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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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We tried to fix Hallmark’s Hanukkah problem. Here’s the movie we made instead
Hallmark holiday movies are famously formulaic. They all have guaranteed happy endings and almost universally involve a homecoming, a life-changing shift in work-life balance and a chaste kiss amid glowing lights. But that doesn’t mean they have to be bad.
Since 2019, Hallmark has occasionally applied this formula to Hanukkah. This is generous of them. It is also where the trouble begins.
Sorry to be a Grinch, but this year’s installment in the Hallmark Hanukkah canon was not only corny (that’s to be expected) but also honestly kind of offensive. In the plot, a rabbi’s son comes home for the holidays and falls for the pastor’s daughter; their families end up combining Hanukkah and Christmas services and traditions to “unite their communities through song,” since, as the logline says, “coming together is the best way for everyone to celebrate the holiday season.”
After watching the movie, two of us — Mira Fox and Benyamin Cohen — cringed in dismay. We thought we could easily write a better plot, one that didn’t seem knocked out by a monkey typing into ChatGPT but still stays true to the frothy hallmarks people love about, well, Hallmark, complete with soapy romance and happy ending, but without the Christian hegemony.
So here’s our attempt. Give us a call, Hallmark.
The name
Love at First Light
The plot
Esther Rayzel Stiefel (not all Jewish women have generic names like Rebecca Goldstein) is a high-powered Jewish consultant who flies home to her struggling childhood synagogue to “fix Hanukkah,” a simple marketing mission her boss thinks will somehow reverse decades of suburban synagogue decline through a few simple branding choices.
Naive and headstrong, Esther believes it’s a task she can confidently take care of in one night, with a PowerPoint. Instead, it drags on for all eight days — derailed by committee meetings, Talmudic disputes and the discovery that Hanukkah is, theologically, a minor holiday that has nothing to do with synagogue attendance. This insight comes thanks to Esther’s new study partner: the synagogue’s new, young rabbi, Shaya Carlebach, who is singlehandedly revitalizing the shul’s youth attendance through his impish grin and knowledge of the slang term “6-7.”
Romance, sufganiyot and and a humorous montage of the pair trying to make an “elevated” latke out of everything but a potato ensue.
The cast
Kristen Bell, Emmy-nominated for her role as a non-Jewish podcaster dating a hot rabbi in Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, stars as Esther. Some call it stunt-casting, or worse, others progress: an attractive blond with a normal-sized nose can play a television Jewess.
A shaggy-haired Timothée Chalamet repurposes his Wonka topper as a black hat to play Shaya Carlebach, a Rashi-quoting neo-Hasid who has a penchant for Yiddish EDM and moonlights as a DJ. The supporting cast — including Benny Blanco playing himself as a music industry friend — all correctly pronounce the end of his last name as “CH” and not “CK.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, who has real-life experience restoring a shul, plays Shaya’s widowed mom who falls in love with the equally widowed dad of Esther, portrayed by Kelsey Grammar. The star of Frasier — whose sixth season featured the holiday episode “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Moskowitz” — already has daddy-daughter chemistry with Bell from their little-seen 2018 film Like Father.
Seth Rogen, his beard dyed white in a nod to Santa Claus, plays Esther’s boss, Nick Frost. Barbra Streisand makes a cameo.
Behind the scenes
Hallmark passes because the jokes have too much Yiddish and the executives didn’t get any of them. Also, Streisand requests fresh rugelach on set, a bark mitzvah for her cloned dog, and $18 million.
Warner Bros. pounces, but the script spends months in development, caught up in the midst of a corporate takeover. David Ellison, the new head of Paramount who is constantly trying to prove his Jewish bona fides, promises he’ll cast an Israeli, but only if he can fund the film using sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia.
Netflix produces the movie instead, repurposing the menorahs from the Nobody Wants This set, and says it will give the film a short theatrical release to qualify for an Oscar. Diane Warren scores the soundtrack and includes a song called “Let the Light Find You.”
The opening scene
Esther, wearing a power suit that signals both competence and unresolved resentment toward her mother, kisses a mezuzah as she strides through a glossy open-plan office in Manhattan murmuring into her phone buzzwords like “engagement,” “deliverables” and “community buy-in.”
A junior colleague asks the meaning of Hanukkah. Esther pauses, realizes she doesn’t really know, and says, “I’m too farklemt to do this right now.” Also, she’s late for lunch with her mom, who offers to raise a grandchild so Esther can focus on her career if she’ll just pop one out like, yesterday. (Nagging Jewish mothers might be an overdone trope, but this anecdote is straight out of real life.)
Cut to Esther’s boss assigning her the Hanukkah account — Esther’s childhood synagogue, now hemorrhaging members and relevance. “We need to make it festive,” he says. “Warm. Universal. Christmas-adjacent.”
Esther promises quick results. She books a flight home that night. Eight candles appear on the screen. Only one is lit.
The meet-cute
Esther arrives at the synagogue, a product of multiple mergers over the decades, and buys a hot drink from the lobby cafe, The Kiddush Cup. As she reaches to grab the non-dairy creamer, her hand brushes up against Shaya. They both realize they’re lactose-intolerant and have undiagnosed Chron’s. She introduces herself briskly, explaining she’s here to “optimize Hanukkah engagement.” Shaya smiles and asks if she wants to study.
They sit down for a chevruta — Shaya pulls an Artscroll Talmud off the shelf while Esther opens her laptop to Sefaria.org. They both try not to stare at each other. It’s antagonistic, flirtatious and immediately derailed by a congregant interrupting to ask the rabbi whether LED candles can be used in a menorah. In his attempt to summarize the arguments for and against the electric candles, Shaya digresses into recounting Talmudic gossip, like that time one student lay under his rabbi’s bed while he had sex with his wife because “this, too, is Torah.” Esther begins to realize there might be more to Judaism than Hanukkah-print pajamas.
The plot twist
By night four, Esther’s PowerPoint has grown to 97 slides (98 if you’re counting the one showing all the Jewish a capella groups parodying KPop Demon Hunters into Hanukkah medleys.) She has zero buy-in. Every attempt to “rebrand” Hanukkah collapses: Is it about miracles? Assimilation? Resistance? Latkes? Mensch on a Bench?
Esther is beginning to worry that all her ideas about revitalizing Hanukkah are more about trying to imitate Christmas. Hanukkah stockings aren’t going to convince anyone to come to shul.
That’s when Shaya casually mentions Purim. Esther can’t believe she didn’t think of this herself. After all, she is named after the holiday’s heroine. Perhaps it is a nod to the megillah, in which God’s divine hand is hidden.
In their study sessions, Esther and Shaya begin to speak faster and faster, cooperatively overlapping, discussing how the best way to bring people into synagogue isn’t trying to make Judaism closer to Christianity, but instead leaning into real Jewish practices. Hanukkah bushes might be pretty lame but Purim spiels can be outlandish, whip-smart and fun.
“Wow,” Esther exclaims, “It’s pretty ironic how everyone wants to make Hanukkah about Christmas when the whole holiday is about religious zealots resisting assimilation!” They laugh heartily.
The ending
On the eighth night of Hanukkah, Esther finally gives up.
At the synagogue candle lighting, she scraps her prepared remarks — a TED-adjacent d’var Torah about resilience, relevance and light as metaphor — and instead tells the truth. Hanukkah, she says, doesn’t need to be fixed. It resists optimization. It has survived this long without a content strategy.
Still, Esther has to do something to prove to her boss that she succeeded and get a long-awaited promotion, so she and Shaya decide to host a sufganiyot-eating contest in concert with a local bakery; they have their first kiss covered in strawberry jam. But the real moral — and romance — comes in the beit midrash, with Esther’s realization of the real solution to the synagogue’s woes.
What this synagogue needs is a blowout Purim party: Costumes, chaos, congregational email threads. Shaya offers to DJ. Someone starts arguing about hamentaschen fillings. Good thing they have more than eight nights to plan this time. (Coming this spring, A Very Purim Proposal.)
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Holocaust survivor event features a Rob Reiner video address — recorded just weeks before his death
(JTA) — At a virtual Holocaust survivor event on Thursday, beloved Jewish film director Rob Reiner gave a pre-recorded address where he urged those watching to be “resilient.”
For the survivors, families and advocates who tuned into the virtual event hosted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, Reiner’s words carried added weight, having been recorded just weeks before he and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were killed in their home on Sunday.
Ahead of Reiner’s pre-recorded remarks, Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the Claims Conference, said that Reiner had begun working on the organization’s annual International Holocaust Survivors Night a few years ago, including appearances in the virtual screening in 2023 and 2024. The organization has disbursed restitution money to survivors since 1951.
Schneider then read a quote from a 2017 Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview with Reiner.
“Yes, all this is reflected in my work. It’s my sensibility. I’m a Jew. I was raised a Jew. I value honesty and integrity and knowledge and education and all those values I was raised with,” said Schneider, quoting Reiner.
Concluding his introduction to Reiner’s address, Schneider said, “Rob and Michelle, we will carry on your values of acting with honesty, integrity, knowledge and education.”
As Reiner came on the screen, surrounded by posters from some of his most acclaimed films, including “The Princess Bride” and “A Few Good Men,” he began by describing his family’s “personal connection” to the Holocaust.
“Thank you again for asking me to join your evening, I can tell you that what you’re all about means a lot to me,” Reiner said in the video. “Personally, my wife, her mother, was in Auschwitz, and her whole family died there. Her mother was the only survivor, and my aunt was also in Auschwitz.”
On Wednesday, the USC Shoah Foundation shared a 1994 video of Singer Reiner embracing her mother, Holocaust survivor Nicole Silberkleit, who described her children as “very understanding, loving, and affectionate.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSYmPLmEshI/
In his address, Reiner then shifted his focus to urging “resilience,” which was the theme of the virtual event to honor Holocaust survivors.
“I know the theme of the evening is resilience, and if ever we needed to be resilient, it’s now,” he said. “We’re living in a time where what’s happening in our country is scary and reminiscent of what we’ve seen happen in the past, and we just hope that we can all survive this and that we can hold on to our democracy, but I want to just thank everybody for being there, and let’s be resilient.”
The Claims Conference’s event was part of an annual menorah lighting ceremony on the fifth night of Hanukkah to honor survivors. It concluded with around 100 survivors lighting candles at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
This year, Claims Conference officials also used the event to draw attention to antisemitism, with the survivor event taking place just days after 15 were killed during an antisemitic attack on a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia.
“Even in these difficult days, when antisemitism is rising and Jewish communities around the world are under attack — this very week on the first night of Hanukkah in Sydney, Australia — we draw strength and inspiration from you, the survivors, from your personal and collective resilience,” Schneider told the group of survivors in Jerusalem.
One of the victims of the attack, Alex Kleytman, was a Holocaust survivor who had passed World War II living with his family in Siberia.
“Lessons from the past should have protected Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman – a husband, a father and a grandfather,” the Claims Conference wrote in a post on Facebook Sunday. “Educating about how words of hate can turn into violence must not be a hollow promise.”
The couple’s 32-year-old son, Nick, briefly appeared in a Los Angeles court Wednesday after he was charged in connection to his parents’ killing. He has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of multiple murders.
The other Reiner children, Jake and Romy, shared a statement with People on Wednesday expressing their grief over the loss of their parents.
“Words cannot even begin to describe the unimaginable pain we are experiencing every moment of the day,” the statement said. “The horrific and devastating loss of our parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, is something that no one should ever experience. They weren’t just our parents; they were our best friends.”
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In Reykjavik, Hanukkah offers a chance for Iceland’s tiny, isolated Jewish community to come together
(JTA) — REYKJAVIK — December light is brief in Iceland. It was not yet 4 p.m., and by the time the giant menorah was lit in downtown Reykjavík, the day had already slipped into darkness. A steady drizzling rain blurred the streetlights and soaked the pavement where fewer than 100 people gathered, roughly half of the country’s Jewish population, which has always been small and largely unseen.
The celebrants were calm, almost subdued; security was not. Armed plainclothes police ringed the area. They moved through the crowd while surveillance drones hovered overhead. Air support was on standby, measures almost unheard of in a country that tops the world’s most peaceful list.
The gathering took place just hours after news broke of the most recent terrorist attack on Jews, this one a celebration of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.
Rabbi Avraham Feldman and his wife, Mushky, welcomed the crowd, their voices steady but restrained. Iceland’s minister of foreign affairs, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, followed, and she lit the menorah herself. Curious passersby slowed, some watching silently before moving on. The event passed without incident.
“The attack in Sydney reminds us that darkness is not only something we read about in history books. It still exists in the world and appears suddenly and violently,” said Avraham Feldman, who is associated with the Chabad movement, which makes public menorah-lightings a centerpiece of its outreach around the world.
“Hanukkah does not ask us to deny this darkness,” he added. “Instead, Hanukkah teaches us that each and every one of us can create light and positivity. Even a small light pushes away great darkness. And when many lights stand together, we overpower the darkness.”
In a statement issued the same day, Gunnarsdóttir condemned the attack in Sydney, which took place at a Chabad event. “I strongly condemn the horrific attack on those celebrating Chanukah at Bondi Beach in Australia,” she said. “There is no place, anywhere, for antisemitism or terror. I extend my heartfelt condolences to the victims, their loved ones, and others affected.”
Her presence at the Hanukkah event carried significance well beyond the ceremony itself. Iceland’s government has been among Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel, and public discourse around the war in Gaza has been intense. Jewish teens have reported increasingly tense relationships with their peers, and the national broadcaster recently announced that it would boycott the Eurovision song contest over Israel’s participation.
For some Jews in Iceland, the political situation has shaken their sense of acceptance.
“It has become very different for me since Oct. 7,” said an American Jew living in Iceland who asked to remain anonymous. “Before, I was fairly widely open about being Jewish, but the landscape has changed.”
When he and his spouse moved into a new home last year, he ordered a mezuzah for the front door, but he hesitated to put it up. “For the first time, I found myself concerned about placing my Hanukkah menorah in the window,” he said, even as he added that most Icelanders would likely not recognize the symbol anyway, given the prevalence of seven-armed electric advent lights in windows each December.
For some present, having Gunnarsdóttir at the Hanukkah event offered a rare and meaningful signal that support for a vulnerable minority need not be conflated with geopolitics.
“It’s so special to have the foreign minister join us today, to stand with us, support the community, and offer her continued friendship,” said Mushky Feldman said. “We’re honored to have her speak tonight and light the first candle.”
Jewish life in Iceland has no long historical footprint. There are no historic synagogues, no Jewish neighborhoods, and no centuries-old institutions. Holidays are celebrated in rented spaces or private homes. Until 2018, there was not even a resident rabbi. The community is made up largely of immigrants — including an Israeli jewelry designer who was the country’s first lady for 13 years until 2016 — their children, and Icelanders who have claimed a Jewish identity later in life.
“How do you teach your children what it means to be Jewish without a ready-made community?” asked Reykjavík resident Adam Gordon, an American Jew. “The answer is that we must create that community ourselves.”
Practical challenges abound. “Supplies can be difficult to come by,” said the American Jew, who decided that he would light a menorah. “I finally placed a bulk order from abroad with enough Hanukkah candles to get me through the end of this decade.”
An obstacle is the traditional Icelandic approach to religion. Most Icelanders are nominally Christian but the country is known as one of the most secular in Europe. (Judaism became an official state religion in 2021, following Avraham Feldman’s advocacy.)
“Icelanders see Jewishness as a function of religion, which they largely see as a quaint if outdated view of the world incompatible with their collective level of political and moral evolution,” said Mike Klein, an American Jew living in Iceland.
“Discussions about my being Jewish often become uncomfortable, partly because of the current political predicament, but also because Icelanders find it strange that I would choose to make my life difficult by maintaining my Jewish identity when I’m otherwise relatively well accepted,” Klein added.
Others echo the same tension. A Jewish American living in Iceland, who declined to be named out of concerns about identifying publicly as Jewish, said antisemitism in Iceland is often rooted in misunderstanding rather than explicit hatred. “There is a lot of ignorance,” she said.
“Many Icelanders have no idea that there are only about 15 million Jews in the world, and that while we are few, we are not a monolith. We have different ways of connecting to our Jewish identity, that it is not only rooted in religion, but culture, a shared heritage.”
At the same time, some Icelanders have embraced the community in meaningful ways. Finnur Thorlacius Eiríksson first encountered Jewish life in 2017, when he met an Israeli couple visiting Iceland. When they later moved to the country and invited him to a Passover seder in 2018, he joined.
“The experience was a positive one, which prompted me to attend more events where I got to know the Jewish community in Iceland quite well,” he said.
Eiríksson now holds the distinction of the only non-Jew known to be registered as a member of the official Jewish community. He attends major holidays and events and is even considering converting to Judaism.
“Thankfully, nearly all my Jewish friends are open about being Jewish,” he said. “They know it never helped the Jewish people to hide their identity, so they wear their Jewish identity with pride.”
Andrea Cheatham Kasper, who is Jewish and lives in Iceland with her family, said her Shabbat table has become a cornerstone of connection.
“Our Shabbat table has been central in our home and also as our way to make friends and build community,” she said. “Relationships have grown there, some immediately and some after many meals together.”
Kasper said she does not hide being Jewish or Israeli but avoids online political battles. “My goal is to focus on face-to-face relationships and interactions that are human, not political,” she said. “What I have found is that the noise comes from the loud voices, and they aren’t always representative.”
At the lighting, the menorah flickered against the rain and the early darkness. Children stood close to their parents. Photos were taken to share with family far away, and fresh-baked sufganiyot (jelly-filled donuts) were passed out to the crowd.
“Events like the menorah lighting become these precious moments when we can gather and celebrate together,” said Gordon. “None of us came to Iceland to deepen our Jewish practice, but we don’t want to abandon it. Instead, we want to weave it together with our Icelandic identities.”
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