Los Angeles-area Rabbi Steve Leder has publicly criticized actor Adam Brody after Brody told GQ magazine he believes Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.
Leder, former rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, served as a technical adviser on the first season of Brody’s Netflix rom-com “Nobody Wants This,” helping ensure the show’s portrayal of Judaism and its rabbi character — played by Brody — was accurate. Leder also oversaw how Erin Foster, the show’s creator, learned about Judaism before her own conversion.
Despite that working relationship, Leder did not hold back in a video posted to Instagram.
“You by your own admission are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed the other day,” Leder said. “Here’s some technical advice: If you know nothing about something, you should say nothing about it.”
Brody, who was born to Jewish parents, has previously acknowledged a limited connection to the religion, saying in 2024 that he “barely got bar mitzvahed and retained nothing from it.”
Ahead of the third season of “Nobody Wants This,” Brody told GQ he worries Hollywood is becoming “too conservative.” He said, “Between COVID, a second Trump term, Israel-Gaza, it’s really brought out some different beliefs that I was ignorant to, and then disheartened by.”
Brody went further, telling the magazine: “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”
He added, “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.”
Leder responded directly to those comments.
“Your pronouncement the other day about a ‘genocide in Gaza’ was truly shocking,” Leder said. “Not only because of your misuse and mischaracterization of your use of genocide — there is no genocide in Gaza, there are genocides in other countries happening, but you failed to mention any of them … if you’re going to use a word like genocide, you better 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 [L.A. hotspot] Craig’s — is disgusting.”
