Is Elon Musk Jewish?

By PJ Grisar
November 6, 2024

Elon Musk, whose portfolio of electric vehicles, spacecrafts and a social media company may soon include a voice in Donald Trump’s second administration, with many speculating as to the depth and duties of his possible role. But some are asking a different question that has a simpler answer: Is Elon Musk Jewish? 

No. Next question.

OK, we’ll indulge this a bit. Elon Musk’s first name is Hebrew. It was the name of one of the biblical judges.

It’s also the name of unincorporated communities in Iowa and Virginia, a North Carolina university and the Kodak trade name for a chemical used to develop black and white photos. None of those –with the exception of Elon U, which boasts a nice-sized Jewish population – strike me as particularly Jew-y. 

As for Musk’s ancestry, a 2012 Forbes profile noted that while Musk’s Christian name means “oak tree” in Hebrew, he is not Jewish, but of Pennsylvania Dutch and British extraction, the scion of a South African engineer-emerald miner father and a model-dietician mother born in Canada. Musk is so un-Jewish, in fact, in 2021 a row ensued over a play at the Royal Court Theatre in London because an evil billionaire character based on Musk was given the very Jewish name of Hershel Fink.

Though he comes from a country with the largest Jewish population in Africa, he really is just not mishpacha, as much as we may have wanted naming ceremonies for his newest, 12th child, whose name has yet to be disclosed to the press (notable Musk baby names include  X Æ A-12 and Exa Dark Sideræl.) 

‘Aspirationally Jewish’ or antisemitic?

Musk has attracted the ire of some Jews for likening Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler and once appearing to imply that Jews control the media (a claim he insisted he was not making). After he assumed control of Twitter, and rebranded it X, many were critical of his moderation of hate speech on the platform. 

In September of 2023, Musk threatened a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League for lost revenue from the notion he was antisemitic. That same month he participated in an interview, on X, hosted by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro where he called himself “pro-semitic” and “aspirationally Jewish”  

Two months later, in November, Musk called a post alleging that Jewish communities push “hatred against whites” an “actual truth,” when it is in fact a variation of the Great Replacement theory. He denied the post was antisemitic. That same month he went to Israel and met with Benjamin Netanyahu in the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

In Jan. 2024, Musk, Ben Shapiro and Musk’s son Techno Mechanicus, then a 3-year-old, visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. Musk initially said that the visit would “take a few days to sink in.” In an interview with Shapiro after the trip, Musk said he was “Jewish by association” and then averred that his social media platform, had it existed at the time of the Holocaust, “could have saved millions of lives.” OK, then.

So, Elon Musk: not a Jew, despite a number of antisemites probably believing him to be, based on his supreme wealth and ambitions to run the 21st century commons that is Twitter. Google this question and consider why it’s such a popular one outside of Jewish spaces.

Still, I would contend there is one parallel – however tenuous — between Musk and the people of the book. Musk once joked on the app he now owns that he is the real-life version of flame-thrower-toting “Simpsons” super villain Hank Scorpio, for whom Homer briefly worked in a very good episode from the show’s eighth season. The character of Scorpio, a CEO bent on world domination, is probably not Jewish either, but at least he’s voiced by Albert Brooks.

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