Rabbi Steve Leder, who served as a technical advisor for the first season of Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This,” publicly criticized the show’s star Adam Brody this week after Brody said he believes Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.
In an Instagram video posted Tuesday and addressed directly to Brody, Leder reminded the actor of their working relationship on the show, where Leder’s job was to ensure the Judaism portrayed in Brody’s character was accurate.
“Hi Adam, you might not remember me. My name is Rabbi Steve Leder, and I was the technical advisor for Season 1 of ‘Nobody Wants This.’ My job was to make sure that your character was authentic and that everything in Season 1 about Judaism was authentic.”
Leder went on to call Brody’s remarks “ignorant” and accused him of mischaracterizing the conflict in Gaza while treating a serious term too casually.
“Your pronouncement the other day about a ‘genocide in Gaza’ was truly shocking. Not only because of your misuse and mischaracterization of your use of the word genocide — there is no genocide in Gaza, there are genocides in other countries happening, but you failed to mention any of them. You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed the other day.”
Leder added that anyone invoking a word as heavy as “genocide” should understand its meaning before using it.
“If you’re going to use a word like ‘genocide,’ you ought to know what it means. And, by the way, being so flippant about a word like ‘genocide’ — ‘Hey, put me down for genocide,’ like you’re asking for a table for two at Craig’s — is disgusting. Here’s some more technical advice: If you know nothing about something, you should say nothing about it.”
What Brody said
Brody, who plays a rabbi on “Nobody Wants This,” made the comments in a recent interview with GQ magazine.
“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine. It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago. I’m hopeful that another administration can really do some good and correct some of these policies that are helping that situation be as awful as it is.”
Fox News Digital reported it reached out to Brody’s representatives for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Other reaction
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, also criticized Brody, telling Fox News Digital that calling the effort to free hostages held by Hamas a “genocide” reflected bigotry rather than informed analysis.
“One of the hallmarks of antisemitism is to irrationally regard Jews as a threat. While Hamas was holding, torturing, raping and murdering hostages, only a bigot would call the effort to free those hostages ‘genocide.’ An ignorant Jew is no less likely than anyone else to fall prey to hateful indoctrination.”
Menken further argued that the dynamics of the conflict don’t match historical genocides.
“As even photographer Motaz Azaiza now admits, Hamas could have ended the conflict in Gaza at any moment, simply by releasing the hostages. In no genocide in history have the victims controlled the off switch. On roughly a daily basis, a prominent Jewish leftist goes on X (formerly Twitter) to say ‘As a Jew’ and then follow it by expressing antisemitic nonsense.”
The Israeli-American Council also weighed in, calling Brody’s statement “ignorant and harmful.”
“Lies like this are not just fake news, they incite violence that can lead to the murder of innocent Jews. Just today, Israeli passengers narrowly escaped death from what is being called an attempted terrorist attack on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. That’s the reality Israelis and Jews live with every day.”
