{"id":111312,"date":"2021-11-18T13:32:51","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T11:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=111312"},"modified":"2021-12-15T10:36:04","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T08:36:04","slug":"lbh-kirk-douglas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/lbh-kirk-douglas\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirk Douglas: Star of David and Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like many Jews of his generation, Kirk Douglas had changed his name to avoid revealing that he was born Issur Danielovitch, the son of poor Jewish immigrants who lived in Amsterdam, New York.\u00a0 Even before that, he adopted the Americanized surname of his uncle Avram Demsky and preferred Isadore over Issur.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A photo of Kirk Douglas as a young man with his mother, appearing in his autobiography, The Ragman’s Son<\/em><\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Douglas always was acutely aware that he was Jewish. His childhood temple offered to subsidize his education at a Yeshiva so he could become a rabbi, but he had fallen in love with acting and declined the offer.\u00a0 Though he had a bar mitzvah and celebrated Jewish holidays in his home, he did not share the piety of his parents.\u00a0 The anti-Semitism he encountered in his hometown, however, never let him forget his Jewish origins.\u00a0 As he recalled in his autobiography, The Ragman’s Son<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAfter school each day, I\u2019d have to walk about twelve blocks to Hebrew school.\u00a0 I had to run the gauntlet, because every other street had a gang, and they would always be waiting to catch the Jew boy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He could not escape this prejudice when he attended St. Lawrence University, a Liberal Arts college located in an isolated rural area of northern New York. Though athletic and handsome, he was not rushed by the fraternities whose national charters banned pledging Jews. Instead, Douglas left his imprint on the campus as an actor, champion wrestler, and the first non-fraternity member and Jew to be elected student president in 1938.\u00a0 The alumni protested over a \u201cJew boy president of the student body\u201d and threatened to stop donating to the school.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A photo of Douglas on the wrestling team at St. Lawrence University, appearing in The Ragman’s Son<\/em><\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
A photo of Kirk Douglas, \u201cJew boy president of the student body\u201d at St. Lawrence University, appearing in The Ragman’s Son<\/em><\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Douglas served in the navy during World War Two.\u00a0 He married his first of two gentile wives in 1943 (the second converted when they renewed their vows in 2004) in a ceremony conducted by a navy chaplain.\u00a0 A rabbi agreed to officiate at a subsequent wedding in return for the couple promising to raise their children as Jews.<\/p>\n

Douglas subsequently admitted that he never intended to honor this pledge.<\/p>\n

He landed his first leading role opposite Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers<\/em> in 1946, though he would not be cast as a Jewish character for another seven years. Privately during this period, his attachment to Judaism expressed itself by fasting on Yom Kippur out of a sense of solidarity towards the Jews of the past and the present.<\/p>\n

This connection was reinforced when Douglas played Holocaust survivor Hans Mueller in Edward Dmytryk\u2019s The Juggler<\/em>, the first Hollywood motion picture to be filmed in Israel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Douglas receiving a gift to present to Moshe Sharett, prior to filming “The Juggler” in Israel.<\/a> From \u2068\u2068the October 3, 1952 edition of The B’nai B’rith Messenger\u2069\u2069<\/em>; part of the National Library of Israel Digital Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
This double-spread feature on the filming of “The Juggler” was published in the newspaper Davar<\/em> on October 31, 1952<\/a>; a part of the National Library of Israel Digital Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the registration center for new immigrants, Hans, a former juggler and clown, hallucinates that his deceased wife and children are peering at him from a window.\u00a0 Chafing from confinement, he escapes from the facility and beats up an Israeli police officer whose check of his identification papers stirs up memories of Nazi interrogations. Roaming the countryside, Hans is befriended by a boy and woman who belong to a kibbutz and invite him to stay there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When the police track him down, Hans barricades himself in a room, though he eventually surrenders and acknowledges he is sick and needs help.\u00a0 Throughout the film Hans repeatedly remarks that \u201chome is a place you lose,\u201d but slowly discerns that Israel is a homeland for Jews fleeing oppression.\u00a0 In real life, Douglas admired Israel for fighting for Jewish statehood in the shadow of the systematic slaughter of European Jewry.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Kirk Douglas in Tel Aviv, 1952.<\/a> Photo by Rudi Weissenstein, all rights reserved to Pri-Or PhotoHouse; part of the National Library of Israel Digital Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His next Jewish character, Mickey Marcus, in Melville Shavelson\u2019s Cast a Giant Shadow <\/em>(1966) was based on an American Jewish soldier recruited by the Haganah as a military advisor to Israeli troops during the War of Independence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
David “Mickey” Marcus.<\/a> From the Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Until he tours Dachau after its liberation, Marcus feels little sympathy for Zionism.\u00a0 Later, catapulted into the fray in Israel, he trains soldiers and organizes the clandestine route to smuggle arms, food, and medical supplies into besieged Jerusalem. Marcus is eventually killed in a “friendly-fire” incident – an Israeli sentry who does not understand English shoots the American, who does not speak Hebrew and cannot respond to orders to prove he is not an enemy combatant.<\/p>\n

\"\"
“Mickey” Marcus during Israel’s War of Independence, 1948 (Government Press Office \/ Public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/div>\n

Douglas identified with Marcus who \u201cin helping the Israelis, discovered his Jewishness, came to grips with it, and acknowledged that he was a Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner on the set of “Cast a Giant Shadow” (Photo: Boris Carmi).<\/a> From the Meitar Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner on the set of “Cast a Giant Shadow” (Photo: Boris Carmi).<\/a> From the Meitar Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/div>\n

The actor returned to the topics of the Holocaust and Israel in films like Victory at Entebbe <\/em>(1976) and Remembrance of Love<\/em> (1982).\u00a0 As Holocaust survivor Joe Rabin in the latter, he travels to a gathering of survivors in Israel searching for his long-lost lover and the baby she was carrying before the two were deported to concentration camps.\u00a0 Douglas\u2019 indignation over the Shoah and pride in Israel as a Jewish state are evident in many of the books he authored<\/a>, as well.<\/p>\n

In 1991, Douglas nearly died in a collision between his helicopter and a stunt plane. Confined to a hospital bed with spinal injuries, he reevaluated his relationship to Judaism:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI came to believe that I was spared because I had never come to grips with what it means to be Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This quest spurred him to study Torah and have his second bar mitzvah at the age of 83. He valued the morality promoted by religions in general, \u201cI studied Judaism a lot. I studied religion in general, and I have never imposed my Judaism on my kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kirk’s son, the actor Michael Douglas, also began to further explore his Jewish roots after the helicopter incident. In subsequent years he became very active in Jewish causes and visited Israel numerous times, including in 2015 to receive the second annual Genesis Prize, known as the “Jewish Nobel”, which “recognizes and celebrates Jewish talent and achievement, honoring individuals for their accomplishments and commitment to Jewish values.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Kirk Douglas, wearing his original Bar Mitzvah tallis<\/em>, speaks at his second Bar Mitzvah to his son, Michael Douglas, and soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Catherine Zeta-Jones.<\/a> From the \u2068\u2068January 7, 2000 edition of The Australian Jewish News<\/em>\u2069\u2069; part of the National Library of Israel Digital Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1996, the elder Douglas suffered a severe stroke.\u00a0 Intensive speech therapy enabled him to regain his ability to talk.\u00a0 Rather than letting his halting speech deter him from acting, he appeared in three more feature films and one television movie.\u00a0 In It Runs in the Family <\/em>(2003), he plays the patriarch of a Jewish family coping with the aftermath of his stroke. In the film, Douglas quips:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSo what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Moses had one, and he did all right.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Over the years, the actor donated over $100 million to American and Israeli charities, funding hundreds of playgrounds in poor sections of Los Angeles and Jerusalem, an Alzheimer\u2019s hospital unit, and a theater near the Western Wall.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Eighty-five year-old Kirk Douglas tries out a slide at a playground he donated.<\/a> Published in the \u2068\u2068February 1, 2002 edition of The Australian Jewish News<\/em>\u2069\u2069; part of the National Library of Israel Digital Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the course of his career, Kirk Douglas evolved from an actor who originally minimized his Jewish roots into a proud Jew who recovered his ethnic and religious identity by dramatizing it and immersing himself in Judaism and Jewish history.<\/p>\n

\n

—<\/p>\n

A version of this article was originally published by the San Diego Jewish World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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