JEWISH CHRONICLE
Oppenheimer liked to pretend he wasn’t Jewish — like the film
David Baddiel
July 27, 2023

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”. READ MORE

NEWSWEEK An Irish Actor Playing Oppenheimer Proves Once Again That Jews Don’t Count Oppenheimer was raised a secular Jew, and much has been made of the strain of internalized shame and self-hatred that ran throughout the course of the scientist’s life. Oppenheimer was noted for denying his Jewishness, despite the fact (or maybe because of it) that he encountered antisemitism at almost every turn, facing discrimination at Harvard, the University of Göttingen and U.C. Berkeley, where after lobbying faculty head Raymond Birge to hire fellow scientist Robert Serber, he was told “one Jew in the department was enough.”