Shabbat shalom!
This week on The Jew News Review, we take a break from doomscrolling anti-Israel op-eds and reanimated Nazi rhetoric on Instagram to honor a real milestone: the 50th anniversary of Jaws, the movie that made Americans terrified of swimming and turned a 27-year-old Jewish kid from Cincinnati into the king of Hollywood.
Yes, JNR readers, Jaws is having a birthday. And like all great Jewish birthdays, it involves a lot of people screaming, a poorly understood monster, and no one listening to the guy who actually knows what’s going on.
We are on Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend, attending the Island’s bi-annual Book Festival, taking place in the “up island” tented woke-sphere of Chilmark, MA. We arrived early Friday, so we had time to do a quick visit to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum where an exhibit of Jaws, the summer blockbuster filmed on the island 50 years ago, was pulling in crowds of all ages interested in learning a bit of folk lore around the movie and, like myself, wanting a few good goofy tourist pictures.
Let’s explore, just for giggles, the Jewish roots of Jaws, and why, half a century later, it still might resonate with the broader Jewish community.
Start with the obvious: Steven Spielberg, director of Jaws, is a card-carrying MOT (Member of the Tribe). Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Ohio, Spielberg spent much of his early life feeling like an outsider — bullied and marginalized.
He famously said that as a kid, “being a Jew meant that I was different.” And what does the young 27 year old Spielberg do with that alienation? He gives us Jaws: a film where the protagonist is the outsider no one listens to, the monster is an unstoppable force of destruction, and the local authorities are in full “please stop making trouble” mode.
Let’s take a quick look at the three main characters: Sheriff Brody is the outsider. He sees the threat clearly and tries to warn everyone, but the locals shut him down because he’s ruining the vibe. Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss (another MOT), is the nerdy marine biologist who actually knows what a great white can do—but gets dismissed as hysterical. He’s too smart for the room, too nasal for the mayor, and too Jewish to be listened to. Then there’s Quint. Rough. Scarred. A little unhinged. He’s the muscle. You could say he’s the retired IDF general of the bunch, traumatized by war and willing to do the dirty work no one else wants to.
By the end, these three archetypes—the diaspora Jew, the intellectual Jew, and the warrior Jew—team up to kill the shark. I’m not saying it’s a Zionist allegory. But if the shark had launched rockets from a tunnel under a kids beach volleyball court, it wouldn’t be off-script.
Later in his career, Spielberg stopped hiding the Jewish themes. Schindler’s List. Munich. The Fabelmans. But Jaws was his first sermon in disguise. A parable for the Jewish experience in America: be smart, be strong, be ready, and don’t expect anyone else to save you. Because Jaws isn’t about vampires, ghosts, or zombies. It’s about the unseen thing beneath the surface. It’s about worry. About what might be out there. It’s the movie version of your mother saying, “Don’t go too far, you don’t know what’s in the water.” That’s Jewish horror: a creeping sense of dread backed by very good reasons. And the town only listens when the blood is on the surface. That’s the lesson. That’s the warning.
So, as you head to the beach this weekend, reapply sunscreen for the fifth time, and decide against going in the water more than waist-deep, take a moment to raise your oat milk latte to Steven Spielberg: the nice Jewish boy who taught America that the scariest thing in the world is what you don’t see. And sure, the shark may have terrified America, but it was Spielberg, a Jewish kid with a busted prop and a vision bigger than the ocean, who made it swim.
Dun-dun. Dun-dun.
Be safe out there.
Brad out.
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