O pinion
How Gal Gadot Is Changing the Image of the Jewish Woman
BY BENJAMIN KERSTEIN | ALGEMEINER
IF THERE IS SUCH a thing
as the most famous Israeli or
even the most famous Jew in the
world, it is in all likelihood the
actress Gal Gadot. Indeed, when
a film like “Wonder Woman” is
a hit from the U.S. to China and
back again, it could hardly be
otherwise. One imagines that the film
has thousands, perhaps millions,
of fans who have never heard of,
say, Benjamin Netanyahu. Being
a prominent world leader is one
thing — being a blockbuster
movie star is quite another.

Generally speaking, Israelis
and Jews are fairly proud of
Gadot’s success, mainly because
she is seen as an excellent, if
informal, cultural ambassador
for the Jewish state. And Gadot,
unlike previous Israeli interna-
tional stars, plays roles more
in accordance with Israel’s
sabra archetype — the Zionist
“new Jew” liberated from the
Diaspora: beautiful, smiling,
athletic, slightly exotic and
with just a touch of swagger.

She feels, in other words,
both genuinely Israeli and very
much the image Israelis would
like to present to the world.

More than anything else,
however, Gadot is unapolo-
getic, completely open about
her Israeli and Jewish identi-
ties, with none of the cringing
deference other Jewish celebri-
ties often make to potentially
hostile audiences.

But there is something else
Gadot is doing, perhaps invol-
untarily, that is less tangible
and less connected to Israel per
se: By simply being who she is
with the celebrity she enjoys,
Gadot is remaking the cultural
image of Jewish women in the
non-Jewish world.

Over the last century,
non-Jewish cultural products
— and, regrettably, quite a few
Jewish ones — have tended
to portray Jewish women
according to a rather small
set of derogatory stereotypes:
the ugly but conveniently
promiscuous slut; the materi-
alist, demanding and sexually
withholding JAP; and, of
course, the grasping and suffo-
cating Jewish mother.

None of these are particu-
larly appealing stereotypes,
and they weren’t meant to be.

Nonetheless, they were and, in
many ways, still are immensely
popular, especially in American
cultural products, where they
are usually played for cheap
laughs and tend to get them.

It should be noted that
this is, in fact, a relatively
new development. For most
of Diaspora history, such as
in Shakespeare’s “Merchant
of Venice” and 19th-cen-
tury European literature, the
“Jewess” was in fact seen as an
exotic, highly sexualized and
desirable object: the beautiful,
inscrutable woman of the
East who the non-Jewish man
sought to capture and conquer.

This was, of course, an equally
derogatory stereotype in its
own way, but it does point to
the fact that the image of the
Jewish woman in non-Jewish
eyes has always been a
malleable one, and subject to
rapid change.

What Gadot — or at least
the image of Gadot — is accom-
plishing, however, is something
quite new: She is remaking the
image of the Jewish woman
via Israeli means. That is to
say, the image is finally being
remade by Jews. While it
still has remnants of the old
stereotypes, especially of the
exotic Oriental, it nonetheless
is taking place almost entirely
on Gadot’s own terms. That
is, on Jewish terms, and this is
something that, interestingly,
the non-Jewish world appears
finally ready to accept.

One can see this in the
very fact of Gadot’s casting as
Wonder Woman. While comic
book films are, of course, not
profound art, they do speak to
the collective unconscious of
a particular culture. Wonder
Woman has for decades been
a feminist icon around the
world; an embodiment of the
ideas of female strength, intel-
ligence, beauty and power.

And the film itself was
also groundbreaking, not
only because it was the first
female-led superhero block-
buster. More important was the
uniqueness of the story it told —
most superhero “origin stories”
are about the coming of age of
a young boy, a classic universal
archetype. “Wonder Woman”
was about the coming of age
of a young girl, introducing
a new universal archetype
into mainstream pop cinema.

That the non-Jewish world has
proven itself willing to not
only accept a Jewish actress in
such a role, but to embrace it
enthusiastically, is in historical
context fairly remarkable.

It is true that, in some
ways, Gadot had to be Israeli
to accomplish this. Israel’s
relatively unusual policy of
drafting women into the army
has long created an under-
ground fetish for such things
as “the girls of the IDF” —
that is, powerful and forceful
women who can hold their
own among men — and it was
likely that putting a non-Israeli
Jew in such a role would have
been a step slightly too far for
an ever-cautious Hollywood.

But by giving the world a new
image of how a Jewish woman
can and ought to be seen,
Gadot’s success may be a step
toward changing this.

Jewish girls around the
world can look at Wonder
Woman and see themselves in
a way they cannot with other
female heroines, and perhaps
they too will begin to insist on
putting an end to pernicious
stereotypes that have already
persisted for far too long. l
Benjamin Kerstein is a columnist
and Israel correspondent for The
Algemeiner. Why Christmas Is the Best Day to Be a Jew
Christmas, and they succeeded
as much as possible in a
Catholic and Protestant suburb
of Pittsburgh.

Our next-door neighbors
invited my family to their big
Christmas Eve party every year.

The crowd always welcomed
us, and eventually we reached
a customary status as the Jews
of the party. We were among
the last to leave, with a short
BY ALEX KIRSHNER
commute and no church the
next morning.

THE CHRISTIANS OF my
Christmas could be hard,
childhood tried hard to make though, especially early on.

me feel welcome around When you are 5, the slow
14 DECEMBER 24, 2020
drip of Chanukah presents
doesn’t match a bearded man
chimneying in to shower you
with gifts all at once. (And when
you are 5, you don’t realize how
lucky you are to get gifts at all.)
A menorah in the window for
eight days doesn’t match extrav-
agant lights all over the yard for a
whole month. Christmas isn’t for
us, and it’s hard for a kid to inter-
nalize the notion that something
so culturally dominant is not
for you. Shouldn’t everything
be for you?
But adulthood brings
wisdom. As I’ve aged, I’ve
JEWISH EXPONENT
come to view Christmas as a
uniquely wonderful experience
for American Jews. In fact,
when I look upon Christmas
through a particular lens,
Dec. 25 reveals itself as the
single best day of the year to
be Jewish.

As Jews, we spend a lot of
time being yelled at. Even when
we are not being implicated in
world-dominating conspiracy
theories by anti-Semites, life is
hectic. But on Christmas, there
may be nobody at all to even
bother us, much less subject us
to their worst vitriol. In fact, on
Christmas, Jews can enjoy an
almost unprecedented serenity.

Even before a pandemic
relegated many Americans
to work-from-home setups
that tore down whatever thin
boundaries existed between
work and home, it had become
difficult to live a single day of
responsibility-free life without
going on a solo vacation or
throwing your phone into a
lake. Even then, your boss or
someone in your house might
find you and ask for something.

See Kirshner, Page 15
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM