www.thejc.com Open in urlscan Pro
45.60.155.24  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

POST /Search

<form method="post" action="/Search">
  <input type="submit" value="">
  <input name="searchPhrase" type="text" placeholder="What do you need to search?">
  <a href="#"><img onerror="this.src = '/img/closeicon.svg';this.onerror=''" src="/img/closeicon.svg" alt="closeicon" loading="lazy"></a>
</form>

POST /lets-talk/all/oppenheimer-liked-to-pretend-he-wasnt-jewish-like-the-film-1rsH6pz4EC1yDIku5F1azk

<form method="post" id="newsletter-form" action="/lets-talk/all/oppenheimer-liked-to-pretend-he-wasnt-jewish-like-the-film-1rsH6pz4EC1yDIku5F1azk">
  <div class="form-group">
    <span>EMAIL ADDRESS *</span>
    <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="Your email" required="">
  </div>
  <button type="submit">Sign up here</button>
</form>

Text Content

THIS SITE USES COOKIES TO STORE INFORMATION ON YOUR COMPUTER.

We and select companies use cookies to store and retrieve information from your
browser. This information may be about you, your preferences or your device and
is mostly used to make the site work as you expect. While the information does
not usually directly identify you, details such as the device, operating system
and type of browser may be considered personal data as it helps to create a more
personalised web experience.

You can review how this information is used and customise your consent
preferences for cookies or for any other identifying technology below by either
purpose, feature or third party vendor.

Certain vendors may process personal data on the basis of legitimate interests
to offer certain services. You have the right to object to the processing of
data in this manner and can do so on an individual basis or globally by clicking
"Reject All". Please refer to the vendor tab for more details. You may freely
change your preferences at any time by clicking the Cookie Control icon.

The aforementioned personalised advertising services adhere to the IAB
Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF)(Opens in a new window)

Accept AllReject All

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How data is usedThird party vendors

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


PURPOSES

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


STORE AND/OR ACCESS INFORMATION ON A DEVICE



Vendors can:

* Store and access information on the device such as cookies and device
identifiers presented to a user.



purpose 0OnOff

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SELECT BASIC ADS



To do basic ad selection vendors can:

* Use real-time information about the context in which the ad will be shown, to
show the ad, including information about the content and the device, such as:
device type and capabilities, user agent, URL, IP address

* Use a user’s non-precise geolocation data

* Control the frequency of ads shown to a user.

* Sequence the order in which ads are shown to a user.

* Prevent an ad from serving in an unsuitable editorial (brand-unsafe) context

Vendors cannot:

* Create a personalised ads profile using this information for the selection of
future ads without a separate legal basis to create a personalised ads profile.

* N.B. Non-precise means only an approximate location involving at least a
radius of 500 meters is permitted.



purpose 1OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Select basic ads

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


CREATE A PERSONALISED ADS PROFILE



To create a personalised ads profile vendors can:

* Collect information about a user, including a user's activity, interests,
demographic information, or location, to create or edit a user profile for use
in personalised advertising.

* Combine this information with other information previously collected,
including from across websites and apps, to create or edit a user profile for
use in personalised advertising.



purpose 2OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Create a personalised ads profile

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SELECT PERSONALISED ADS



To select personalised ads vendors can:

* Select personalised ads based on a user profile or other historical user data,
including a user’s prior activity, interests, visits to sites or apps, location,
or demographic information.



purpose 3OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Select personalised ads

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


CREATE A PERSONALISED CONTENT PROFILE



To create a personalised content profile vendors can:

* Collect information about a user, including a user's activity, interests,
visits to sites or apps, demographic information, or location, to create or edit
a user profile for personalising content.

* Combine this information with other information previously collected,
including from across websites and apps, to create or edit a user profile for
use in personalising content.



purpose 4OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Create a personalised content profile

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SELECT PERSONALISED CONTENT



To select personalised content vendors can:

* Select personalised content based on a user profile or other historical user
data, including a user’s prior activity, interests, visits to sites or apps,
location, or demographic information.



purpose 5OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Select personalised content

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


MEASURE AD PERFORMANCE



To measure ad performance vendors can:

* Measure whether and how ads were delivered to and interacted with by a user

* Provide reporting about ads including their effectiveness and performance

* Provide reporting about users who interacted with ads using data observed
during the course of the user's interaction with that ad

* Provide reporting to publishers about the ads displayed on their property

* Measure whether an ad is serving in a suitable editorial environment
(brand-safe) context

* Determine the percentage of the ad that had the opportunity to be seen and the
duration of that opportunity

* Combine this information with other information previously collected,
including from across websites and apps

Vendors cannot:

*Apply panel- or similarly-derived audience insights data to ad measurement data
without a Legal Basis to apply market research to generate audience insights
(Purpose 9)



purpose 6OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Measure ad performance

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


MEASURE CONTENT PERFORMANCE



To measure content performance vendors can:

* Measure and report on how content was delivered to and interacted with by
users.

* Provide reporting, using directly measurable or known information, about users
who interacted with the content

* Combine this information with other information previously collected,
including from across websites and apps.

Vendors cannot:

* Measure whether and how ads (including native ads) were delivered to and
interacted with by a user.

* Apply panel- or similarly derived audience insights data to ad measurement
data without a Legal Basis to apply market research to generate audience
insights (Purpose 9)



purpose 7OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Measure content performance

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


APPLY MARKET RESEARCH TO GENERATE AUDIENCE INSIGHTS



To apply market research to generate audience insights vendors can:

* Provide aggregate reporting to advertisers or their representatives about the
audiences reached by their ads, through panel-based and similarly derived
insights.

* Provide aggregate reporting to publishers about the audiences that were served
or interacted with content and/or ads on their property by applying panel-based
and similarly derived insights.

* Associate offline data with an online user for the purposes of market research
to generate audience insights if vendors have declared to match and combine
offline data sources (Feature 1)

* Combine this information with other information previously collected including
from across websites and apps.

Vendors cannot:

* Measure the performance and effectiveness of ads that a specific user was
served or interacted with, without a Legal Basis to measure ad performance.

* Measure which content a specific user was served and how they interacted with
it, without a Legal Basis to measure content performance.



purpose 8OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Apply market research to generate audience insights

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


DEVELOP AND IMPROVE PRODUCTS



To develop new products and improve products vendors can:

* Use information to improve their existing products with new features and to
develop new products

* Create new models and algorithms through machine learning

Vendors cannot:

* Conduct any other data processing operation allowed under a different purpose
under this purpose



purpose 9OnOff

I accept the processing of personal data on the grounds of Legitimate Interest
for the purpose:Develop and improve products

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SPECIAL PURPOSES

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


ENSURE SECURITY, PREVENT FRAUD, AND DEBUG



To ensure security, prevent fraud and debug vendors can:

* Ensure data are securely transmitted

* Detect and prevent malicious, fraudulent, invalid, or illegal activity.

* Ensure correct and efficient operation of systems and processes, including to
monitor and enhance the performance of systems and processes engaged in
permitted purposes

Vendors cannot:

* Conduct any other data processing operation allowed under a different purpose
under this purpose.

Note: Data collected and used to ensure security, prevent fraud, and debug may
include automatically-sent device characteristics for identification, precise
geolocation data, and data obtained by actively scanning device characteristics
for identification without separate disclosure and/or opt-in.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


TECHNICALLY DELIVER ADS OR CONTENT



To deliver information and respond to technical requests vendors can:

* Use a user’s IP address to deliver an ad over the internet

* Respond to a user’s interaction with an ad by sending the user to a landing
page

* Use a user’s IP address to deliver content over the internet

* Respond to a user’s interaction with content by sending the user to a landing
page

* Use information about the device type and capabilities for delivering ads or
content, for example, to deliver the right size ad creative or video file in a
format supported by the device

Vendors cannot:

* Conduct any other data processing operation allowed under a different purpose
under this purpose



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


FEATURES

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


MATCH AND COMBINE OFFLINE DATA SOURCES



Vendors can:

* Combine data obtained offline with data collected online in support of one or
more Purposes or Special Purposes.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


LINK DIFFERENT DEVICES



Vendors can:

* Deterministically determine that two or more devices belong to the same user
or household

* Probabilistically determine that two or more devices belong to the same user
or household

* Actively scan device characteristics for identification for probabilistic
identification if users have allowed vendors to actively scan device
characteristics for identification (Special Feature 2)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


RECEIVE AND USE AUTOMATICALLY-SENT DEVICE CHARACTERISTICS FOR IDENTIFICATION



Vendors can:

* Create an identifier using data collected automatically from a device for
specific characteristics, e.g. IP address, user-agent string.

* Use such an identifier to attempt to re-identify a device.

Vendors cannot:

* Create an identifier using data collected via actively scanning a device for
specific characteristics, e.g. installed font or screen resolution without
users’ separate opt-in to actively scanning device characteristics for
identification.

* Use such an identifier to re-identify a device.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SPECIAL FEATURES

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


USE PRECISE GEOLOCATION DATA



Vendors can:

* Collect and process precise geolocation data in support of one or more
purposes.

N.B. Precise geolocation means that there are no restrictions on the precision
of a user’s location; this can be accurate to within several meters.



specialFeatureOptins 0OnOff

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


ACTIVELY SCAN DEVICE CHARACTERISTICS FOR IDENTIFICATION



Vendors can:

* Create an identifier using data collected via actively scanning a device for
specific characteristics, e.g. installed fonts or screen resolution.

* Use such an identifier to re-identify a device.



specialFeatureOptins 1OnOff

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Save Preferences and Exit
About this tool(Opens in a new window)
LOGIN
SUBSCRIBE NOW SIGN UP TO THE JC NEWSLETTER SUPPORT US
 * home
 * news
 * community
 * let's talk
 * let's eat
 * life & culture
 * family & education
 * judaism
 * archive
 * social & personal
 * jobs

 * HOME
 * NEWS
    * POLITICS
    * ISRAEL
    * WORLD

 * COMMUNITY
 * LET'S TALK
 * LET'S EAT
    * RECIPES
    * THE FRESSER

 * LIFE & CULTURE
    * TRAVEL
    * SPORT

 * FAMILY & EDUCATION
 * JUDAISM
 * ARCHIVE
 * SOCIAL & PERSONAL
 * JOBS

LOGIN
SIGN UP TO THE JC NEWSLETTER
SUBSCRIBE NOW SUPPORT US


SIGN UP TO THE JC NEWSLETTER

EMAIL ADDRESS *
Sign up here

David Baddiel


OPPENHEIMER LIKED TO PRETEND HE WASN’T JEWISH — LIKE THE FILM

Yet again, a major movie has cast a non-Jew to play a famous Jew. This may be
part of a deeper erasure of Jews — and antisemitism — going on under the surface
of storytelling

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer (Photo: Universal Studios)

July 27, 2023 10:30
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 



Another day, another film/TV show/play in which a famous Jew is played by a
non-Jew.

I have talked and written about this many times — about how it’s a question not
of acting but of context: minority casting being presently dominated by the
notion of authenticity, the question is why that doesn’t apply to Jews, and what
that means for how people see Jews — so I shan’t rehearse it again.

But there is another, more complex issue thrown up by the casting in
Oppenheimer. Any biopic on such a serious subject as the creation of the atomic
bomb needs to delve deep into the psychological underpinnings of the narrative.

My sense of a possible omission in that regard was alerted reading Peter
Bradshaw in the Guardian saying that the film “doesn’t quite get to grips with
the antisemitism Oppenheimer faced”.



Which is interesting, as it was certainly a central issue in the physicist’s
life and career. He entered Harvard just as the university established a quota
system to limit Jewish entry. While in Berkeley, he attempted to secure a
position for his colleague Robert Serber but was told “one Jew in the department
is enough”.

Meanwhile, Einstein is played by the also not-Jewish Tom Conti. Forget for a
minute how much outrage would usually be inspired by casting arguably the most
iconic member of a minority not from that minority, and consider why Albert and
J Robert were meeting in America. It’s because of course in 1933, Einstein, who
had been lecturing in the US, was unable to return to a Germany under Nazi Rule.
His books were being burnt, and his cottage had been stolen to become a centre
for the Hitler Youth.



Point being, the context of Oppenheimer is inseparable from antisemitism — both
on the micro-level, in American society, and the macro, the existential threat
posed by Nazi Germany. When I discussed the movie on Twitter — where the
bringing up of the issue of non-Jews continually being cast as Jews tends to
lead to scores of responses saying “it’s called acting, mate” and “oh I suppose
only murderers can play murderers now” — the writer Naomi Alderman chose to
respond, very insightfully, by pointing out the vast amount of Jewish physicists
whose work was vital to the discovery of nuclear fission, and therefore to the
Manhattan Project.

American atomic scientist Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967) arrives in
Paris to give a series of lectures at the Faculty of Science. (Photo by Central
Press/Getty Images)



It’s too many to list in this article, but beyond Oppenheimer and Einstein, she
mentions Enrico Fermi (Jewish wife, fled Italy), Hans Bethe, (Jewish mother,
Jewish fiancée, fled Germany), Otto Frisch, Neils Bohr (Jewish mother), Lise
Meitner and many others. “I mean it’s not everyone but good luck doing it
without them,” she concludes.

Something is going on there. Obviously, a lot of great scientists at the time
happened to be Jewish refugees. But in a time of intense peril, the vulnerable,
I think, dream of magical power. It is not coincidental that the creators of
Superman, born during the war and originally a fighter of Nazis, were Jewish.

The atomic bomb is not a magical weapon but it must have seemed so, in its
initial stages, the idea of being able to destroy this terrible existential
threat, in one go, with your own existential-destroying reality.

This is not to say — let me be clear — that the Jews are to blame for Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. That blame lies with the American government and military at the
time, keen to end the war but also to send a message to the Soviets of their
nuclear capability.

But even physics has an emotional undercurrent, and the emotional undercurrent
for J Robert and Albert Einstein and the other Jews involved in trying to make
this weapon before the Nazis did, was fear and desperation.

Which is why Alderman is correct to say, “I don’t really understand how it’s
possible to make a movie about the Manhattan Project without talking about
Jewishness.” Oppenheimer does include scenes where mentions of J Robert’s
heritage are present and correct, but the film lacks, perhaps because of the
casting — and this is where authenticity casting, whatever you feel about it,
has some artistic value — any profound sense of that ethnicity being key to who
he was, the secret driver of his work at Los Alamos.

This may be because there is, from some of our storytellers presently, a
fatigue, I think, a boredom, with Jews, and the strange incessant way that
Western history has, often to their misfortune, placed them at the centre of
itself. This boredom is what leads to Jewish erasure, and that erasure is
doubled down upon by the complacent casting of non-Jews as these great and
complex Jewish figures of history.

I’ve called Oppenheimer J Robert in this article, because his first name was in
fact Julius. He, however, insisted it stood for nothing, because he didn’t want
people to think he was Jewish, or that Jewishness mattered much to him — and
there is a sense in which Oppenheimer the movie has gone along with that. But to
do so is to miss, perhaps, the deepest undercurrent of the story.

Read more: The real Oppenheimer's complicated relationship with Judaism

David Baddiel’s show ‘Talking Books’ is at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh
Festival August 2nd-12th




READ NEXT


Hannah Gillott

THE REAL OPPENHEIMER'S COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP WITH JUDAISM

While he tried his best to assimilate, J Robert Oppenheimer's faith was a
constant theme throughout his career


David Rose

AN URGENT SOLUTION IS NEEDED TO RESOLVE ISRAEL'S GROWING POLITICAL CRISIS

The situation is Israel is becoming more dangerous by the day as Bibi pushes
through his judicial reforms


Karen E H Skinazi

I’M DECLUTTERING FOR PEACE OF MIND

I get Marie Kondo’s way of thinking: hold on to what makes you happy and when
you let go of things were once meaningful, honour them


Victoria Sterman

WE’RE HELPING OUR UNEMPLOYED ‘HIDDEN ARMY’ INTO WORK

Joblessness is a bigger problem than we are led to believe - and the Jewish
community is not immune to this. But Resource is here to assist


Dominic Green

IS IT TIME TO END UNITED STATES AID TO ISRAEL?

The optics of the US-Israel alliance are popular. But does it still reflect
reality?


July 27, 2023 10:30
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 




LET'S TALK MORE

Anshel Pfeffer

Broken Bibi is powerless as Israel tears itself apart

Tanya Gold

When is a Jew not a Jew? When they are German and Gentile

The JC Leader

Compromise is the only way forward for Israel

Nathan Abrams

Welcome to Jewrassic Park — Spielberg’s first Nazi parable

Ian Austin

Skewed priorities harm the prospects of peace


HAVE THE JC DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR


Subscribe Now
 * 
 * 
 * 

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTERS

Subscribe Now
 * News
 * Israel
 * Let's Talk
 * Let's Eat
 * Life & Culture


 * Family & Education
 * Judaism
 * Archive
 * Social & Personal
 * Jobs

SUPPORT US DONATE NOW

©2023 The Jewish Chronicle

 * About us
 * Advertising
 * Terms & Conditions
 * Cookie Policy
 * FAQs
 * Privacy policy
 * Contact us