Ron Rosenbaum has an interesting open letter to Jon Stewart up on Slate, in which he asks him to change his name back to the one he was born with: Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. His rationale is that the era of Jewish actors and comedians changing their names to assimilate into likable, acceptable Hollywood forms is over.
He also maintains that Stewart could easily work the name change into his routine by openly calling attention to it, “forgetting” his name, etc. But what I feel like Rosenbaum is forgetting is that actors, comedians, artists, writers, and other creative professionals routinely change their names for a variety of reasons: to make it more pronounceable, more memorable, to make it sound cooler, snappier… the list goes on. I can’t imagine that Stewart’s decision, in this day and age, was based purely on a desire to cloak his ethno-religious background. As Rosenbaum himself admits, Stewart regularly pokes fun at his background, referring to himself “Jewy von Jewstein,” among other names. I wonder if any Daily Show interns will pick up on the Slate article. God help Ron Rosenbaum if they do.
