“You Forgot the Jews”: A Full Circle Moment at the Television Academy

“I’d like to thank the Academy.” That’s how I opened my presentation at the Television Academy earlier this week, and everybody laughed. But I explained that it wasn’t really a joke.

My colleague, Cindy Kaplan (director, JITC Hollywood Bureau), and I were presenting our Norman Lear Center research on Jewish television representation to a packed room of entertainment professionals. And standing there, I couldn’t stop thinking about the first time we attended a Television Academy event after launching the Jew in the City Hollywood Bureau back in late 2021.

It was the Academy’s first Inclusion Summit, fall of 2022. It was a couple weeks after the Kanye “deaf con 3 on the Jews” comment and I somehow snagged a spot at this illustrious gathering. Our Hollywood Bureau was less than a year old.

In the opening session, panelists discussed virtually every marginalized group in Hollywood, except one. At the end of the session, they asked a remarkable question: “Did we forget anything?”

With my heart pounding in my chest, I wondered if I should say the thing that needed to be said. Why was I there after all if not to say the uncomfortable things. I picked up the mic and told a room full of diversity experts that they forgot the Jews, that I was sitting in an inclusion summit as a Jew feeling totally invisible. At the end of my short speech, and I took time to describe our fear and alienation, every single Jew that was in the room (for every other cause) walked up to me and thanked me for finally saying the truth that they have been too afraid to say for so long.

Two participating groups in the room gave me incredible opportunities to continue to amplify my message. A Black producer at ABC told me she had tears in her eyes when I described how my son cried to me when he was little (after learning about attacks that were happening to Jews) that he wished he wasn’t born to such a hated group. That producer filmed a mini-documentary about my life and our organization for Jewish heritage month later that year. Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA asked me to write an essay on the blindspot of why inclusion spaces exclude Jews. This has become by manifesto in explaining why our cause is true and righteous.

To the Television Academy’s credit, they immediately corrected the mistake. They began including Jews in conversations around diversity and inclusion at the next summit, in their diversity listings, and even incorporated Jews into a demographic study on Hollywood, something no other entertainment organization had done before. This data will help the future research we are working on.

From there, things started to grow. We helped members of guilds like the DGA, WGA, and CSA strategize and launch Jewish committees. More committees followed their lead, and then came our research. We conducted the most extensive study on Jewish television representation in 25 years with one of the most reputable groups in the entertainment industry.

So returning to the Television Academy in 2026 felt deeply meaningful. Three and a half years ago, I was a lone voice trying to convince an industry that these issues mattered. This time, I walked into a room filled with entertainment professionals who had organized, mobilized, and were actively using their voices, armed with credible data about Jewish representation on screen.

The Jewish community is being clobbered by bad news left and right these days. But we also have important moments to celebrate. There is unity. There is empowerment. There is pride.

And this is how we fight back.

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