than other celebrities and comedians, such as Amy Schumer<\/a>. But for a figure long held up, like few others in entertainment, as a generational narrator of the American Jewish experience, even a cautious exploration of his identity has been notable.<\/p>\n In one recent interview<\/a> \u2014 part of a promotional tour for the Pop-Tarts movie \u2014 Mr. Seinfeld said he felt \u201cvery close to the struggle of being Jewish in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n He has also stopped himself short of full-scale sermonizing.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t preach about it,\u201d he told GQ<\/a> last month. \u201cI have my personal feelings about it that I discuss privately. It\u2019s not part of what I can do comedically, but my feelings are very strong.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Seinfeld\u2019s views of Israel seem to echo those of many Jews his age. Growing up on Long Island, he attended Hebrew school and became a bar mitzvah the year he turned 13, a representative confirmed. That was <\/strong>the year of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, which prompted a sea change in American Jewish consciousness, establishing support for Israel as a pillar of American Jewish life.<\/p>\n By contrast, American Jews who came of age since the 1980s or 1990s have not known firsthand an Israel that was a regional underdog. And the youngest American Jews, a predominantly progressive cohort, may only remember an Israel led by increasingly right-wing governments under Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been the prime minister nearly without interruption for the past 15 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Leonard Saxe, a professor of Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, said Mr. Seinfeld\u2019s instinctive solidarity toward Israel was typical for their generation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe grew up worrying about Israel and its survival,\u201d Mr. Saxe said, \u201cand seeing Israel as the refuge for Jews from around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Some data points, even before Oct. 7, have suggested a deeper interest from Mr. Seinfeld in his Jewish identity.<\/p>\n When an Instagram post<\/a> from Ms. Seinfeld, advising followers on how to talk about antisemitism, went viral in 2022, Mr. Seinfeld reposted the message (\u201cI support my Jewish friends and the Jewish people\u201d) and saluted<\/a> its \u201cnonaggressive\u201d simplicity and power.<\/p>\n But for some with warm memories of \u201cSeinfeld\u201d \u2014 and searing opposition to the Israeli response to Oct. 7 \u2014 the comedian\u2019s actions since that day have been disappointing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Wajahat Ali, a writer and commentator who has been sharply critical of the Israeli government and Hamas, suggested that Mr. Seinfeld\u2019s support for Israel carried more weight given his prior status as a \u201cfamously apolitical man who couldn\u2019t muster any concern or care about what was happening in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat was part of his aesthetic,\u201d Mr. Ali said. But now, he added, Mr. Seinfeld had chosen to speak up as a wildly affluent man from \u201ca cocoon of privilege\u201d amid \u201ca brutal war\u201d he does not condemn.<\/p>\n Surely, Mr. Seinfeld sees it differently. His public comments have largely avoided geopolitical specifics, dwelling little on the choices of the Netanyahu government or prospective conditions for a cease-fire.<\/p>\n And he can still sound hesitant even in recent discussions about the Jewishness of \u201cSeinfeld\u201d \u2014 which an NBC executive once described as \u201ctoo New York, too Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n