Why are there no Jews in the Star Trek universe?

Star Trek is famous for its multiculturalism: Chekov is Russian, Sulu is Japanese, Uhura is Swahili, being Afro-American is an important factor in Sisko's identity, Chakotay is Native American, Scotty is Scottish, O'Brien is Irish, Picard is French. Yet one ethnic group is notably missing from all iterations of the series: the Jews.

This is made even stranger by the fact that so many Star Trek actors were Jews. (William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Walter Koenig, Brent Spiner, Armin Shimerman, to name a few.)

Is there any explanation for why there are no Jews in Star Trek, not even as minor characters? No family names like Rosenberg or Cohen among the crew, nothing. Where have all the Jews disappeared to?

To clarify, I'm curious about both an in-universe and a real-life answer, if there is one.

4 Answers
4

Other answers have addressed the fact that atheism was a central feature of Star Trek, except when network meddling imposed religion (for instance, Kirk saying that "we find the one [God] sufficient"). But it seems to go beyond that.

Most of the information is covered here (credit to Valorum for the link).

Rodenberry seems to have had some degree of anti-Semitic sentiment. Here Sheldon Teitelbaum recounts an encounter with him.

The congenial Roddenberry concluded what I later realized was a slow
burn. “You Jews,” he snarled, “have a lamentable habit of identifying
those characteristics in a society that you deem positive and then
taking credit for inventing them.”

He also quotes Leonard Nimoy on Roddenberry's attitudes:

“Gene was anti-Semitic, clearly,” Nimoy replied as my heart sank.
“Roddenberry had Jewish associates; Bill (Shatner) and I were both
Jewish, as were others. To be fair, Roddenberry was anti-religion. And
apart from being a ethnic-cultural entity, Jews, to him, were a
religious group. But I saw examples not only of him practicing
anti-Semitism, but of him being callous about other peoples'
differences as well.”

In light of these opinions it seems easy to see that he wouldn't want to portray Jews positively; in light of his desire to avoid portraying religion in general, the easiest solution would be not to portray them at all:

What, for instance, are we to make of Roddenberry's decision to

rewrite screenwriter Shimon Wincelberg's reference to Hillel's “Torah
on one leg” parable in the classic first-season-episode, “Dagger of

the Mind,”, attributing it to “the ancient skeptic.”

This "policy" continued past Roddenberry's era, when at least some other producers took a similar stance: not necessarily because of personal anti-Semitism, but because of the perceptions of the audience:

“It was a subject of extraordinary discussion,” the late executive
producer Michael Piller recounted. “The orders were handed down not to
make Worf's adopted parents Jewish. I don't want to sound
anti-Semitic; that's not what it meant. I am a Jew and so is Rick
(Producer Rick Berman). We were simply afraid of making the Worf
character laughable.”

In acknowledging that a Russian Jewish character would be perceived as "laughable," the producers essentially were bowing to the prejudices of the time: why would a Jewish character be laughable, but not a Christian one?

In light of these facts, it seems likely that both Roddenberry's personal attitudes (initially) and the attempts of producers to play to audiences (later) played a role in the relative¹ lack of Jews in Star Trek.

_{1: As noted elsewhere, the number of Jews in Star Trek is not necessarily underrepresentative of the world population. Rather, the prejudices of Roddenberry and others caused them to be underrepresented relative to their proportion among the actors and their proportion of the US population, roughly 2%—two more common referents for Hollywood producers.}

A brief note about the Ferengi. To some people, the Ferengi are the most obvious examples of Jewish stereotypes in Star Trek (to some, it's the Vulcans, whom Nimoy seems to have intended to portray more positively). At least some people associated with these show have echoed these concerns. To me, while they certainly could have been intended as anti-Semitic caricatures, it's not very clear: greed and sexual lust as species traits aren't definitive by themselves (especially since they're go-to "evil" traits), and the Ferengi's oversized ears as stand-ins for the traditional anti-Semitic caricature of oversized noses seems a bit of a stretch. The idea that the Ferengi represent "mere" 20th century capitalists, as frequently claimed, isn't readily dismissed. As such, I didn't include them in the list of examples.

Gene Roddenberry was an active atheist, as per this quote:

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will - and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

For this reason, there isn't a lot of religion portrayed in Star Trek, or at least the Federation. That said, there are many references to religion in Star Trek. As for why the original series didn't portray any Jews specifically, it could be because Roddenberry seemed to dislike the Jewish religous culture more than other religions (which didn't prevent him from hiring Jews like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy).

Even so, numerous Jewish characters have in fact appeared in several Star Trek novels, which may or may not be considered canon:

It may be noted that:

With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide,[6] Judaism is the tenth largest religion in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism1

http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Studies/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=33942

It is believed that the present world population in 2018 is about 7,600,000,000.

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/3

Therefore, the larger estimate of the Jewish population is about 0.00228 of the total world population.

So one person out of every 436.78 should be Jewish. So how many total characters are there is Star Trek? Eliminating extraterrestrial characters, how many characters are there in Star Trek?

The 2016 estimated population of China is about 1,403,500,365 people, or about 0.1846 of the estimated world population in 2018 - one person out of every 5.417. Do 0.1846 of all Star Trek characters seem Chinese?

The 2016 estimated population of India is about 1,324,171,354 people, or 0.1742 of all the people in the world in 2018 - one person out of every 5.740. Do 0.1742 of all Star Trek characters seem Indian?

These two examples show that while Star Trek may be better than most American shows in depicting the diversity of the world population, the cast of Star Trek characters is far less diverse than the world population in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Since Jews mostly look like European or Mediterranean people, though there are Jews looking like members of every human race, and since most most actors cast in Star Trek productions look like European or Mediterranean people, telling Jewish characters apart from non Jewish characters would be difficult without religious or cultural references.

And only a small percentage of Star Trek characters refer to their ethnic, national, religious, or cultural backgrounds.

And I point out that in TOS, and to a lesser degree in other Star Trek productions, alien planets often had populations that looked like Earth Humans, and in fact usually looked like "white" or "Caucasian" Earth Humans. And since there are a number of planets in the United Federation of Planets with alien populations, It is probable that many of them have populations that look like Earth Humans even though those planets weren't colonized by Earth. Thus the Federaton should be full of people who look like "white" or "Caucasian" or other Earth Humans but are more of less native to those planets and not descended from colonists from Earth. Human looking people who probably don't share cultural, linguistic, or religious practices with Earth Humans.

So how can you tell which random Human looking characters actually are Earth Humans and which are aliens who merely look like Earth Humans? How can you estimate the percentage of characters who are Earth Humans as opposed to merely looking like Earth Humans?

If many of the Star Trek characters who look like Earth Humans are aliens who merely look like Earth Humans and have cultures different from any Earth cultures, the proportion of Jewish characters among Star Trek characters would be even lower than it would be if all Human-looking characters actually are Humans.

Therefore, I do not think that there are statistical grounds for considering Jewish characters to be under represented in Star Trek, nor do I consider Jews the first group that people should worry about being underrepresented in Star Trek - they should be more like number 100 or something on the list of underrepresented groups.

Since Jews have been subject to horrible discrimination and persecution, any portrayal of their perceived ethnic characteristics would need to be done particularly carefully and respectfully. As with any ethnic portrayal, there would be risk in taking it too far into caricature (as in Chekov's exaggerated Russian-ness), leaving the ethnic characterisics in the realm of stereotype (Scotty), or not developing the traits sufficiently (for which Picard, with not much French except his name, is sometimes criticized). The writers and showrunners might not have wanted to take this risk in the case of Jews, since the issue of Jewish ethnicity is more charged than others.

Thank you for your interest in this question.
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