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How a 3-hour play about antisemitism in France became Broadway’s must-see show
(New York Jewish Week) — I’ll be honest: At the outset, a three-hour play about antisemitism did not sound like my idea of a good time. After all, as the editor of a Jewish publication, I spend much of my workdays writing about and thinking about the world’s hatred of Jews.
But my trepidation evaporated within minutes of the first scene of “Prayer for the French Republic,” Josh Harmon’s Broadway play about generations of a French Jewish family grappling with their Jewish identity, their French identity and the ways in which these identities invariably clash and overlap with one another.
From the opening scenes — in which we are introduced to the Benhamou family, including a somewhat brittle but loving matriarch, Marcelle Salomon Benhamou (Betsy Aidem); a brilliant but sarcastic daughter Elodie (Francis Benhamou); father Charles (Nael Nacer) and a religiously curious son Daniel (Aria Shahghasemi) — “Prayer for the French Republic” felt like I was looking in a mirror. Or, perhaps a more accurate description would be watching a home movie — a term that has fallen out of favor but uniquely describes that experience of observing a family’s everyday interactions as seen through the lens of someone who is apart of, rather than separate from, the family depicted on screen.
The play opens in Paris in 2016, with the family in turmoil after Daniel, who wears a kippah, gets attacked on the street just before sundown on Shabbat. It’s a time of heightened antisemitism in France, most notably with the 2015 attack by an Islamist on a kosher supermarket, which killed four and terrified Paris’ Jewish community to the core. Amid fears for their safety, over the course of three hour-long acts (punctuated by two 10-minute intermissions), the Benhamous debate joining the record number of French Jews who are moving to Israel.
The nearly present-day family’s story is punctuated by flashbacks to 1944-1946, spotlighting Marcelle’s great-grandparents, Irma and Adolphe Salomon, who miraculously survived World War II by secreting themselves in their Paris apartment — unlike their other family members who had fled to the U.S. or Cuba, or endured or succumbed to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps.
“Prayer for the French Republic” was first mounted off-Broadway in 2022, garnering awards and rave reviews. And when it moved to Broadway earlier this month, many of its key players, including director David Cromer and stars Aidem and Francis Benahmou, came along for the ride.
I had the chance to speak with Aidem, who most recently played Grandma Emilia in another recent Broadway play about antisemitism, Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award-winning “Leopoldstadt.” The 66-year-old Upper West Sider shared with me her thoughts on the play’s relevance in 2024, her personal experiences with Judaism and why live theater is an “alchemical” experience.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.
Molly (Molly Ranson) and Elodie (Francis Benhamou) debate Israel in a scene from “Prayer for the French Republic.” (Jeremy Daniel)
Watching “Prayer for the French Republic,” I felt like I actually knew the Benhamou family, and that I knew your character personally. Did you feel this way when you first “met” Marcelle? What was your reaction when you read the script the first time?
I got the script at the very beginning of 2020. I was set to go to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to direct a bunch of actors for the Arts in the Armed Forces at the army base and the army prison there. I read the script before I left. They wanted to do a startup workshop — I was like, I’ve got to get out of Kansas. I literally flew back a day early to do the workshop. That’s because when I read the play, and I read the part of Marcelle, I was blown away by how I understood who she was, and I couldn’t believe the breadth of what the writer Josh Harmon was able to give to one character in a story as beautiful as this.
The world is a very different place now than it was when the play premiered off-Broadway in January 2022. After the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7 and the turmoil over the war in Gaza, how do you think the play hits differently with audiences today?
I think the play, because it is a closeup, people see themselves in this circumstance. It becomes incredibly relatable, it’s personal. It’s not a sweeping epic. I think being able to recognize people going through something that you feel you’re going through privately — when you watch it in public it expands your sense of belonging to a greater community.
How does that happen? Because I agree — watching the play was somehow uplifting, despite the difficult subject matter. The audience was laughing and engaged. Is that the magic of theater? What is it about this play that makes it feel comforting in a really fraught time?
I think there’s something that alchemically happens in live performance. [Plus, director] David Cromer is incredibly insistent on true behavior — not doing what he calls “theatrical behavior” but really letting things get uncomfortable, showing their smudges, showing where people lose their footing. When audiences see that, they instantly enter into the center of the character’s anguish, because they’re not perfect. They’re imperfect. I think it helps them relax and go, “Oh, I do that too. I know what that feels like.” I think that’s a tribute to Josh’s writing and tribute to David’s directing, and the actors he’s assembled, who are willing to be foolish and willing to be lost. And I think that’s what makes the experience universal.
You’ve had a couple of heavy years, coming off “Leopoldstadt,” where you play Emilia, another Jewish matriarch, this time in a family epic set before and during the Holocaust. What similarities do you see between these two characters?
Emilia supposedly walked from Kyiv to Lviv on foot, which is something like over 500 miles, during one of the pogroms — she’s a survivor. She was very tough. I mean, the line that I said at the end of the 1899 [scene] was, “They used to hate us for killing Christ, now they hate us for being Jews. God, give my grandchildren the desert.” So Theodor Herzl was, at that moment, coming up with this plan [for a Jewish state in Palestine] that a lot of the Viennese thought, “Oh, who wants to give up high society and the culture that we live in, which is the best of Europe, and go live in some terrible desert?” That has a very similar theme to a family in Paris [in “Prayer for the French Republic”] thinking they live in the best, most cultured city in the world, and thinking the only safe place to go is Israel. That similarity is interesting to me.
The Benhamou family of Paris conducts a Passover seder in a scene from Broadway’s “Prayer for the French Republic.” (Jeremy Daniel)
How would you describe your own Jewish identity?
I was raised in Phoenix, Arizona, which didn’t have a large Jewish community. But I noticed in like fifth or sixth grade that all the boys were going to this thing called Hebrew school. So I asked my mom if I could also go to Hebrew school. I was a year younger than my brother and she’s like, “I’m not doing two carpools a week. You can go to your brother’s class.” So I was the only girl in my Hebrew school class, and I was the first girl at my temple to be bat mitzvahed. This was the ’60s. The only reason I kept at it was because I figured out, early on, I had a good ear and photographic memory. So they [the teachers] thought I was extremely proficient, but it was just that I figured out I had a gift.
Was this the start of your acting career?
It was a skill I didn’t know I had; it just came out at that time. Also my father, who had been raised more religiously than I, I could feel his pride that I would take an interest in this. And then I raised my son — he went to Hebrew school, he was also bar mitzvahed, even though I was a single mom and his father was Catholic. I just was like, “Yeah, we’re gonna carry this on.”
“Prayer for the French Republic” is such a deeply Jewish play. How would you describe its audience? Do you think it resonates with non-Jews?
Oh, absolutely. I have a lot of friends that aren’t Jewish, who said, “I really, really loved the play. I learned a lot.” I think Elodie’s monologue is very helpful, in a certain way, for people to say, “Gee, I didn’t think about the size of Indonesia and Pakistan and Nigeria and India being so vastly larger [than Israel]. But why is our news cycle so fixated on that?” I think people learn a lot; I think they say, “It doesn’t matter that this family is Jewish — the interaction between the siblings and the parents and the children is universal.” The actual crisis of the play has to do with something else, but their internal family dynamic is universal.
“Prayer for the French Republic,” a production of the Manhattan Theatre Club, is at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater (261 West 47th St.) through March 3. Click here for tickets and information.
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The post How a 3-hour play about antisemitism in France became Broadway’s must-see show appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.
Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page.
Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.
According to The Chronicle‘s website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.
One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.
Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.
Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”
That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.
Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.
So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.
And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.
Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.
Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.
The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.
“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.
The post Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Weak National Canadian Identity Is Leading to Democratic Values Backsliding
Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters, primarily university students, rally at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square on Oct. 28, 2023. Photo by Sayed Najafizada/NurPhoto
As I sat in an anthropology lecture at the University of British Columbia, we debated the question: What is a unifying national identity for Canadians? In response, I said, “Our national identity is that we aren’t Americans; our identity is contrasted against American identities, for good or for bad.”
Some students laughed, and my professor nodded approvingly. How I wish we could laugh about our lack of Canadian identity today, as we watch university student encampments support the repressive tyrannical terrorist regime Hamas, the antithesis of democracy.
I am not Jewish, but I have watched in awe as the Israel Defense Forces fights to defend the Jewish nation from Hamas, and free the remaining hostages. The parliamentary democracy that governs Israel acts as a beacon of light in the Middle East. The strong national identity that interlocks the state and the people propels the continued hostage rescue operations.
It is my greatest hope that Canada, my country, would feel as strongly in their national responsibility to rescue me, my family, or fellow Canadians if we were ever taken hostage, or if Canada was invaded by a terrorist group. However, I fear that the national Canadian identity would not be strong enough to withstand the international pressure that Israel has withstood to continue the hostage rescue missions.
Across Canada, university students are assuming pro-Hamas identities — many after reading ill-informed or false Instagram posts. In the name of social justice, they are aligning with a cause that approves the intentional targeting of Jewish civilians, calls for the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, and ignores the fact that Israel is waging one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty wars in the history of armed conflict.
Here in Canada we, as the Gen Z’ers, don’t have a strong national identity. We haven’t grown up with a strong appreciation for our democracy, military, or a high respect for our veterans. Many of us under the age of 30 do not know the words to “O’Canada.” We have taken for granted the freedom that is our democratic right in Canada. I hypothesize that so many of our younger generations have fallen for terrorist propaganda because we lack rootedness in a national backbone.
There is nothing wrong with advocating for civilians in war zones. It’s exactly because of our democratic freedoms that we can have differing dialogues around war. But what is taking place on campuses is not pro-peace, pro-innocent civilians, pro-hostage release, or pro-democratic values.
These university encampments are anti-peace and they promote hate, propaganda, and terrorism. Before our eyes, since the Oct. 7th massacre carried out by Hamas, many university students have sided with the terrorist organization.
I am nearly infuriated to the point of tears most days, in what feels like a never-ending battle of terrorist propaganda being shared by my leftist friends. I have always been a politically center-left person, but as the left moves further to the extremist side, I feel the need to call this extremism out.
As a non-Jewish Canadian university student, I have had enough of this childish behavior. If we want to be treated like adults, we need to act like them. As silly as that sounds, my peers are using their democratic rights to advocate for a terrorist group. A terrorist group who would kill us if given the chance.
Without a strong national backbone, we have lost ourselves to incompetent “social justice” causes that cease to make rational or logical sense. Canadian democratic values are about peace, respect, and diversity. Hamas is a radical Islamist military movement that does not believe in equal rights for men and women, let alone LGBTQ+ individuals. It does not make democratic sense to advocate for a terrorist group who are fanatical Islamic extremists.
Intense false realities have been created by the extreme left that fantasize and romanticize terrorists as resistance fighters — a desperate attempt to create a false narrative that implicates Israel as the terrorist organization. Instead of calling for accountability and disbandment of Hamas, the blame has been unfairly placed on Israel. These dangerous terrorist-sympathizing ideologies need to be met with harsh repercussions, as the democratic values of future adult Canadians rest in the balance.
Many of us on the left have lived in fear of falling victim to cancel culture, and have instead allowed the extremism on the left to grow. The hypocrisy and privilege of these protestors have stripped them of their credibility for a social justice movement.
Putting up signs stating “F*** KKKANANDA” at the University of British Columbia, painting “F*** Quebec” in Montreal on the face of a new Holocaust museum poster, and chanting “Death to America” on campuses, is life or death for Western democratic values.
The (false) colonial narrative about Israel has become dizzyingly amplified on campuses, commonly stating that Israel is a colonizer of the land and the Palestinians are the oppressed. Instead, the ancestral and Indigenous right of Jewish return is the ultimate act of decolonization.
The intense leftist approach to teaching makes race the center of every issue, causing students to view indigeneity and colonization in simplified forms without historical context. I am an Arts student who has always been politically and socially left, and an active feminist.
However, I have been inundated with intense frameworks of colonialism, racism, and intersectionality since beginning my undergraduate studies — and these claims are not always based in historical reality.
I never thought I would write these words, but I am dismayed by how my leftist peers are acting, and it is becoming more extreme every day. They are acting like puppets for terrorism, amplifying propaganda and disinformation about what occurred on Oct 7th.
I do not want to live in a society that denies rape, denies accountability, and denies basic human rights to Israelis and Jewish people. I love that my friends in the LGBTQIA2S+ community get to live freely here in Canada and that my friends who choose to receive an abortion for personal or life-saving reasons, can do so. Also, as a woman, I can live equally in a society that promotes my human rights. None of these rights are awarded by Hamas in the society they govern. With the privileged position of having access to basic human rights, I am thankful to call myself a Canadian citizen.
If we don’t fight for our Canadian democratic values, we will be flattened by external forces. It is time to build and cultivate a strong national backbone that holds us accountable for upholding our country. Maybe we will one day be able to look back with humor on this dark period in academic spaces that have allowed this ideology to foster. Until then, we must fight for our country to remain the “True North, strong and free.” If we stand for nothing, we will fall for everything.
As a Gen-Z Canadian, I refuse to allow my peers to degrade our freedoms by romanticizing terrorism.
Zara Nybo is a student at the University of British Columbia, and a Campus Media Fellow with HonestReporting Canada and Allied Voices for Israel.
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University of Pennsylvania Suspends Pro-Hamas Rioters for Full Semester, Activist Group Says
Pro-Hamas encampment at University of Pennsylvania on May 5, 2024. Photo: Robyn Stevens Brody via Reuters Connect
The University of Pennsylvania has suspended four pro-Hamas protesters who participated in illegally occupying the campus, according to an activist group that helped organize the demonstration.
“The [university’s] administration has continued to endorse Zionist ideology and bent to the will of their donors in order to prioritize their profit and image. In their most recent attempt to stifle pro-Palestinian speech, they have suspended four of their own students,” a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) splinter group — Freedom School for Palestine — wrote on Instagram.
“It is clear that Penn is not an institution of education but a corporate power which serves to oil the gears of the global war machine (and then beat, jail, and suspend those who protest this) [sic],” the post continued, adding that the students were “placed on semester-long or year-long suspensions.”
Freedom School for Palestine — which helped organize a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” in which pro-Hamas students lived for weeks and refused to leave unless administrators agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — also implored the public to flood the administration’s office with messages demanding revocations of the suspensions, claiming that the students have been “robbed of their income, health insurance, and access to education.”
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) commented on the report on Wednesday.
“Penn continues to review student conduct cases in connection with campus demonstrations this spring,” it said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner. “The university affords due process to all students in accordance with our policies and recommends sanctions as appropriate on a case-by-case basis.”
Penn’s handing down disciplinary sanctions came nearly two months after it finally cleared protesters from school property with the help of the Philadelphia Police Department. The university had attempted to negotiate with the protesters, but its patience wore thin amid their escalating conduct. After hours of discussions failed to yield a settlement acceptable to both sides, interim president Larry Jameson publicly called the protesters a safety hazard while noting that they had committed acts of vandalism, including defacing a statute of Benjamin Franklin, one of the United States’ Founding Fathers, and “The Button,” a sculpture built in the early 1980s.
In addition to divestment from Israel, the demonstration’s leaders demanded that the university vacate a suspension of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, which the school shut down after multiple rules violations. Frustrated with the university’s refusing to grant them any concessions, masses of new people joined the encampment, expanding it over a larger area of school property and forcing the university to request additional security on campus.
“The protesters refused repeatedly to disband the encampment, to produce identification, to stop threatening, loud, and discriminatory speech and behavior, and to comply with instructions from Penn administrators and Public Safety,” Jameson said after the tents were dismantled. “Instead, they called for others to join them in escalating their disruptions and expanding their encampment, necessitating that we take action to protect the safety and rights of everyone in our community.”
Antisemitism fueled by anti-Zionism exploded at the university long before the “encampment” was set up, an action which was precipitated by Israel’s military response to Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. In September, it hosted “The Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which included speakers such as Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, who once promoted antisemitic tropes, saying in an interview, “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.” Another controversial figure invited to the event was former Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters, whose long record of anti-Jewish snipes was the subject of a documentary released last year.
One day before the event took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner. Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
Former Penn president Elizabeth Magill, who refused to stop the university from hosting the festival, resigned from her post in December, ending a 17-month tenure marked by controversy over what critics described as an insufficient response to surging antisemitism on campus.
The University of Pennsylvania will continue to deal with the events of this academic year for some time. Last month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging a US congressional investigation of antisemitism there, which the House Committee on Education and the Workforce launched after Magill failed to provide acceptable answers about her handling of the problem during a hearing in December. The ruling cleared the way for Congress to continue an inquiry that could complicate Penn’s attempts to repair a perception that it coddled antisemites because they claimed to be partisans of the progressive left.
As part of its inquiry, the committee, led by US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), subpoenaed the university for a trove of documents, including reports and correspondence, which would provide a window into how administrators discussed antisemitism on campus.
Such documents have already proved injurious to Columbia University, which according to reports by The Washington Free Beacon, derided Jewish students’ concerns about rising antisemitism, calling them “privileged” and “wealthy.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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