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For ill and for good, this ‘Wicked’ song has become ubiquitous
In the final minutes of the second act of the Broadway musical Wicked, Glinda and Elphaba sing together one last time. They have reached their ultimate, iconic forms: Glinda is the Good Witch, ringletted and resplendent. Elphaba is the Wicked Witch of the West, caped and glittering. They suspect they will never see each other again. And so the two women sing a duet that is part yearbook note, part deathbed confession.
“Because I knew you,” Glinda sings, “I have been changed for good.”
Jenna and her husband watched from their orchestra seats. It was 2005, Wicked was the toast of Broadway, and the tickets were a splurge. When the actress playing Elphaba sang, “It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime, so let me say before we part: so much of me is made of what I learned from you. You’ll be with me, like a handprint on my heart,” Jenna’s eyes filled with tears. Her husband reached over and took her hand.
Four months later, they separated. On her birthday that year, Jenna’s ex-husband sent her a card. “Because I knew you,” he wrote, “I have been changed for good.”
“I love the double meaning of that,” said Jenna, now 57 and a volunteer manager at a nonprofit in Maryland. “I have been changed to be a better person, but I have also been changed permanently, for good. There’s no going back.”
The second life of ‘For Good’
Amidst cheers and ballyhoo — to borrow a phrase from Glinda — a second Wicked movie is now hitting theaters. To mark the distinction between this movie and its predecessor, the 2025 edition is called Wicked: For Good.
“For Good,” the song, has attained an unusual second life outside of the musical. In Wicked, Jewish composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz launched a number of forever entries into the musical theater book of standards — “Defying Gravity,” “Popular,” “The Wizard and I” — but “For Good” belongs to an exclusive category: songs that have become staples at graduations, retirement celebrations and funerals. If you see a cap and gown, you are not safe from a heartfelt rendition of “For Good.” If there is a casket on a table, these days you may be as likely to hear “For Good” as you are to hear “Wind Beneath My Wings” or “Candle in the Wind.”
“As a cantor, it’s impossible to hear ‘For Good’ from Wicked without sensing that the song is doing something deeply Jewish, whether or not its creators intended it,” said Neil Michaels of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan. “It has become, in many sanctuaries and life-cycle moments, a kind of contemporary niggun, carrying emotional truth where spoken liturgy might fall short.”
“I’ve played it for a funeral,” said Joe Wicht, who has accompanied singers for 18 years at the San Francisco piano bar Martuni’s. “I’ve played it for singers at wedding receptions, too.” But most often, he said, the song is sung “by two best friends.” Duos who request “For Good” are often about to be separated by a move, or redefined by one person getting married, he said. Sometimes, the singers are a parent and a child.
“This isn’t the kind of song where people just willy-nilly decide to sing it in a bar, a la karaoke,” he said. “It’s always sung with intent.”
“It’s always the same scenario — best friends,” he added. “I’ve never heard this song performed between two people in love.”
An anthem of friendship for this generation
Few songs aim to articulate the way that two people can alter each other’s lives and edit each other’s characters, sans romantic love. Schwartz has said in interviews that he wrote the song after sitting down with his daughter and asking her about her best friend. “If you could never see Sarah again and you had one chance to tell her what she’s meant to you,” he asked, “what would you say?”
The song, which lifts some of Schwartz’s daughter’s words directly, literalizes the way two people can blend without losing their own specificity. It begins with a solo for each woman, then they sing in counterpoint, then harmony. “For Good” is sometimes derided as schmaltzy and overearnest. But its impact is indelible: it is a song people rely on to express a kind of love that often goes unsung.
“For those of us who have lost someone,” wrote vocal coach and therapist Petra Borzynski in a recent essay, ‘For Good’ is “the song that speaks the unspeakable: that the person who is gone still lives in every choice we make, every kindness we extend, every moment we choose differently because they existed (for better, for worse).”
Borzynski sang the song for years. Then her mother died, at 59, of ovarian cancer. When Borzynski attempted to sing the song, she recalled, “my voice literally broke.”
When 75-year-old Melbourne resident Des Flannery was in his late 60s, he got into a fight with his best friend, Max. They made up when Des sent Max a written apology, Des’ daughter, Breanna, told me. In his note, Des quoted the opening lyrics from “For Good.” When Max died several years later, Des eulogized him, reciting the lyrics that had helped bring him and his friend back together.
“He wasn’t confident he could get through it without becoming a wailing mess,” his daughter, Breanna Flannery, said. “So reading it seemed the best way to get it out.” (Afterwards, women mourners crowded around Des to praise his bold, emotional writing, unaware that he had been quoting Wicked.)
Drew Wutke, a pianist at Marie’s Crisis, the famed Broadway musical singalong bar in the West Village, is used to looking up from the piano during “For Good” and seeing drinkers crying into their tequila sodas.
“It is the friendship anthem of the last 25 years,” he said.
“I don’t know another way to say it other than: it is a heaven-blessed song,” he said. “The hope that soul-friendship exists, that chosen family exists — those are the wires that get tripped when that introduction starts,” he said, humming the song’s opening notes. “Even though it is lyrically nonsensical at times.” One lyric often maligned even by fans is, “Like a seed dropped by a sky bird, in a distant wood.”
“A skybird! Please!” said Wutke. “We could have workshopped that lyric.”
I’ve heard it said…but what does it mean?
As with the rest of the musical, the universality of “For Good” is both a strength and weakness. Wicked is a musical about a woman who faces cruelty and discrimination because of her skin color. It has been called a parable about fascism, and an allegory for racism and ableism. But no Black actress played Elphaba full-time on Broadway for the musical’s first 22 years. And though one character in Wicked uses a wheelchair, the first time a wheelchair user ever played Nessarose was in last year’s movie.
Though the Wicked movies have been released during a time of rising authoritarianism, the movie’s stars and creators have limited themselves to comments like the joint statement Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande made recently, which spoke of “times like these that feel so divided, as if we’re reading from different pages and different books.”
Though the song is deeply meaningful to listeners, the meaning those listeners derive is not consistent. “At its core, ‘For Good’ is about hineni — ‘here I am’: standing fully present in relationship,” said the cantor, Michaels. “It is the musical embodiment of the Jewish belief that who we become is inextricably shaped by the people who walk beside us.” The song, he argued, “echoes the teaching that every person you encounter teaches you something, that chevruta (sacred partnership) shapes the soul, and that human connection is one of Judaism’s most powerful agents of transformation.”
No one religion or perspective has a monopoly on interpreting Schwartz’s message. Ali, a friend of mine, and a 31-year-old interior designer from Los Angeles, grew up singing songs from Wicked with her friend Brittany. “She would always be Elphaba and I would always be Glinda, even though I secretly wanted to sing the Elphaba part,” Ali said.
Ali was active in the Catholic church, and the girls were often asked to perform at fundraisers and other events. They reserved “For Good” for the finale. “It’s about connection and sisterhood, and friendship,” Ali said. “It was a tearjerker.”
As 14 year olds, the two girls were summoned to perform in a hotel ballroom for a group of about “200 nuns and other women,” Ali remembered. After the song, the nuns thanked them profusely for lending their voices to their cause. The two girls exited the stage to wild applause, then sat down to eat lunch and when they looked back up, “they were literally showing fetuses on the screen and just spewing anti-abortion rhetoric,” Ali remembered. The shift was shocking, she said. “From sisterhood and friendship to hating other women for having abortions.”
Changed for good? Or just good at singing?
“For Good” is usually performed in the context of honoring another person. No matter how tragic or poignant an event is, though, for a theater kid it’s also an opportunity to perform “For Good.” If that sounds cynical, it comes from personal experience: Your author performed the Elphaba part at her high school graduation. I knew that it was my job to move the audience to tears, but my thoughts were largely about how to achieve vocal clarity and resonance. Also, my ankle was broken, and my secular high school had rented out a synagogue for graduation, so I sang the song on the steps of the bima, mindful of the fact that my cast was wider than the steps and if I gestured emotionally during the “like a comet pulled from orbit” harmony I could roll forward and crash to the ground.
But Victoria, 21, who sang the song just a few years ago at her high school graduation in Port Richey, Florida, begs to differ. “I think that vocally, it is not an extremely challenging song,” she said. The real challenge, she said, is allowing yourself to feel the meaning of the song, and conveying that depth of feeling to the audience. “I couldn’t help but really internalize the lyrics I was singing,” she said.
“I was reflecting on all of the relationships I had made with my fellow students, as well as my teachers,” Victoria said. “And I knew then that they had changed and helped create the person I am today, because I knew them.” Among masses who will see Wicked: For Good in the coming weeks, there will be many who weep throughout the title song, and many who call the song saccharine and sentimental. The second group is missing the point. “For Good” is meant to be saccharine. It takes on the most cringe-inducing, embarrassing topic in the world: human connection. If you love it, it probably came into your life for a reason.
The post For ill and for good, this ‘Wicked’ song has become ubiquitous appeared first on The Forward.
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‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded
One week after California Gov. Gavin Newsom caused a stir by using the term “apartheid” to describe Israel, Jewish leaders in the state and beyond — have tried in vain to get him to walk back his statement.
Those seeking answers include allies of the term-limited governor, a likely presidential candidate, who have defended his record and even the comment itself.
Newsom said March 3 on a podcast that Israel had been talked about “appropriately as sort of an apartheid state,” and suggested that a time may come when the U.S. should reconsider its military aid to Israel.
Some Jewish leaders have said the apartheid comment had been taken out of context, and representatives of Jewish groups who met with the governor’s staff following Newsom’s remark called the conversation constructive. But Newsom has not backtracked in public appearances since then, leaving those leaders split on whether a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination — long seen as a champion of Jewish causes — is plotting a new course on the national stage.
Newsom’s clarification two days later — noting that he was referencing a Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times about the direction Israel was headed — offered them little succor.
“It’s out of step,” said David Bocarsly, executive director of Jewish California, a group that represents more than 30 Jewish community organizations in the state. “This isn’t the Governor Newsom that we know.”
Newsom’s office did not respond to an inquiry.
‘Sort of an apartheid state’
Newsom made the remark in a live taping of Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. The duo, who are among the Democratic mainstream’s most vocal Israel critics, asked Newsom whether he thought the time had come to reevaluate American military support for the country.
In an extended response, Newsom brought up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting, because he’s got his own domestic issues,” Newsom said. “He’s trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West—the West Bank. I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately as a sort of an apartheid state.”
As to whether the United States should consider rethinking military support for Israel down the road, Newsom replied, “I don’t think you have a choice but that consideration.”
Newsom’s use of the term and apparent willingness to break from pro-Israel orthodoxy sent heads spinning. Jewish Insider described the interview as a “hard left” shift. A column in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles assailed Newsom for “finger in the wind politics.” And secular outlets like Politico and The Guardian reported that Newsom had likened Israel to an apartheid state.
Even organizations that have historically enjoyed a collaborative relationship with Newsom publicly condemned the remarks. Jewish California, whose member groups include the state’s local Jewish federations, took to Instagram to call them “inflammatory.”
Newsom said in a subsequent live appearance March 5 that he was referencing Friedman’s recent assertion that Israel annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians equal rights would create an apartheid system.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman column last week, where Tom used that word, ‘apartheid,’ as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” he said. “I’m very angry with what he is doing.”
The clarification wasn’t strong enough for the Jewish California coalition. Bocarsly told The Jewish News of Northern California last week the groups hoped to see a definitive public statement from the governor that he continues to support funding for Israel’s defense and that he “doesn’t believe that a thriving, pluralistic and democratic society, as it is in its current state, is an apartheid state.”
Tye Gregory, chief executive of the JCRC Bay Area — a Jewish California member group — added to the outlet that “we need to hear directly from the governor.”
The coalition left its conversation with Newsom officials believing such a statement was forthcoming, but Bocarsly said his optimism was fading.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped,” Bocarsly said. “And we’re still waiting.”
A loaded word
Some international and Israeli human rights organizations say Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the treatment of Palestinians in the territory already constitutes apartheid.
The term was originally used to describe the system of institutionalized segregation in South Africa that granted the minority white population official higher status, denied nonwhites the right to vote and enforced a range of other forms of economic, political and social domination. Those applying the apartheid term to Israel point to the Israeli citizenship, voting rights, freedom of movement and legal protections granted in the West Bank to Israeli residents but not Palestinians in the territory.
But many Jews say that any charge of apartheid — whether referring to the present or a hypothetical future — oversimplifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is used as a cudgel to delegitimize the Jewish state, where within its boundaries Israeli Arabs can vote and travel freely.
Israel annexing the West Bank — a stated goal of far-right ministers in the Netanyahu coalition like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — would replace the premise of Palestinian sovereignty in the territory, which is officially governed by the Palestinian Authority, and enshrine the two-tier system. Such a step, Friedman wrote in a Feb. 17 column, would amount to apartheid.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped. And we’re still waiting.”
David BocarslyExecutive Director, Jewish California
Bocarsly believed that Newsom’s reference to apartheid had been misinterpreted — even after the governor clarified his views — as describing Israel today, rather than a future scenario.
Nevertheless, he said, by invoking the term “apartheid” at all the governor had played into an effort among Israel’s detractors to make use of terms like “apartheid” and “genocide” to describe the Jewish state’s actions a litmus test for elected leaders.
Only a month earlier, Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener — then the co-chair of California Legislative Jewish Caucus — called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, after first declining to during a congressional candidate debate and getting jeers in response.
“For someone as close to our community as Gavin Newsom is, I think it was disappointing and painful for a lot of people to see that he was falling into this test,” Bocarsly said. “We want to know that when it comes down to it, that he is willing to avoid criticizing Israel in that way.”
Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said Newsom’s initial comments had been taken out of context, and she was satisfied with his later clarification. Instead, she objected more to Newsom’s suggestion that the U.S. might eventually withhold military aid to Israel. The JDCA rejects withholding or conditioning such aid in its platform.
Still, while the “apartheid” phrase got the most attention, Soifer suggested it was just as revealing when — in the same podcast appearance — Newsom had described Israel’s rightward turn under Netanyahu as “heartbreaking.”
“It’s indicating his emotions are actually in this but also disagreement with the policies of the current Israeli government,” Soifer said. “And that is a view that polling has consistently shown is held by the vast majority of American Jewish voters.”
But she acknowledged that further backtracking would help, noting that she had listened to the section of the podcast multiple times to get a clear idea of his intent.
“I don’t think the average person is doing that,” Soifer said in an interview, “and he shouldn’t assume that either.”
The governor you know
The comments seemed to break with Newsom’s track record of verbal and legislative support for Jewish life both in the state and in Israel.
During his seven years in the governor’s office, he has funded the largest nonprofit security grant program in the nation, signed a landmark bill aimed at addressing antisemitism in public education and poured some $50 million into Holocaust survivor assistance programs. He also visited Israel to meet with Oct. 7 survivors less than two weeks after the attacks.
That made Newsom’s failure to hedge in a more fulsome way all the more confounding for his Jewish allies.
Gregg Solkovits, president of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, a Democratic party club, thought the governor had been intentionally vague — and was intentionally waiting out the Jewish criticism — to “protect his left flank” as a future presidential candidate.
“He knows that in the upcoming election, there will be Bernie-supportive candidates who are going to be running for the nomination, and he will be attacked for being too pro-Israel, which he has been consistently,” Solkovits said. “Would I wish that he had not taken that approach entirely? Of course. I also understand he’s running for president.”
Soifer offered that Newsom might just be waiting for the right opportunity.
“He doesn’t actually legislate on this particular issue, so perhaps he feels he doesn’t need to clarify,” she said. “But I think it would be helpful for him to clarify that, especially if he’s seeking an opportunity at some point in the future to weigh in on such decisions.”
The post ‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded appeared first on The Forward.
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Norway Police Apprehend 3 Suspects in US Embassy Bombing
Police vehicles outside the US embassy, after a loud bang was reported at the site, in Oslo, Norway, March 8, 2026. Photo: Javad Parsa/NTB/via REUTERS
Norwegian police said on Wednesday they had apprehended three brothers suspected of carrying out Sunday’s bombing at the US embassy in Oslo, in an attack investigators have branded an act of terrorism.
The powerful early-morning blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) damaged the entrance to the embassy‘s consular section but caused no injuries, Norwegian authorities have said.
The three suspects, all in their 20s, are Norwegian citizens with a family background from Iraq, police said.
“They are suspected of a terror bombing,” Police Attorney Christian Hatlo told reporters.
“We believe they detonated a powerful bomb at the U.S. embassy with the intention of taking lives or causing significant damage,” Hatlo said, adding that none of the suspects had so far been interrogated.
One of the men was believed to have planted the bomb while the two others were believed to have taken part in the plot, Hatlo said.
The brothers, who were not named, had not previously been subject to police investigations, he added.
A lawyer representing one of the three men said he had only briefly met with his client and that it was too early to say how the suspect would plead.
Lawyers representing the two others did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
“Although it is early in the investigation, it is important that the police have achieved what they characterize as a breakthrough in the case,” Norway‘s Minister of Justice and Public Security Astri Aas-Hansen said in a statement.
Images of one of the suspects released by police on Monday showed a hooded person, whose face was not visible, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag or rucksack.
Investigators on Monday said one hypothesis was that the incident was “an act of terrorism” linked to the war in the Middle East, but that other possible motives were also being explored.
Police are now investigating whether the bombing was done on behalf of a foreign state, Hatlo said, reiterating that they were also looking into other possible motives.
Europe has been on alert for possible attacks as the US and Israel conduct air strikes on Iran and Iran strikes Israel and US targets in the Middle East.
On Monday, a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege was damaged by a blast that authorities called an antisemitic attack. It was not clear who was behind it.
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Belgium’s Jewish Community Sounds Alarm on Rising Antisemitism After Liège Synagogue Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Just days after a synagogue in Liège, Belgium was struck in an apparent antisemitic bombing, the local Jewish community is sounding the alarm over a surge in hostility and targeted violence against Jews across the country.
In an interview with the local news outlet La Première on Tuesday, the president of the Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), Yves Oschinsky, called on government authorities to deploy soldiers to protect Jewish sites and institutions if police protection proves insufficient.
Following the attack on a synagogue in Liège, a city in the country’s eastern region, early Monday morning, Oschinsky warned that the Jewish community faces a far greater threat than authorities publicly acknowledge, emphasizing that Jewish institutions remain at heightened risk.
He also slammed the government for failing to appoint a national coordinator to fight antisemitism, while urging political parties and officials to take urgent, concrete action to protect the Jewish community.
Like most countries across the Western world, Belgium has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the Belgian Interfederal Center for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism and Discrimination (Unia), which tracks antisemitism nationwide, 192 reports of antisemitism and Holocaust denial were filed in 2025, following a record 270 cases in 2024 — marking two consecutive years well previous years.
Before the Oct. 7 atrocities, only 31 antisemitic cases had been reported in Belgium in 2022.
On Tuesday, the Brussels-based Jonathas Institute released a new report warning that antisemitic prejudices remain widespread and deeply entrenched in Belgium.
“The results are clear: the study highlights that the population of Brussels continues to hold many antisemitic stereotypes ‘inherited from the past’ of a religious or political nature,” the institute said in a statement.
The newly released report found that 40 percent of respondents in Brussels agreed with the claim that Jews control the financial and banking sectors, while one in four blamed Jews for various economic crises.
According to the study, these stereotypes are “sometimes expressed as obvious truths” without overt hostility, a pattern the report warns makes them especially prone to being trivialized, particularly online.
More than one in five Belgians believe Jews are “not Belgians like the others,” while 21 percent label Jews an “unassimilable race.”
“The attack on the synagogue in Liège confirms that it is no longer just antisemitic speech that has been unleashed, but antisemitic acts as well. This aggressive antisemitism continues to rise,” the institute said.
The survey also found that 70 percent of respondents believe Jews form a “close-knit or closed community.”
In relation to the war in Gaza, 39 percent of Belgians claim that “Jews are doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them.” This view is particularly common among 18- to 35-year-olds, who are more likely to compare Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis.
Within far-right circles, 69 percent believe Jews exploit the Holocaust, while 72 percent say Jews use antisemitism for their own interests.
Based on these findings, the Jonathas Institute urged authorities and policymakers to strengthen historical education, improve digital literacy, and remain vigilant against narratives that normalize or justify hostility toward Jews, warning that such discourse can ultimately spark real-world violence.
The institute also calls for formalizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, aiming to better distinguish “legitimate criticism of Israel” from “forms of anti-Zionism that revive antisemitic patterns.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.