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For theatergoers at Broadway’s recent spate of Jewish shows, attendance is a form of witness
(JTA) — Jewish stories have had top billing on Broadway this season — and Jewish audiences have been flocking to the theater.
Audiences have lined up to see Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” the multigenerational saga of a Jewish family in Vienna, and the devastating consequences of the Holocaust upon its ranks. They have packed the house for “Parade,” a musical retelling of the infamous antisemitic show trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915. And just off Broadway, “The Wanderers” (which closed April 2) invited us into the slowly disintegrating marriage of two secular Jews born to mothers who dramatically left the Satmar sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, a show replete with intergenerational trauma and a pervasive sense of ennui.
None of these shows offers a particularly lighthearted evening at the theater. So why have they proven so popular? Critics have penned countless reviews of the three plays, analyzing the quality of the productions, the scripts, scores, performances of principal actors, set and design. But for our new book exploring what audiences learn about Judaism from Jewish cultural arts, my colleague Sharon Avni and I have been interviewing audience members after seeing “Leopoldstadt,” “Parade” and “The Wanderers.” We are interested in turning the spotlight away from the stage and onto the seats: What do audiences make of all this? What do they learn?
Take “Leopoldstadt,” for example, a drama so full of characters that when it left London for its Broadway run the production team added a family tree to the Playbill so that theatergoers could follow along. “Leopoldstadt” offers its audience a whistle-stop introduction to modern European Jewish history. In somewhat pedantic fashion, the family debates issues of the day that include Zionism, art, philosophy, intermarriage and, in a searing final scene, the memory of the Holocaust.
For some of the theatergoers that we interviewed, “Leopoldstadt” was powerful precisely because it packed so much Jewish history into its two-hour run time. It offered a basic literacy course in European Judaism, one they thought everyone needed to learn. Others, however, thought that this primer of Jewish history was really written for novice audiences — perhaps non-Jews, or assimilated Jews with half-remembered Jewish heritage, like Stoppard himself. “I don’t know who this play is for,” one interviewee told us. “But it’s not me. I know all this already.”
Brandon Uranowitz, left, who plays a Holocaust survivor, confronts Arty Froushan as a young writer discovering his Jewish roots, in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.” (Joan Marcus)
Other interviewees thought the power of “Leopoldstadt” lay not in its history lessons, but in its ability to use the past to illuminate contemporary realities. I spoke at length with a woman who had been struggling with antisemitism at work. Some of her colleagues had been sharing social media posts filled with lazy caricatures of Jews as avaricious capitalists. Upon seeing “Leopoldstadt,” she realized that these vile messages mirrored Nazi rhetoric in the 1930s, convincing her that antisemitism in contemporary America had reached just as dangerous a threshold as beheld European Jews on the eve of the Shoah.
We heard similar sentiments about the prescience of history to alert us to the specter of antisemitism today from audiences who saw “Parade.” Recalling a scene where the cast members wave Confederate flags during the titular parade celebrating Confederate Memorial Day, Jewish audiences recalled feeling especially attuned to Jewish precarity when the theater burst into applause at the end of the musical number. “Why were we clapping Confederate flags?” one of our interviewees said. “I’ve lived in the South, and as a Jew I know that when you see Confederate flags it is not a safe space for us.”
“Parade” dramatizes the popular frenzy that surrounded the trial of Leo Frank, a Yankee as well as a Jew, who was scapegoated for the murder of a young Southern girl. Jewish audience members that we interviewed told us that the play powerfully illustrated how crowds could be manipulated into demonizing minorities, comparing the situation in early 20th century Marietta to the alt-right of today, and the rise of antisemitism in contemporary America.
What we ultimately discovered, however, was that audience perceptions of the Jewish themes and characters in these productions were as varied as audiences themselves. Inevitably, they tell us more about the individual than the performance. Yet the fact that American Jews have flocked to these three shows — a secular pilgrimage of sorts — also illustrates the power and the peril of public Jewish storytelling. For audience members at “Leopoldstadt” and “Parade,” especially, attending these performances was not merely an entertaining evening at the theater. It was a form of witnessing. There was very little to be surprised by in these plays, after all. The inevitable happens: The Holocaust destroys Jewish life in Europe, Leo Frank is convicted and lynched. Jewish audiences know to expect this. They know there will be no happy ending. In the secular cultural equivalent to saying Kaddish for the dead, Jewish audiences perform their respect to Jewish memory by showing up, and by paying hundreds of dollars for the good seats.
The peril of these performances, however, is that audiences learn little about antisemitism in reality. The victims of the Nazis and the Southern Jews of Marietta would tell us that they could never have predicted what was to happen. Yet in “Parade” and “Leopoldstadt” audiences are asked to grapple with the naivete of characters who believe that everything will be all right, even as audiences themselves know that it will not. By learning Jewish history on Broadway, audiences are paradoxically able to distance themselves from it, simply by knowing too much.
In the final scene of “Leopoldstadt,” Leo, the character loosely based on Stoppard himself, is berated by a long-lost relative for his ignorance of his family’s story. “You live as if without history,” the relative tells Leo. “As if you throw no shadow behind you.” Audiences, at that moment, are invited to pat themselves on the back for coming to see the show, and for choosing to acknowledge the shadows of their own Jewish histories. The cold hard reality, however, is that a shadow can only ever be a fuzzy outline of the truth.
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Jewish groups protest former California mayor appointed to lead local Rotary Club
A former California mayor who began posting conspiracy-tinged anti-Israel messages on her social media shortly after she left office has been tapped as a local goodwill ambassador in Orange County, infuriating Jewish residents who say their concerns about her appointment have been ignored.
Former Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan’s installation as president of the Rotary Club of Orange County L.A. last month came over the objections of the Jewish Federation of Orange County and other Jewish advocacy groups, including the regional chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Community Action Network (JCAN) and the local Israeli American Council.
Over the last 18 months, these groups say, Khan has spread unverified claims about the war in Gaza, making her a questionable choice to lead a public service-oriented club purportedly dedicated to promoting peace.
“This is somebody who’s a public figure who’s using a quasi-public account to spread blood libels,” said Julie Heiman, JCAN’s director of policy, legal and government affairs. “And a civil society organization, the purpose of which is to build goodwill, is kind of blessing this.”
Neither the Rotary International organization nor the Rotary Club of Orange County Los Angeles responded to inquiries. But Craig Livingston, governor of the Rotary Club district that includes the Orange County chapter, told the Forward in a statement that he did not have the power to make decisions regarding a club’s members or its leadership.
When Heiman initially raised the Jewish community’s concerns about Khan’s nomination, he discussed them with the club’s leadership, “including the potential implications for the club’s and Rotary’s public image should the matter receive broader public attention.” He added that the Rotary “values diversity and celebrates the contributions of people of all backgrounds.”
But critics say Khan — a Democrat and the first Muslim woman elected mayor of a large American city, in 2020 — does not reflect those values in her social media posts about Israel andw instead cross into antisemitism.
In one Facebook post, Khan responded to a report that Israel had bombed an Iranian girls’ school by writing that “the sick pedophiles/cannibals are doing what they do best.” Jewish groups said she was invoking antisemitic canards. Khan later clarified that she was referring to Israeli government officials and the military, not the general public, but Jewish groups were not satisfied with that response.
“It’s a proxy for saying ‘Jew,’” Heiman said. “Most of our community supports Israel, and therefore I think to the public writ large, if they’re reading that Israelis are cannibals and pedophiles, and then they see the Jewish community here flying an Israeli flag, saying we support our ethnic homeland, then we must be evil too.”
Other posts spread rumors and disinformation about the war in Gaza, including that handcuffed babies were found in a mass grave.
In another Facebook post, Khan wrote “the elite were caught with evidence worshipping evil, eating humans, engaging in rape and pedophilia…” but that “we continue to watch their movies, listen to their music, consume their products.”
Rotary International, founded in the early 20th century as a non-religious, nonpartisan service organization, has as its stated mission the promotion of service, integrity and peace. Its 45,000 clubs tend to fundraise for and organize volunteer projects around the world and in regular meetings host speakers, organize classes, promote volunteering and hold networking events.
Its credo is called the “Four Way Test”: truth, fairness, goodwill and general benefit.
When Jewish groups initially raised their concerns June 22, they wrote to the chapter’s past two presidents, Jenny Wang and Beth Fujishige, as well as Livingston, asking them to review whether Khan’s conduct aligned with the Rotarian Code of Conduct and the Four Way Test.
Wang and Fujishige did not respond to Heiman or to the Forward. Livingston told Heiman that he had consulted with Rotary International leadership, which told him the organization did not have policies governing what individuals say on their personal social media accounts when they’re not serving in a Rotary capacity.
Heiman said their choice to elevate someone who trafficked in antisemitic statements mattered because it at best normalized the behavior — at worst, it represented tacit approval. Rotary Club bylaws enable clubs to terminate membership “for good cause when they cease to have the qualifications for membership.”
“We have to be able to push this back into the dark corners where it belongs,” Heiman said. “We need for decent people to be willing to stand up and say this isn’t OK. I would have expected Rotary to be the front line of that, and it’s very scary to me that Rotary just is going along with this as if it were acceptable.”
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He was a shy, retiring, Jewish record store manager. How did he come to manage the world’s biggest rock band?
Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of The Beatles
By Philip Norman
Da Capo, $32.50, 368 pages
Brian Epstein was a most unlikely candidate to discover the Beatles playing in a subterranean music club in Liverpool and manage them toward becoming the biggest pop-rock band in the universe. The somewhat shy and retiring record store manager and classical music aficionado was convinced by an employee to join him during a lunch break to walk over from his family-owned NEMS record shop to the Cavern Club, where he stood out for his age (he was 27; the group’s oldest musician, John Lennon, was 21 and the crowd consisted largely of teenagers), his outfit (a formal suit and tie), and his mature deportment.
But despite being a fish out of water in the grungy club and with no experience working with musicians, within just a few weeks of getting to know the members of the Fab Four, Epstein signed them to a management deal for the purposes of getting them gigs, attracting a record deal, and freeing the foursome from business and logistical concerns. Along the way, Epstein cleaned them up, convincing them to trade their leather outfits for suits and ties, to all cut their hair in the same bowl-cut style that garnered them the nickname “mop-tops,” and to stop eating, smoking and cursing out the audience while performing.
Who was this character, and why did the Beatles put their trust in him?
The 5th or 6th Beatle
Brian Samuel Epstein was born on Sept 19, 1934, which happened to be Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, when Jews traditionally fast and spend the day in synagogue in an annual ritual of atonement. In some small but significant way, atonement would prove to be one of the themes of Epstein’s short, enigmatic life.
Brian’s paternal grandfather, Isaac Epstein, emigrated from Lithuania to Manchester, England, in 1894. He eventually moved to Liverpool, where he opened a furniture shop. The family expanded the business by taking over a nearby shop called North End Music Stores, which became the famous NEMS chain of furniture and record stores. Paul McCartney’s father once bought a piano from NEMS, and teenage Paul — along with his pals John Lennon and George Harrison — often went to NEMS to hear the latest pop and rock ‘n’ roll records from America.
Isaac Epstein’s son Harry married a woman named Malka Hyman (hence her nickname, “Queenie,” as “Malka” is Hebrew for queen), and the two became “prominent and popular members of the largest Jewish community outside London.” Brian and his younger brother Clive were raised in a household that kept a kosher kitchen and had weekly Shabbat dinners.
After briefly attending RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, where he had hopes of becoming an actor, Brian Epstein returned to Liverpool and went to work for his father, managing the NEMS record outlet.
As Beatles biographer Philip Norman recounts in Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles, Brian led something of a double life from a young age. He was gay at a time when engaging in homosexual activity was against the law as well as frowned upon socially. Epstein lived his gay life mostly in the shadows, attracted as he was to anonymous trysts with “rough trade,” which could and often did wind up with him getting into trouble with the law as well as being beaten up, robbed, or blackmailed. To make things worse, Epstein was a heavy drug user and drinker who combined alcohol and sleeping pills, and he was hospitalized several times for depression and drug abuse.
Nevertheless, Epstein steered the Beatles to fame and fortune, first in England, then in America, and then all around the world. He was tenacious in trying to score them a record deal in London. Bringing them to the attention of Parlophone staff producer George Martin proved to be auspicious. Although Martin had previously specialized in recording comedy records, he saw something in the Fab Four (who, at least in their early years, were something of a comic group — or at least John Lennon fancied them as such) that was distinctive and showed promise. Martin convinced the upper brass at EMI, which owned Parlophone, to take a flyer on the group. The pairing of Martin and the Beatles would prove as significant as anything Epstein did for them, and when talking about “who was the fifth Beatle?” the only honest answer is both Epstein and Martin (or one was the fifth and the other the sixth — take your pick). Martin’s influence on the Beatles’ musical development and his support of their more experimental tendencies in the recording studio would prove to be an essential ingredient in their magical mixture.
A genteel and not-so-genteel antisemitism
In early 1963, a Jewish Londoner named Helen Shapiro was one of the biggest pop stars in England. Epstein got the Beatles attached to a nationwide tour headlined by Shapiro, which wound up laying the groundwork that would evolve into the full-fledged Beatlemania that would erupt by the end of the year. By early 1964, Epstein convinced American TV variety host Ed Sullivan to have the Beatles appear as guests on his weekly program for three consecutive weeks, lighting the fire of Beatlemania in the U.S., on their way to total domination of the world’s airwaves.
Epstein also worked with Jewish-American concert promoter Sid Bernstein to get the Beatles booked at Carnegie Hall in New York City and later at Shea Stadium, for two massive concerts in 1965 and 1966. In the meantime, Epstein hooked up the Beatles with Dick James (born Isaac Vapnick) for the purposes of creating Northern Songs, a publishing company for their original compositions. Epstein also midwifed the Beatles entrance into moviemaking, making a deal with United Artists to make several films, including A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, both directed by American-born filmmaker Richard Lester (born Richard Lester Liebman). Lester, like George Martin, had previously worked with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, two of the Beatles’ favorite comedians.
For Epstein, it was not always smooth sailing. It was a time when a kind of genteel (and not-so-genteel) antisemitism permeated British life and culture, a time when the words “Jewboy” and “Yid” came tripping off the tongue. When Paul McCartney told his father that the Beatles were thinking of partnering with Brian Epstein, pere McCartney replied, “Jews are good with money,” leaving it to our imagination if this betrayed antisemitism or was meant as a compliment.
Even with his commercial and financial success, Epstein found certain doors closed to him. According to Norman, “As a permanent London base, [Epstein] favored the city’s two most exclusive neighborhoods, Knightsbridge and Belgravia, but for him, as he well knew, it wouldn’t be just a question of studying an estate agent’s brochure and requesting a viewing. Antisemitism flourished nowhere more vigorously than among those elegant white squares, many of whose ritzier apartment blocks made clear without stating explicitly they did not welcome Jews.” Brian recounted the anti-Jewish taunting he fell victim to in school in his memoir, writing, “even now [antisemitism] lurks around the corner in some guise or other.”
The godfather
No one was crueler to Epstein about being Jewish and gay than John Lennon, who, although perhaps best known for singing about peace and love, could be violent and cruel to those closest to him. Norman writes that Lennon treated Brian “abominably, at one minute sarcastically over-reverential, at the next blisteringly rude to his face about his clothes, his hair, his accent, his sexuality, even his religion.” When Epstein hired Tony Barrow to be the Beatles’ press agent, Lennon asked him (with Epstein within earshot), “If you’re not Jewish and you’re not queer, what are you doing working for Brian?” And when Epstein asked the band members what he should call his memoir, Lennon replied, “Queer Jew.”
Nevertheless, when Cynthia Lennon gave birth to Julian, the Lennons asked Epstein to be the boy’s godfather. And immediately following Julian’s birth, Lennon and Epstein went on holiday together for two weeks in Spain, where it has long been assumed the two of them had sexual relations of some sort.
When the Beatles decided to retire from touring in 1966, Epstein was left wondering what remained for him to do for them, since so much of his work had revolved around booking concert tours and negotiating deals. With the focus of the Beatles work now dedicated to the recording studio, Epstein spiraled. His drinking and drug use, as well as his expensive gambling habit, grew to epic proportions. He was found dead in his bed on August 27, 1967, at the age of 32. Surrounding him in bed were items of correspondence, the script for the Yellow Submarine animated film, and a novel called The Rabbi by Noah Gordon. Published in 1965, the American author’s debut was an instant hit, spending 26 weeks on The New York Times’ bestseller list.
An inquest ruled that Epstein died from an “incautious” drug overdose. On Oct. 17, a memorial service for Epstein was held at the New London synagogue in Abbey Road, attended by the Beatles, Cilla Black, George Martin, Dick James, and members of the Finchley Jewish Youth Club, for which Brian had served as president. Writes Norman, “The Beatles wore black paper yarmulkes which kept slipping off their shaggy hair.”
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He reconnected with Judaism as an adult. With his art, he hopes others do the same.
Bruce David’s magnum opus is a psychedelic lithograph depicting practically the entire Torah. Over eight months, David filled it with a plethora of hidden symbols: If you look closely, you can see Joshua blowing a shofar, which hugs the Israeli flag. Squint even more and you’ll notice Joshua’s face is the flared end of an even bigger shofar that encompasses the Ten Commandments, a shofar made up of dozens of small people, seven of whom hold flames as if making a human menorah.
To understand every hidden image in just this one painting would take more words than I have space for. David gave me the “short version” of the piece’s story on Zoom — it still took six minutes.
Although David has now spent decades making Jewish art — prints, mosaics, stained glass and metal works — and exhibiting it across the country, it wasn’t what he had anticipated doing with his life. David doesn’t have any formal art training and for several years, he lost touch with his Judaism.
“Oftentimes I’ll refer to myself as a deeply flawed holy man wannabe,” David told me over Zoom from his house in Bloomington, Indiana. “But I always had this spiritual pull.”
David grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, with a Reform father and a mother from an Orthodox family. His Orthodox grandmother, Bess Harris — who he described as a force to be reckoned with — was a particular influence on him.
“I really learned my Jewish heart from her and her love of God,” David said. “She was involved with starting a Jewish day school, a Jewish nursing home, the synagogue, and she would lead trips to Israel.”
But traditional religious practice didn’t speak to him when he was a kid. He told me that one time he even climbed out of the window during Hebrew school to go play basketball.
Years later, his wife Diane was the one who helped him find new ways to connect with Judaism. Although she was raised Catholic, Diane was curious about Judaism. David needed to refresh himself on the answers.
“We started looking at the different aspects of Judaism and different things started to make sense,” David told me. “Shabbat made sense — you know, everybody needs a time to rest, recharge. Yom Kippur makes sense as a time to forgive and be forgiven. Rosh Hashanah to start again. Sukkot to get out and celebrate and get close to nature.”
When the couple met, David’s job was making deliveries for his grandfather’s wholesale store in Louisville. For David’s 30th birthday, Diane gave him a set of pigment pencils and the art started flowing out of him. Many of his pieces are concerned with biblical stories — like his mosaic of Jonah emerging onto the shores of Nineveh or his rainbow colored print of Balaam and his donkey — and he refers to them as “visual midrash.”
Unsure what to do with his art, David went to the Hillel at Indiana University Bloomington to see if the rabbi had any ideas. The rabbi connected him with art professor Mazelle Van Buskirk who was taken with David’s work. She arranged for an exhibit at IU’s School of Fine Arts, making him the first community artist to be given such an honor and kicking off his career.
He has presented his art at Jewish schools and exhibited it at events like the National Hadassah Conference, the Cincinnati Jewish Folk Festival, and the Coalition for Alternatives to Jewish Education. His work has been on the cover of books and Jewish publications. Many of the events that have had the greatest impact on David’s life were unplanned.
“We’ve always lived our lives on miracles,” David told me.
Among these, David said, was Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, “the Singing Rabbi” who wrote hundreds of liturgical melodies in the 20th century, conducting a (planned) conversion for Diane and an (unplanned) wedding ceremony for the couple in the 80s.
“We went to the mikvah for the conversion,” David told me. “And then he tells us ‘Oh by the way we’re going to marry you Saturday night after Shabbat.’”
Another miracle happened when David met a couple looking for someone to manage 29 acres in Bloomington overlooking Monroe Lake. Nature lovers, the couple quickly took the opportunity to live somewhere they could connect with the earth. David’s admiration for natural forms can also be found in much of his art; the shapes tend to flow and bend.
Over the 46 years that the couple has lived on their property, they’ve turned it into a home base for their Jewish worship and educational group Light of the Nations, which conducts lessons at various synagogues and JCCs through art and music. They host parties for Sukkot and the solar eclipse on their huge lawn, welcoming dozens of visitors.
David said they wanted their home to be a “place where people come out and get close to nature in life and slow down.”
Seventy-five years old and battling blood cancer, David is now spending his time focusing on helping people connect to Judaism in a holistic way and see the beauty that brought him back to religion. He’s slowed down on exhibiting his art, instead working on making sure Light of the Nations’ mission can continue once he is gone and that his art will find a home.
David hopes that people recognize in his art “that there’s this amazing, incredible life force influencing all creation.”
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