Seth Rogen has been praised for a wide-ranging podcast interview in which he discusses Israel and his thoughts on identity as a Jewish American man.
The 38-year-old actor appeared on the WTF with Marc Maron earlier this week and speaking to the host, Rogen labelled the plan for Jews to “spread out” and move to various places around the world after the Holocaust as a “better strategy” than immigrating to Israel.
He said: “You don’t keep all your Jews in one basket. I don’t understand why they did that [moved to Israel]. It makes no sense whatever… It would be nice to live somewhere that is not part of the Christian apocalyptic prophecy.
“Maybe settle somewhere that the Christians don’t think we all have to die,” he quipped.
Adding that he feels “that as a Jewish person, like, I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life”, Rogen continued: “You know, they never tell you, that oh by the way, there were people there.
“They make it seem like it [Israel] was just sitting there, ‘oh the f**king door’s open’.”
The duo then admitted neither of them could imagine living in Israel.
“There are nice parts,” Rogen said. “At best you are convincing yourself that you are far enough away from a major conflict to not worry about it which is a terrible thing to convince yourself of.”
The Pineapple Express actor’s comments - and his decision to speak out on the complex debate - has won praise online:
Rogen's standpoint still drew some criticism though:
The podcast appearance also sees Rogen discuss other aspects of his upbringing, including attending a Jewish summer camp as a child, and the pair admitted they had previously been “frightened” to publicly address a number of the topics discussed.
“I’m afraid of Jews,” Rogen quipped. “I’m 100 percent afraid of Jews, that’s it! Aside from James Caan we have no one to be afraid of.
“It’s scary. But we’re Jews – we can say whatever we want,” he continued. “If anyone can say whatever they f**king want about this s**t, it should be two famous Jewish people.
“If anyone’s getting rounded up first, it’s our f**king a***s.”
Rogen was appearing on the WTF podcast to promote his new movie, American Pickle, which follows a struggling worker who arrives in the States with the hope of starting a new life in the 1920s.
“If you meet a Jewish person in America, they’re probably here because someone tried to kill our grandparents not too long ago,” he said.
