All About Change - Tracy-Ann Oberman: Unabashedly Fighting Antisemitism and Reclaiming "The Merchant of Venice"

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to All About Change. Now is a great time to check out my new book about activism. Find Your Fight. You can find Find Your Fight wherever you buy books, and you can learn more about it at jruderman.com. Today, my guest is Tracy Ann Oberman. Tracy Ann is a British actress. She gained prominence for her role as Chrissy Watts

Starting point is 00:00:22 in the British soap opera EastEnders and has appeared in numerous television shows, including Doctor Who, Friday Night Dinner, and the toast of London. Throughout her career, Tracy Ann has been an outspoken advocate for the Jews of England and around the world. In recognition of this work, Tracy M. was awarded a member of the Order of the British Empire for services to Holocaust education and combating anti-Semitism earlier this year. At the time, she said that her recent production of the Merchant of Venice of 1936 is driven by a commitment to Holocaust education and challenging

Starting point is 00:00:59 anti-Semitism through storytelling, as well as bringing communities together through shared understanding. These issues, Tracy Ann has tackled her whole career, sadly remain relevant today, and I'm so glad to be able to talk to her about it. Tracy Ann Oberman, thank you so much for being my guests and All About Change. Welcome. Pleasure. Lovely to be here. So first of all, I want to start off with the huge congratulations on your MBE, which is well-reserved. And those of us in the global Jewish community are incredibly proud of you and appreciative for the work that you've done over the years on our behalf. Looking back on your decades of advocacy for the Jewish community,

Starting point is 00:01:41 are there any stories from early on that stick with you? I think the seminal moment of my life was my parents in a mad moment of sort of 70s parenting when I was really young, about four or five years old, took me to Yad Vashem, without any context. or explanation. And it was a deeply traumatic moment in my life. I would say a defining moment because I remember pretty much being left alone to walk around seeing all these images. And I didn't understand what I was seeing, but seeing bodies being put into what looked like pizza ovens and seeing a pile of children's shoes and seeing women being shot into a pit.

Starting point is 00:02:25 And I just remember being very young and not really understanding it, but I knew it had something to do with being Jewish and I couldn't understand. And the images were so strong and I knew it had something to do with being Jewish. And I think even then I could not understand why what was a huge machine was put into place for killing Jews, men, women and children. And this huge feeling of shame of why were we hated, so much, a huge feeling of impotence, of how did they manage to make this that I'm seeing happen. And also a huge feeling of pride that we had all survived and that we were there looking at

Starting point is 00:03:12 these images. And I spent most of my childhood, you know, trying to read everything that I could about the Holocaust, how it happened, who were the willing executioners, why it wasn't stopped, how an industrial genocide happened against one people. And I know others were involved in it, but, you know, the Shoah, the final solution was ultimately about the dissolution of Jews in Europe and had the Nazis taken over the whole world. So I would say that was the moment of my life of feeling, well, if I survived and if we have survived, we have a responsibility, one, to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else. Two, I always felt this responsibility to stand up, even though I was quite a shy child to stand up and have my voice heard

Starting point is 00:03:56 to speak against what I saw as injustice and to advocate for my people. How does it feel living in the UK when people compare what Israel is doing to the Holocaust that was perpetrated by the Germans? Well, I mean, I look at you in America and I see a huge rise in anti-Semitism. The problem we have with Israel, You know, it's a global, it's a global, you know, the great late Rabbi Sachs, who was our

Starting point is 00:04:26 chief rabbi, and sadly passed far too young. He always, and he was a great mentor, actually, because he was so wise. People should read his books. He was a wise man. He was like a, you know, he was a philosopher of the highest order. But he always said anti-Semitism is a virus, two things that we have to acknowledge. One is that any society that allows due hate to flourish on its watch. It's not about Jews. It's about a bigger sickness in society. And Jews are the canary and the coal mine. And the past predicates the future on this. You look at any society that has allowed Jew hate to flourish, all other evils follow. I just did a play, Merchant of Venice, 1936, where I seeped myself in the fascism and the

Starting point is 00:05:14 due hatred in the 1930s in Great Britain under Oswald Mosley. and I've also looked at Limburg in the 1930s in America and many, many other countries where there was a huge rise in anti-Semitism. The slogans, the vernacular, the images, the marches against Jews, the tropes, the medieval tropes are very similar to what we see now,

Starting point is 00:05:45 and that was long before Israel existed. And in my work as an actress and a writer and my advocacy, what I try and say is, you know, you can criticize Israel all you want, but when it bleeds into anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish vernacular, you have to then question what you're actually saying. And I think the problem with a lot of work that is going on about advocacy for the Palestinians is very, very good. And it's very important for those of us that have worked in

Starting point is 00:06:23 Palestinian and Israeli advocacy and trying to bring people together and people who, you know, like myself as Palestinian friends, we absolutely know what the endgame is. But what the end game isn't is pushing blood libel, throwing all Jews into the mix when you're criticizing a government, government policy and an army. is throwing Jews into a medieval trope of baby killers and blood libel. It's effectively blood libel.

Starting point is 00:06:55 And there are far too many intelligent people around the world that are pushing these very, very dangerous tropes. What I think has been a big wake-up call in America and around the world and in Great Britain, and I'm sure in Europe, and it's going to be an even bigger wake-up call, is that when anti-Jewish hatred, anti-Semitism comes from the hard left, it's very, very confusing. Number one, because the left see themselves as good, progressive, in some cases, pious.

Starting point is 00:07:22 And to quote Jeremy Corbyn, I don't have a racist bone in my body. But there was vernacular and a blind spot to Jews to anti-Semitism that they either willingly choose not to see or, as they would say, oh, it's an unconscious bias. but if you keep pointing it out enough to people and they're conscious of it, then it's just a bias. I'm now feeling at times that I'm seeing it real time

Starting point is 00:07:50 in front of my very eyes that people have managed to dehumanise us to the point that the ripping apart of the Bebas babies who were taken from their kibbutz didn't seem to touch the side of many influences. There was almost a feeling of, well, the kids at the Nova Festival, they were Israeli.

Starting point is 00:08:09 What do you expect? that's what I was getting from a lot of my progressive friends. And that's really depressing. It is depressing. And I see people, I see Jews who are afraid to speak up, you know, because of concern about how it will impact their career. How are you so courageous in speaking up, you know, because you have a career and you're working and you're an actress.

Starting point is 00:08:34 And aren't you ever worried about like, well, there'll be backlash against me and it'll affect me? Well, it goes back to, you know, I had a long time to think about this. At the time when I was one of the few voices, well, one of the only voices in my industry calling out Jeremy Corbyn and his followers and all the anti-Semitism that was bleeding out. You know, when I got myself into trouble, I tweeted something which I shouldn't, you know, which I made a mistake about and, you know, ended up having to apologize for that. And that was more about not understanding how social media work. But on the whole, my advocacy, what do they say, activists are born, they're not made. I just felt when I was seeing the abuse and misogyny, particularly on the left, towards Jewish women in the Labour Party, such as our, you know, very brave Jewish MPs like

Starting point is 00:09:25 Luciana Berger and Joan Ryan and Margaret Hodge, there was so much misogyny. And I just was looking for the grown-ups to come in and say something. And the grown-ups in my industry, as well as in the political sphere. And then I suddenly couldn't keep silent any longer. I remember sitting and dropping my daughter at school and seeing that the woman who had spray painted, the last standing Warsaw Ghetto Wall, had spray painted it.

Starting point is 00:09:53 Now, that was free Gaza, this was years ago, and long before this war, longer for the terrorist attack by Hamas. And she'd been invited to speak at the Labour Party conference, at an adjunct to the Labour Party conference, And I remember putting out there saying, wow, there's one surviving wall in the Warsaw Ghetto. My family died in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Starting point is 00:10:15 This woman has spray painted, effectively spray painted the grave of mine and many, many people's families and has been dignified with a platform at the Labour Party conference. This is not right. And the abuse I got, huge abuse from Labour Party politicians, from Labour councillors, thousands and thousands. Every member of your family deserves to die to atone for one Palestinian baby. The hollow hoax. There was no such thing as a Holocaust. It doesn't.

Starting point is 00:10:45 The numbers don't add up. You know, you Jewish, you Jewish whore. And I could see this misogyny and Jewish hatred that was running alongside Corbyn's campaign. And there was a, you know, I'm not saying that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite, but he seemed to attract a lot of anti-Semitic vernacular. And then the next thing I found was that I was suddenly in the middle of a political storm. I was getting phone calls by leading members of the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats. I suddenly found myself a voice of activism.

Starting point is 00:11:23 So I call myself an accidental activist. And it was really brave, I have to say, because at the time, nobody else was really saying it. And particularly in my industry. So I was then discovered that I was getting lots and lots of comments behind the scenes from people saying in my industry, you're so brave, you're so brave, I believe every word you're saying, but I couldn't do it, keep going. And it was, you know, I could have lost my career. I could have lost my livelihood and I could have lost everything. But there was a point where I thought, actually, what I want to say and acting like a lightning rod for all this due hate will be worth it because it means that on my

Starting point is 00:12:01 social media timeline, people could actually see real time so much due hate coming towards me that it became impossible to deny or say it wasn't happening. And I just stood firm. And as an actress, they thought that my M.O. was to be liked and loved. And they thought they could frighten me off with sexual threats and physical threats and intimidation and threats of cancellation. And I just stood firm. And courage calls to courage everywhere.

Starting point is 00:12:29 And I found more and more people through seeing what was going on on my timeline and seeing the kind of hate that was coming my way, a lot of people joined the fight and I had to say it was as horrible as it has been when I was doing the merchant of Venice which was in the West End but it was touring around the country and at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Starting point is 00:12:48 at the time of October the 7th I had to have security 24-7 because of threats and I have always now when I'm doing a public facing thing that has to be security it is so normalised to me but it's crazy that it

Starting point is 00:13:05 has become normalized. I ended up becoming that Jewish voice that said, I'm not going to be silenced. So I know I wasn't canceled. My career has gone from strength to strength. And I think that I have, I now work with people who may not agree with me, but definitely admire my courage for carrying on doing what I've done. I work, I try and work with people who I align with,

Starting point is 00:13:29 not on a political level, but on a courage level. And on a, I think, you know, I think the work that I do has to have some meaning, one for the meal, one for the real. And I try and do one for the real, which has meaning. I try and do work at least, you know, a couple of times, which brings in my activism with being able to write about what matters to me and also about bringing communities together. And I've found that there's now, I have a huge number of allies and a lot more people are standing up. And my bubba always said, when they're coming to burn your village and the neighbours aren't going to come and help you, you have to stand for yourself.

Starting point is 00:14:05 Because if we don't stand for ourselves and we don't advocate for ourselves, nobody else is going to do it. And we have to be brave enough to say, that is hypocritical, that is wrong, and that is dehumanizing us, and that is anti-Semitic. Because we're not all. All Jews are not white, and all Jews are not rich, and all Jews are not globalizing colonialists. But I have dealt with a friend of mine, Julianna Margolis, who does TV, a movie and theater. and she was, there was an attempt to cancel her, which was not successful. But I know, because I, you know, she's a friend of mine, that it was a traumatic experience for her. And many people who speak up, Deborah Messing, Jerry Seinfeld, have gone through, you know, traumatic incidents where they're heckled at public events, exactly. But you see, this is the point.

Starting point is 00:15:05 that we shouldn't, you know, you wouldn't heckle an LGBT actor who is speaking up on LGBT rights. You shouldn't, you know, nobody should be heckling a Chinese actor holding them responsible for the Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs. We shouldn't be holding our Iranian actors to account for what the Theocracy and the Ayatollahs are doing. So therefore, when we advocate very understandably for our people who were murdered, our hostages who were taken.

Starting point is 00:15:39 And most of the people who are advocating come from a left-wing progressive background. We should not be cancelled, and there should be a great big arm. You know, Susan Sarandon should be throwing her lovely feminist sisterhood arm around Julia Margolis and Amy Schumer and Deborah Messing, saying, I hear your pain, I understand your pain, and we're all on the same side.

Starting point is 00:16:05 Yeah, I feel sorry for the American Jews because you didn't see it coming. I think we've always had it kind of slightly surrounding us, and we know it, particularly since the Corbyn leadership of the Labor Party, we saw what it was like on the left amongst our progressive friends. I think we're learning. I think it is shocking because I think we lived in the golden age of Jews in America. I want you to talk a little bit about Merchant of Venice, 1936.

Starting point is 00:16:34 And, you know, what that play is about and how you were able to take the character of Shylock and make it into a character that is a woman, and then how you based that decision and where you drew your inspiration. Merchant of Venice, I think, has been the career, the moment in my career, I think, of my life, because it managed to pull together my activism, my childhood trauma about the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and my desire to bring people together and turn it into a very potent piece of theatre that was punchy, sexy, short and very accessible.

Starting point is 00:17:17 I have always hated The Merchant of Venice. I think it's responsible for, you know, there are two tropes in English literature about Jews. One is Fagin out of Dickens, and one is Shylock, money-grabbing Jew who loves his money more than his daughters and wants to take a pound of flesh off the good Christian. So it's a difficult play. When I was taught it at school, and it was taught very, very badly, you know, back in the Jurassic Age, and I don't think it's changed. Today, we were

Starting point is 00:17:44 never taught it through the prism of anti-Jewish hatred or prejudice. Portia was the heroine, the sort of the Christian Jewish woman that dresses as a man and saves Antonio from the evil Jew. So, and I always wondered what would happen to this play if, rather than taking it out of the canon, as people like Juliette Stevenson and others were saying, it's a very problematic play, therefore let's not perform it anymore. I think rather than taking things away from our history

Starting point is 00:18:11 that we don't like, we have to contextualise it. And I was thinking, well, you know, it's a horrible play. But what could make it accessible? And I've always wondered, if you turn Shylock into a woman, an immigrant woman with her one daughter, it becomes a very different relationship to a controlling father and his one daughter.

Starting point is 00:18:29 to Jessica, who he doesn't want to marry a non-Jew. And then I was thinking about all the tough, strong Jewish matriarchs that were in my family, my bubba, my great-grandmother, Annie Donoff came over here at 14 on the boat. She lived in the east end of London. She slept on the floor of a factory. She lived in the slums of the east end of Cable Street. She met her. She was a communist.

Starting point is 00:18:53 She was a very strong activist, her and her husband, who was also a Russian emigray from the village next door. They were part of forming the Labour Party. Her Judaism was so important to her, but she loved her adopted country. She called England the Golden Medina. And she stood in 1930s on the front line at the Battle of Cable Street against Oswald Mosley and the British Union of fascists who marched on the Jewish entity as his great friend Hitler had taught him to do with his own private army of his black shirts. And my bubba stood there with all the other neighbours, working class Irish, the working in class English, the Somali sailors, the small Afro-Caribbean community and these ordinary heroes from all over the country came together and said, if you

Starting point is 00:19:39 come for the Jews, you come for us all. And they stood together 30,000 of them on the front line. And my bubba was there overturning milk floats and they were throwing marbles at the fascists and the police that were protecting the fascists. And it was a, you know, it was a civil rights moment. So I thought, what happens if I take Shylock and I turn her into an amalgam of these tough, strong women lending money under the table of her porn-broken business in Cable Street in 36 on the eve of the Battle of Cable Street. And I turned my Antonio into an Oswald Mosley upper-class acolyte. And I turned my Venetian aristocrats into these upper-class followers who loved Oswald Mosley and actually loved Hitler and sort of found the idea of blaming the Jew for all the

Starting point is 00:20:23 fact that their houses were crumbling and the international Jew for everything very attractive. And then I thought, well, what happens if I also take our Porsche and I turn her into the Diana Mitford character, the upper class, beautiful Diana Mitford, who marrowed Oswald Mosley at Goebbels' house where Hitler was a witness, who was an outright fascist and anti-Semite till the day she died? And this became a very potent brew and the RSC allowed us to workshop it. So I was able to reclaim my family history of a tough, strong, immigrant woman who faced a lot of anti-Semitism and misogyny. And I put her in her little home on Cable Street.

Starting point is 00:21:02 And I put the Venetian aristocrats as part of the English aristocrats that supported Mosley and were going down into Cable Street and beating up the Jews and daubings. And through this production, we cut a film together. I found a film and lots of footage where we showed real-life footage that went all the way through

Starting point is 00:21:25 of headlines and footage of just of fascism and anti-Jewish hatred during that play. And together, it made a very potent brew. And it worked. And I'm very proud to say that we sold out all over the country twice. I think the word 130% of the box office was thrown my way, although I'm not really a proper producer,

Starting point is 00:21:45 but it did very well. But most importantly, I was able to use this production to tie it in with an organisation called stand up to racism, where we went into a lot of schools and a lot of communities. With the RSC's help, we made an online world that explained the background of the Merchant of Venice, the anti-Semitism of the Merchant of Venice, because it is an anti- it's a play that pushes anti-Semitic tropes, the story of the Battle of Cable Street. And there's this incredible, if people want to go and have a look at it, it's Merchant of Venice.com, go online and you'll see this world explode for you.

Starting point is 00:22:21 and I was able to hold many, many Q&As around the country to predominantly non-Jewish audiences, to many, many Muslim audiences. We did a lot of work with the Roman egypti community. We did a lot of work with, like I say, with schools where I was able to go in and say, take the word Jew out of this play, hands up, who comes from an immigrant background,

Starting point is 00:22:40 you know, who's got a strong mother, daughter, sister, auntie, hands would go up. Imagine this was your grandmother standing up for you in the court case and, you know, desperate to give you a better life. And it just managed to bring about the discussion that our communities of immigrants, and I think it would do very well in America,

Starting point is 00:23:03 which is a country built on immigration, is that our stories may be slightly different, but our experiences may be slightly different, but our stories are the same. It takes a strong mother to bring a family out of a country and to keep that family together and able to adapt. to a new country. It takes a strong mother to keep the values of that family alive. And it takes

Starting point is 00:23:26 a tough, strong, maybe dislikable woman, because Shylock isn't particularly likable. But you understand the way that she is. And it's not just a Jewish story in our version. It sort of can speak to lots of immigrants. And I think it brought communities together. And I think that this production did a hell of a lot of good of explaining what anti-Semitism looked like long before Israel and explained what misogyny looked like to other communities. And an outsider, tough, strong woman is not always the adopted home, adopted country's most favorite woman. And I think that's why I was partly, I got the MBE. I have to, again, get back to your fortitude because as you were doing this play, you had to take extra security to leave the theatre.

Starting point is 00:24:19 there were groups waiting for you outside the theater, and yet you didn't cower, which I think is a character in activism that is needed. And I think that not everyone has that. I think with activism, you know, I didn't feel I had a choice. And I didn't just have to have, you know, I didn't just have security when I was leaving and coming into the building. I had to have, we had to have security all around the stage

Starting point is 00:24:42 because part of our play is we were sort of reenacting a bit of the Battle of Cable Street at the end, it was possible to access onto the state. So we had to have, we had security all the way around the theatre everywhere we went. And I mean, I did keep having to pinch myself saying, I'm a Jewish actress putting on the merchant of Venice, trying to fight anti-Semitism in 1923, four and five,

Starting point is 00:25:05 as opposed to Berlin in 1938. I mean, it was crazy. The meterness of it was mad. I don't know why I've got the fortitude. I think it just comes back to that. early trip to Yad Vashem of just saying, not on my watch. And I feel like there's a whole army behind me of Jews and non-Jews alike who've been incredible allies, because people have to recognize what is legitimate criticism and activism and what bleeds into anti-Semitism.

Starting point is 00:25:36 And that is my bottom line. I would just tell you, in Twitter, you know, a lot of people have fled Twitter. They're like, you know, it's out of control. There's anti-Semitism. And yet you stick to Twitter, and you're not, you don't shy away from it. So I think that there's something that you're doing that you're like, you know, to hell with the trolls and what I'm going to get, I'm strong enough, and I believe strong enough in my position and my ability to speak out that I'm going to stay there and I'm going to fight. I think you're right. I think that's exactly it. You know, back in the day, people were saying, well, why are you staying on Twitter? And it was like, because it's a battleground, because it's an echo chamber battleground and it needs to have dissenting voices.

Starting point is 00:26:18 You know, my industry is, you know, I wouldn't say that the entertainment industry is full of courageous people. I think it's full of a lot of lemmings that follow the crowd that are very nervous to make autonomous decisions and they look to see where the group is heading and what the group think is telling them. And they get very nervous of people that don't follow the group think. And similarly on Twitter, but it's still a battleground nonetheless because journalists are lazy and news cycles are often dictated by what is trending on social media. And I still maintain that Twitter is still a strong place where news people will go to see what is trending

Starting point is 00:26:55 and what the debate is. Unfortunately, the debate is mainly led by trolls, bots and organized pay-for propaganda. But I think it's important that we stay on social media and that we fight because it is still a place where the voice can be heard and it can cut through. and it can cut through in numbers. And I would beg Julia, Juliana, and many and the others

Starting point is 00:27:17 to do whatever they can, to stand strong to who they are because I can put my, I can sleep at night despite the threats and despite the fears of cancel. Actually, I don't fear being cancelled anymore. I actually think I've sort of gone beyond that. And I think I work enough and I do the work that I want to do and I'm able to create my own work. And it's made me a better performer, a better writer, a better everything.

Starting point is 00:27:42 But I would beg you, don't they want us to be silent. They want us to be frightened and they want us to be full of shame. Don't let them. If our background has taught us anything, if we do not advocate for ourselves, no one else will do it. We teach them how they can treat us. So powerful. And Tracy, and I really want to thank you for your advocacy,

Starting point is 00:28:06 for standing up for what you've done in terms of talking about, anti-Semitism and being courageous to be out there. And I wish you to go from strength to strength. Thank you. I find that you are unique and powerful. And I'm proud to have had this time with you. Thank you. Really enjoyed it. Thank you for being part of the All About Change community. We aim to spark ideas for personal activism, helping you find your pathway to action beyond awareness. So thank you for investing your time with us, learning and thinking about how just one person can make the choice to build a community and improve our world. I believe in the power of informed people like you to drive real change, and I know that what we explore

Starting point is 00:28:57 today will be a tool for you in that effort. All right, I'll see you in two weeks for our next conversation, but just one small ask, please hit subscribe and leave us a comment below. It lets us know that you value this content and it supports our mission to widely share these perspectives. If you're looking for more inspiration, check out this next video. I chose it for you and I know you're going to enjoy it. I'm Jay Ruderman. Let's continue working towards meaningful change together.

All About Change - Tracy-Ann Oberman: Unabashedly Fighting Antisemitism and Reclaiming "The Merchant of Venice"

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