Jonah Platt Talks Season 2 of Podcast ‘Being Jewish’

What does it mean to be a Jewish person today, in 2025?

It’s a question with a multifaceted answer that Jonah Platt continues to explore in the second season of his podcast, Being Jewish.

“I wanted to really highlight the diverse spectrum of Jewish identity and allyship,” Platt says over Zoom. “The thesis of my podcast is that [Judaism] means something different to everybody. I believe it should be, at its best version of itself, a choose your own adventure. There’s so much there for everybody and anyone who wants to gain anything from it. Today, it means finding what it means to you; feeling accepted for that and knowing that there is no right or wrong way to be Jewish. There’s room enough for all of us.”

The podcast coalesced in the wake of the October 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel and subsequent war against Hamas in Gaza. As global antisemitism began to rise, both online and in the streets, Jonah decided to take a hiatus from his acting career and focus on activism.

“What was happening in the world, and to the Jewish community, was just so much more important than anything I could possibly be doing in a self-serving career that is entertainment,” he explains. “It was like, ‘I have an hour right now. Do I want to go prepare this audition to play Cop #3 on Season 6 of The Rookie, or do I want to spend this hour going online, answering questions and helping people sort through the cacophony of what’s going on right now?’”

Being Jewish became his way of “empowering people to take ownership and lean into their Jewish identity,” he adds. “Trying to encourage people to lean into their full, authentic selves and not apologize for that. Putting these Jewish conversations with notable Jews front and center, saying, ‘Hey, we can talk about this stuff openly.’”

Simply put, “It’s not controversial for Jews to be Jews and talk about being Jewish.”

That idea resonates positively across the scale of religious observance, from members of the Orthodox community to “someone who found out they were Jewish a year ago and is the only Jew in Iowa,” Platt says. “Both of those people feel my show is for them. That’s really exciting to me.”

He continues: “By far, the most rewarding thing is the way that it’s helping people. I had one listener who went and volunteered for Magen David Adom because she was inspired by the show. I’ve have people [say] ‘I’m speaking up at a school board meeting that I never would have spoken up at before, but I heard your voice in my head from the show.’ Or, ‘I’m reconnecting with my Judaism and being more proud of it than I’ve ever been before.’ Or, ‘I’m getting a Jewish star necklace.’ Whatever it is, all of those things mean the world to me. It’s incredibly fulfilling, and it’s the reason I keep doing it.”

Since its inception last fall, the podcast attracted such high-profile names as Josh Gad, Ginnifer Goodwin, Marlee Matlin, Tara Strong, Skylar Astin, Tiffany Haddish, Sheryl Sandberg, Michael Solomonov, Stuart Weitzman, Van Jones, and Ben Soffer (aka Boy With No Job). But even as Season 2 kicks off with a guest appearance from Seinfeld alum Jason Alexander (see below), Platt insists that listeners are not solely tuning in for recognizable celebrities.

“If it’s between an A-lister who can’t go super-deep, or is not super literate on these topics, versus someone who’s less well-known and can offer really amazing insights, it seems my audience prefers the latter,” he notes. “My MO is a big diversity of guests. Am I having men and women? Am I having Jewish and non-Jewish? Am I having Black, Latino, Middle Eastern? [In Season 2], you’re gonna get a really diverse crew and meaty conversations all the way through — whether they’re an A-list kind of guest or not.”

Jonah and his family — which includes his producer father, Marc (Wicked), and actor brother, Ben (Dear Evan Hansen) — are something of an outlier in the world of entertainment, where many Jews are either apathetic to or actively shy away from their identity. After all, the industry was built by Jewish immigrants from Europe looking to paint themselves as good, industrious Americans in a much less tolerant time.

“I’m very fortunate that I grew up with very proud Jewish parents,” shares Jonah. “My dad is one of the most un-Hollywood people in Hollywood. He’s a Jew from Baltimore who happens to work in Hollywood … We’ve had these decades of, ‘Let’s just be more assimilated. Let’s not advocate for Jews within the industry the way we do for other social groups and minorities, because we don’t want people to think we’re playing favorites with our own community,’ even while every other community plays favorites. It’s a big switch we’ve got to flip.”

Thankfully, there has been a recent influx of mainstream film and television projects that proudly lean into Jewish stories and characters. “Humanizing pieces of entertainment where the characters happen to be Jewish,” says Platt, who cites Adam Sandler as a prime example of how to do it properly. “A lot of people didn’t catch this, but he very clearly — and sort of totally unnecessarily — put a flag in the ground that Happy Gilmore is Jewish in Happy Gilmore 2. I love that,” he says. “I also thought You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah was great Jewish representation. It was actually a story where the Jews were not apologizing for being Jewish; and the bat mitzvah was not something stupid, to be ignored. She cared a great deal about it, put tons of effort into it, and took a big lesson away from it. I thought that was fantastic.”

Platt is also a big fan of Nobody Wants This, which returns to Netflix next month for its second season. “That there’s a hit show on Netflix where they go to Jewish summer camp and they talk about havdalah … is amazing for me,” he concludes. “That’s the kind of stuff I want in the culture, and it’s through the vehicle of an entertaining romantic comedy that people will like on its own merits — whether it was about Jews or not. That, to me, is a bullseye.”