Marc Maron On Why He Won’t Stop Talking About Antisemitism
As a Jew, you are taught early on that you are different and people will hate you for it and maybe kill you. They’ve done it since the beginning of Jews. We watched Holocaust documentaries at Hebrew school to make sure we understood. It didn’t seem like something I really had to worry about here as an American Jew.
I’ve been working professionally as a comic since 1988. When I was a kid, most of my favorite comics were Jews. Old Jews. Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett, Rodney Dangerfield, Woody Allen, Richard Lewis, Lenny Bruce. Comedy was basically Jewish in my mind for years. When I started doing comedy, I didn’t embrace my Jewishness. I didn’t want to honor the stereotype.
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I just believed that being a Jewish comic had to be more than a schtick or neurosis or a way of talking and acting. I didn’t want to play into what was familiar to Jews and what people who weren’t Jews grew to understand through Jewish comedy. I still enjoyed it, but I didn’t want to be it. (It turns out, you can’t outrun it, but that’s a different essay.) I’m not saying it wasn’t true or honest, but it was not where I wanted to live. I wasn’t trying to pass — I was trying to find my voice.
My comedy has always been a bit confrontational and dark. As I got older, my comedy heroes shifted to Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks. I wanted to speak some version of angry truth. The first time I talked about being a Jew on stage was on my ’95 “HBO Comedy Half-Hour.” It was a riff about Jews having all the money. I turned an antisemitic trope on its head and took it over the top by claiming we did have all the money. You can go into any synagogue as a Jew and ask to be let into the secret money room in the basement, just to sit with it. It was a big bit. It was designed to show how ridiculous the conceit was and to prod antisemites. To push back on antisemitism.
I’ve been doing bits on that trajectory ever since. In my last three specials, I tried to provoke antisemites. I prod people who don’t know Jews or realize that it is wrong to generalize. I do it because I feel like it’s my responsibility. To publicly be Jewish and cutting when it comes to what non-Jews assume about us. Antisemitism can be innocuous, almost unintentional, innocent ignorance or violent and deeply rooted in false ideas about the nature, reality and diversity of Jews. Whether you think Jewishness is a religion, a race, a cultural identity, or if you are a Jew and think that other types of Jews are not really Jews because they aren’t religious enough or they aren’t Zionist — none of it matters to antisemites.
We’re all Jews.
Jews are being attacked for being Jews. Jews are being killed for being Jews. Here in America. Now. It’s random and usually attributed to a radicalized, mentally ill person, but the information that drives that radicalization is organized and focused and readily available and promoted. Antisemitism is becoming normalized. Christian fascism is rising. Democracy is under threat. It is dangerous to be out as a Jew in some states. I go to those states to perform comedy. It scares me sometimes.
After a show in Salt Lake City recently, during which I had done my most recent riffs on antisemitism, I left the club — alone. Outside, some of the audience members were lingering around. There were these two young guys who looked a bit lit-up, wiry, game for trouble. They were with two young women. They didn’t seem like my fans. Maybe they just came for a “comedy” show. A date night. They were looking at me, almost manic. One said, “Hey, what are you up to now?” I said, “Going back to the hotel, I guess.” The other one said, “You want to go do some hate crimes?” It was odd, but I played along, “Yeah, you have some spray paint? Let’s go find a synagogue.” Then the first guy said, “No really, what are you doing now?” It felt menacing. I thought, wait, am I the hate crime they want to do?
I may have been projecting. I may have been being paranoid. The fact is, it is not out of the realm of possibility. It’s something Jews live with now. I guess they always have.
I won’t stop talking about antisemitism.
This article is part of Variety’s Antisemitism and Hollywood package and was written before October.
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