The chief executive of UK Jewish Film Festival, which begins next week, has warned of the “erasure of British-Jewish culture from national cultural life” as Jews in the creative industries have faced “deafening silence and avoidance tactics” from mainstream arts organisations since October 7.
Writing for the JC (see p4), Michael Etherton said that arts bodies, which are largely publicly funded, now feel “impunity” to exclude Jews in the new climate of antisemitism.
It comes as leading authors and figures in the arts world have warned that Jews are being quietly silenced, intimidated and erased from Britain’s cultural spaces.
Novelists Howard Jacobson and Lionel Shriver described a petition urging a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions – signed by 1,000 writers last week – as an attempt to “silence” and “intimidate” other authors.
In response to Etherton sounding the alarm, a number of Jewish performers have told the JC that over the last year they have been routinely overlooked, dismissed, or frozen out of their respective industries.
Benjamin Till, a Bafta-nominated composer and film-maker who commissions films depicting British Jewish life as part of his role with UKJF, said he had been rejected by Arts Council England four times over a 2025 project entitled The Jews of Britain.
What he alleged to be the consistently dismissive approach of the Arts Council led him, like Etherton, to conclude that “there is a serious danger of the erasure of British Jewish art”.
The problem, he added, comes “from people who can’t differentiate between Israeli policy and British Jewish people”.
Last month, Till wrote to his MP, Sarah Sackman, the representative for Finchley and Golders Green, saying he felt “lost” and “invisible”, adding that Jewish creatives were being “frightened, censored, boycotted and utterly ignored”.
In her reply, Sackman said his letter raised “highly concerning issues of antisemitism in the arts”, which she promised to relay to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy. Nandy’s office told the JC it would respond next week.
Comedian Josh Howie said outwardly Jewish comics “have definitely felt a change over time”, with venues less eager to book them.
Josh Howie
“No promoter has said ‘I can’t book you because you’re Jewish,’ but some are not getting back to you. It’s much more anecdotal,” he said. “I’m hesitant to call it out as antisemitism but what a coincidence that a promoter put up a post about genocide and won’t respond to your emails.”
Howie said that at some points during the war, he has had “people calling the venues and trying to get my gigs cancelled for weeks. None of the gigs were pulled but then none of them have rebooked me in since. Regardless of politics, they just don’t want the hassle as they might get a complaint.”
JW3’s programming director William Galinsky said that since October 7 “things have felt tricky” for many Jewish artists and creatives.
“Regardless of their relationship to Israel, Jewish artists can sometimes feel at the sharp end of some pretty hurtful behaviour and attitudes,” he said.
A screening of the documentary We Will Dance Again could not take place safely in any central London venues last month, he said, with film-makers having to resort to screening the film at JW3 only.
Natan Paul-Collis, founder of the Jewish Dramatic Association of London (JDAL), said there was in the acting world at the moment “a lot of antisemitism, and some antisemitism which they won’t admit as they use euphemisms for it, [but either way] it leaves Jewish people feeling less comfortable”.
He said many JDAL cast members were “worried” about what others in the industry think about them, and sometimes chose to refrain from wearing Star of David necklaces or displaying their Jewishness in other ways.
One young Jewish actor told the JC on condition of anonymity that Jewish creatives were “being strategically convinced to make their characters palatable, universal and not to mention Israel”.
He added that there was a “growing feeling” among his acting peers that Jews “ought to keep their heads down”.
Another Jewish actor based in Manchester who has just graduated from a performing arts school said he was forced to leave a young actors’ union after the group routinely posted “anti-Israel propaganda” on its social media and encouraged members to “speak up for Palestine”.
“They would put out statements vilifying Israel, without nuance or context, and the few Jews of us who were in the group were made to feel even more maligned. God forbid we ever speak our minds, we’d be crucified by our fellow colleagues,” he said.
Till’s project, The Jews of Britain, is funded mostly by the British Jewish community and seeks to tell the 1,000-year story of Jewish people in Britain through a variety of media including musicals and film.
More than 20 academics and historians have been working with him on the project.
In an exchange seen by the JC, the Arts Council, after rejecting Till’s third submission on The Jews of Britian project, said the application would have benefitted from “further information on how you will reach and engage non-Jewish audience members”.
Benjamin Till
Till said: “A project funded by Jewish people, with a natural Jewish audience of some 300,000 British Jewish individuals, and they’re telling us you’re not allowed to have them as your primary audience.”
Something has “changed” in the industry after October 7, he said, adding that the Arts Council, which had been cooperative and generous on projects in the past, is now minimally responsive.
“The Arts Council has changed enormously recently.
“It used to be a situation whereby you could go in and talk with them, be given updates to your application and detailed feedback containing clear and precise details about what might have gone wrong. Now, it’s difficult to get anything at all from them,” Till said.
Unlike in previous years, “these days you spend the best part of a week on each application, filling out this incredibly long form and taking care with each detail, only to eventually get one dismissive or vague line back from them in response.
“That’s the situation we feel we’re now in,” Till said, adding: “I feel there is a serious danger of the erasure of British Jewish art if things continue, coming from people who can’t differentiate between Israeli policy and British Jewish people.”
It comes as an online petition calling for a boycott on Israeli publishers, book festivals, literary agencies and publications, organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature, has received more than 1,000 signatures from well-known authors.
The petition, which urged action against Israeli cultural institutions “complicit in genocide”, was distributed by Fossil Free Books, a UK-based activist collective and pressure group made up of workers from across the publishing industry.
Rebuking the petition, Howard Jacobson told the Times it was “staggering” that “one person from the artistic community should dream that he or she has a right to silence another”. Lionel Shriver, another prolific author and journalist, and winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2005 for her novel We Need To Talk About Kevin, said the petition sought to “intimidate” authors.
“Even if… you decry Israel’s pursuit of the war against Hamas and Hezbollah,” she said, “it is not in the larger interest of any writer for publishers, agents and festivals to be the preserve of a narrow ideological position on any issue.”
Shriver also wrote on The Free Press website that she had signed an open letter circulated by another organisation, Creative Community for Peace, in opposition to members of the literary community who “harass and ostracise their colleagues because they don’t share a one-sided narrative” about Israel.
The letter, which was published on Monday, states that the signatories “will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians”.
An Arts Council England spokesman said:
“Competition for our rolling project funding is extremely high, and as a result of the high volume of applications, we are unable to provide detailed feedback for any applicants. We recognise the hard work that people put into their applications, and we understand that it is disappointing when applications are not successful.
“We do not comment publicly on unsuccessful applications; however, each application is considered carefully and solely against our published guidance for the fund. No other considerations inform our decision making.”
