TikTok has given rise to a new crop of Jewish personalities who are profiting from creating popular content for the Jewish community (as well as Jewish content for non-Jews, too).
Unless you’ve been hibernating for the past couple of years, you’ve probably heard of TikTok. It’s a social networking app that features short videos and has taken the world by storm. Today, you can watch the latest dance craze or see teens doing pranks and stunts. You can also watch actual video footage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine shot on cell phones along with stay-at-home dads telling their favorite jokes and highlights of the latest sporting events.
The Chinese-owned TikTok only allows the upload of short (15 seconds to three minutes) videos and has gained in popularity since the demise of similar apps like Vine and Musical.ly (another Chinese-owned app that merged with TikTok). It became the first non-Facebook mobile app to reach 3 billion downloads globally this past summer.
Like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, Jewish content is readily available on the TikTok platform. The app has given rise to a new crop of Jewish personalities who are profiting from creating popular content for the Jewish community (as well as Jewish content for non-Jews, too). A recent NBC News article interviewed several Jewish creators on the TikTok app who said they feel they have been subjected to a type of censorship, with the app regularly flagging and removing their content. Additionally, there have been many antisemitic slurs in the comment section of videos uploaded by these Jewish content creators. Nevertheless, these new Jewish internet celebrities have persevered and continue to churn out videos that go viral, even educating people about Judaism and dispelling myths along the way.
So, who are these Jewish TikTok content providers?
Crazy Brothers-in-Law (@JewCrazy)
Tommer and Yossi are brothers-in-law who must have looked at the typical dance memes on TikTok and determined that they could do those with a Jewish flavor. This duo has half a million followers, 10 million likes, and make money selling JewCrazy-branded merchandise.
In one of their most popular videos, the two men appear to be getting into a fight with a gangster who tells them to come back to the alley strapped. Instead of returning strapped with guns, they reappear wearing the leather straps of their tefillin.
Tommer and Yossi regularly answer questions from commenters in a cynical manner, but ultimately educate the public about what it means to be observant Jews. Many of the comments on their videos bring up millennia-old stereotypes about Jewish people (e.g., do Jews have horns, do Jews control the banks, etc.), but @JewCrazy responds to these misguided commenters by setting the record straight.
Many of their videos just put a Jewish spin on viral TikTok dances and memes. For example, they remade the famous Island Boys video substituting the lyrics with “I’m a Menorah Boy.” Like other popular Jewish TikTok users, @JewCrazy has had Jewish- and Israel-related videos censored on the app and has even been banned for several weeks. The pair does not do anything more obscene or offensive than many other accounts on TikTok, but they have been targeted for their Jewish content.
