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From Mel Brooks to Elaine May to Ethan Coen: Producer Julian Schlossberg writes memoir about working with Jewish stars over 6 decades
(JTA) — On a couple of occasions in Julian Schlossberg’s early life, he found himself in parts of the United States where some people he talked to had never met a Jewish person. The first was a stint in the Army, the second was while selling movies to rural television stations.
But over the next six decades — once Schlossberg embarked on a long and successful career that included stops as a Hollywood studio executive with Paramount Pictures and later as a prolific distributor of movies and producer of off-Broadway and Broadway shows — he was rarely the only Jew in the room ever again.
Schlossberg tells those stories and many more in his new memoir “Try Not to Hold It Against Me: A Producer’s Life” (Beaufort Books). He writes about how he went from a child in the Bronx to an influential show business figure who mingled and worked with countless movie stars, having enjoyed a long career that shows no signs of being over at age 81.
Schlossberg was born in 1941, and grew up in what he describes as a middle class family, in a Bronx neighborhood that at the time was heavily Jewish and Irish. His father Louis played semi-pro baseball, but as Schlossberg writes in the book, turned down the chance to play for a team in Kansas City in part because “there were almost no Jews in baseball.” Instead, Louis spent most of his professional life working in Manhattan’s Garment District.
The family lived near the Kingsbridge Armory, then likely the largest of its kind in the world, which hosted conventions, car shows and rodeos that came through the city at the time. Those rodeos, in fact, were Schlossberg’s introduction to showbiz.
“I would go as a kid and just revel in the fact that I was meeting these incredible stars,” he said.
Schlossberg with Jewish star Michael Douglas. (Courtesy of Julian Schlossberg)
Meeting stars would eventually become commonplace. Before and after his time in the Army in the early 1960s, Schlossberg worked as a cab driver, a busboy, a waiter, a counselor, a typist and more while taking college classes at night. He got a job at the ABC in 1964 and worked his way up the company’s ranks.
“I had decided, as a very young man, that since I didn’t have a law degree or a dental degree or a medical degree, I was going to learn every aspect of show business that I could,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was going to do, but I knew that knowledge was power, and that if I had knowledge, maybe I’d get some power.”
He would live out that goal, working in just about every area of entertainment, from radio to movie distribution to theater producing. (He goes back and forth on which one he likes best.)
In the 1970s, he hosted an AM radio show called “Movie Talk,” for which he interviewed hundreds of movie stars. WMCA station executives wanted Schlossberg to use a different stage name, to sound less Jewish.
“They didn’t want it to be ‘a Jewish name,’ and I said ‘Wait a second — if I’m going to be on the air in New York City, I can’t be a Jew?’ So they gave in, and I kept my name,” he said. “You kind of want to remember the times you did stand up, I guess. Not that it was a giant standing up, but I would have not done the show if they had asked me to change my name, because it made no sense to me.”
Speaking of Jews, Schlossberg has worked with a virtual who’s-who of famous Jewish entertainers over the years, from Neil Simon to Lillian Hellman to Sid Caesar to Mike Nichols to Peter Falk to Ethan Coen. And the ones he didn’t work with, he hung out with socially. Barbra Streisand invited him to a famous birthday party (that ended up taking place at Liza Minnelli’s house), and Mel Brooks has always greeted him as “Schloss Berg,” as if his name were two words.
Schlossberg with Barbra Streisand, right, and Merryn Jose. (Courtesy of Julian Schlossberg)
Schlossberg’s film production credits range from the 1994 British mystery “Widows’ Peak,” starring Natasha Richardson and Mia Farrow; to the 1980 “No Nukes” documentary that filmed an anti-nuclear weapons concert with the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne; to a revival of the long-buried version of Orson Welles’ “Othello.”
In 1995, Schlossberg worked with three prominent Jews on one off-Broadway production: a set of one-act plays performed together each night, called “Death Defying Acts,” written by Woody Allen, David Mamet and Elaine May. Schlossberg later produced the Broadway adaptation of Allen’s movie “Bullets Over Broadway,” while May, whom Schlossberg likens to a sister, contributed the forward to his book.
“Elaine is, as I’ve written, the smartest person I’ve ever met, and probably one of the most talented if not the most talented, because there is nothing that she cannot do,” Schlossberg said of the now 90-year-old Oscar, Tony and Grammy winner. “She’s a great actress, she’s a great writer, and she’s a great director. And she’s a hell of a friend.”
At one point in his career, as he details in one chapter, Schlossberg crossed paths with another Jewish producer: Harvey Weinstein. When Weinstein was young, the now-disgraced serial sexual harasser approached Schlossberg and asked him to teach him the movie business. The two men worked together for a time, although eventually they fell out.
“I never in my wildest dreams thought he would hit the heights that he hit, or the depths that he sunk to. Never,” Schlossberg said.
Another of Schlossberg’s mentoring experiences ended on a more positive note. Mark S. Golub, a rabbi, came to Schlossberg for advice in the late 1990s on learning the theater business. Golub, who died late last month at 77, went on to become a prolific Broadway producer and the founding president of the Jewish Broadcasting Service channel.
It was a fruitful partnership: Golub learned about the industry, and Schlossberg absorbed lessons about Judaism.
“It was a very interesting combination, of somebody who certainly knew a great deal about Judaism, and myself, who was learning a lot by that time about [Judaism],” Schlossberg said. “It was interesting to me to be partners with a rabbi.”
Schlossberg had several projects set to go at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but when the industry shut down, he wrote his memoir instead. Now he’s looking to rev up some of those projects. Next up on the docket is “Tales From the Guttenberg Bible,” an autobiographical, four-character play written by and starring the Jewish actor Steve Guttenberg. It is now set for its world premiere in April, at the George Street Playhouse in Rutherford, New Jersey.
“I think audiences will respond to it, because he’s so kind and personable and living… a nice Jewish boy,” Schlossberg said of Guttenberg.
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The post From Mel Brooks to Elaine May to Ethan Coen: Producer Julian Schlossberg writes memoir about working with Jewish stars over 6 decades appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Says Iran Can Phone If It Wants to talk; Iranian Minister Heads to Russia
US President Donald Trump speaks about research into mental health treatments in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, April 18, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump said on Sunday Iran could telephone if it wants to negotiate an end to their two-month war and stressed it can never have a nuclear weapon, after Tehran said the US should remove obstacles to a deal, including its blockade of Iran’s ports.
Hopes of reviving peace efforts receded on Saturday when Trump scrapped a visit to Islamabad by his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi shuttled to and from mediators Pakistan and Oman on Sunday before heading to Russia, where he is due to meet President Vladimir Putin.
Oil prices rose, the dollar inched higher and US stock futures wobbled lower in early Asia trade on Monday after the peace talks stalled, leaving Gulf shipping blocked.
“If they want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us. You know, there is a telephone. We have nice, secure lines,” Trump told “The Sunday Briefing” on Fox News.
“They know what has to be in the agreement. It’s very simple: They cannot have a nuclear weapon, otherwise there’s no reason to meet,” Trump said.
Axios reported on Sunday, citing an unnamed US official and two sources with knowledge of the matter, that Iran gave the US a new proposal through Pakistani mediators on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and the ending of the war, with nuclear negotiations postponed for a later stage. The US State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.
Iran has long demanded Washington acknowledge its right to enrich uranium, which Tehran says it only seeks for peaceful purposes, but which Western powers say is aimed at building nuclear weapons.
Although a ceasefire has paused full‑scale fighting in the conflict, which began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, no agreement has been reached on terms to end a war that has killed thousands, driven up oil prices, fueled inflation and darkened the outlook for global growth.
TRUMP FACES DOMESTIC PRESSURE TO END WAR
With his approval ratings falling, Trump faces domestic pressure to end the unpopular war. Iran’s leaders, though weakened militarily, have found leverage in negotiations with their ability to stop shipping in the economically vital Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries a fifth of global oil shipments.
Tehran has largely closed the strait while Washington has imposed a blockade of Iranian ports.
Before heading to Russia, Araqchi returned to Islamabad after holding talks on Sunday in Oman.
Iranian state media said Araqchi discussed security in the strait with Omani leader Haitham bin Tariq al-Said and called for a regional security framework free of outside interference.
Araqchi said on X that the focus of his Oman talks “included ways to ensure safe transit that is to benefit of all dear neighbors and the world.”
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said topics for Araqchi’s talks with Pakistani officials included “implementing a new legal regime over the Strait of Hormuz, receiving compensation, guaranteeing no renewed military aggression by warmongers, and lifting the naval blockade.”
Iran’s envoy in Russia, Kazem Jalali, said in a post on X that Araqchi would meet with Putin “in continuation of the diplomatic jihad to advance the country’s interests and amid external threats.”
“Iran and Russia are present in a united front in the campaign of the world’s totalitarian forces against independent and justice-seeking countries, as well as countries that seek a world free from unilateralism and Western domination,” Jalali said.
On Saturday, Trump said he canceled his envoys’ visit due to too much travel and expense for what he considered an inadequate Iranian offer. Iran “offered a lot, but not enough,” he said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif by phone on Saturday that Tehran would not enter “imposed negotiations” under threats or blockade, an Iranian statement said.
He said the United States should first remove obstacles, including its maritime blockade, before negotiators could begin laying the groundwork for a settlement.
US AND IRAN HAVE EXTENSIVE DISAGREEMENTS
Disagreements between the US and Iran extend beyond Tehran’s nuclear program and control of the strait.
Trump wants to limit Iran’s support for its regional proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and curb its ability to strike US allies with ballistic missiles. Iran wants sanctions lifted and an end to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah.
After the latest diplomatic trip was called off, two US Air Force C-17s carrying security staff, equipment and vehicles used to protect US officials flew out of Pakistan, two Pakistani government sources told Reuters on Sunday.
Trump said on Saturday there was “tremendous infighting and confusion” within Iran’s leadership.
Pezeshkian said last week there were “no hardliners or moderates” in Tehran and that the country stood united behind its supreme leader.
The war has destabilized the Middle East. Iran has struck its Gulf neighbors and conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon has been reignited.
In Lebanon, Israeli strikes killed 14 people and wounded 37 on Sunday, the health ministry said.
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Seismic shift in Israeli politics as opposition leaders Lapid and Bennett form joint party
(JTA) — Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett teamed up once before to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, striking an unusual power-sharing deal after Israel’s 2021 election that briefly ousted Netanyahu from power.
Now, the two men are going even further in seeking to repeat their feat. Lapid and Bennett announced on Sunday that they would run in this year’s election in a shared party called Yachad, or Together.
“Our unity is a message to the entire people of Israel: The era of division is over. The era of correction has arrived,” Bennett said at a press conference announcing the collaboration.
The two men are betting that Israelis will see their coming together as an antidote to the polarization that has deepened under Netanyahu, who was reelected in late 2022 after an 18-month interlude in which Bennett was prime minister for a year and Lapid for six months. They hope that Lapid’s centrist supporters and Bennett’s center-right backers can overlook policy differences, which they acknowledged, for the greater good of the country.
Their announcement invigorated some Israelis on Sunday who believe it is essential to unseat Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for about 14 of the last 17 years and who is facing both criminal prosecution and calls to reckon with the security failures that led to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Many of them are willing to make compromises on policy nuances to achieve that goal.
But the union also ignited scorn on the right, as even some who might prefer to see Netanyahu unseated said they could no longer support Bennett if he is working with Lapid, whom they perceive as left-wing. Both Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners posted on social media suggesting that Yachad would partner with Arab parties or even do the bidding of the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, posted an AI-generated image of Abbas presiding at a wedding of Lapid and Bennett, whom he called “an extreme leftist.”
Neither Bennett nor Lapid has prioritized resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or supported the creation of a Palestinian state. Their 2021 coalition included an Israeli Arab party.
Current polls show that the two men alone would not garner enough votes to be able to form a coalition on their own this year. But they could negotiate to add other parties to reach a governing majority either before or after the election, which must be held before the end of October. Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff who launched his own party last year, reportedly called for a three-way union earlier this year.
Their union in some ways resembles the pre-election alliance-building conducted by Peter Magyar in Hungary, who recently unseated Netanyahu’s ally Viktor Orban there. Many Israeli critics of the current government see the election in Hungary as a template for what could happen in Israel.
In the lead-up to the Yachad announcement, Bennett in particular announced some personal policy shifts that could make him more palatable to centrist and non-Orthodox voters. He said that he would now support same-sex unions in Israel and back public transportation operating on Shabbat.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Seismic shift in Israeli politics as opposition leaders Lapid and Bennett form joint party appeared first on The Forward.
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His kippah was a symbol of coexistence. Israeli police officers seized and destroyed it.
(JTA) — Alex Sinclair had no idea what would follow when he posted a picture of his mutilated kippah to Facebook on Thursday.
Sinclair, who lives in central Israel, described being detained by police officers who told him that his kippah, which had both the Israeli and Palestinian flags woven in, was illegal. When he was released from their custody, he was allowed to take his kippah home — but only after the Palestinian flag was cut out, leaving him with roughly half a head-covering.
To Sinclair, a British-born writer and educator whose books include “Loving the Real Israel: An Educational Agenda for Liberal Zionism,” the situation was galling, and not just because he had been accused of breaking a law that does not exist.
“She’d taken my possession, a religious ritual object, something that is very dear to my heart, and destroyed it,” he wrote about the officer who returned his kippah. He added, “That was it. I walked home, shaken, angry, depressed.”
A day after publishing his account of the encounter, eliciting hundreds of almost universally supportive comments, Sinclair said he had not heard from anyone in the government about his Facebook post or the complaint he filed on the Israel Police website.
But he had gotten offers of legal aid; calls from left-wing politicians, including Yair Golan; and even Shabbat flowers from a prominent liberal activist. His phone had been ringing off the hook with calls from journalists, and someone he barely knows was planning a rally for outside the police station in Modiin where he was detained.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” Sinclair said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday afternoon.
The Israel Police has acknowledged the incident, saying publicly that a man had been detained after they were contacted about his kippah and had been released “following a clarification process.” They said the official complaint about the incident prevented further comment.
Sinclair said he thought the image of the defiled kippah was resonant for Jews who instinctively associated it with centuries of antisemitism. But he said he wondered whether the depth of the response reflected something else, too.
After the ceasefire in the Iran war, Israelis were “beginning to be able to breathe a little bit and look above the parapet and just sort of see, OK, maybe we can start to think about the future in a way that we really weren’t able to as a society for the past couple of years,” he said. Now, the thought for many is: “If we are looking ahead, oh my God, is this what is in store for us?”
The incident comes amid a broad crackdown on Palestinian symbols in public spaces, and allegations that police, who have come under the control of a far-right minister, are increasingly intimidating liberal activists.
Soon after being named national security minister in January 2023, Itamar Ben-Gvir told Israeli police officers to exercise wide latitude in removing Palestinian national flags from public places in order to preserve public order. He characterized the flag as a terrorist symbol, even though it is legal in Israel.
“It cannot be that lawbreakers wave terrorist flags, incite and encourage terrorism, so I ordered the removal of flags supporting terrorism from the public space and to stop the incitement against Israel,” he said at the time. Following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel later that year, the crackdown intensified even more.
During the same period, the police have been accused of using inappropriate force against people protesting against the right-wing government. Sinclair said he was concerned about the threats to liberal values in his chosen country.
“The job as a police officer is not to police people’s political opinions,” he said. “That happens in other countries that we don’t want to become.”
Among the hundreds of people responding to Sinclair’s Facebook post were many who echoed that sentiment — even while saying they did not share his appreciation for the Palestinian flag. (Elsewhere in Israel and online, Sinclair drew more scorn.)
“While I don’t agree with your choice of kippa, I do agree you have every right to wear it,” wrote one commenter. “This is awful and I’m sorry you experienced it. And I hate that this is where we are now, that someone could be detained for something like this.”
Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi and member of the opposition in Israel’s parliament, said in a statement that there was “systemic madness” within the Israel Police and that he believed a criminal investigation and civil lawsuit would be appropriate. He also called for introspection.
“If police officers had cut off a Jew’s kippah in any other country in the world, there would have been an uproar here in Israel,” Kariv wrote.
Sinclair said the kippah that was destroyed was not his first with the same design. After the wind blew away the first one, which he had custom-made by a popular Jerusalem vendor nearly 20 years ago, he ordered a replacement — that’s how motivated he was to wear his values on his head.
“I’m a Zionist, and I believe in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in this part of their historic homeland. And I also think that the Palestinians are also people who have a right to self-determination in part of this place, which is also their historic homeland,” Sinclair said.
“By the ironies of history, the same chunk of land ended up being a place where two peoples have a legitimate connection, and we have to figure that out,” he continued. “People from both sides who want to delegitimize or erase the other side forget about whether they’re being nice or nasty; they’re just not being true to history.”
That was once a relatively widely held view among Israelis and Jews around the world. But decades of failed peace efforts, violent attacks on Israelis from Palestinian terrorists, and increasing extremism among both Jews and Arabs have caused a two-state solution to fall sharply out of favor during that period.
Sinclair says he sees himself as a peace activist, though he called the term “grandiose” and said, “I’ve got a lot of respect for people whose life is much more about the activism than mine.”
What he is, he says, is a Jew who loves Israel and is scared for its future. His next book, out this fall, will tackle what he believes is “a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people,” a topic on which he has suddenly become an unwilling case study.
On one side, he said, are far-right extremists, including Ben-Gvir, who “want a kind of Judaism and an Israel which doesn’t have a place for all kinds of things that feel very important to me,” including egalitarianism, Palestinians and left-leaning politics. (That side, he noted, is currently advancing legislation that would ban egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall.) On the other, he said, are those who promote an Israel that “is open and pluralist,” one in which people tolerate people who practice Judaism in ways they would not and hold values they do not.
“We’re in a struggle between these two versions of Judaism and versions of Zionism,” Sinclair said. “I very much hope that we’ll win the struggle. I think it’s not too late to win that struggle. … But it’s not a slam-dunk. And we, the Jewish people, are in real trouble if we lose.”
Sinclair believes his book could help turn that lofty vision into a how-to guide for Israeli liberals. But he also has more practical concerns, like where to get another kippah. He isn’t sure the vendor who made it before will be willing to do so again. And this time, it’s not just him but many of his friends who say they are interested in getting their hands on one.
“Some bright lefty entrepreneur,” he joked, “has got a big money-making opportunity there.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post His kippah was a symbol of coexistence. Israeli police officers seized and destroyed it. appeared first on The Forward.