"He just cancelled himself": Noah Schnapp ethnicity explored as Israel post sparks online controversy

Teenage actor Noah Schnapp of Stranger Things fame found himself mired in controversy when he took to Instagram over the weekend and shared a series of images offering a glimpse of his ongoing Israel tour. His first post was at The Dead Sea, Israel, and was captioned, “Never felt more alive.”

However, the trouble began with his next post. It was a carousel that had Tel Aviv tagged. However, one of the images showed him standing with a group of friends, posing in front of the famous Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He captioned the picture, “Happy place.”

This particular post earned him severe backlash online as some say he supports Islam, while others speculated that he favors anti-Semitism. Others have issues with him putting in the wrong location. One user even commented on Twitter:

---

Noah Schnapp has Jewish roots

Noah Schnapp is currently on a tour of Israel with Israeli-American entrepreneur and blogger Moti Ankari and Hollywood producer Rachel Katsner among others. The tour has been organized by Aish Global.

While Noah Schnapp visited the Dead Sea and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, he also shared his picture on Instagram Story at the Western Hall in Jerusalem, a world-famous prayer hall for Jews. He was seen wearing a ‘kippah’ (a cloth skullcap traditionally worn by male Jews while praying) and had phylacteries (also called ‘tefillin’ in Hebrew and refers to two small leather cases containing biblical scrolls worn by Jewish males at morning prayer) wrapped on his arm.

Interestingly, Schnapp has Russian Jewish ancestry on his father’s side and Moroccan Jewish roots on his mother’s side and has followed reform Judaism all his life. In fact, in 2020, he said in an interview that he had his bar mitzvah in Israel.

However, many netizens slammed his visit to Israel, calling him out particularly for his Al-Aqsa Mosque picture. Here are some of the criticisms faced by Noah Schnapp, as seen on Twitter:

---

In brief, about Noah Schnapp

Noah Schnapp was born and raised in New York City and rose to fame in July 2016 for playing the role of Will Byers in the Netflix science fiction horror series Stranger Things. However, not many know, his acting debut happened a year before through the Oscar-winning Steven Spielberg film Bridge of Spies where he played the son of James B. Donavan, Roger.

Noah has also been a voice artist for Charlie Brown, the lead character of the animated film The Peanuts Movie, and the video game The Peanuts Movie: Snoopy’s Grand Adventure.

He has also appeared in independent films like 2019’s Abe, where he played a young chef of half-Israeli and half-Palestinian origin, and the 2020 film Waiting for Anya, where he was a shepherd who helped smuggle Jewish refugees out of Nazi-occupied France. In 2020, he starred in the Halloween comedy Hubie Halloween and the following year joined the cast of Tutor, a coming-of-age film.