Jewish songwriter Benj Pasek joins elite EGOT ranks after ‘Only Murders’ Emmy

(JTA) — Benj Pasek has become the eighth Jew to win an EGOT, taking the elite show business throne alongside his songwriting partner Justin Paul.

The duo won an Emmy on Sunday with their original song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?,” a rapid-fire patter about three infants suspected of murdering their mother, from the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building.” Pasek and Paul are the 20th and 21st people to win the coveted quartet of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards.

They also won all the awards together, starting with a 2017 Oscar for their song “City of Stars” in the film “La La Land” and a Tony for their score of the stage musical “Dear Evan Hansen” later that year, followed by a Grammy for the cast album of “Dear Evan Hansen” in 2018. The 39-year-old pair met as freshmen at the University of Michigan and won their first Tony nominations in 2013 for the songs in “The Christmas Story,” a stage adaptation of the classic movie. (For its TV special, they added a Jewish family and Hanukkah number.)

Pasek joins a large proportion of Jewish artists to win all four of the top entertainment awards. More than a third of all EGOTs have been Jewish, including the first person to ever reach the status, composer Richard Rodgers. Rodgers and Marvin Hamlisch, who was also Jewish, are the only people to have added a Pulitzer Prize to the EGOT crown.

Pasek, raised in a Jewish family in Philadelphia, has celebrated his ties to the community throughout his rocketing career. He is a member of the Jewish arts and culture nonprofit Reboot and hosted an untraditional Passover seder for Broadway performers, focused on reinterpreting Passover themes to discuss modern-day concerns in 2017. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he created “Saturday Night Seder,” a digital broadcast that featured dozens of celebrities and raised $2.6 million for the CDC Foundation.

Jewish identity influenced creative work

This May, Pasek spoke about his Jewish identity during an early-morning session at an all-night learning event for Shavuot at the Jewish community center near his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

“My Jewish identity totally informs my work,” Pasek told the Jewish Community Voice of Southern New Jersey in 2019, adding that Jews have a vantage point of looking in from outside the mainstream that enables unique insights.

“It’s important to be vocal about identity and politics and be vocal about what you believe in — especially at a time when so many people are being marginalized as ‘others,’” Pasek said. “I think Jewish people particularly have a responsibility to claim their Jewishness and also be champions for people in marginalized groups. It’s a really important thing that you inherit that comes with being a Jewish person.”

In addition to the 21 artists who have won EGOTs in competition, six others have earned the four awards with one achieved as an honorary or non-competitive distinction. Non-competitive EGOT winners include the legendary Jewish actor and singer Barbra Streisand.