A seat at the table

Donny Deutsch’s résumé includes so many verbs — branding, marketing, advertising, hosting — and so many nouns — television, ad agency, chairman, guest, podcaster, trend forecaster, public personality — that it’s hard to say exactly what it is that he’s been doing, or maybe more accurately what he hasn’t done, during the decades that he’s been in the public eye.

Or, as he puts it, “I’ve had a couple of careers. I went to the University of Pennsylvania, to the Wharton School, and then I was in the ad business for 25 years. Then I went into media.”

But one thing that he’s always been, during all that time, is Jewish.

Now, as the act of being Jewish in the world seems to be changing around us, Mr. Deutsch is continuing to claim that identity proudly.

He’ll talk about all of it — about himself, and about being publicly Jewish — at Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston on Wednesday evening. (See below.)

“I’ll basically be talking about what’s going on in the world,” Mr. Deutsch said. “About the state of the Jews.

“Since October 7, the one good thing — and I hate to say that anything good possibly came out of it — is that everybody got very in touch with their Jewishness.

“You couldn’t help it. Whether or not you were religious, whether or not you thought about it much before, all of a sudden your sense of Jewish pride and history and heritage and faith all started to rise.”

Mr. Deutsch, who was born in 1957, grew up in Hollis Hills, in Queens. “We belonged to the Hollis Hills Jewish Center, and I went to Hebrew school there,” he said. “Now it’s the last Conservative synagogue in Queens. Everything else has merged or closed.

“I go back there every year for the holidays.

“I’ve always been very proud of my Jewish heritage, even though I don’t practice it on a daily basis,” he continued. “And then when October 7 happened, I think that I thought something that a lot of other people were thinking also. I realized how vulnerable we are. We are only a generation away from the Holocaust.

“Things that always seemed to be more distant now feel closer.

“And I think that as much as October 7 was devastating, it also has been unifying.”

Its lessons have been heartrending, he said.

“When it happened, the world should have put its arms around us. Around Jews. Around Israel. Instead, antisemitism spiked.

“I talk about it on the air. I talked about it very early. I talked about how unfair it was that Israel and Jews always get graded on a curve. They have to second guess everything before they can do anything.

“It didn’t matter what we did post 9/11. No one questioned anything.” But when it comes to Israel, everyone questions everything.

“And on the flip side, terrible things are happening to hundreds of thousands of Arabs in Yemen, in Iraq, by Assad in Syria. They are horrific events. But we don’t hear much about them. It’s just the Jews, and Jews defending themselves, that we hear about.

“It takes on a different form, but it’s antisemitism.

“And then there’s the simplistic ideas about the oppressor/oppressed dynamic, where somehow the Jews got put in the role of oppressor. Now we’re colonialists. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. It’s dangerous.”

Because Mr. Deutsch is on television so often, he has much more opportunity than most other people to talk about this new form of antisemitism. He’s not the only person to have those opportunities, though, and he’s unimpressed with his peers who let them slide by.

“There have been very few voices in the mass media talking about it,” he said. “There are many in social media, you could count the numbers of people in broadcast and cable news on maybe two hands.

“I’m on “Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough has been a fantastic advocate for Israel and Jewish causes. I wish there were more like him. He’s about fair play and decency, and he has a very strong moral compass.

“On CNN, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have been wonderful, and so has Andrew Cuomo, on whatever he’s on.”

It’s not easy to advocate on behalf of a cause that somehow has become increasingly unpopular. How does Mr. Deutsch get the strength to do it?

“It’s a no-brainer,” he said. “I don’t consider it as taking strength. I have a seat at the table.

“I speak from the gut. I speak from my heart. I would consider it weak not to have done it. I don’t deserve any bonus points for it.”

Why don’t many other people speak up as he does? He’s not sure, Mr. Deutsch said, but “maybe it’s a function of not that many Jews having a seat at the table like mine.” It’s probably different for actors, he added; “they fear backlash” and have to maintain a broad general appeal in a way that he, as a commentator, does not.

What does he think will happen? “It’s all really very foggy,” he said. “Israel is in a very tough position. And as a lover of Israel, I have to say that Netanyahu is not the future of Israel.

“You can be critical of Netanyahu and still be a lover of Israel.”

What about the hostages? “It’s a conundrum,” Mr. Deutsch said. “On the one hand, we need them back. On the other, we can’t do things that will endanger the 9 million people in Israel.

“Remember that in its charter, Hamas says that it won’t negotiate. Everyone points the finger at Israel, but Hamas lives for this. A dead Jew is a win for Hamas, and a dead Palestinian also is a win for Hamas.”

And then Mr. Deutsch returned to the one bright spot. “Jews are coming together,” he said. “We all could just feel our Jewishness rise. Most of us have relatives who died in the Holocaust, and recently my daughter said to me that there could be another Holocaust.

“In Michigan on Sunday, a student was asked if he was Jewish. When he said yes, they kicked him to the ground and spat on him.

“I can’t believe that this is happening. This story would have met with so much more public outcry if the victim had been Black or Hispanic or gay. That would have been a big story. But now, except for social media we’re not hearing about it.

“It’s really very frightening,” Mr. Deutsch concluded.

Who: Donnie Deutsch

What: Will talk about current events and being Jewish today

When: On Wednesday, September 25, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Where: At Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston

How much: $36 for general admission; the reserved section is sold out

To register: Go to tbanj.shulcloud.com and click on the photo of Mr. Deutsch on the homepage.