Jewish Pornstar

Jewish Pornstar

Menu

Open Search Field Close Search Field
Search

Submit
Get Our Newsletter

Support the Forward
Funded by readers like you
Donate Subscribe

Support the Forward
Funded by readers like you
Donate Subscribe

The Schmooze 7 Jews Who Made It Big In Porn

By Irene Katz Connelly
4 min read

דאָ אירצט דער מגיד־שיעור די בחורים און מע רעדט אַ ייִדיש פֿון אַ הויכן קאַליבער.

icon/f

About
Jobs
Contact Us
Help
Newsletters
Store

By Gabe Friedman (JTA)

June 15, 2015

Last week, the news surfaced that “Queen of Porn” Jenna Jameson . Jameson, who has been married twice before, is engaged to Israeli Lior Bitton (who works in L.A.’s diamond business and has been charged with stealing merchandise from his stores).
Jameson’s Instagram page is filled with photos of challah and other kosher dishes she’s been cooking up; she’s even dropping Hebrew words on Twitter.
As it it turns out, Jameson will be in great company — several other members of the tribe are (or have been) major stars in the adult film industry. In honor of Jameson’s high-profile conversion, we give you seven of the most famous Jews in porn. You might not want to Google them in an office or other public place.
Real name: Ronald Jeremy Hyatt
Jeremy is arguably the most famous porn star of all time. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Queens, Jeremy went on to star in well over 2,000 adult films. He’s also been featured in almost every realm of popular culture since the 1980s — through small parts in films such as “Ghostbusters” and music videos for bands like Sublime and Guns N’ Roses — even if he now looks more like your goofy Jewish uncle than a porn legend.
Real name: Bryan Matthew Sevilla
Deen is the most famous Jew — and one of the most famous people, period — working in the adult film world today. His unassuming “nice guy” demeanor has even won him female fans outside of the industry. He has also been very open about his Jewish upbringing (among other things, the public now knows he lost his virginity at a Jewish summer camp).
Real name: Mary Louise Hartman
Hartley, now 56, is a bona fide porn legend, having starred in over 1,000 adult films and directed 18. After winning eight Adult Video News Awards throughout her career, she’s now a sex educator and speaker.
Real name: Joanna Mostov
Joanna Angel is believed to be the first porn star to enter the industry after living in an Orthodox home. After working at a kosher restaurant in Teaneck, New Jersey, and attending Rutgers University, she founded her own porn website and became one of the leaders of so-called “alt-porn” movement.
Real name: Andrei Treivas
Lucas — who was born in Russia and has lived in New York and Israel — has been one of the more successful Jews in the industry, as both a gay pornographic actor and an entrepreneur. His company Lucas Entertainment is the biggest gay adult film company in New York and has made some of the most expensive gay pornos of all time. He is fiercely pro-Israel and pro-gay rights, and in 2009 his film Men of Israel was the first adult movie to feature only gay Jewish actors.
Real name: Naomi Russell
Russell, who was one of the more popular porn starlets in the late 2000s, has stated that her father is a rabbi. She was born in Los Angeles and has Israeli ancestry.
Real name: Adam Glasser
Butts – or Glasser, take your pick – was born in the Bronx to Jewish parents, whom he has said were involved in the “shmattah business.” As the Showtime reality series “Family Business” pointed out, his mother Lila has also been involved with the production and distribution of some of his films.
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit Foward and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.
To republish, copy the HTML, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline, and credit to Foward. Have questions? Please email us at help@forward.com.
Copyright © 2022 The Forward Association, Inc. All rights reserved.
Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Get The Daily Edition

Account

Sign In

© 2021 The Times of Israel , All Rights Reserved

Terms and conditions
Privacy policy

Members of the tribe Members of the tribe

By Gabe Friedman

13 June 2015, 2:28 am

Edit

Former adult actress Jenna Jameson promoting her erotic novel 'Sugar' on October 25, 2013 at a Barnes and Noble in Los Angeles, California. (Valerie Macon/Getty Images, via JTA)
Joanna Angel (Michael Dorausch – Flickr: AVN Expo & AVN Awards)

Join our Israeli cooking experience!

View comments

Hide comments

Please use the following structure: example@domain.com
By registering you agree to the terms and conditions

Send me The Times of Israel Daily Edition

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes..
Incorrect password. Please try again or choose an option below.

I forgot my password
/
Send me a sign in link

It has a link that will sign you in.
Click the link in that email to complete registration so you can comment.

Israel statistics:

6,713,259
Vaccinated: 1st dose

4,472,124
cases

6,146,762
Vaccinated: 2nd dose

68,952
Active cases

4,503,788
Vaccinated: 3rd dose

388
Serious cases

834,042
Vaccinated: 4th dose

11,101
deaths

Global statistics:

563,115,258
cases

6,377,055
deaths

535,610,557
recovered

Coronavirus Worldmeter

Health Ministry stats (Hebrew)

Health Ministry Coronavirus homepage (English)

The email is either missing or invalid.

By signing up, you agree to our

terms

You hereby accept The Times of Israel Terms of Use and Privacy Policy , and you agree to receive the latest news & offers from The Times of Israel and its partners or ad sponsors.

© 2022 The Times of Israel, all rights reserved

JTA — This week the news surfaced that “Queen of Porn” Jenna Jameson is converting to Judaism . Jameson, who has been married twice before, is engaged to Israeli Lior Bitton (who works in L.A.’s diamond business and has been charged with stealing merchandise from his stores).
Jameson’s Instagram page is filled with photos of challah and other kosher dishes she’s been cooking up; she’s even dropping Hebrew words on Twitter.
As it it turns out, Jameson will be in great company — several other members of the tribe are (or have been) major stars in the adult film industry. In honor of Jameson’s high-profile conversion, we give you seven of the most famous Jews in porn.
You might not want to Google them in an office or other public place.
Ron Jeremy
Real name: Ronald Jeremy Hyatt
Jeremy is arguably the most famous porn star of all time. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Queens, Jeremy went on to star in well over 2,000 adult films. He’s also been featured in almost every realm of popular culture since the 1980s — through small parts in films such as “Ghostbusters” and music videos for bands like Sublime and Guns N’ Roses — even if he now looks more like your goofy Jewish uncle than a porn legend.
James Deen
Real name: Bryan Matthew Sevilla
Deen is the most famous Jew — and one of the most famous people, period — working in the adult film world today. His unassuming “nice guy” demeanor has even won him female fans outside of the industry. He has also been very open about his Jewish upbringing (among other things, the public now knows he lost his virginity at a Jewish summer camp).
Nina Hartley
Real name: Mary Louise Hartman
Hartley, now 56, is a bona fide porn legend, having starred in over 1,000 adult films and directed 18. After winning eight Adult Video News Awards throughout her career, she’s now a sex educator and speaker.
Joanna Angel
Real name: Joanna Mostov
Joanna Angel is believed to be the first porn star to enter the industry after living in an Orthodox home. After working at a kosher restaurant in Teaneck, New Jersey, and attending Rutgers University, she founded her own porn website and became one of the leaders of so-called “alt-porn” movement.
Michael Lucas
Real name: Andrei Treivas
Lucas — who was born in Russia and has lived in New York and Israel — has been one of the more successful Jews in the industry, as both a gay pornographic actor and an entrepreneur. His company Lucas Entertainment is the biggest gay adult film company in New York and has made some of the most expensive gay pornos of all time. He is fiercely pro-Israel and pro-gay rights, and in 2009 his film Men of Israel was the first adult movie to feature only gay Jewish actors.
Naomi
Real name: Naomi Russell
Russell, who was one of the more popular porn starlets in the late 2000s, has stated that her father is a rabbi. She was born in Los Angeles and has Israeli ancestry.
Seymore Butts
Real name: Adam Glasser
Butts – or Glasser, take your pick – was born in the Bronx to Jewish parents, whom he has said were involved in the “shmattah business.” As the Showtime reality series “Family Business” pointed out, his mother Lila has also been involved with the production and distribution of some of his films.
Israeli cooking is taking the world by storm. Here’s your chance to join in...
The Times of Israel Community is excited to present our new virtual cooking series, B’Teavon , where world renowned chefs show you how to make classic and modern Israeli dishes.

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.

That’s why we started the Times of Israel ten years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE , as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel

We have a new, improved comments system. To comment, simply register or sign in.

NYC antisemitism rises; Israel’s housing protests carry on

Input for searching articles, videos, shows
FYI. This story is over 5 years old.
Chatting About Jewishness with the Greatest Jewish Porn Stars
Does a background in Judaism make you a better adult actor?
ORIGINAL REPORTING ON EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS IN YOUR INBOX.
James Deen. Photo via Doc Johnson/Wikimedia Commons.
James Deen is going out to the desert to fuck, but first, he has to make his way to the bank.
If you have a "Jews love money" joke in mind, now would be the time to make it.
The crown prince of porn is totally OK with jokes about his Semitism. You would be too if your nice, Jewish, boy-next-door looks had made you arguably the biggest (heh) male porn star of all time.
By now, his bio is well known. Born in Los Angeles County to successful engineer parents, he grew up in an upper-middle-class household in Pasadena. Rather than following in his parents' white-collar footsteps, however, he says he made the decision to go into porn while still in kindergarten. His slight build, smile, and tendency to somehow communicate an innate sweetness while balls-deep in a colleague's asshole gained him legions of female fans, rocketing him to porn star fame, and eventually, real fame. But before the blowjobs, the profiles in GQ, and the time he costarred with Lindsay Lohan in a crowdfunded film , Deen was just Bryan Matthew Sevilla, a boy who went to synagogue on the high holidays like all the other Yids.
"I don't know if I'm the only [Jewish porn star]," he says in a voice that recalls every overly excited Jew-boy I ever went to summer camp with. "But I'm definitely the loudest one about my Jewish heritage."
He's part of a long and proud tradition of porn stars who are not just Jewish, but whose Judaism can be considered a defining trait. Ron Jeremy may be notorious for his homeliness (despite the fact that as a young man, he was one mean, lean hunk of a dude), but the Hedgehog is fugly in a very stereotypical old-Jewish-man way: excess body hair, a prominent nose, a physique that's definitely had more than its share of kuegel and knishes.
Seymore Butts (a.k.a. Adam Glasser) transcended his fame as the pioneer of vaginal fisting porn to gain mainstream recognition in the early 2000s Showtime series Family Business , which featured both his impressive Jewfro and showed how his tight-knit Jewish family helped him run his porn empire. The appeal was that this could be the family next to you at any Reform synagogue service.
So what's with all the chosen people doing the no-pants horah in front of the cameras, already?
It's here that an important distinction needs to be made. There's Jewish and then there's Jew -ish, and the difference between the two is massive. "Jewish" implies that you follow a religious belief system and way of life based on faith and participation in rituals. A rabbi is Jewish. My parents are Jewish. Joseph Lieberman is Jewish. Jew-ish is a collection of personality and physical traits that border on the stereotypical. Seth Rogen is Jew-ish. Larry David is Jew-ish. So are Gene Simmons, Lizzy Caplan, and, of course, James Deen.
Take this tweet: " Got a boner while in the bank. #Jewproblems #bankboner ." The self-deprecating humor is a hallmark of being Jew-ish, but even more telling is that it was sent on September 26, a.k.a. the second day of Rosh Hashanah, one of the three holiest days in the Jewish year. It's a day when, for the Jewish, tweeting and banks are verboten (boners are still permitted).
Deen puts it more succinctly: "More than anything, I identify with Judaism as a culture."
Of course, that culture influences the religious aspects of Judaism. Among the porn stars I spoke to, there's a weird consensus that there's a lower moral barrier to entering porn for Jews. We've got our neuroticism, but we don't have the Catholic guilt or Protestant moralizing. Deen talks at length about a liberalism inherent to Jewish thought regarding sexuality, and he's not wrong. In the Jewish religion, fucking is a mitzvah. Yes, there are a lot of rules that come into play—rules that involve words like mikvah and iggeret ha-kodesh . But those rules are in place to reinforce the idea that sex should be frequent, fun, and clean (albeit between a husband and wife).
And yet I grew up in a typical Montreal Jewish household and I was terrified of putting my dick anywhere near a vagina until I was way past puberty.
We celebrate the beauty of sex, and that's great. But not without a ton of caveats and paperwork, sometimes literally. Pretty much anything goes within the confines of marriage, but outside of that, it's all sin. Fucking someone you don't love? That's a sin. Doing it for money? Oh yeah, that's a sin. Doing all that on camera so other people can sploosh more easily? Obviously that one is a pretty big sin. As far as rebellion against rules goes, becoming a porn star is a pretty emphatic statement.
Angel Cassidy and Seymore Butts. Photo via lukeisback.com/Wikimedia Commons
Of course, that shouldn't really bother the Jew-ish Deen. While Deen is the face of kosher dick, he grew up mostly secular. That wasn't the case for either Howie Gordon or Joanna Angel, two porn stars separated by decades in terms of active involvement in porn, but both of whom grew up in Orthodox Jewish households.
Gordon was a superstar of his time, catching the tail end of the Golden Age of porn in the 1980s. He starred under the nom de porn Richard Pacheco in films with titles like Sex Wars (he played Mark Starkiller) and Sensual Encounters of Every Kind . But before that, he was just a kid in a religious household with his parents and brother in Pittsburgh.
Talking on the phone from his home in Berkeley, Gordon embodies the gift-of-gab stereotype befitting the rabbi he was at one point destined to become. What was supposed to be a 20-minute interview quickly became an 8
Forced To Be A Cocksucker
Lily Ford Pov
Veronica Vain Video

Jewish Pornstar

Report Page