Highlights
- Rabbi Steve Leder, a Season 1 consultant on Nobody Wants This, called Adam Brody a ‘relatively ignorant Jew.’
- Brody told GQ he considers the war in Gaza a genocide, a heavily disputed claim, and said he wants a free Palestine.
- Leder said there is no genocide in Gaza and told Brody to say nothing about topics he knows nothing about.
Rabbi Steve Leder, who consulted on Season 1 of Nobody Wants This, posted an Instagram video addressed directly to star Adam Brody, criticizing the actor’s recent comments to GQ about the war in Gaza.
“You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew,” Leder said in the clip.
Brody’s remarks came when GQ asked if he wanted to go on record about Gaza.
“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide,” the actor said.
He continued, “Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”
Brody also said, “It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery,” adding that the situation seemed to be reaching a breaking point that should have come much earlier.
He said he had shared his views privately but had not spoken much about them publicly. He also said he hoped a future presidential administration would change policies he believes are making things worse.
Brody presented his candor as part of the job. “I just answer the questions I’m asked,” he said.
He told GQ he has “never ducked a question.”
Leder is the former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. He started his video by reminding Brody of their work together.
He said his role was to ensure Brody’s character “was authentic.”
Then he turned to the interview. Leder argued that Brody had misused the word “genocide.” He said no genocide is taking place in Gaza and that Brody had ignored genocides happening in other countries.
He also objected to Brody’s tone. He compared the actor’s phrasing to “asking for a table for two at Craig’s,” and called that flippancy disgusting.
Leder ended with what he called more technical advice: “If you know nothing about something, you should say nothing about it.”
Others joined the criticism. Rabbi Yaakov Menken of the Coalition for Jewish Values told Fox News Digital that “only a bigot would call the effort to free those hostages ‘genocide.'”
The Israeli-American Council also condemned the actor’s statement and called it ignorant and harmful.
Brody’s own words in GQ point to a reckoning of a different kind. He said recent years have exposed beliefs among his Hollywood peers that “I was ignorant to, and then disheartened by.”
Brody has said before that his bar mitzvah left little lasting impression on him.
The genocide accusation remains heavily disputed. At the UN last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it the biggest lie of the century. He argued that Israel had prevented genocide and that Hamas used civilians as shields.
Outside that same gathering, about 100 people were arrested while protesting Netanyahu’s arrival. Several of Brody’s Hollywood peers were among them.
The dispute comes just before Season 3 of Nobody Wants This premieres Oct. 22 on Netflix. Brody returns as Rabbi Noah Roklov, opposite Kristen Bell.
