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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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Black Jews seek renewed solidarity to fight hate after Bondi Beach

In the backlash against Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack, many American Jews put away Stars of David or avoided wearing yarmulkes in public, fearing they would be targeted in antisemitic violence. The burgeoning anti-Zionist protests on the left, coupled with emboldened right-wing antisemitism during the Trump years, shattered a sense of security that many Jews believed they had finally achieved in America.

But with antisemitism showing no sign of abating — most horrifically in the deadly Hanukkah attack at Bondi Beach in Australia on Sunday — the reticence among Jews to express their identity may be dissipating.

That renewed sense of empowerment and pride — even at some risk to personal safety — may open an opportunity to renew alliances with others committed to combating hate. Shoshana Brown, the co-founder of the Black Jewish Liberation Collective, says she would welcome the return of a Civil Rights Movement–style partnership between her Black and Jewish communities.

“The only people who reached out directly to me after Bondi Beach were two African American Muslim women who I have been doing anti-Islamophobia and anti-antisemitism work alongside of for over two years now,” Brown said.

In that time, mainstream Jewish organizations and white Jews generally (or “white-presenting,” since in recent years the idea of Jews as white is itself being re-examined) have focused on antisemitism to the exclusion of other anti-hate work, she said.

“They were all in for anti-Black racism and George Floyd and all that. But as soon as Oct. 7 happened, all the money, all the resources, everything turned to fighting antisemitism,” she said. “It’s like white Jews can’t walk and chew gum.”

Brown and other Black Jews point out that unlike their white sistren and brethren, they do not have the option of hiding their identity from those intent on spreading hate — with people who would attack Jews likely to be the same as those who would target Black people.

“I’m a woman, I’m Black, I’m an immigrant. I have an accent. Being a Jew is the least of my problems,” said longtime Boston publicist Colette Phillips.

Phillips, who converted to Judaism not long before the 2023 attack. “I wear my Magen David because I did not become Jewish to hide my Judaism,” she said using the Hebrew term for Star of David, adding, “If people have a problem with that, so be it.”

She too has noticed a re-embracing of Jewish identity, if only in a sampling of one.

“As a matter of fact, today, my fiancé — he happens to be white, Ashkenazi Jewish — wore his kippah, because, he said, ‘Look, you’re wearing your Magen David out.’”

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Although there is no shortage of evidence that antisemitism has been rising in recent years, starkly in the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue murders in Pittsburgh and Charlottesville’s 2017 Unite the Right rally, it remains difficult to measure precisely. Even the definition of what constitutes an antisemitic attack has been fiercely debated, with some arguing that protests against Zionism or Israel’s war in Gaza are not attacks on Jews for being Jewish.

And Jews find themselves on each side of that divide, with organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace among the strongest critics of Israel.

Brown said the split is also reflected in how Jews respond to adversity, with some anti-Zionist Jews nonetheless embracing their religiosity as others sought to hide it.

“I actually have seen that part of the Jewish community dig deeper into their Jewish roots,” she said. “More people wanting to be rabbis, more people wanting to do Torah study, more people wearing a kippah, more people looking to Jewish practice in hopes of finding interpretations” supporting their activism.

If antisemitism is difficult to measure, there is one constant regardless of how much it has increased: There was never a time it did not exist in America.

The same is true of racism.

Nicky McCatty, who has experienced both racism and antisemitism as a Black Jew, was a longtime Boston area resident before moving back to his childhood home of Brooklyn at the start of the pandemic.

There, he said, he noticed white people were no longer crossing the street as he walked toward them on the sidewalk. Maybe New Yorkers weren’t as racist.

Then he realized he was now using a walker, making his six-foot frame look more like five-six — meaning he was no longer the stereotypical scary Black man.

“I might not be catching some of the stuff that I otherwise would if I still looked like a strong 50-year-old,” said McCatty, who is 73 and wears a hamsa necklace and can hardly conceal his Blackness.

Like antisemitism, racism hadn’t gone away. And he wasn’t hiding anything.

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The post Black Jews seek renewed solidarity to fight hate after Bondi Beach appeared first on The Forward.

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Amnesty International Finally Acknowledged Israeli Victims, and the Media Looked Away

Partygoers at the Supernova Psy-Trance Festival who filmed the events that unfolded on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Yes Studios

Two years. That is how long it took Amnesty International, one of the world’s supposedly leading human rights organizations, to formally acknowledge in a report that on October 7, 2023, Hamas committed horrific crimes against the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

These are facts Jews did not need Amnesty to discover. The mass murder, sexual violence, hostage-taking, and brutality were documented in real time. The evidence existed. The testimonies existed. The crimes were undeniable and should have been reported immediately by any organization claiming to defend human rights.

Instead, Amnesty chose a different path. From the outset, it framed Israel as the primary aggressor while sidelining, minimizing, or delaying acknowledgment of the atrocities committed against Israelis.

Worse still, just one year after the massacre, Amnesty released a report accusing Israel of committing genocide. To reach that conclusion, the organization stretched and distorted the definition of genocide, while conspicuously avoiding any serious accounting of how many Hamas terrorists were killed in the fighting. The result was not rigorous human rights reporting, but a document shaped to fit a predetermined narrative.

For Amnesty International, evidence mattered less than preserving a false genocide narrative. When irrefutable proof of crimes against humanity committed on October 7 surfaced, the organization chose silence. The reason is obvious: acknowledging those crimes would have disrupted the carefully constructed narrative designed to strip Israel of international sympathy.

A report detailing Hamas’ crimes was originally scheduled for release in September 2025. Its publication was delayed after internal opposition within Amnesty International, with critics reportedly arguing that even a belated acknowledgment of Hamas’ atrocities might benefit Israel in the court of public opinion, particularly given its proximity to ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

Amnesty International presents itself as an impartial humanitarian organization committed to defending all victims of human rights abuses. Yet this episode reveals how internal politics were allowed to override that mandate. Israeli victims were acknowledged only when doing so could be carefully timed and controlled to avoid disrupting a preferred narrative. That selective moral calculus further erodes the organization’s already questionable credibility and claims of impartiality.

Even with the delay, the mere fact that a major human rights organization had finally documented the crimes committed against Israelis should have been newsworthy in its own right.

Instead, many of the same media outlets that rushed to amplify Amnesty’s deeply flawed genocide accusation against Israel have remained conspicuously silent about its report detailing the crimes against humanity Israelis suffered on October 7.

The contrast is difficult to ignore — and speaks volumes about which victims are deemed worthy of attention, and which are not.

Major outlets, including CNN, the BBC, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, remained silent on Amnesty International’s new report, despite immediately amplifying its genocide accusation just one year earlier.

Had the media outlets that so eagerly promoted Amnesty’s deeply flawed genocide report been committed to basic journalistic standards, they would have rigorously examined its distortions and misuse of the term genocide. At the very least, they would have also reported on Amnesty’s documentation of Israeli victims. Their refusal to do so tells a disturbing story: one in which editorial judgment determines not only which stories are told, but which victims are allowed to exist at all.

When human rights organizations and newsrooms decide whose suffering deserves recognition — and when that recognition is granted only if it is politically convenient — they do more than mishandle a single report. They corrode public trust, hollow out the principles they claim to defend, and turn the language of human rights into a tool of selective erasure.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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The Missing Context: Media Distort the West Bank Terror Threat

Illustrative: Palestinians run during clashes with Israeli forces amid an Israeli military operation in Jenin, in the West Bank July 3, 2023. REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta

Compared to the terror threats emanating from numerous fronts, including Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, the international media often downplays or dismisses the dangers Israel faces from the West Bank.

After the October 7 massacre, Hamas made no effort to hide its intentions to open a front in the West Bank, calling on Palestinians to take up arms against Israel.

In 2024, Israel faced over 18,000 incidents of terrorism, according to the National Public Diplomacy Directorate. The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, thwarted 1,040 incidents in the West Bank and Jerusalem in 2024, with an additional 231 significant terror incidents reported.

In 2025, the threat persisted. In February 2025, a terrorist from the Nablus area of the West Bank triggered a series of explosions on buses in the Tel Aviv area. Fortunately, the explosives detonated when the buses were empty, causing no injuries.

In September, a deadly terror attack at the Ramot Junction in Jerusalem killed six innocent people and injured 21 others. The terrorists came from the West Bank.

On November 29, a terrorist hurled an iron rod at the windshield of a car on Route 5, a highway in the northern West Bank. Miraculously, no one was physically injured, but the incident underscores the threat targeting Israelis.

The security challenge is real and ongoing. It targets Israelis, no matter where in the country they are.

After the ceasefire went into effect in the Gaza Strip in October, analysts found that Hamas and other terrorist organizations began reorganizing their operations in the West Bank as a way to continue their so-called “resistance.”

For these reasons, on November 26, the IDF launched Operation Five Stones, a counterterrorism operation specifically aimed at countering threats in the northern West Bank.

Naturally, terrorist groups condemned the operation. That didn’t stop the AFP from reiterating the press releases from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Counter-terrorism efforts by the IDF have proven successful.

In the first nine months of 2025, 22 terrorism incidents were carried out by Palestinian terrorists from the West Bank, in comparison to 90 in 2024. With the launch of the new operation, the IDF is strategically operating in specific locations in the West Bank that have become hotspots tied to previous terror attacks, including Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams, Tubas, and Tammun.

These cities and villages have become operational hubs for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Iranian-backed groups, producing everything from roadside bombs to shooting cells to coordinated plots targeting Israeli civilians across the country.

Me’ata, a Palestinian media center, claimed that in October 2025, there were 356 “popular resistance actions” in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including 16 incidents of planting and detonating explosive devices, mainly in the Jenin and Tubas areas. One of those explosions in Tubas left two IDF soldiers injured.

Jenin is perhaps the media’s favorite West Bank location to cover, consistently referring to it as the “martyrs’ capital.” What most outlets leave out, however, is that the name reflects the city’s role as the origin for more than one-third of terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada. The next time you read “martyrs’ capital,” know that the journalist is really referring to terrorism.

The IDF began intensively operating in Jenin in January 2025, following a terrorist attack carried out by terrorists from the Jenin area that left three Israelis dead.

During the current operation in Jenin, the IDF eliminated two terrorists claimed by Islamic Jihad. The shooting was documented on film, and an investigation into whether the officers took the correct action to mitigate harm to themselves has been launched, as is proper in a case where there are questions over whether individuals violated the IDF’s rules of engagement and code of conduct.

Several major outlets, including CNN, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, however, reported the incident without stating in the headline that the two individuals killed were not ordinary Palestinian civilians. but terrorists. This omission leaves readers with a distorted impression of the event and obscures the context of ongoing terrorist activity in Jenin.

Sky News went so far as to suggest the two were not terrorists at all.

The terrorist threat Israel faces from the West Bank is not theoretical or isolated, nor did it disappear after the October 7 terrorist attacks. Had the IDF not continuously acted to prevent further attacks, Israelis would be facing a far deadlier and more coordinated terrorism campaign today.

After October 7, Israel vowed never again to let the country or the Jewish people face such devastation and insecurity. A secure Israel after that massacre means dismantling terror networks before they can carry out mass-casualty attacks, not after. It means denying Hamas and Islamic Jihad the ability to embed in civilian areas, build explosives factories, or dispatch terrorists into Israeli cities. In a post-October 7 reality, counterterrorism is not optional. It is the prerequisite for any genuine stability, security, or peace.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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