Proud activists

Becoming 10 per cent more Jewish

Josh Gad, Ginnifer Goodwin and Marlee Matlin sit down with Jonah Platt for an episode of his podcast Being Jewish to chat all things advocacy, family and heritage.

Photos: Instagram @beingjewishpodcast
Photos: Instagram @beingjewishpodcast

When October 7 happened, Ginnifer Goodwin took the advice of columnist, journalist, and editor Bret Louis Stephens to become 10 per cent more Jewish. But she multiplied it by 100,000.

The actress, who acknowledged that many people didn’t even know she was Jewish, said she is one million per cent more Jewish now than she ever has been.

Goodwin, alongside Josh Gad and Marlee Matlin, was speaking on Jonah Platt’s podcast, Being Jewish.

The podcast, which launched in August 2024, shares diverse Jewish stories from personalities, some of whom aren’t necessarily known for their connection to Judaism. When it launched, Platt told Kveller that his aim was to show the full spectrum of what being Jewish really is.

He wants to “help people, empower them to take more ownership of their Jewish pride, to help Jews and non-Jews understand how different being Jewish can look for people. I see conflicts within the community on that, and I see misunderstanding from outside the community on that.”

Platt’s guests have included Skylar Astin, Montana Tucker, Jerusalem’s then deputy mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan-Nahoum and in one of his most recent episodes, Goodwin, Gad and Matlin.

During the live recording of the episode, Platt jumped right into the heavy stuff, asking the trio about their experiences post-October 7. It’s when Goodwin, who was raised in an interfaith home in the South, shared that she had to have some heavy conversations with her husband. And since then, she has fully embraced her Judaism.

“We talked about what if I lose my career over this. What if I become some kind of pariah because I am standing up for us? And it came down to yeah, okay, we would be okay if we lost the house and had to pull the kids out from school and all of these things. Because the truth is, there’s only one way this goes, where I can sleep at night, and that’s the way where I not only embrace Judaism, but I fight for the continuation of our people, and I educate and I celebrate and I advocate,” she said. “I’m going to be loud and proud. Because I feel like our job as public figures is to give permission and to show we can take this so you can take this too, and it’s part of stepping out into the community and saying ‘I’m here. Come with me. We’re going to do this together. This is a team sport. And we all need each other to continue’.”

Goodwin explained that they have since enrolled her children in Hebrew school, her eldest is studying for his bar mitzvah, the family now celebrates Shabbat and they have plans to go to Israel. She also acknowledged that she has gotten far more jobs in the past year than she has throughout the past 10 years, in spite of – or perhaps because of – her advocacy and outspokenness.

“Because the truth is, there’s only one way this goes, where I can sleep at night, and that’s the way where I not only embrace Judaism, but I fight for the continuation of our people, and I educate and I celebrate and I advocate” Ginnifer Goodwin

When sharing what his life was like in the immediate aftermath of October 7, Josh Gad – who many would know thanks to the adorable Olaf in Frozen – said he was scared to leave his apartment.

“I had to have security because I did the thing you’re not supposed to do, which was be Jewish, and it was tough,” Gad shared. “I made one post after October 7, which is, ‘my heart breaks for the families’. And it’s not a political post, that is not a post that should have any controversy. And I was met with death threats. I was met with rabid antisemitism. And I called it out. I said, this is insanity, the fact that you are making me feel ashamed of giving condolences for people being massacred, that’s a point of no return; that’s a problem. And I felt really uncomfortable in my skin, and I felt scared, and I felt really, really sad that I had to feel those things. My grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and they always said, ‘never forget’. And I just didn’t realise that the warning meant, ‘because it could happen in your lifetime’.”

For Marlee Matlin, who was the youngest and first deaf actor to receive an Oscar at just 21 years old, she had to take a break from social media for a couple of days to process the hate she received when she posted about the massacre.

“The comments were so hateful, so full of words that I couldn’t even process or look at after the first time. I felt just disgusted. [They] upset that my kids who saw the same comments and I wanted to sit and have a conversation, but probably for the first time, I just had no words,” she recalled.

Despite all the hate the trio has experienced, they continue to be ‘loud and proud’ Jews, advocating for our community and for future generations, including their children.

For Gad, it harks back to his grandparents who both survived the Holocaust.

“They survived so I could live, and I don’t take that for granted. It’s why I speak out. It’s why I speak up,” he told Platt and the audience. “Never again kind of means now, and I wasn’t prepared for that. I don’t want this job. I don’t want to have to talk to people about why they shouldn’t be a**eholes. It shouldn’t be hard. But it is. And I hear my grandparents in the back of my head every day saying, ‘keep going’. And for my own kids, it’s more important than ever. I have a surviving aunt who’s 97 years old, who lives in New Jersey, and she wakes up and she says, ‘it’s happening again, isn’t it?’. And I want to defend her, and I want to defend everyone else who shouldn’t have to feel that way, who shouldn’t feel that there is this hate, this naivete, this ignorance. That’s my battle. And I’m wearing it wearily but proudly.”

Gad also spoke about the fact that many people in Hollywood have stayed silent on the Jewish plight, calling it “tough”.

“It’s with the same people I advocate for and with and alongside. It’s heartbreaking to stand with others firmly and unequivocally, and then hear their silence when it’s your turn,” he said, explaining that this silence is why he has become an ‘active activist’.

“It comes back to the fact that nobody spoke out for my grandparents. Their lives were taken from them, they were forced into compounds, ghettos with barbed wire fences, and stripped of their jobs, stripped of their identities, and then stripped of their families, stripped of their clothing, stripped of their hair, stripped of their legacy, and taken to barbaric camps, where at best you would starve and leave with maybe one or two family members, and at worst, it would be the end of your name. That was my legacy. That happened two generations ago, and I’m not going to sit here and f***ing let that happen again,” he said to applause. “That’s why I speak out, because I have a microphone, because I have a platform, because I know the consequences of not speaking out.

“I had to have security because I did the thing you’re not supposed to do, which was be Jewish, and it was tough” Josh Gad

Gad said he also does it because he knows the community – like Goodwin and Matlin – is there alongside him, revealing that he gets a lot of people coming up to him in the street to thank him for his activism. “It makes me sad that people need to thank you. Because you shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to be doing this, but I promise to keep doing it as long as I can and as long as I have to.”

Goodwin explained a big reason why she continues to speak out is because of a video that she took part in very soon after October 7, taking on the voice of a hostage – Raz Asher, a four-year-old who was taken captive with her mother Doron and sister Aviv. At first Goodwin refused to take part saying her fear was that it would appear opportunistic, that it would do more harm than good. But then she was told that there was a chance that Raz’s family would see that people weren’t forgetting her, that people are listening.

“I was like, I’m in whatever you need. And I did learn that I had to turn my comments off of social media because that’s not a healthy place for discourse,” she said, explaining that she felt the sentiment that ‘if you can reach one person in the audience, just one person, then you’re doing G-d’s work’.

“So my audience was really just her family. It was just like, maybe someone in her family will feel like someone is listening from the other side of the planet,” Goodwin said.

Aside from the heavy conversations around October 7 and their advocacy work, Gad, Goodwin and Matlin also spoke about their childhoods, their Jewish and interfaith marriages, their kids and even their favourite Jewish Holidays and words – Pesach and chutzpah for Gad, Pesach and schmuck for Goodwin, and Chanukah and oi vey for Matlin – as well as whether they rip or slice the challah (they all rip).

As for advice or inspiration for the audience, Gad told everyone to call their mother, Matlin told everyone to be kind and Goodwin simply told everyone to go 10 per cent more Jewish.

Challenge accepted!

You can listen to the full episode and previous episodes of Being Jewish wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the full recording below. 

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