Why are there no Jews in the cast? - The Dovekeepers (2015) Discussion

This is about Jews; why are there no Jewish actors cast in this project?

I sure there are some among the cast. They certainly weren't left out by design!

Wouldn't it give it some authenticity if there were? This pisses me off.

I never understood this authenticity argument when people nit-pick trivial details about an actor's physical attributes when talking about PROFESSIONALS THAT PRETEND TO BE OTHER PEOPLE FOR A LIVING.

I don't want you to hold me
I want you to pray
This is bigger than us...

-White Lies

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[–] Lets_talk_about_that 9 years ago

Because it's being produced by uber-Christians Roma Downey and Mark Burnett.

In the same way many Christians love to downplay the Jewishness of the Bible & Jesus, they downplay the Jewishness of the story of Masada, so that it's no longer a Jewish story, but rather a universal story - where "God's people" become a symbol for "all of humanity" or even "all believing Christians."

www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-j-winograd/PETA-KILLS-PUPPIES-KITTENS_b_ 2979220.html

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[–] wmackirdy 9 years ago

Roma Downey is not an "uber-Christian" - she is a New Age Roman Catholic. Just saying!

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[–] demelzabunny 9 years ago

Same thing!

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[–] BertoBoy 9 years ago

Oooh, come the *beep* off it! First of all it is clearly a story about Jews, so it's not like they are changing the ethnicity or locale of the novel or even glorifying the Romans of the time. Do you forget Hollywood is run by mostly people of Jewish ancestry? The heroes in the story are Jews. I once casually met Roma Downey and a more nice, unassuming person I could not have met, therefore it is absolutely preposterous to suggest that she and her co-producers would deliberately cast non-Jewish actors in order to impose an Anti-Semitic agenda, which is basically what this ridiculous thread seems to be all about.
I am Mexican-American and found the whole up-in-arms to-do about the cast of "The House of The Spirits", with the only Hispanic actors playing a prostitute and a peasant equally risible.
People getting upset about such trivial points and details a such need to check themselves and stop projecting they're own senses of inadequacies.

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[–] elysejfactor 9 years ago

Jews.are G-d's chosen people because it is only to Jews that G-d literally revealed himsel. You need to brush up on your bible. This is not something that we made up. For the sake of accuracy, according to the latest statistics, Jews comprise 2 percent of the worlds population and also 2 percent of the US population. Live with it!

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[–] BertoBoy 9 years ago

WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING???? GOD B L E S S ISRAEL AND THE JEWSIH PEOPLE! YOU COMPLETELY MISCOUNSTRUED WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY, which is that lame ass whining about there being no Jews in the cast as if it was some kind of deliberate conspiracy, for *beep* sakes. And that other moron who said that it was because of Roma Downey being whatever type of catholic they said she was. Bottom line, this is a beautiful story and whoever is telling it or portraying should not matter at all whatsoever in the least.
Again you just had to make it about some kind of anti Jew thing which that was not at all whatsoever in the least what my point was. So spare me the 'live with it' lame ass remark at the end. Growing up Baptist in Mexico we had nothing but utmost respect and admiration for the Jewish populace. Personally, for instance, "Fiddler on the Roof" is still a much beloved film my family and I enjoyed since my childhood, then "Yentl" in the 80s. I feel the need and uncomfortable trying-to-hard feeling to clarify myself before I'm deemed racist.
You seem to have some self esteem issues you need toaort before geting incredibly defensive.
Incidentally I am simultaneously watching the show, enjoying it and not once going "Oh well, this is not authentic. Josephus is really Australian, Shirah Chilean, Yael a cheesehead from Milwaukee, Amram, gasp!, a Mexican, his father Maltese and Eleazar, omg! an Egyptian! Great casting, regardless of their ethnicity. End of story.

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[–] stepstone 9 years ago

Ola, BertoBoy

An article in Atlantic Monthly, I think July 1999, was about a group of people in Mexico and the American Southwest who call themselves a secret tribe of Lost Jews, who immigrated to America after the Inquisition.

The author provided evidence that most of these people were descended from an 1800's cult you might call 7th-Day Pentecostal.

I re-read the article only last summer, but it's lost in the avalanche of papers & things I've been going through since my Mother died. The article was backed with a picture of the inside of an Auschwitz gas chamber.

Stepstone

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[–] tmustafa 9 years ago

Jews are "God's Chosen People?" Now, that sounds bigoted. Of the billions of mankind, God has a special affinity for only a mere less than 1% of the total human populace, and little-to-no regard towards the other 99.9% of His creation?

It sounds eerily simliar to "the Master Race" ideology.

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[–] Randy-144 9 years ago

According to the Tanakh, which is what the Christian Church calls the Old Testament, it was God's plan to send to earth the Messiah to take the sins of mankind upon himself so that whosoever believes that Christ Jesus is the Messiah (the Promised One) will receive salvation and enter Heaven after death. God chose the Jews as the nation that would produce the Messiah. In that sense they are the Chosen People.

The following link answers the question, "What does it mean that the Jews are God’s chosen people?"
http://www.gotquestions.org/Gods-chosen-people.html

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[–] sandirs1 9 years ago

Tanakh is what the JEWISH people call the book the CHRISTIANS call "THE OLD TESTAMENT." It's a HEBREW ANAGRAM for the three main sections of Tanach (or Tanakh, if you prefer.

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[–] Randy-144 9 years ago

I sit corrected (in front of my computer screen). 
Usually I catch my errors before I hit the Post Reply button but this time I missed.

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[–] Tyrione 9 years ago

Who cares? The entire Bible is a plagiarism of other stronger and richer mythologies both the Jews and Christians adapted.

Islam is all that and the bastardization of Arabian and Zoroastrian mythologies, plus a major rebasing of Egyptology, Hittite, Babylonian and Assyrian Mythology.

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[–] stepstone 9 years ago

I just read in TV Guide: "AD," also Roma Downey-produced, made 2 of the
Apostles Black (John, & Philip the Evangelist), & Mary Magdalene is Chinese! I guess I could see that happening, historically. Since, to coin more cliché & possibly inaccurate genetic history, Jews are classed by some as Asians, and there are the Ethiopian Jews. Supposedly Moses' wife Zipporah was African. According to, I think, an old National Geographic article. Or a PBS special.

Downey's husband Mark Burnette said,

"The Crucifixion of Jesus led to the Jewish war with Rome, the fall of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the temple."

Seems a Non-Sequitir to me. The Romans were making war because, like Napoleon or Der Kaiser or Alexander the Great, they wanted land, power, & slaves. This started centuries before Jesus was born. The Romans attacked many, many non-Jewish countries too.

So, maybe I'll see you on the AD forum. Stepstone

The reason all this matters: Holocaust, Spanish Inquisition, Pogroms. The dead children at the Kosher grocery in France, this January. But this was supposed to be only about a TV show. PEACE & Feng Shui on Earth

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[–] elysejfactor 9 years ago

This is a singularly Jewish tragedy and victory in that the Jews refused to give in to the Romans. However, I don't see one Jewish name in the cast. It doesn't seem like an accident. It seems as though the producers went out of their way NOT to cast a Jewish actor. SHAME ON THEM! This is one miniseries I won't be watching. I have been well-educated about what happened at Masada and had the great privilege to visit the ruins myself. I don't need some TV melodrama to teach me my history.

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[–] NewBeginnings16 9 years ago

Cote de Pablo is a Catholic from Chile who portrayed an Israeli Jew for 8 years on NCIS.

If the production hired no or just a few Jews to portray Jews it's indeed troubling.

Sheldon: If you were a cat, I'd have brought you a lasagna.

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[–] jabell 9 years ago

I was going to say, Cote de Pablo isn't a Jew, but she played one on tv!

Boo Hoo! Let me wipe away the tears with my PLASTIC hand!--Lindsey McDonald (Angel)

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[–] elysejfactor 9 years ago

To NavyResGirl

I find your comment to be an indecipherable nonseqeutor. I loved Cote de Pablo's portrayal of Ziva and feel that NCIS is worse for her absence. However, I don't know what this has to do with the fact that no featured roles are being portrayed by Jewish actors. I can't even tell whether or not you find this problematic. I certainly do and I believe the producers went out of their way not to hire Jews. I guess Downey and Burnett forgot Jesus was a Jew. Kind of hard to do when you think about it.

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[–] BertramWilberforceWooster 9 years ago

If you expected a response from NRG, you might want to reply directly to her.

--
Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.

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[–] NewBeginnings16 9 years ago

Sorry for the delay, elsy.

Yes, I find it very problematic that Downey/Burnett didn't find Jewish actors to play Jewish characters. It smacks of antisemitism on the parts of the people producing and casting.

Sheldon: If you were a cat, I'd have brought you a lasagna.

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[–] BertramWilberforceWooster 9 years ago

Since I am one of "these people", yes, I have. They're a delight.

--
Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.

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[–] angelosdaughter 9 years ago

You can't always tell by the name who is Jewish and who isn't. Many actors change their names.
For example, Issur Danielovich became Kirk Douglas.

I could be a morning person if morning happened at noon.

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[–] elysejfactor 9 years ago

You are so ignorant and antiSemitic that Jesus would becdisgusted by you. If you really knew your bible, you would know, as all right minded people do that Jesus was born and raises a Jew, so when you show your obvious scorn for Jews, you are showing hatred of Jesus and his heritage. Additionally, it has been my experience that Jew haters like yourself are quite inferior intellectually and are actually jealous. You certainly fit the bill to a tee when it comes to intellectual inferiority.

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[–] jagmarky 9 years ago

Never heard of someone talk about religion as if it's a race or visible in any matter. What difference does it make? Religion has no physical appearance. Such ignorance.

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[–] Lets_talk_about_that 9 years ago

Jews are a PEOPLE who happen to have their own ancestral religious traditions. Any person born of a Jewish mother is a member of the Jewish PEOPLE, but that person might not be religious. It is much more than a religion, it is a nation/population (unlike Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.)

You are the ignorant one.

www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-j-winograd/PETA-KILLS-PUPPIES-KITTENS_b_2979220.html

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[–] pksoze22 9 years ago

Even if the cast was all Jewish, it wouldn't be terribly accurate. The Jews of that time didn't look like Israelis today, they would have looked more like gasp Muslims in the Middle East.

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[–] Lets_talk_about_that 9 years ago

The Israelis you are referring to as 'not looking Middle Eastern' are Ashkenazi Jews from Europe.
There are plenty of Mizrachi Jews in Israel who do look Middle Eastern.
Also, many Palestinians and Lebanese people have very fair features & do not look very Middle Eastern either.

www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-j-winograd/PETA-KILLS-PUPPIES-KITTENS_b_2979220.html

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[–] lauriegonzalez11 9 years ago

These are actors. A racial, ethnic or spiritual background has no bearing on their ability to act and has nothing to do with "authenticity". What do you think happens when a SciFi show is made, do they get real aliens to play the part so it will be more authentic?

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