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A jingle inspired a show about dueling lawyers. Two synagogues helped bring it back to the stage.
(New York Jewish Week) — For any New Yorker, the background noise of the 2000s may well have been marked by the numbers 800-888-8888, the ubiquitous jingle for the Buffalo-based personal injury law firm Cellino and Barnes.
The renown of Ross Cellino and Stephen Barnes grew even more when the pair contentiously split up in 2017. Their acrimonious business divorce included clashes over managing the business, a restraining order against Cellino, claims of “bullying” by Barnes and a complaint that Barnes refused to let Cellino hire his own daughter.
Naturally, comedy writers Michael Breen and David Rafailedes needed to write a show about what might have gone down, including a scene about how that infamous jingle came into existence.
Breen and Rafailedes had performed the show, “Cellino v. Barnes,” a handful of times in New York in 2020 before the pandemic shut it down. Breen moved to California and Rafailedes headed to grad school and the play they wrote about a unique New York sensation almost faded into the ether.
But this isn’t that story. This is the story of how two 25-year-old high school buddies and amateur theater producers made sure that didn’t happen — and how they leaned on their synagogues to get the job done.
David Pochapin and Cameron Koffman were 22 when they saw “Cellino v. Barnes.” They loved the show for the way it spoke to their sense of humor, their New York childhoods and their love of niche theater. The pair would eventually take on the task of producing the play and teaming up with Breen and Rafailedes to bring it to a wider audience, this time in a vacant office space in Manhattan to really give audiences the feeling of authenticity.
Now 25 and a year into producing “Cellino v. Barnes: The Play,” Pochapin and Koffman are admittedly amateurs — Pochapin works a day job in FinTech and Koffman in city government.
“When we are trying to get people to come see the show, we say, ‘we’re doing this not because we saw a business opportunity but because we genuinely saw a story that more people needed to see,’” Pochapin said. “It’s hard to imagine finding another project quite like this. It’s been a wild ride and we’re super excited for the show.”
(On Oct. 2, 2020, Stephen Barnes and his niece were killed in the crash of a private plane in upstate New York. Pochapin said there is “absolutely no comedy about the plane crash” and the show centers around the creation, success and break-up of the firm.)
Ahead of the show’s opening, the New York Jewish Week spoke to Koffman and Pochapin about why they love the show, how their synagogues and Jewish communities have supported them in this process and what changes they are most excited about.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
New York Jewish Week: How did you get involved as producers with the show?
Cameron Koffman: We first saw the show in January of 2020. We had no involvement — we had just seen an article from the Buffalo News: “Show about Cellino and Barnes is an 8.8888 out of 10.” It sounded fun and it was playing in New York City for just a couple shows in January at the Bell House in Gowanus. It was the absolute funniest thing. Then COVID hit, obviously, six, seven weeks later, and life moved on.
I got an email from the venue that the show was back for two performances in August of 2021. David and I dragged more of our friends. It was a big group activity because we had been talking about the show for a year and a half at this point. I mean, it’s Cellino and Barnes, iconic New York names and a jingle that everybody recognizes. We saw it again and it was even funnier.
We had a mutual friend with one of the actors and pushed to get a drink because we just really wanted to tell them, “We thought the play was so funny. It was so great that someone wanted to tell this story.” When we met up with him, we asked if he ever had aspirations to make a permanent run out of it. He said yes, but COVID happened, he ended up having a kid and the other co-writer and actor moved out to the West Coast. Basically, life got in the way. When we talked to [Breen and Rafailedes], it really just sounded like more than anything they needed people to help initiate the process, which we thought we would be able to handle.
We certainly didn’t have experience in production, but we were so passionate about the story and we like to get our hands dirty with logistics. We just thought it was so fun that we wanted to take it to another level and really create a full run of this. We put our heads down, worked on a proposal and here we are.
How did your Jewish communities step in to help get the show back on its feet again?
DP: When we first got into this, which was over a year ago now, we talked to everyone we could, every person that would hear us out and offer an opinion. We reached out to people at my synagogue and they offered to provide chairs for the audience and books for the set, so now we have chairs and books. We’re both very involved in our synagogues — mine is Sutton Place Synagogue and Cameron’s is Temple Emanu-El. My first exposure to theater at a young age was not only in school, but during the Purim spiels at my synagogue. It is because of our communities and our upbringing there that we have the confidence that we’ll be able to do this.
CK: It really is. So many people that we know, that we rely on, that we talk to and the time that we spend with them have helped us put this show together. For example, I lead a couple of lay-led groups at Temple Emanu-El. Through that, I’ve become friendly with dozens of people, I’ve met other people through the young members circle, through becoming friendly with the rabbi and actually leading Shabbat once last year. So — for both of us — one of the main reasons we knew we could do this was because we’re deeply embedded in a large Jewish community and we knew that we could tap into people that would be able to sort of help and guide us with advice and knowledge along the way. Also, we knew we’d be able to blast out the show to a lot of people. David could tell you, one of the first people to buy a ticket for the play was the rabbi [Rachel Ain] from Sutton Place Synagogue, she and her whole family.
As producers you have a little more control than you did as audience members. What changes are you most excited about since the first production?
CK: Not much had to change about the story. Breen and Rafailedes had done the play and certainly the story of Cellino and Barnes is still ever present in the cultural milieu of today. For a large swath of people, millions of people in the New York area, and even in California, where Cellino and Barnes worked too, that jingle just rings a bell and it seared itself into our brains, so our vision didn’t have to be focused on making sure there was name recognition.
When we saw it at The Bell House, the show was very bare bones. The venue had a stage, but it’s a big hall with 200-250 seats and you don’t really feel like you’re at a theater venue — you certainly don’t feel like you’re at an experiential venue. The space that we got on West 23rd is a vacant commercial space that feels like you’re actually in a law office. That was one of the key things we brought — we thought, “if we’re going to really lean on the vibe and the aura of Cellino and Barnes, we want to make you feel like you’re stepping into a dingy personal injury attorney’s office, with plaques on the wall and all of it.”
Why should people see it?
CK: I’m deeply passionate about my love for New York. A couple years ago, right out of college, I actually ran for the New York State Legislature. I love the city. It’s just such an amazing place. Cellino and Barnes is very much a part of New York’s cultural fabric. There are just certain things that resonate with all New Yorkers. It’s Roscoe the bedbug dog from Bell Environmental, it’s Sandy Kenyon from the Eyewitness News “movie minute” in the back of the taxi cab. All those sorts of things that people who grew up in New York or who have spent significant time here will know and recognize.
So many people come from different backgrounds, but there are still these unifiers — everybody’s seen the billboards and subway ads. And although it is a very New York production, we do think that it can resonate with everybody. Every city seems to have their own version of Cellino and Barnes — the mysterious personal injury lawyer who’s on every billboard, on every bus, and who has their slogan.
DP: When you’re in the theater and you’re laughing at these two people that are so nostalgic and are two of the easiest people to laugh and make jokes about, it’s just an unforgettable night. It’s hilarious, and even though it’s a comedy it also makes you think. Cameron and I have had several discussions about who’s right or wrong and Team Cellino or Team Barnes.
“Cellino v. Barnes: The Play” opens on April 13 at 320 W 23rd St. Tickets start at $40.
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The post A jingle inspired a show about dueling lawyers. Two synagogues helped bring it back to the stage. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Black Jewish experience, and Black-Jewish relations, take center stage on Fifth Avenue
The civil rights movement represented a kind of pax romana in Black–Jewish relations — symbolized most enduringly by the image of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching beside Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery.
While many Jewish and Black Americans recall that era with a sense of wistful nostalgia, the relationship has become increasingly strained amid debates over racial justice, Israel and Palestinians.
This week, Temple Emanu-El on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, one of the country’s most prominent Reform synagogues, is launching a new five-year effort as a contribution toward rebuilding those ties while also foregrounding Black Jews.
Shared Histories, Shared Futures: The Arielle Patrick & Aaron Goldstein Initiative on Black-Jewish Relations promises to bring scholars, activists, and religious leaders to the synagogue for a series of conversations on race, antisemitism and coalition-building. Its first event, set for May 29, will take place during a Friday night service.
“This is not a performance or a gimmick,” said Patrick, the Chief Communications Officer at Ariel Investments, a global investment firm, who endowed the initiative alongside her husband Goldstein. “This is intentionally not during Black History Month, it’s intentionally not on MLK Day. It’s embedded in how we’d like people to think about creating a better society for our children and grandchildren.”
A frayed bond
Patrick, who is a Black Jew, said part of the inspiration behind the initiative came from her sense that the relationship between the two communities is not what it once was.
“I think a lot of Jews felt that their Black brothers and sisters were silent after Oct. 7, and perhaps jumped into the conversation about Palestine versus Israel without having the full context,” she said. “And then I also think that for a long time, the Black community has felt almost deserted by the fact that Jews were enabled to be upwardly mobile from the communities we once lived in and shared because of assimilation.”
In recent years, debates over Israel have fractured many progressive spaces, leaving some left-wing Jews who refused to disavow Israel feeling isolated from circles they once felt a sense of belonging to. Segments of the Black Lives Matter movement have explicitly linked racial justice in America to the cause for Palestinian liberation, and some of its chapters have even endorsed militant resistance to that end.
At the same time, rising antisemitism in the aftermath of Oct. 7 has shifted how some Jewish organizations engage with social justice work. The Anti-Defamation League, which for years invested in broader civil rights and democracy initiatives, pivoted from much of that programming to focus its resources on the rise in antisemitism.
Fostering the relationship is also complicated by divisions within both communities themselves. “When we think about Black-Jewish relations, we have a tendency to assume that everyone who is Black thinks one way and everyone who is Jewish thinks one way,” said Dr. Susannah Heschel, the head of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth and the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. “Of course, there’s enormous diversity of all kinds: political, cultural, religious,” she added.
Relations in New York City reached a low point in 1991 after a Hasidic driver struck and killed a Black child in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, setting off days of unrest that left a Jewish student fatally stabbed and two communities grieving.
Though strain has reemerged in recent years, particularly during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and the war in Gaza, organizations have emerged during that same period seeking to rekindle Black-Jewish dialogue.
“I think a lot of Jews are inspired by the civil rights era, by the fact that so many Jews participated,” said Heschel. “I know that photograph of my father marching in Selma is very important to a lot of people.”
She considers that photo a spur to new generations to continue the work. “The question is, what do you do with a photograph like that?” she asked. “Do you say, ‘Isn’t that great, what we did,’ in the past tense? Or do you take it as a challenge?”
Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism launched a partnership with Hillel and UNCF in 2024 to host unity dinners bringing together Jewish students and students at historically Black colleges and universities.
One might recall the viral Super Bowl ad, sponsored by Kraft’s Blue Square Initiative, where a Jewish boy is taunted by his classmates for being Jewish before his Black classmate fearlessly comes to his aid. The two boys walk off together in an idyllic (and, as critics have noted, somewhat antiquated) display of Black-Jewish solidarity.
Other groups, including Rekindle and CNN commentator Van Jones’ Exodus Leadership Forum, have launched programs aimed at fostering conversations between Black, Jewish, and Black-Jewish leaders. And this month, in a significant development, a National Convening on the Black-Jewish Alliance will be hosted in Miami, bringing together representatives from 75 organizations focused on cultivating the relationship.
A recent PBS series, Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History, which came out in February also shed a light on the relationship, leaving many hoping to engage in the present — though also received pushback for not engaging seriously with the perspectives of Black Jews.
Centering Black Jews
Rabbi Joshua Davidson, the senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, grew up in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement and came to deeply value the stories of Black and Jewish communities working together.
“I knew that ultimately it would become an important part of my rabbinate too,” he said.
He says has been engaged in intercultural work for years, cultivating friendships with faith leaders across New York City, including at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn.
“One doesn’t enter into a relationship with the expectation that you’re going to get something in return,” Davidson said. “There’s a difference between allyship and friendship. The way I approach this is I want to establish friendships.”
Davidson said those relationships have allowed him to stand together with clergy members from those communities during difficult moments. Following the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, for example, he participated in a solidarity service at Abyssinian Baptist Church.
“There are times when a crisis hits, and you need allies, and so you reach out. You have no choice. But if you’ve been fortunate enough to be able to build the friendships when things were calm, you’re in a much better position,” he added, referring to the sense of abandonment many Jews felt after Oct. 7.
“I know around the country there’s been a great deal of frustration that expectations of one community showing up for another during moments of distress weren’t met. I can only say that my own experience has been different,” he said. “When something has happened to the Jewish community, I get the phone call from colleagues of other faith communities, and certainly among the leadership of the Black community in the city.”
The initiative also seeks to foreground Black Jews themselves, whose experiences are often absent from conversations about Black-Jewish relations.
“We have a tendency, all of us, to talk about Black–Jewish relations as if all Jews are white and all Black people are not Jewish,” Heschel said. “It’s gradually dawning on Jews that we have Black Jews in our community.” Estimates suggest Black Jews make up roughly 1% to 2 % of American Jews.
Patrick said she has often encountered those assumptions firsthand.
“When I go to synagogue or when I’m in a social setting, the first thing a person asks me is, ‘Did you convert?’” she recounted. “That’s not a normal question to ask anyone.”
According to a 2021 study by the Jews of Color Initiative, 80% of respondents who identified as Jews of color said they had experienced discrimination in Jewish settings. Another survey, conducted by the Black Jewish Liberation Collective, found that of 104 Black Jewish respondents, 62% reported feeling increased marginalization in Jewish spaces after Oct. 7.
Davidson hopes that bringing Black Jews to the fore, like Rabbi Tamar Manasseh — a Chicago-based activist and community leader known for her work combating gun violence, who will be Temple Emanu-El’s first speaker in the initiative — will encourage more Jews of color to feel at home in the congregation.
“If you don’t acknowledge that there are Jews of color, and if you don’t find opportunities for them to be front and center, then you’re less likely to actually have that segment of the Jewish community join you,” he said.
Temple Emanu-El has committed to the initiative for at least five years — a timeline Patrick said was intentional.
“I knew that just having one fun lecture was not going to do anything,” she said. “It has to be a sustained commitment.”
Still, she hopes the work will continue long beyond that.
“In my perfect world,” she said, “I’m 95 and still doing this.”
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A Yiddish lecture in Munich by literature scholar Nathan Cohen
דעם 17טן יוני וועט נתן כּהן, אַן אָנגעזעענער פֿאָרשער פֿון דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור בײַם בר־אילן אוניווערסיטעט, האַלטן אַ רעפֿעראַט אויף ייִדיש בײַם אוניווערסיטעט אויפֿן נאָמען פֿון לודוויג מאַקסימיליאַן אין מינכן, דײַטשלאַנד.
כּהן וועט רעדן וועגן דער געשיכטע פֿון דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור און די וועגן און אָפּוועגן פֿון איר אַנטוויקלונג אויף די זײַטן פֿון דער ייִדישער פּרעסע, ווי אויך וועגן דעם פֿענאָמען פֿון דער שונד־ליטעראַטור.
די „שלום־עליכם לעקציע“, ווי מע רופֿט אָט די אונטערנעמונג, איז אַ יערלעכער רעפֿערעט אויף ייִדיש אין אָנדענק פֿון עוויטאַ וויעצקי, ז״ל, וואָס האָט די ערשטע געהאַט דעם שיינעם אײַנפֿאַל מיט 15 יאָר צוריק. „זי האָט אַרויסגעפֿירט ייִדיש פֿון די קליינע דײַטשישע אוניווערסיטעט־קלאַסן און פֿאַרבעטן אַ ברייטן עולם צו הערן אַ ייִדיש וואָרט – און דווקא אין אַקאַדעמישן פֿאָרמאַט,“ האָט דערקלערט דאַשע וואַכרושאָווע, אַ ייִדיש־פֿאָרשערין בײַם אוניווערסיטעט.
יעדעס יאָר האַלט אַ היסטאָריקער, שפּראַך־וויסנשאַפֿטלער, ליטעראַטור־פֿאָרשער אָדער שרײַבער אַ רעפֿעראַט פֿאַרן ברייטן מינכנער עולם אין גאַנצן אויף ייִדיש. „אין עולם זיצן אי ייִדיש־קענער אי אַזעלכע וואָס ווייסן גאָר ווייניק וועגן דער שפּראַך, אָבער האָבן דעם מוט זיך אײַנצוהערן און זיך לאָזן טראָגן פֿונעם ייִדישן וואָרט, וויסנדיק אַז זיי ריזיקירן ניט צו פֿאַרשטיין דעם מיין אָדער צו פֿאַרשטיין אים פֿאַלש,“ האָט וואַכרושאָווע געזאָגט.
פֿאַראינטערעסירטע קענען בײַזײַן די לעקציע אָדער אויפֿן אָרט אין מינכן, אָדער דורך דער אינטערנעץ. כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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Hundreds of Jewish leaders call on Israeli ambassador to apologize for attack on J Street
(JTA) — More than 500 rabbis, cantors and Jewish communal leaders have signed onto a letter calling on Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, to rescind and apologize for remarks describing J Street as a “cancer within the Jewish community.”
The letter, which J Street shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday, accused Leiter, a Netanyahu appointee and former settler leader, of using language that “dehumanizes fellow Jews” during his remarks in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
J Street is the leading liberal pro-Israel lobby, and has increasingly staked out positions that have departed from other mainstream pro-Israel groups. Last month, the group announced its opposition to continued U.S. military aid to Israel, which Leiter decried in his remarks.
The signatories wrote that while Judaism embraces vigorous debate, disagreements must be conducted with “humanity, humility and respect for the dignity of every Jew.”
“At this painful and polarized moment in Jewish life, leaders on both sides of the ocean bear a heightened responsibility to lower the flames rather than fan them further,” the letter read. “We therefore call on you to retract your remarks and issue a public apology to the many American Jews, rabbis, cantors and communal leaders who have been hurt by them.”
Among the signatories were New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, former U.S. ambassadors to Israel Daniel Kurtzer and Tom Nides, National Council of Jewish Women CEO Jody Rabhan, Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs and Rabbi David Saperstein, the director emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami told JTA that his initial reaction to Leiter’s comments was “simply dismay on behalf of Israel and on behalf of the Jewish community.”
“It’s a shame, because Israel, right now, needs all the friends it can get, and it really needs diplomats who seek to open doors and not slam them in people’s faces,” Ben-Ami said.
The Israeli Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment from JTA.
The comments from Leiter follow a long history of criticism of the lobby from pro-Israel officials. In 2017, former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman called the group “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jews who aided the Nazis during WWII.
While Ben-Ami said that the latest attack was “not new,” he felt spurred to craft a communal rebuke of Leiter’s rhetoric because he felt it was “breaking” not just the US-Israel relationship, but the relationship between the “American Jewish community and the Israeli Jewish community.”
“Within 24 hours we had hundreds and hundreds of people, and I think it just shows what a raw nerve Ambassador Leiter has touched here, and just what a big mistake it is for the Israeli government to write off the majority of Jewish Americans who are deeply critical of the government but supportive of the state and the people,” Ben-Ami said of the number of signatories.
While Ben-Ami said that J Street had long been invited to meet with former Israeli ambassadors, he claimed that since Leiter arrived, the group had been “blacklisted by the Embassy, and there’s been no engagement whatsoever.”
The letter comes as J Street has also faced scrutiny from across the political aisle, with the Zionist Organization of America calling for Hillels, Jewish Community Relations Councils and federations to cease relations with the group, while the student government of Sarah Lawrence College rejected an application to form a chapter of the group on its campus.
“There’s going to be people to our left who are intolerant and you know engage in similar tactics to folks on the right who are intolerant and try to shut out those they disagree with, and that is just as disturbing,” Ben-Ami said.
Looking ahead, Ben-Ami said that he hoped the letter would serve as a reminder that Jewish leaders need to make room for ideological differences rather than treat dissent as disloyalty.
“The message more broadly here is, we need to embrace the diversity of opinion,” Ben-Ami said. “We need to embrace our disagreements and recognize that that is indeed part of Jewish tradition.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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