This Sunday, Jewish actor Jason Isaacs, known for his role as Lucius Malfoy in the “Harry Potter” movie series and in iconic films like “Black Hawk Down,” “Peter Pan” and “The Patriot,” wore a yellow ribbon pinned to his suit while attending the British Independent Film Awards.
Isaacs, who is about to star in the next season of “The White Lotus,” didn’t comment on the pin or its significance while being interviewed on the red carpet. Since October of last year, the yellow ribbon has been associated with the plight of the Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza by Hamas. It’s possible that the star of TV shows like “The O.A.” and “Star Trek: Discovery” wore the pin to show his support for those dealing with sarcoma or bone cancer. In fact, on October 7, the actor ran a family-friendly race to benefit the Children’s Cancer Centre at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London — a race that he has run for many years. Isaacs, who hasn’t been sharing much on social media in the past year, shared that he watched the hospital “save my amazingly brave goddaughter from cancer.”
Yet Isaacs, one of the more prolific British actors of his generation and a father of two girls, has very profound ties with Israel. Isaacs, who was born in 1963, was raised Jewish in the Childwall suburb of Liverpool, in an insular Jewish community his immigrant great-grandparents helped found. Judaism was a big part of his early childhood; he went to Jewish school and religious school. His family moved to London when he was 11 (as a teen, he attended the same school as Sacha Baron Cohen, David Baddiel and Matt Lucas). It was the antisemitism that his family experienced in London amid the rise of the National Front in England that drove his mother and father, a jewelry maker, and his three brothers to eventually make aliyah to Israel in 1988 (two of his brothers had returned to England by 2000).
“There were constantly people beating us up or smashing windows,” he shared with The Independent in 2013 about his childhood. “If you were ever, say, on a Jewish holiday, identifiably Jewish, there was lots of violence around. But particularly when I was 16, in 1979, the National Front were really taking hold, there were leaflets at school, and Sieg Heiling and people goose-stepping down the road and coming after us.”
“That might have been what galvanised my parents to get out,” he continued. “My dad got into a lot of scraps in the 1930s when he was a young Communist. I’m always trying to persuade them to come back, because this is home to me. But they felt so uncomfortable as young people and were so defined by their experience being Jewish during the 1930s and Forties.”
Isaacs himself has shared that as a North-London Jew, he felt a bit out of place in his early days in college. While he isn’t incredibly effusive about his Jewish identity, he has shared that he’s proud to be a Jew.
“I feel my Jewish roots are my core. I went to cheder all my young adult life, and my parents live in Israel. I’d like to join a shul where they welcome children of a mixed marriage,” he told the Jewish Chronicle in 2008. “I feel profoundly Jewish but not in a religious way. I love the tradition through the ritual and the songs, but when I read the Seder in English it’s nonsensical… But Judaism has wonderful things to offer.”
In 2014, his mother passed away in Israel from complications related to cancer and dementia. Isaacs was lucky enough to be in the country before her death to say goodbye while shooting the show “Dig” with showrunner Gideon Raff, of “Homeland” fame, at the helm. In the show, Isaacs plays an FBI agent working in Jerusalem opposite Anne Heche, Lauren Ambrose and current “Mary” star Ori Pfeffer. Then, rockets started firing out of the Gaza strip.
“The production I was shooting obviously shut down. The insurers shut it down,” Isaacs shared on the Marie Curie podcast in 2021.
“They sent everyone home and I got to stay just at the moment my mum moved into this place. She was there for months, fading away, not quite understanding why she wasn’t getting better but, you know, continually talking to doctors and stuff, and everybody around knew, not because we had a diagnosis, but because it was clear that she was fading. I got to be with her there, and various brothers flew in at various stages, and my wife and kids flew out for a little bit, until she died and we buried her.”
“She wasn’t just my mum. Or a grandma. Or a great-grandma. She was a little girl, a victim, a survivor, a vamp, a wife, a provider, a cook and cleaner and carer on an industrial scale, a bleeding heart, a campaigner, an activist, a life-saver, a convict for her convictions, a perpetual critic and a rock-steady support, a loyal friend, an open minded, open hearted beautiful, difficult, fierce, frustrated, fabulous woman. An inspiration. Almost all of which I’ve come to realise after I lost her,” Isaacs shared in an ode to his mom back in 2023.
It's the Jewish New Year. 5781 years of stress, running and guilt. No wonder we have bad posture.
It's supposed to be a time of rebirth, re-imagining and, over the next 10 days, of reflection.
May it be sweet and fruitful for everyone and herald the start of something better.
x— Jason Isaacs (@jasonsfolly) September 19, 2020
Isaacs received backlash to appearing in a show that was shot in Israel back in 2014, and responded that anyone who thought he shouldn’t be in Israel didn’t know the story, saying he was there not to cash in but always to connect, that he believes in a peaceful two-state solution and that culture can be the answer. Isaacs also praised his Israeli castmates like comedian Assi Cohen.
Isaacs hasn’t played very many Jewish roles throughout his career. In fact, he had to insist on playing the Jewish Louis in the British production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels In America,” where he got to make out with Daniel Craig (who is married to a nice British Jew, Rachel Weisz).
“Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters,” he apparently told the producers. “In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can’t I for once play that onstage?”
Isaacs also played a Jewish German therapist at the dawn of World War II in the film “Good,” a role for which he prepared by listening to recordings from the liberations of Bergen-Belsen, feeling so moved to hear prisoners recite Jewish prayers and even sing the “Tikvah.”
Isaacs, who has been outspoken about multiple charitable causes, including being a Red Cross ambassador, speaking in support of Ukrainian refugees and refugees around the world as well as those fighting cancer, has not made any public statements about the Israel-Hamas War since it’s start in 2023. Him attending a public event with a yellow ribbon on behalf of the Israeli hostages feels less likely than him wearing a ribbon to draw attention to a cause he’s already outspoken about, but it’s not impossible.
It’s undeniable that the actor has a strong connection to Israel, a country that he has spent decades visiting regularly, a country where he wished his mother, Linda, a final farewell, a country where his parents went to feel proudly and comfortably Jewish.
