Writer/comedian Seth Rogen recently spoke about his own Jewish background and the “lies” that it’s based on.
Rogen appeared on the Marc Maron podcast on Tuesday to promote his new movie “An American Pickle,”. The new film focuses on Jewish life in the U.S. which prompted Maron to ask Rogen about Jews moving to many places around the world after the Holocaust, and not to Israel.
Around 26 minutes into the interview, Rogen shares his belief that Jews have some “ridiculous visions” that include “lies” about the nation of Israel.
I think that’s a better strategy… You don’t keep all your Jews in one basket. I don’t understand why they did that. It makes no sense whatsoever…. It would be nice to live somewhere that was a not part of the Christian apocalyptic prophesy… Maybe settle somewhere that the Christians don’t think you all have to die in order for the apocalypse to happen…. There’s some common vested interest in the meantime… Our ridiculous visions are temporarily parallel and allied with one another.
Maron then asked Rogen, “Do you want to live in Israel?”
Rogen boldly replied,
No!
Maron agreed with Rogen and added that their words would “piss off a bunch of Jews”
“I’m the same way and we’re going to piss off a bunch of Jews… For some reason my mother, who’s not religious, her generation, they’re kind of hung up on Israel and they find some comfort in it. I’ve been there– I couldn’t imagine living here.”
Rogen:
No. There are nice parts… At best you are convincing yourself that you are far enough away from a major conflict to not worry about it, which is a terrible thing to convince yourself of.
I don’t understand. To me it just seems very, like an antiquated thought process. Like, if it is for religious reasons, I don’t agree with it because I think religion is silly. If it is truly for the preservation of Jewish people, it makes no sense, because again, you don’t keep something you’re trying to preserve all in one place especially when that place has proven to be… pretty volatile. You know, “I’m trying to keep all these things safe, I’m going to put them in my blender and hope that that’s the best place! That will do it!”
It doesn’t make sense to me.
And I also think that as a Jewish person, like I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life. You know, they never tell you, that oh by the way, there were people there. They make it seem like it was– just sitting there. Oh the fucking door’s open!
Maron: Ours for the taking.
Rogen:
Yeah. Literally they forget to include the fact to every young Jewish person: Basically, oh by the way, there were people living there.
Maron.
“They want to make you feel frightened enough about your own survival that when you are old enough, you will make sure money goes to Israel, that trees are plants, that you always speak highly of Israel. And Israel must survive no matter what.”
Rogen:
I don’t understand it at all. I think for Jewish people especially who view themselves as progressive and who view themselves as analytical and who view themselves as people who ask a lot of questions and really challenge the status quo — Like, What are we doing?
Maron then spoke on how scared he is of his own Jewish community.
“I get frightened to talk about it. And, we’re afraid of Jews.”
To which Rogen jokingly agreed.
I know… I’m afraid of Jews. I’m 100 percent afraid of Jews, that’s it!… Aside from James Caan we have no one to be afraid of!
It’s scary. But we’re Jews– we can say whatever we want. If anyone could say whatever the fuck they want about this shit, it should be two famous Jewish people. If anyone’s getting rounded up first, it’s our fucking asses. We are outwardly Jewish– and so I think…
Their comments come amid increased backlash toward Nick Cannon over his old podcast episode where he talked about Black people being Hebrew Israelites and used the terms “barbaric” and “savages” when describing the history of white supremacy.
It ultimately led to Viacom ending their relationship with Cannon and taking his show “Wild N Out” with them. Cannon responded by demanding ownership of his show while also apologizing to the Jewish community.
Cannon recently posted his discussion with Rabbi Abraham Cooper that was widely criticized by many in the Black community including rapper Jay Electronica.
