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“Magical Meet Cute” – new novel imbues age-old “golem” theme with romance…and mystery
Review by BERNIE BELLAN I’d never read what would be considered a romance novel before, so when I received an email from a publicist for Harper Collins inviting me to read what was described as a new “rom-com,” I admit I was somewhat hesitant to accept the offer.
But – the premise of the novel, as described in that email was somewhat enticing. Here’s what it said:
“Ettel Resnick is a proud Jewitch woman. After being dumped by her fiancé of seven years, she recreated herself, selling her successful legal practice in Manhattan to open Magic Mud Pottery in Woodstock, New York. But everything changes on the fateful night Ettel returns from yet another singles event at the synagogue—and finds her town papered with antisemitic flyers.
“Desperate for comfort, she turns to the only thing guaranteed to soothe her Jewitch soul. Pottery. Heading to her studio, she gets super drunk, and crafts a golem. Ettel pours her heart into that little clay creature. She gives it everything she’s ever wanted in a partner, etching words onto his body—some sensible, some esoteric—before getting totally naked and burying that golem doll in her backyard.
“But when her ideal man turns up the very next day—and checks every detail inscribed on her clay man’s belly, including loving to play Scrabble and reading her books—she’s left wondering if she’s falling in love with the real deal, or if she’s truly summoned a golem.
“This laugh out loud romantic comedy explores witchcraft from a Jewish angle, fighting back against the anti-Semitic way Jewish witches have been portrayed throughout history. It also features a woman dealing with anti-semitism in her town and turning to the ancient Jewish protector—the golem.”
There are several things wrong with what that publicist wrote, however: First, the main character’s name was not Ettel Resnick, it’s Faye Kaplan. (That mistake alone made me wonder where the publicist got her information. Obviously, she hadn’t read the book.)
But second – and perhaps this is more important, to describe “Magical Meet Cute” as a rom-com is a disservice to a book that is far more than a rom-com.
Yes, it contains some of the elements of a romance novel and it does have some good laughs, but as the book develops it takes on a far more serious tone – and turns into a rollicking good mystery.
After reading something about the author, Jean Meltzer, I discovered that she had just about completed writing the book, but then October 7 happened and it cast a giant shadow over what she had mostly written. As a result, she now says that there is a much more serious overtone to her book than what she had anticipated in writing it.
A good part of “Magical Meet Cute” has to do with antisemitism and how completely shocked so many Jews are when it comes to having to deal with overt displays of antisemitism. In the book, Faye fights back, but others in the Jewish community are less willing to confront the threat posed by a group known as “the Paperboys.”
As the press release noted, the action in the book takes place in the very real town of Woodstock, New York (although I have no idea whether the Woodstock described here bears much resemblance to the real town.)
As for the reference to “witchcraft,” I admit that threw me off somewhat. I have encountered the notion of Jewish witches previously, especially in Alice Hoffman’s brilliant “The Dovekeepers,” but as I read “Magical Meet Cute,” I became much more aware of the notion of “Jewitches” which, in this book, is treated in a positive manner.
But, add to that the introduction of the theme of the “golem” in this novel, and you get something quite a bit more complex than what many readers might expect to find in a typical “rom-com.”
Yes, Faye Kaplan does drunkenly fashion a golem out of clay early on in the novel – and then the very next day a character appears who certainly does seem to tick off all the right boxes as a real golem. But, that’s where this book takes a very interesting turn, as the author explores the notion of the golem in Jewish history.
The theme of antisemitism and how ordinary Jews – just leading their everyday lives, are taken so completely by surprise when they encounter direct – and often vicious antisemitism, is especially hard hitting in “Magical Meet Cute.” And, because the notion of the golem as a magical defender of Jews has been around for centuries (as the author explains), it serves as a very convenient – and enticing device around which to develop a modern-day novel, especially in a time of rampant antisemitism.
That’s also where the book veers from romance to thriller – and Jean Meltzer does a fabulous job of injecting tremendous suspense – and trepidation, into the latter part of what is actually quite a long novel (over 480 pages).
In fact, I could have done with less of the romance and more of the thriller. When Faye Kaplan does meet – and fall in love with the character, who we come to know as “Greg” – who may or not be a real golem, I suppose it would have ruined the story for the two of them to go to bed right off the hop. But Meltzer describes Faye as quite beautiful, while Greg is what I would think would be almost any woman’s fantasy of a perfect male.
Not only is he gorgeous, he’s absolutely devoted to Faye. I won’t let you know whether they consummate their relationship, but there is an entire subplot revolving around Faye’s abandonment issues which prevents her from trusting Greg that is really quite sad, although totally credible.
As I made my way through “Magical Meet Cute,” I kept asking myself: Would someone who isn’t Jewish enjoy this book quite as much as someone who is? After all, there are so many references that, if you weren’t Jewish, you’d be wondering just what the heck they mean?
One that comes to mind off the top though – and it’s one I’ve never encountered previously, is Faye’s repeated use of the expression “Haman’s hat,” which she says whenever she’s quite surprised by something. I did a bit of reading on the subject but I simply couldn’t find an explanation why someone would say “Haman’s hat” as say, a substitute for something like “holy s_it.” (Maybe someone will enlighten me.)
Something else that intrigued me was Faye’s predilection for “hard kosher salami.” I realized early on it was her go-to comfort food, but aside from how unhealthy it is to eat, I couldn’t help but think of its phallic overtones. (By the way, Meltzer does enjoy using the term “shvantz” as a term of endearment in describing a certain part of Greg’s anatomy. I would have thought she might have resorted to the more commonly used “schmeckle.”)
When Meltzer introduces the group terrifying the Jews of Woodstock as “the Paperboys,” it’s obviously a not-too-thinly veiled reference to one of Donald Trump’s favourite white supremacist groups, “the Proudboys.” (I apologize if I’ve offended any Trump lovers. After all, there were “many good people on both sides,” as Trump suggested, during the white supremacist march through Charlottesville in 2017, weren’t there?)
“Magical Meet Cute” does have so much more to offer than simply a romance, but if I do have one qualm about the book it is that it so very long. It could have been cut down to no more than 300 pages but, having said that, I applaud the author for combining two quite different genres into quite the good read.
By the way, the book is slated for release August 27, but it’s available online right now from Amazon.
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Two plays stage three years of infighting over Israel
The last three years of Jewish life can be read as a singular drama with no last act.
The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 proved to be just the first bloodletting in a renewed cycle of violence and recrimination. Israel responded with its destructive campaign in Gaza. Far from the theater of war, American Jews reckoned with renewed fears of antisemitism and fractures within their own communities and families.
Before that October had even ended, about two weeks into a discourse that’s still nowhere near to disappearing, Michel Hausmann, the artistic director of Miami New Drama, reached out to playwright Jonathan Spector to create a play reacting to the moment.
The writer’s response: a categorical no.
“I was like, ‘That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. I wouldn’t touch that with a 10-foot pole, it’s too scary and hard and complicated,’” Spector, a Tony winner for his play Eureka Day, recalled, “but you know, he was very persistent.”
“I think I wore him down,” Hausmann, a Venezuelan-born Jew, told me.
The result of this exploration is Birthright, a domestic epic that touches on international news and centuries of Jewish thought. The play, now at MCC Theatre after a 2025 debut at Miami New Drama, follows six friends, most of whom met on a Birthright trip in 2006. It opens in the pre-smartphone age and ends in the social media-saturated aftermath of Oct. 7. Overall, it covers 18 years, an intentionally Jewish number.
“I feel like so many of the ways that these kinds of arguments play out is people leap very quickly from a thing that happened yesterday to a thing that happened 80 years ago to a thing that happened 2000 years ago,” Spector said. “It’s too narrow a lens if we’re only looking at this moment.”
Spector landed on the organizing idea of a Birthright trip after conducting interviews with a diverse group of American Jews, most of whom mentioned the free journey to Israel. (Spector, raised Conservative in the DC suburbs, like his characters, didn’t participate in Birthright; he hasn’t been to Israel since he was 15.)
Hausmann, whose theater only produces world premieres and designs its season to cater to the local Cuban, Venezuelan and Jewish communities, commissioned Spector because as early as Oct. 8, he imagined the response from the cultural field would be missing complexity or morphing into activism.
In truth, theaters have been slow to respond. Seasons have featured shows about antisemitism and Israel, but for the most part, they’d been in development before these issues were on everyone’s minds and social feeds.
Joshua Harmon’s A Prayer for the French Republic moved from its 2022 off-Broadway run to a Dec. 2023 Broadway opening largely unchanged. But amid the mounting headlines, the historical irony of the central family’s ultimate choice to relocate to Israel for safety was devastating in its new theater.
Itamar Moses’ The Ally, which premiered at the Public in Feb. 2024, looked prescient in its dissection of campus activism surrounding Israel. It concerned a Berkeley professor caught between his liberal values and his Israeli parentage. Moses’ show was scheduled for the season well before Oct. 7, but debuted just after. The playwright chose not to touch the Hamas attack, but conclude right on the cusp of it.
By the time Giant, about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism, transferred from the West End to Broadway earlier this year, many online seemed to have no problem with Dahl’s blithe Holocaust inversion, accusing the play of vilifying someone who was merely an advocate for the persecuted neighbors of the Jewish state.
Birthright and S. Asher Gelman’s The Zionists: A Family Storm, which opened at Miami New Drama in April and is now playing at Barrington Stages in the Berkshires, are the first major American plays directly addressing a post-Oct. 7 Jewish world.
Gathering the storm
Gelman told me his play emerged out of what he saw as betrayal from his progressive artistic community, which immediately sought to “contextualize” Hamas’ barbarity.
“I watched complex histories become flattened and simplified for ostensibly propaganda,” said Gelman, whose previous plays include the gay polyamory play Afterglow. He was floored by the views of some people in his circle who labeled him, as an American-born Israel citizen who lived in Tel Aviv from 2006 to 2016, a “white colonizer.”
He started taking notes, and about a year after Hamas’ invasion of Israel, began work on his play, about a wealthy and well-connected Jewish family on vacation in the Turks and Caicos. (Gelman’s parents are Jewish philanthropists, like the matriarch and patriarch in the play; one of his sisters, like the play’s youngest son, has funded pro-Palestinian groups.)
In setting up the drama, a kind of staged debate between the liberal Zionist family and the anti-Zionist wicked son and his husband, Gelman had to think of a way to keep the warring factions in the room to have the conversation.
His solution was a violent metaphor: a hurricane raging outside their deluxe bungalow.
“I think that the beauty of The Zionists is that you have to sit down through it, you have to hear a point of view, wherever you stand,” said Hausmann. Perhaps because of the play’s title, he said, members of Jewish Voice for Peace picketed the production in Miami. In one performance, an audience member shouted back as one character made his case for anti-Zionism.
“All extremes are upset at us, and so I think that we’re doing something right,” Hausmann said.
The yelling matches in the play tip into the tedious at times, and the grievance-laden backstory given to the anti-Zionist Aaron — he’s a recovering drug addict whose IDF donor brother outed him as gay when they were kids — seems to support a familiar claim made against Jewish critics of Israel: They are acting out against their upbringing rather than out of a real conviction.
While the show pays lip service to the Jewish value of questioning, it often seems disinterested in the anti-Zionist perspective, privileging the gradient spectrum of liberal Zionism in a queer, multiracial modern family with at least one convert and two descendants of refugees.
Gelman, 42, says he thinks anti-Zionist Jews of a younger generation (the Aaron character is 34) may arrive at their beliefs because they don’t remember a pre-Netanyahu Israel or Rabin and Arafat shaking hands on the White House lawn.
They’ve only “known one type of Israel,” he said.
The art of argument
Spector wrestled with the arguments he wanted his characters to make. The show could have easily been a back and forth about the Peel Commission or suicide bombings during the Second Intifada, but the more ideas he included, the more the play flatlined.
“It’s, like a three hour 10 minute running time and only 15 minutes of it is arguments,” Spector said, “but I probably wrote and have cut two hours worth of arguments.”
He took care to make sure the points of view were rooted in character and their evolution: The most outspoken anti-Zionist character, Izzy (Molly Bernard), evolves from working for J Street to leaving the group chat when her friends send a link to The New York Times walking back its reporting on the 2023 Al-Ahli hospital explosion, which rushed prematurely to blame Israel for the strike. By that point, we can glean how everything from Izzy’s fertility to her disillusionment with her work has shaped her worldview.
Spector came to realize that the question he was examining wasn’t a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis or in winning a debate (he thinks social media has gamified conversation), but a change within American Judaism.
In the second half of the 20th Century, he said, Jewish institutions made an effort to pitch a big, tolerant tent to embrace all levels of observance. “As the main dividing line within American Jewish life has shifted from your religious practice to your beliefs about Israel, there’s been a similar kind of shift away from tolerance from people on both sides of that divide,” he said.
He’s less interested in passing judgment on this development than trying to make sense of it. It’s a view expressed by the character of Izzy in his play.
“I can go up on the bimah at my parents’ shul and I can say I am married to a woman, I can say I don’t keep kosher, I can say I don’t believe in God,” she said, noting how she’d not just be accepted but welcome. “The one thing that would get me kicked off the bimah, kicked out of the shul, kicked out of my family is if I say I am an anti-Zionist.”
Spector said so far a minority of audience members have been uncomfortable with his show. (The evening I saw it, there were young people with tattoos and men in kippot; by contrast, the crowd at The Zionists, typical of my theatergoing there, looked to be almost exclusively of retirement age.) His own views have naturally evolved with the play – he’s been working on it for years, and the facts on the ground have changed.
“It’s a little bit difficult for me to separate the work on the play and the evolution of my own feelings and beliefs,” he said. “If I could sum those up in a sound bite, I wouldn’t need to write a three-and-a-half hour play.”
Hope for healing?
Birthright was the first entry in Miami New Drama’s Jewish Play Commission. Hausmann said some donors wished the piece was more “feel-good,” but said he thinks it is, ultimately, healing.
Spector doesn’t use that word.
”Midway through writing it, I was definitely like, ‘Oh my God. How am I going to find an ending to this that is not just like unrelentingly bleak and depressing,’ because that was certainly how I felt in the moment about where things were.” We black out on a scene of people coming together in a shared grief.
The Zionists ends at a moment of uncertainty amid a wrathful, Act of God weather event. For Gelman, the ambiguity and anger are the point, and point to a way forward.
“Discomfort, disagreement, it’s a feature of a great relationship, not a bug,” Gelman said. “With the privilege and luxury of actual physical safety comes the responsibility to be brave and the responsibility to be uncomfortable. Discomfort is the price we pay for community.”
The post Two plays stage three years of infighting over Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Colorado congressional race upset hinged on Israel
A democratic socialist who put condemnation of Israel front and center in her campaign defeated a long-serving member of Congress in Colorado’s congressional primary Tuesday, adding to recent upsets that are rocking the Democratic party and Jewish politics.
Melat Kiros beat U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a 15-term incumbent first elected in 1996, just one week after two New York members of the Democratic Socialists of America movement defeated sitting congressmen targeted as supporters of military aid to Israel.
“Denver voters of all ages, of all races, of all religions sent a clear message: We will not wait!” Kiros declared in her victory speech, which took aim at U.S. aid for Israel. “We will not wait to reject corporate PACs like AIPAC. No, we will not wait to end the genocide in Palestine.”
She will face Republican Christy Peterson in the general election but is favored to win the heavily Democratic district.
Meanwhile, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors, won the Democratic nomination to replace the term-limited Gov. Jared Polis, who also is Jewish. David Seligman, a progressive Jewish candidate for the open attorney general seat, lost in a four-way contest to Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who gained notoriety for removing Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 ballot.
Kiros, who was born in 1997, the year DeGette took office, used Israel as a wedge throughout the campaign — calling for an arms embargo against Israel, including a suspension of funding for defensive weapons including the Iron Dome.
She also vows to abolish the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency and pass Medicare for all.
Hasan Piker, the progressive streamer who has been accused of trafficking in antisemitism, attended Kiros’ victory party in Denver Tuesday. She also picked up endorsements from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and a slew of leftist groups. Some Jewish Coloradans supported her, saying that her harsh criticism of Israel is necessary and warranted.
In her victory speech on Tuesday, Kiros reminded supporters that she did not flinch when her former law firm, Sidley Austin, threatened to fire her if she didn’t take down a post on Medium addressed to law firms nationally supporting anti-Israel student protesters on college campuses — and was ultimately terminated.
Kiros’ victory on Tuesday comes on the heels of the defeat of two Democratic incumbents in New York targeted specifically for their support of aid to Israel. A former Gaza war encampment leader on Columbia University’s campus, Darializa Avila Chevalier, beat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, while former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander will replace Rep. Dan Goldman. Another candidate who campaigned on Israel, Claire Valdez, secured the nomination for another House seat being vacated by Rep. Nydia Velazquez in New York’s 7th district.
Like Kiros, both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are DSA members. Lander, who is Jewish, left DSA after Oct. 7, 2023, when DSA promoted a pro-Palestinian Times Square rally that Avila Chevalier attended.
Like Avila Chevalier, Kiros has come under scrutiny for her repudiation of Israel and its supporters.
In the final stretch of her campaign, Kiros gained national attention for declining to declare antisemitic the 2025 firebombing of a group holding a vigil in Boulder, saying in an interview: “I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator. All I know is that he attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed,” adding that she could not say what they believed, either: “most of them were probably just there to ask that the people who were kidnapped on Oct. 7 be returned to their families.”
The attacker, Mohammed Soliman, was heard saying “Free Palestine” as he threw molotov cocktails and used an improvised flamethrower to burn 13 people, including an 82-year-old woman who later died of her wounds.
As a candidate, Kiros has said in interviews that weapons that defend Israeli citizens against attacks from Iran and Hezbollah “give Israel the cover” to continue policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing. (Genocide scholars have debated whether the war in Gaza rises to the level of genocide.)
And asked whether Israel “had it coming” on Oct. 7, Kiros told a local news channel “no, not at all — it’s about understanding the conditions in which violence and war happens.” She said Israel had resisted change despite decades of international frustration with its policies; her job as a member of Congress, she said, was to change those conditions.
In the gubernatorial contest, Weiser’s victory over U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet made him the likely next governor of the state. Colorado has not had a Republican governor since 2007.
Bennet’s mother, like Weiser’s, survived the Holocaust. She was smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto as a child before her family immigrated to New York. But Bennet was raised Christian and does not identify as Jewish.
Estare Weiser was born in Buchenwald the day before the camp was liberated. Now 81, she was photographed celebrating with Weiser, 58, at his victory party Tuesday.
Weiser’s platform focuses on expanding the state’s universal preschool program, defending LGBTQ+ and women’s rights and countering Republican gerrymandering efforts in other states. He entered the race as an underdog, but successfully attacked Bennet for backing several Trump cabinet nominees.
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Survey: Jews in smaller communities feel less heard when raising concerns about antisemitism
(JTA) — Jews living in smaller communities are less likely than those in large communities to feel their concerns about antisemitism are taken seriously by law enforcement and would-be allies, a new survey from the Jewish Federations of North America has found.
Jews in smaller communities were “lacking a sense of allyship in the communities around them,” said Mimi Kravetz, the chief impact and growth officer for JFNA.
“Jews in small communities tell us that they feel deeply concerned that they’re looking for support, that their leadership is looking for network and resources, because it can feel like they’re on their own,” Kravetz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The JFNA survey, which was compiled from its March 2025 study of Jewish Life in North America, found that 22% of Jews live in small communities. Defined as Jewish communities with fewer than 5,000 Jews living within five miles of their zip code, small Jewish communities are also more likely to be found in the South or in rural or suburban areas.
Although the survey found no statistically significant difference in the antisemitism experienced by Jews in smaller and larger communities, it found that Jews in small communities are more likely to feel that antisemitism is invalidated or dismissed.
Among respondents, 58% of Jews in small communities reported feeling more likely to be invalidated, compared with 48% of Jews overall.
Jews in small communities were also less likely to express confidence in local law enforcement’s responses to antisemitism. Just 39% of Jews in small communities say local law enforcement takes antisemitism seriously, compared with 47% of Jews in larger communities.
Leaders of small Jewish communities also feel less physically safe in Jewish spaces than their big city counterparts: 60% of those small-community leaders said they feel safe, compared to 86% of community leaders overall.
While the survey found that 50% of Jews in smaller communities report being unengaged in Jewish life, compared to 36% of Jewish respondents overall, they were just as likely to say they wanted greater connection to Jewish life.
The survey suggested that geographic constraints and limited availability of Jewish life likely caused the disparity in engagement, even as Jews sought out Jewish connections in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
Kravetz said Jews in small communities were just as likely as Jews in big communities to crave those connections.
“What’s needed in small Jewish communities is more leadership infrastructure and support for Jewish life,” Kravetz said.
The survey was conducted before the January arson attack on Beth Israel Congregation, the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, which drew renewed attention to the security challenges facing smaller Jewish communities.
Michele Schipper, the CEO of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, a nonprofit that supports Jewish communities across the South and was housed inside Beth Israel Congregation prior to the arson attack, said security remains a challenge for some smaller congregations.
“For some of those smaller communities, they may not be able to have personnel on site every time they’re open,” Schipper said. “It may be an older building. Not everyone is able to get one of the secure community grants,” she said, referring to federal and state government grants to nonprofits seen as vulnerable to attack.
Earlier this month leaders from Jewish communities across the South convened at the ISJL’s annual conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Schipper said they discussed strategies for keeping smaller communities safe.
“One of the things we really did share is how important it is not to isolate ourselves in these communities, but to continually build relationships with the local community, with local law enforcement, so that when, God forbid, something happens, you’re not starting to reach out or wait for somebody to contact you,” Schipper said.
Looking ahead, Schipper said her message to Jews in small communities was to “continue to build relationships in your own local community, and just continue to participate in the Jewish community and stay strong and positive.”
The study, which was conducted online by JFNA from March 5-25, 2025, surveyed 5,798 total U.S. adults, of which 1,877 identified as Jewish. The margin of error for Jewish adults was ± 2.26%, and samples were weighted to be representative of the U.S. population and Jewish community.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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