Jews win big at the Academy Awards
From an Adam Sandler cameo to a When Harry Met Sally reunion, here are all the best Jewish moments from the 2025 Oscars.
The Academy Awards is always entertaining. Whether it’s actors falling down stairs (ahem Jennifer Lawrence) or on-stage surprise smooches (we’re looking at you Adrien Brody and Halle Berry), the Oscars is always filled to the brim with laughs and plenty of awkward moments.
So how did the 2025 Oscars fare? Well, the Jews were there in force. Here are all the best Jewish moments from the 2025 Oscars.
1. Adam Sandler’s cameo
Leave it to the Sandman to wear basketball shorts and a hoodie to the Academy Awards. During his monologue, host Conan O’Brien jokingly called out the Jewish comedian for being underdressed, though Adam Sandler was clearly only there for the bit anyway. “You know what, Conan? I like the way I look, ’cause I’m a good person,” Sandler said, pulling the mensch card in his iconic character voice. He then announced that he and his “snazzy gym shorts and fluffy sweatshirt” were leaving, to protestations from the crowd. Before he left, however, he invited everyone in the audience to a game of 5v5 basketball at midnight, mispronounced “Nosferatu” as “Nosterafu” and hugged Timothée Chalamet, uttering, “CHALAMEEEETTTT.”
2. Kieran Culkin’s award season sweep
No, Best Supporting Actor winner Kieran Culkin is not Jewish. But the actor won his first Academy Award for his portrayal of troubled Jewish 30-something Benji Kaplan in Jesse Eisenberg’s Holocaust-generational-trauma dark comedy A Real Pain.
Though Eisenberg was himself nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category, Culkin’s win gave A Real Pain its only Academy Award of the night. As Lior Zaltzman wrote for Kveller, A Real Pain is a “masterful” Holocaust movie, and it is absolutely deserving of more recognition from the Academy than it got. But an Oscar is an Oscar.
Photo: Rich Polk/Penske Media via Getty Images
3. Jewish actors Andrew Garfield and Goldie Hawn present Best Animated Film
Truth be told, this moment between Jewish actors Andrew Garfield and Goldie Hawn was a bit cringe. Garfield was clearly trying to have an authentic, bittersweet chat about how Goldie’s acting gave comfort to his mother while she was dying. And Goldie … really did not match his energy. Still, it’s always nice to see different generations of Jewish talent next to each other. And Garfield was able to have a more wholesome meeting of the minds with The Social Network co-star Jesse Eisenberg at the Vanity Fair Oscars party.
4. Jewish actors June Squibb and ScarJo present Best Makeup and Hairstyling
There were plenty of funny bits during the Oscars. But perhaps the most unexpected and delightful came when Jewish actresses June Squibb and Scarlett Johansson presented the award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
“I got up at 6am just so [makeup artists] could do my makeup in a way that looks like I didn’t actually do my makeup,” ScarJo quipped to the audience. “I got a little makeup done too,” Squibb responded, “And I’m actually being played by Bill Skarsgård right now.” Once again, Squibb proves with her signature deadpan that she isn’t funny in spite of being 95, she’s 95 years old and absolutely hilarious.
5. Ben Stiller presents Best Production Design
As Ben Stiller starts to come into view on stage, the raised platform clearly is having some technical difficulties, and he becomes stuck with only his upper torso and head in view. “Production design,” he begins announcing the awards, eliciting laughter, “it is a field where the slightest miscalculation could lose the trust of the audience and humiliate the performers onscreen.” The star eventually hopped up and down from underneath the stage to try to announce the winner, before finally getting to the microphone.
6. No Other Land wins Best Documentary Feature
The movie was made by a team of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. In their acceptance speech, Adra and Abraham both spoke, and emphasised the hope for future peace and justice, as well as Israeli-Palestinian solidarity.
Co-director and journalist Yuval Abraham began his speech: “We make this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voice is stronger. We see each other. The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end. The Israeli hostages, brutally taken in the crime of October 7, which must be freed. When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal.”
He closed: “Here is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people … Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way.”
7. Daniel Blumberg wins Best Score
Shockingly, The Brutalist, the three-and-a-half-hour long epic about a Holocaust survivor and architect, only nabbed three Oscar wins out of its 10 nominations. But one of the wins went to British-Jewish composer Daniel Blumberg for his majestic and sweeping original score.
“I’ve definitely become more aware of my Jewish heritage as I’ve grown older,” Blumberg told the Jewish Chronicle in 2020. “I was quite dismissive of it before, but I’ve definitely realised it’s a bigger part of me.” In the interview, he added that some of his music is inspired by niggunim and chazanut.
8. Adrien Brody wins Best Actor
Twenty-two years ago, Adrien Brody, then 29, won the Best Actor Academy Award for playing Jewish pianist and Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist. So Brody’s win, this time for portraying fictional architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth, felt like déjà vu in the best way. During his five-minute-and-40-second speech, the longest in Oscar history, Brody thanked his parents, his partner Georgina and the “real László Tóth”, aka Jewish production designer Judy Becker.
“I’m here once again,” Brody told the crowd, “to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of antisemitism and racism and of othering, and I … pray for a healthier and happier and a more inclusive world, and I believe if the past can teach us anything, it’s a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.”
9. Mikey Madison wins Best Actress
It was clearly Anora’s night, with the Sean Baker film taking home five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing and, of course, Best Actress for Mikey Madison.
Looking stunning in a pink-and-black Dior gown, the Jewish actress thanked her family (including twin brother Miles), Sean Baker, the cast, the Brighton Beach community and, most notably, the sex worker community. “I will continue to support and be an ally. All of the incredible people, the women, that I’ve had the privilege of meeting from that community has been one of the highlights of this entire incredible experience,” she said.
Though Anora is not explicitly Jewish, the movie takes place in the extremely Russian-Jewish New York neighbourhood of Brighton Beach and features both Madison and Russian Jewish actor Mark Edelshteyn.
10. The When Harry Met Sally reunion
Meg Ryan and Jewish comedian Billy Crystal entered the stage to Harry Connick Jr.’s It Had to Be You and exchanged some playful banter about Crystal who “used to work here” in reference to the fact that he has hosted the Oscars nine times. When Ryan said they should cut to the chase, Crystal nodded to the famous line from the movie: “Because when you have a chance of being an Oscar winner for the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
Hey Alma!
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