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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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‘Blue Wave’: Israel Expands Diplomatic, Security Ties Across Latin America Amid Shifting Regional Politics
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
A new wave of diplomacy in Latin America has seen several governments adopt a friendlier, more supportive stance toward Israel, deepening bilateral ties that Jerusalem is now leveraging on the global stage while signaling a potential shift in regional political alignments.
In a new interview with Israel’s Channel 12, Amir Ofek, deputy director for Latin America at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained that the country is undergoing a major shift in its diplomatic engagement across the region, marked by a series of significant developments.
“There have been shifts in countries that were once our allies, and we have faced periods under very critical and challenging governments,” Ofek said. “We respond quickly to these changes, stay in close contact, and we are now beginning to make real progress.”
In a significant regional breakthrough, Israel and Bolivia formally restored diplomatic relations late last year, ending a two-year rupture sparked by the war in Gaza and reopening channels of official dialogue between the two countries.
In December, Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo also announced that the country will lift visa requirements for Israeli travelers, a move that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised as helping to “strengthen the human bridge between our peoples.”
Chile and Honduras are also leading the way among other Latin American nations making a striking turn toward Israel
Last year, Chile elected far-right President José Antonio Kast, who promised to reshape the country’s foreign policy toward the Jewish state, overturning the stance of a previously hostile administration.
This year, Honduras also chose a far-right candidate, President Nasry Asfura, who expressed hopes for a “new era” in bilateral relations and stronger ties with Jerusalem.
“The shift in Honduras is part of a broader regional trend: a ‘blue wave’ across Latin American countries that embrace freedom and democracy and align closely with US policy in the region,” Nadav Goren, Israel’s ambassador to Honduras, told Channel 12. “We are in a very optimistic period for Latin America.”
With the official launch of the Isaac Accords by Argentina’s President Javier Milei last year, Israel has been working to expand its diplomatic and security ties across the region, in an effort designed to promote government cooperation and fight antisemitism and terrorism.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords, a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, this new initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
“Israel offers globally recognized expertise that meets the needs of many countries, covering areas such as agricultural technology, water management, food security, cybersecurity, and innovation. Partners understand that Israel can help propel them forward, even in the context of internal security,” Ofek said.
The first phase of the Isaac Accords will focus on Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica, where potential projects in technology, security, and economic development are already taking shape as this framework seeks to deepen cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
The Isaac Accords will also aim to encourage partner countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem, formally recognize Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding anti-Israel voting patterns at the United Nations.
Less than a year after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina became the first Latin American country to designate the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization, with Paraguay following suit last year.
Building on a deepening partnership, Saar and Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña also signed a landmark security cooperation memorandum, as the two countries continue to expand their relationship following Paraguay’s move to relocate its embassy to Israel’s capital of Jerusalem in 2024.
“Over the past two very difficult years, our friendship has shown its strength through international forums, mutual cooperation, official visits, and measures against Iran. We have expressed our friendship in meaningful, if sometimes implicit, ways,” Ofek told Channel 12, referring to the country’s growing ties with Paraguay.
In recent years, Latin America has gained strategic importance for Israel as a frontline in countering Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, whose growing influence and criminal networks in the region — especially in Venezuela and Cuba — have prompted Jerusalem to expand its diplomatic, security, and intelligence presence.
“For us, this is a circle of allies that recognizes the same threat we face from Iran’s growing influence in the region, and it is only natural to cooperate to halt its expansion,” Ofek said. “We have seen firsthand how damaging this is, particularly in the context of attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets.”
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Australian Nurses Plead Not Guilty Over Viral Video Threatening to Kill Israeli Patients
Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 27, and Ahmad Rashad Nadir, 28, face criminal charges in Australia for statements made in an online video in February 2025 in which they allegedly threatened Israelis, prompting nationwide bans from treating patients. Photo: Screenshot
Two nurses in Australia who were charged over a viral video in which they allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients pleaded not guilty during their arraignment on Monday.
Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 27, and Ahmad Rashad Nadir, 28, previously worked at the Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney until appearing on a video with Israeli social media personality Max Veifer in February 2025.
The footage, which circulated widely, featured Abu Lebdeh stating she would refuse to treat an Israeli patient and would instead kill them, while Nadir used a throat-slitting gesture when he confessed to having already killed many.
“It’s Palestine’s country, not your country, you piece of s—t,” Lebdeh told Veifer.
“One day your time will come, and you will die the most disgusting death,” she added.
Veifer began asking the two during a night shift discussion how they would respond if an Israeli seeking treatment landed in their hospital. Abu Lebdeh, preempting the question, interrupted: “I won’t treat them. I’ll kill them.”
Nadir interjected: “You have no idea how many s—t dog Israelis came to this hospital,” and using a throat-slitting gesture, continued, “I sent them to Jahannam,” the Islamic word for hell.
The video went viral and sparked global outrage, prompting a two-year nationwide suspension to prevent them from continuing to treat patients.
Abu Lebdeh was charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass.
Nadir was also charged with federal offenses, including using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offense, as well as possession of a prohibited drug.
Speaking before Judge Stephen Hanley at Downing Center District Court in Sydney, Abu Lebdeh appeared “with tears streaming down her face,” according to Australia’s Sky News.
The Australian reported last year that Lebdeh has expressed remorse and is now experiencing extreme anxiety. An uncle told a journalist that she “will come out and make a statement when she’s ready, but you can’t talk to her now because she’s having a panic attack, an anxiety attack. We might be calling the ambulance for her.”
Lawyer Zemarai Khatiz represents Nadir and confirmed to Sky News that the defense strategy would seek to make the video inadmissible in court.
“It will be, yes,” Khatiz stated before declining to elaborate. “You will have to just wait until the first of June when the applications are heard.”
The video drew international attention, with Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Sharren Haskel, demanding action.
“There needs to be an investigation immediately into these two Australian medical professionals who are saying they will kill Israeli patients – and suggesting that they already have,” Haskel posted on social media after the video was released. “They are expressing criminal intent towards Jewish people; this must be stopped.”
Haskel went on to declare antisemitism “a disease that is spreading in Australia,” arguing the nurses should be fired and their behavior must “be treated with the highest consequences under the law.’”
“They have broken the Hippocratic Oath,” the diplomat continued. “They have talked about killing Jews, they show the true racism and hate that the Australian Jewish community is currently enduring.”
A US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago told The Algemeiner last year that she no longer feels safe in hospitals given the atmosphere of heightened antisemitism.
“In the past year alone, my little boy has witnessed many hostile protests where ‘anti-Zionists’ have actually come into the Jewish community without permits to intimidate us. Time and time again, instead of [authorities] dispersing and arresting anyone in the crowd for screaming racial slurs and threats, Jews are asked to evacuate and told if they don’t run away, they are inciting violence,” the woman said.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” she continued, referring to the case in Australia. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
Following the video’s exposure and international condemnation, a group of 50 Muslim leaders and organizations came together in defense of Abu Lebdeh and Nadir. “This statement is not about defending inappropriate remarks,” the coalition wrote in a letter. “It is about pushing back against the double standards and moral manipulation at play while the mass killing of our brothers and sisters in Gaza is met with silence, dismissal, or complicity.”
The district court scheduled the suspended nurses’ trial for Aug. 31 with an anticipated five days of arguments and deliberations. A pre-trial hearing will take place on June 1.
The charges against Abu Lebdeh and Nadir reflect a global trend that has emerged since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel wherein medical practitioners come under scrutiny or even legal prosecutions following the exposure of antisemitic statements and behavior.
One notable case drawing attention involved Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, who British police arrested on Oct. 21, charging her with four offenses related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred. In November, she was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK over social media posts denigrating Jews and celebrating Hamas’s terrorism. She also described London’s Royal Free Hospital as “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and declared her belief that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”
That same month, UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the National Health Service (NHS)., amid reports of widespread antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new plan in October to address what he described as “just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively” in the NHS.
Another notable incident occurred in September, when a Belgian doctor reportedly listed “Jewish (Israeli)” as a medical problem in a child’s report.
Jewish writer Jonath Weinberger, a dual Belgian-Israeli citizen living in Amsterdam, recounted an episode in November about a nurse denying her medical care after refusing to remove a pro-Palestinian button
In Argentina, a Buenos Aires doctor received a suspension following a social media post in which he wrote about Jews that “instead of performing circumcision, their carotid artery and main artery should be cut from side to side.”
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‘Don’t be a wimp’: Josh Shapiro, Philly DA Larry Krasner spar over ICE-Nazi comparisons
(JTA) — The Jewish governor of Pennsylvania this week rebuked one of his state’s most visible elected officials for comparing ICE officers to Nazis, leading to a protracted war of words between the two men.
The spat between Josh Shapiro and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, Democrats with a long-running rivalry, comes amid a rise in such incendiary comparisons used to describe weeks of chaotic Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently invoked Anne Frank when discussing ICE, and was criticized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, among others. Celebrities like Bruce Springsteen and Stephen King have also compared ICE to the Gestapo. Some Jews, including those with connections to the Holocaust, have also made such comparisons as ICE’s behavior in the streets of Minneapolis and other cities has become more aggressive and deadly.
For Shapiro, such waters are proving especially difficult to navigate. Shapiro holds higher office aspirations and has become more vocal in his criticisms of ICE in recent days while also saying his office is more open to collaboration with agents.
The fight began last week when Krasner, a pugilistic progressive prosecutor, called ICE “a small bunch of wannabe Nazis” at a rally amid speculation that ICE could turn its attentions to his city. Then, musing about when Trump’s term ends, Krasner likened his own office to Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal.
“If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities, we will find you, we will achieve justice and we will do so under the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” he said.
Shapiro, in response, called Krasner’s comments “abhorrent” and “wrong, period.”
“We need to bring down the rhetoric, bring down the temperature, and create calm in the community,” the governor said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.
Other state officials, including Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who has vocally allied with the pro-Israel Jewish community, also condemned Krasner’s remarks. So did the White House, whose press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared video of Krasner’s comments and asked, “Will the media ask Dems to condemn?”
That didn’t deter Krasner, the son of an Evangelical minister mother and Russian Jewish crime novelist father who enlisted to fight Nazis in World War II. Instead of “bringing down the temperature,” the DA, who does not identify as Jewish, escalated.
“Gov. Shapiro is not meeting the moment,” Krasner told the Philadelphia Inquirer Tuesday. “The moment requires that we call a subgroup of people within federal law enforcement — who are killing innocent people, physically assaulting innocent people, threatening and punishing the use of video — what they are.”
He added, “Just say it. Don’t be a wimp.”
The interview came days after Krasner doubled down on ICE-Nazi comparisons during a CNN appearance, when he also claimed that white supremacists had threatened him with the gas chamber.
“There are some people who are all in on a fascist takeover of this country who do not like the comparisons to what happened in Nazi Germany,” Krasner told Kaitlan Collins on Thursday. “The reality is, they’re taking almost everything they do out of the Nazi playbook. And I say that as the son of a volunteer who served in World War II, who explained his experiences to me.”
Speaking to the Inquirer, Crasher went on to quote Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who fled Nazi Germany for the United States, became a civil rights and Zionist activist, and delivered a famous speech entitled “The Problem of Silence” at the March on Washington in 1963.
“Bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem,” the DA quoted Prinz. “The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.”
Krasner continued, “A reminder, Mr. Governor: Silence equals death.” Referring to ICE, he said, “These are people who have taken their moves from a Nazi playbook and a fascist playbook.”
The two men have longstanding differences, and it’s not the first time Nazis have come between them. In 2019, when Shapiro — then the state’s attorney general — hired away some of Krasner’s staff, Krasner and his remaining staff referred to them as “war criminals” and joked that they had fled to “Paraguay” (a country that housed fleeing Nazis after World War II). The joke received pushback at the time from the Anti-Defamation League.
Jews have been caught up in the fight against ICE in a myriad of ways. On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that a British Jewish immigrant to suburban Philadelphia was subpoenaed by the Department of Homeland Security. Identified in reports only as Jon, the former Soviet Jewry activist had written a critical email to a federal prosecutor about his handling of an Afghan immigration case.
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