Short answer: No. Martin Scorsese was raised Roman Catholic in New York, the grandson of four Sicilian immigrants, and he once trained for the priesthood in a preparatory seminary. He has also said plainly, on the record, "I'm not Jewish."
What the record actually shows
- Born November 17, 1942 in Flushing, Queens, as Martin Charles Scorsese, and raised in Manhattan's Little Italy. His parents, Charles and Catherine Scorsese, both worked in the Garment District and later acted in his films. All four of his grandparents were Sicilian immigrants, the paternal side from Polizzi Generosa and the maternal side from Ciminna (Wikipedia, consistent with Britannica's biography).
- Raised Roman Catholic. Severe childhood asthma kept him out of sports and pushed him toward the church and the movie theater. He graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx in 1960, entered a preparatory seminary intending to become a priest, and left after the first year, then went to NYU (BA in English, 1964, MA 1968). Source: Wikipedia. He has discussed this Catholic formation at length in interviews with America Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, and La Civiltà Cattolica.
- May 2023, in his own words. Explaining to Deadline why he developed "Schindler's List" and then handed it to Steven Spielberg, Scorsese said: "I used the phrase at the time, 'I'm not Jewish.' What I meant was, it's the old story that the journey had to be taken by a Jewish person through that world..." He added, "I come from the Lower East Side, and grew up with the Jewish community. I wasn't being altruistic, but it just made sense to me that he was the person who really should go through this," and "I didn't have the knowledge...I didn't know if I was equipped for it at that time." He explained this to Deadline in May 2023, in an interview carried by syndicated coverage.
- May 27, 2023: Scorsese met Pope Francis at the Vatican and announced he had written a screenplay for a film about Jesus, an adaptation of Shūsaku Endō's "A Life of Jesus," in response to the Pope's appeal to artists. The project remains unproduced as of August 2026. Reported by Deadline and Variety.
- April 22, 2025: after the death of Pope Francis on April 21, Scorsese released a statement calling him "in every way, a remarkable human being," saying "He radiated wisdom. He radiated goodness," and adding, "The loss for me runs deep - I was lucky enough to know him, and I will miss his presence and his warmth" (Euronews).
- November 15, 2025: when Pope Leo XIV held an audience with film artists in the Clementine Hall, Scorsese was not reported among the attendees, though Vatican officials leaned on him as a Hollywood contact to help build the guest list, according to Msgr. Paul Tighe (CBS News).
- October 17, 2025: Rebecca Miller's five-part docuseries "Mr. Scorsese," which premiered at the 2025 New York Film Festival and was released on Apple TV, traces his life from Little Italy through those early priestly ambitions (Wikipedia).
Why people ask
Two things drive the question. The first is his work. Scorsese has told Jewish stories and worked closely with Jewish collaborators for decades. "Casino," which opened November 22, 1995, centers on Sam "Ace" Rothstein, played by Robert De Niro and based on the Jewish Chicago gambling figure Frank Rosenthal. JTA's Stephen Silver called it possibly "the best crime film with a Jewish protagonist at its center" and described Rothstein as "the perfect symbol of how Jews could find great success in mid-20th century America," succeeding even in the crime world, he wrote, yet remaining outsiders. Critics have also pressed him on where he stops. Jewish Journal editor Rob Eshman wrote on December 31, 2013 that "I do regret that Scorsese chose not to deal with the fact that Jordan Belfort is Jewish," and that "Scorsese feels much safer depicting the Italian-ness of his violent mobsters than the Jewishness of his greedy con men." The Forward has published its own guide to his Jewish and "Jew-ish" films, and he served as an executive producer on the Safdie brothers' "Uncut Gems" (2019), built around a Jewish diamond-district family.
The second is the ugly aftermath of "The Last Temptation of Christ" in 1988. The film drew mass Christian-fundamentalist protest, including a demonstration at the Beverly Hills home of Universal chairman Lew Wasserman on July 20, 1988. Some of that protest turned antisemitic against the Jewish executives of MCA/Universal, the studio that released it. On August 4, 1988, JTA reported that director Franco Zeffirelli attacked the film as coming from "that Jewish cultural scum in Los Angeles that is always lying in ambush to strike a blow at the Christian world." On August 26, 1988, JTA reported that ADL national director Abraham Foxman asked Pat Robertson to "condemn and counsel" fundamentalist leaders injecting antisemitism into the protests, which had targeted the Jewish principals in the MCA conglomerate. Willem Dafoe, who played Jesus, recalled at a master class at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival on August 21, 2025: "Then it morphed into a strange thing about Jews in Hollywood and became an antisemitic thing." He said the campaign came from the fundamental right in America, not the Catholic Church. None of that makes the director Jewish. Scorsese himself was the Catholic-raised target of the campaign, and he said at the time, in a Film Comment interview, that he was shocked the backlash turned antisemitic. Sources: The Free Speech Center, JTA, JTA, The A.V. Club.
Martin Scorsese and Israel
No documented statement from Scorsese on Israel appears in any reputable outlet, and he is not among the signatories of the September 2025 Film Workers for Palestine pledge reported by NPR and Variety. What is documented is older: Scorsese took part in Filmmakers United Against Apartheid in the 1980s, refusing to screen his films in apartheid South Africa, the campaign the 2025 pledge cites as its model (NPR). Full details in our companion piece Does Martin Scorsese Support Israel?.
The bottom line
Martin Scorsese is not Jewish. He was born to an Italian-American family whose four grandparents all emigrated from Sicily, he was raised Roman Catholic, served as an altar boy, and spent a year in a preparatory seminary studying for the priesthood. He has said "I'm not Jewish" in his own words, and at 83 he continues to speak publicly about his Catholic faith while making films that engage seriously with Jewish characters and Jewish history.
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Related
Does Martin Scorsese Support Israel? · Is Jesse Watters Jewish? · Is Matt Damon Jewish?
Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
