http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouHaveToHaveJews



Victory depends upon the people that you choose.

So listen, Arthur, darling, closely to this news:

We won't succeed on Broadway if we don't have any Jews." Sir Robin , Spamalot "In any great adventure, if you don't want to lose,Victory depends upon the people that you choose.So listen, Arthur, darling, closely to this news:We won't succeed on Broadway if we don't have any Jews."

For a minority forming less than one quarter of one percent of the world's population, Jews are astonishingly well-represented both as creators of media and as characters appearing in that media. This is largely because much of the most popular media is created in the USA, and specifically in the two parts of the USA with the highest per capita Jewish populations, Los Angeles and New York City. Therefore, this trope is an example of both SoCalization and Big Applesauce.

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Of course, like so many others, this rather sensitive trope began as an inversion of another trope. There was a time when working in media was one of the few options for ambitious, intelligent, well-educated people who happened to be Jewish. Anything considered to be academic or high art would be under considerable pressure to appear "respectable," and cater to the segregationist views of the time. Anyone who was not (or could not pass for) white, American- or British-born, heterosexual, Christian (most likely Protestant), and often times male might be considered a risk to the company's reputation. Since radical new media, such as film, radio, Comic Books and, later, television were often callously dismissed as vulgar, they tended to hire the people no one else would take — i.e. Jews. Despite the doomsday warnings of segregationist Moral Guardians, new media took off and people who once had to scramble for an employer became part of history. In short, many might say that the Jewish people who ran Hollywood did so because they were the ones who built it . Most major Hollywood studios, including the Big Five (20th Century Fox, RKO Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) and the Little Three (Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists) had at least one Jewish founding member, with the prominent exception of Walt Disney Studios (as such, some say that Walt Disney hated Jews, when in fact his beef was specifically with left-wing Jewish labor leaders he suspected of infiltrating his studio), and every American studio currently has Jews in at least some high ranking executive and creative positions. Creative types usually write what they know, and despite the ever-lingering specter of antisemitism in the early twentieth century, many writers, directors, producers, etc. most certainly would have passed on their own perspective into their work, intentionally or not.

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This trope does not lend itself to a simple list of examples, as such a list could easily smack of antisemitism ("what's with all these Jews?"). That is not what this trope is about at all. It is, nevertheless, noticeable to viewers and readers who live in areas where Jewish populations are much smaller (e.g. the UK, where Jews were, according to the 2001 census, outnumbered three to two by Jedi). As it's a Trope in Aggregate, please add examples only where this trope is lampshaded, or possibly averted if it's really incongruous.

It should also be noted that often, while Jewish heritage is common in media, Judaism and Jewish culture are often rare: The audience will be told that a character is Jewish, but uniquely Jewish cultural events will not be discussed, unless there is a Very Special Episode revolving around Hanukkah or Passover, the character is an anti-Semite or loves Jewish culture, or the main character(s) is/are Jewish.

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Contrast White Male Lead, although in many genres they do intersect. This usually results in All Jews Are Ashkenazi.

Examples:

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Comic Books

In the 2009 one-shot comic Watchmensch released by Brain Scan Studios which parodies the Watchmen series, Rorschach is depicted as a lawyer who is known instead as "Spottyman" and is pretending to be Jewish. While a Jewish lawyer in NYC is nothing remarkable, a Gentile pretending to be Jewish is usually doing so because of this trope.

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Lampshaded by this supercut : a great number of hip-hop artists have Jewish lawyers. The accompanying article explains this connection between Black people and Jewish lawyers goes back a long way. Jews were by and large the only white people to actively support the Civil Rights Movement, and so Jews were as disproportionately represented among civil rights lawyers in the '60s as they seem to be among rappers' counsel today.

Theater

Lampshaded hilariously in the Monty Python musical Spamalot, in the number "You Won't Succeed on Broadway (If You Don't Have Any Jews)". They succeed after all because Patsy turns out to be Jewish, though he's reluctant to reveal it to heavily armed Christians. In the UK, the song was changed to "You Won't Succeed on Show Business (If You Don't Have Any Stars)" because there's no Broadway in the UK and Jews have not had the same impact on entertainment there.

Video Games

Webcomics

Web Original

The website Jew or Not Jew , which speculates whether certain celebrities/historical figures/fictional characters are Jewish, inverted this with the Seven Dwarfs. They concluded that six of the dwarfs are Jewish (Dopey being the non-Jewish one) because apparently in a large group of Jews you have to have at least one non-Jew.

Web Videos

The comedy song "All I Want for Christmas Is Jews "

Real Life