In my household, the 25th of December is dedicated to every holiday movie Netflix has to offer, especially the cheesy, guy-gets-the-girl romcoms. It’s our tradition and I’m a sucker for a running-through-the-airport scene. But there’s always something missing.

Jews.

All the festive movies are Christmas or Easter movies. In Netflix’s ‘holiday’ catalogue there are no Hanukkah movies or movies with Jewish protagonists. Sure, there’s the occasional Hanukkiah in the background, but rarely any substantial or particularly positive representation.

I wish this was a new issue or a victimless crime, but no such luck.

The beginning of antisemitic tropes

To understand current antisemitic tropes in media, you need to understand antisemitism in the Middle Ages.

Judaism believes that the Messiah is someone who will return all Jews to our homeland of Israel and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Since Jesus did not address either of those requirements, Judaism does not regard him as the Messiah.

This threatened the Church because it delegitimised it. During the Middle Ages, the Church feared that if Christians saw Jewish people thriving, they would convert and there would be fewer donations to the Church.

The tropes that Jews are greedy, amoral, manipulative and predatory arise from the lies spread by the Church to maintain dominion over its subjects.

In 1144, a 12-year-old boy named William was found murdered in Norwich, England. A monk, Thomas of Monmouth, claimed local Jews had tortured and murdered him to use in their matzah dough. This was an entirely baseless accusation that established the idea that our religious practices were innately predatory.

This became known as the “blood libel” and led to pogroms – the violent, sometimes state-sponsored murder, rape and mutilation of Jews and destruction of Jewish property.

During the Middle Ages, the Black Death killed between 30 to 50% of Europe’s population. Jews were not as susceptible to bubonic plague as the rest of the population (possibly for genetic reasons), which led to non-Jews accusing us of poisoning brooks, wells and even the air in a ploy to “kill all Christians”.

Antisemitism in Disney and Shakespeare

The word ‘shylock’ means someone who lends money at excessive interest rates. It’s also Shakespeare’s only main Jewish character. In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a money-lender (shocker).

Also, in Disney’s 101-year history, there has only been one Jewish princess and she’s in exactly three episodes of the Elena of Avalor series.

Current Jewish representation (the bad and the ugly)

Current Jewish characters mostly fall under three categories; JAPs; comedically convenient Jews; and outright douches. It’s the same stereotypes of the Middle Ages, just more subtle.

JAPs. Jewish American Princess/Prince. Ben Gross (Never Have I Ever) and Gretchen Wieners (Mean Girls). They are ungodly rich (and you know it too), casually cruel and their first line is probably about a Hanukkah gift. How original, a wealthy Jew who likes to flaunt their parents’ money.

Comedically convenient Jew. Ross Geller (Friends) and Howard Wollowitz (Big Bang Theory). Their mention of their overbearing Jewish mothers is enough to trigger the laughing track. They can even make a whole episode on the miracle of Hanukkah while wearing an armadillo costume (while still celebrating Christmas), like Ross in Friends. Apparently, our survival is just one more joke writers can weave into the story.

Outright douche of a Jew. Max (from the 2022 Netflix movie Do Revenge). The boyfriend leaks a sexually explicit video of the protagonist and manipulates the entire school into thinking he is the victim. And he just so happens to be wearing a Star of David necklace.

It sickens me that my people are represented as amoral misogynists who relish betraying those who trust them, just like we were portrayed in the Middle Ages. All these archetypes are caricatures. They are not true Jewish representation. They are not rooted in reality, they are rooted in antisemitism.

Around 32% of Jews in the US earn a household income of below $50,000, with around 45% of Jewish children living in impoverished or near impoverished households. And those Jews who are well-off often choose to use their wealth for charitable causes, with half of Forbes’s 2023 “most generous givers” being Jewish.

On the list are George Soros, who gave $300m to racial justice organisations and humanitarian aid in Ukraine, and Michael Bloomberg, who donated $1.7bn to charter schools, clean energy and fighting heart disease.

So much more than tragedy

The Holocaust was the most tragic moment in Jewish history in which six million lives were stolen for the ‘crime’ of being Jewish. Words cannot describe the horror and they never will. But the story must be retold, so no one will die without knowing the price of ignorance.

But Am Yisrael Chai, the Jewish people lived. We survived, we are broken and bruised; the wounds will never heal, but we are standing. There is so much more to our story and lives than tragedy. So why the hell are so many Jewish movies about the Holocaust?

Jewish people deserve to see our love and light celebrated on the silver screen, or at the very least on the Netflix catalogue. I want to see little kids covering their eyes as they welcome Shabbat. The stolen glances and grins over the Seder. I want to see the guy holding his kippah as he runs through the airport to get the girl.

We are a people filled with love and pride for our culture and each other. We are not villains, we are human, so portray us as such.