'Nobody Wants This' Star Tovah Feldshuh: "I Have No Shame About Being Jewis

Tovah Feldshuh has spent five decades on Broadway and screen playing Jewish heroines, from Yentl to Golda Meir. Now, at 77, with a new generation discovering her as the formidable Jewish mother Bina Roklov in Netflix's "Nobody Wants This," she has become one of the entertainment world's most unapologetic voices for the Jewish people and Israel.

The four-time Tony nominee traces that pride back to her father, Sidney Feldshuh, a lawyer. "I remember my father banging against my chest, gently, but he said, 'Remember who you are, because the world will remind you anyway. So, take it and love it,'" she told the Jewish Journal this month.

"I love being Jewish," she said. "I have no shame about being Jewish."

She repeated the story on "Ordinary Heroes," a program hosted by Bernie Furshpan, vice chair of the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County, in an episode released this week.

Taking on Hollywood's Israel critics

Feldshuh has not shied away from confronting fellow performers who have criticized Israel. In her interview with the Jewish Journal, she singled out Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder, who used her 2025 Emmy acceptance speech to declare support for Palestine.

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"Mark Ruffalo, in my book, has a dangerous and ignorant point of view, and I do not support him," Feldshuh said. "Pity, he's a very good actor. So is Sarandon and so is Einbinder."

Of Einbinder's Emmy moment, she said: "'Free Palestine' means the genocide of six million Jews and two million Arab Israelis. That's what that means."

She said family members have urged her to be more cautious. "They said you're damaging yourself," she recalled. "But so far, so good. So far, people are so grateful that anybody has any guts."

"The indigenous minority"

In interviews with The Media Line last December, timed to the release of the film version of "Golda's Balcony," the longest-running one-woman show in Broadway history, Feldshuh described Jews as "the indigenous minority" in their historic homeland, "like our Native Americans."

She warned that the Jewish story is being erased by a sophisticated media campaign, and delivered a blunt message to those behind it: "We are on to the cleverness of the media campaign that the Muslim radicals can propagate throughout my country."

She also pointed to Azerbaijan, a 96 percent Muslim country, as a model of coexistence, praising it for having "harbored their Jewish community and their Christians."

"We as the Jewish people are fantastic at survival," she said.

A Golda revival that was too dangerous to stage

Feldshuh told the Jerusalem Post that after October 7, she pushed to bring "Golda's Balcony" back to the New York stage, but was rebuffed.

"Some producers, Jewish producers, felt we'd be boycotted, that there would be demonstrations, that it could be dangerous," she said. "That's when I really felt how intense global antisemitism has become."

On the front lines since October 7

A month after the Hamas massacre, Feldshuh appeared on stage at the March for Israel in Washington, which drew some 300,000 people to the National Mall. Her activism is featured in "Tovah," a new documentary about her life by filmmaker David Serero, which won best documentary feature at the Boca International Jewish Film Festival and features Dustin Hoffman, Oscar Isaac and Kristen Bell.

"In this moment of global antisemitism, it's very important to stand up straight and have courage and have pride," Feldshuh said. "I'm happy to stand up for the Jewish people."

She has no plans to slow down. "I plan to work well into my 90s and to live to 104," she said. "I have a fourth act ahead of me."