Cinema has mostly imagined the Jewish past, and the story of the Jewish diaspora in particular, as a white one. Even when filmmakers went to Africa, the Jewish characters on screen were played by white actors. Cecil B. DeMille shot parts of his 1956 epic “The Ten Commandments,” about the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, on location in Egypt (though most of it was filmed on the Paramount lot in Hollywood) – yet his Moses was Charlton Heston.
