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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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Analysis: NYC synagogue protest protection vote gives Mamdani cover
The New York City Council’s passage of protest restrictions outside synagogues and schools is being closely watched by states and cities grappling with the targeting of Jewish institutions — but the two key bills both leave what happens next an open question.
Those uncertainties let Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Jewish Council speaker who drove the package, Julie Menin, both declare victory and appeal to their respective sides of the anti-Israel protest divide.
Menin had originally sought to establish a 100-foot buffer zone around synagogues as part of a broader agenda to combat antisemitism — only to revamp it after Mamdani’s police commissioner and civil liberties groups objected. That amended bill now directs the NYPD to craft a plan within 45 days for managing protests around houses of worship. It passed by a 44-5 vote, a veto-proof margin.
But Mamdani could choose to veto the other key measure, which would similarly direct the NYPD to devise a protest response plan to protect access to schools — including institutions of higher education like Columbia University, where Gaza war protests roiled the campus. That bill passed 30-19.
This outcome offers Mamdani a political off-ramp. A strident critic of Israel who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism, Mamdani faces a different governing reality. The veto-proof synagogue bill allows Mamdani to avoid a direct confrontation with the Jewish community, already concerned about his recent responses to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests.
Meanwhile, his power to veto the schools measure gives him room to declare solidarity with the protest movement that helped bring him to power.
Mamdani also has a third option: take no action. Under city law, the bill would automatically take effect after 30 days without his signature or a veto.
The mayor has not indicated he would refuse to sign the bills. However, he cited “serious concerns” expressed by his allies about limiting New Yorkers’ constitutional rights.
Since taking office, Mamdani has walked a tightrope, resisting pressure to take clear positions that could alienate either progressive allies or Jews worried about rising antisemitism.
Menin’s major win
The vote also spotlighted Menin’s role as a counterweight to Mamdani on Jewish issues. The synagogue bill was her first piece of legislation, and her first major win since becoming the first Jewish speaker in city history, at a time when anti-Jewish incidents continue to make up a majority of reported hate crimes in the city. In remarks after the vote, Menin called it a “victory” and a personal milestone.
“We passed a historic package of bills that protects every single faith and allows every single person in New York City to go to their house of worship without fear of intimidation and harassment,” Menin said at the start of an Interfaith Passover seder she co-hosted with the Jewish Community Relations Council. “This is a very personal bill to me. This matters so much.” The event was held at Tsion Cafe, an Ethiopian Jewish restaurant in Harlem that closed earlier this year, citing security concerns after harassment and vandalism following Oct. 7.
Menin is expected to celebrate the bill’s passage with Jewish leaders Friday morning at Park East Synagogue, which was the site of a November protest that included antisemitic slogans and helped spur this action.
Jewish communal and pro-Israel organizations praised Menin for her leadership in statements after the bill’s passage.
Divisions within the Jewish Caucus
The divide around the schools measure, introduced by Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, co-chair of the Jewish Caucus, could prove less politically fraught for Mamdani. The bill drew opposition from 19 members, including two Jewish colleagues.
Dinowitz told the Forward that if Mamdani vetoes the measure, it would undermine police transparency and accountability, “and make students less safe.” He added that he would continue pushing the issue regardless of the mayor’s decision. “I look forward to the conversation the mayor may want to have about how we protect our students’ safe access to schools,” Dinowitz said.
His co-chair, Councilmember Lynn Schulman, said at the Seder event that she is prepared to whip the votes needed to override a veto. “We only need four votes,” she said.
Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who is Jewish, said in the council chambers that he opposed the measure over concerns it could restrict protests on college campuses. Dinowitz pushed back, saying the bill applies only to educational facilities on public property and does not target campus demonstrations.
A watered-down approach
The synagogue bill’s passage comes as similar protection proposals are surfacing elsewhere. Last week, a California state lawmaker proposed a 100-foot buffer around synagogues, and New York is weighing a 25-foot zone statewide.
The bills were revised multiple times from their original proposal following pushback from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, some progressive Jewish groups and free speech advocates, under threat of legal challenges. What began as a plan to establish buffer zones of up to 100 feet outside synagogues and other houses of worship was scaled back to giving the police department broad authority to design and implement enforcement guidelines. The final version does not explicitly ban protests or set a fixed distance requirement.
Menin said that in her early conversations with the mayor, Mamdani did not “indicate particular concerns.” Mamdani said in January that he ordered his law department and police leadership to review the proposal’s legality. Menin said those officials “had input on the bill,” and that input is reflected in the current language of the bill.
Outside City Hall, a group of Mamdani allies gathered during the vote to protest the measures.
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the Forward that even the modified version of the bill gives the NYPD “free rein” in how the rules are enforced and risks signaling that protest activity is problematic.
“What it’s going to do is make it hard to protest in New York City,” Lieberman said. That runs counter to efforts to reduce over-policing, she added.
Audrey Sasson, executive director of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, called on Mamdani to veto both pieces of legislation.
“We’re extremely disappointed that the City Council voted to pass Intros 001 and 175, bills that serve to generate headlines and convey concern, but not to materially make our city safer for all New Yorkers, including Jews,” Sasson said in a statement. “At best, the legislation changes little. At worst, it restricts New Yorkers’ free speech rights and empowers the NYPD to engage in discriminatory policing of protest outside houses of worship and educational facilities.”
Lieberman said the NYCLU will hold off on further action until the NYPD releases its implementation plan.
The post Analysis: NYC synagogue protest protection vote gives Mamdani cover appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s best-case scenario in Iran may also be its worst
If the war in Iran ends with every objective achieved — and it won’t — Israel may still come to regret its victory. The warnings of an ancient Athenian writer, an early right-wing Zionist and an Orthodox Jewish professor of biochemistry illustrate why.
Since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has dismantled nearly every adversary that once threatened it. Hamas can no longer effectively launch rockets. Hezbollah is degraded. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime gave Israel an opportunity to destroy Syria’s weapons stockpiles. And now Iran: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, other key leaders have been assassinated, and the country’s ballistic missile and nuclear capabilities appear to be in tatters.
None of this is likely permanent. Hamas is regrouping, Hezbollah is launching rockets, Syria may yet radicalize, and Iranian regime change is a fantasy. But even if Israel really does defeat its foes, history teaches a painful lesson: it is victory, rather than defeat, that can set the stage for a country’s collapse.
An ancient analog for modern Israel
When the historian Thucydides documented the rise and decline of Athens some 2,500 years ago, he told a story that feels eerily applicable to Israel in 2026: that of a vibrant state poisoned by its own power.
Athens’ emergence as a military hegemon also marked the onset of its corruption and decline. Initial victories over strong enemies set the stage for later follies, arrogance, and cruelty. Flush with confidence, the Athenians embarked on the Sicilian Expedition and overextended catastrophically. Before that, even, they articulated a credo that almost perfectly encapsulates Israel’s current approach to the Palestinians: “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
This isn’t to say that any country should forego military power. But even right-wing architects of Zionism recognized that such power must eventually become a conduit to sustainable peace.
‘The iron wall’
In 1923, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the ideological founder of the Zionist right, wrote a famous essay arguing that Palestinians would never voluntarily agree to convert what was then mandatory Palestine “from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.”
Therefore, he wrote, a Jewish state “can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population — behind an iron wall.”
But while that part of Jabotinsky’s philosophy clearly aligns with that employed by today’s Israeli right, there are two crucial differences between the two.
The first is that Jabotinsky affirmed that it is “utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine” and that “there will always be two nations in Palestine” — a far cry from Israeli messianists’ current dreams of wholesale ethnic cleansing.
The second is that Jabotinsky saw the “iron wall” he envisioned as the first step to eventual agreement in which both sides “agree to mutual concessions.” Power was a precondition for safety, but eventually diplomacy would reap the fruits of long-term peace.
Yet in recent years, Israel has largely eschewed the second part of Jabotinsky’s vision in favor of a “strong do what they can” attitude towards the Palestinians — and the rest of the world.
A ‘secret-police state’
Which brings us to Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a brilliant and influential Orthodox Jewish philosopher and biochemist who foresaw the danger that a “might makes right” ideology would incur for Israel.
Leibowitz dared to challenge the euphoria of victory following the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel defeated a coalition of Arab armies and drastically increased its territory. Writing the following year, he warned that “a state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners” — the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — “would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech, and democratic institutions.”
Leibowitz was not naive: he firmly recognized the need to “continue to fortify ourselves in our Jewish state and defend it.” But he understood that the military victory of permanent occupation would erode Israeli democracy from within. Nearly 60 years later, Leibowitz is, sadly, vindicated: Settlers are on the rampage, public media and the judiciary are under attack, and some experts have suggested Israel can no longer be considered a true liberal democracy.
A deal in the works
Leibowitz warned that, under the wrong conditions, victory can corrode democracy. The question: Can the gains earned through military success ever justify that risk?
Some might argue that a potential Iran deal in the works would validate Israel’s strategy, because it shows that successful negotiation sometimes depends on military action. That is partially true. Israel has effectively negotiated with countries like Egypt after conflict. Long-term peace with Arab states has emerged precisely from the diplomacy that occurred after victory.
But we should be extraordinarily skeptical that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the man to manage that process. Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who returned the Sinai to Egypt to secure peace, had to muster extreme political courage to go against settler elements within his Likud party. Netanyahu, on the other hand, has folded over and over again to the radical demands of his ultra-right wing coalition.
The man who at this very moment is allowing Hamas to regroup in Gaza because he is avoiding a postwar plan should not be trusted to manage any kind of victory with Iran.
The paradox of victory
What’s even more worrying is that the more successful the campaign in Iran is, the more the Israeli right will likely weaponize victory as proof that force is the only strategy that works for Israel, and that all external critics can be safely ignored.
They will be wrong. And we know that, because that’s exactly the same argument that the right offered during and after the Second Intifada: unilateral security, achieved through Israeli might.
The Oct. 7 attack showed the folly of that promise.
Israeli military strength has perhaps never been greater, and its regional foes have never been less powerful. And yet the country’s international standing is at historic lows, and its people are being harassed, injured and killed by Iranian ballistic missile launches that persist despite the country’s best defensive efforts.
No, Israel should not lay down its arms. No, peace with the ayatollahs was never possible. And yes, sometimes force is the only option.
But long-term security, like the kind we’ve seen Israel successfully build with some Arab states like Egypt, comes from resisting the temptations of radicalization that military success brings.
Israel’s current government lacks the wisdom to take advantage of those successes. It will, in fact, warp a win into a reason to double down on isolationist thinking that will push the country further away from liberal democracy.
In other words: victory in Iran — a best-case scenario for Israeli security in the short run — may turn out to be the worst-case scenario for Israeli democracy long-term.
The post Israel’s best-case scenario in Iran may also be its worst appeared first on The Forward.
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Hundreds of Diaspora leaders call for action against ‘Jewish-extremist terror in the West Bank’
(JTA) — Over 1,000 Diaspora Jews are petitioning Israeli President Isaac Herzog to intervene against settler violence in the West Bank, saying that the settlers are threatening Israeli security.
“Mr. President, the terror, death and destruction inflicted by Jewish-Israeli extremists against innocent Palestinians across the West Bank is an abomination,” says an open letter published Thursday. “It is not only morally shameful but a strategic threat to the future of Israel. It damages world Jewry and the relationship of future generations with Israel.”
The letter continues, “Sadly, based on events and on the statements of the most extreme coalition partners it can be concluded that the violence now engulfing the West Bank is not only condoned by the government but is in fact policy.”
The letter was organized by the The London Initiative, a liberal Zionist network founded earlier last year to “strengthen Israeli democracy, advance a fairer shared future for all citizens of Israel, revive hope in the prospects of achieving secure peace, and improve relations between all Israelis and world Jewry.”
It comes as violence against Palestinians in the West Bank — often unpunished by Israeli authorities — has reached new heights, with settlers allegedly killing seven Palestinians in the last month, including one on Thursday, and driving others from their homes.
The situation has grown so extreme that the Israeli army this week took the unprecedented step of diverting soldiers from Lebanon, where Israel is battling Hezbollah, to the West Bank. Both the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces and the Central Command chief have warned in recent days that conditions in the West Bank are contributing to a dire manpower shortage in the army.
The issue has also ignited concern from the United States, and from Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Rabbi Yechiel Leiter, who told Ynet that he believed the situation was deterring some in Washington from supporting Israel. He called on the rabbis of the West Bank to constrain their disciples.
“I’m so angry about the issue of Jewish riots in Judea and Samaria,” Leiter said. “It’s a handful of a few hundred people who are staining an entire enterprise — and everyone is silent.”
The new letter signed by Diaspora Jews calls on Herzog to advocate for change with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers who have not interceded to stop the violence. The signatories include prominent philanthropists including Charles Bronfman; liberal rabbis from multiple countries; and former British and Canadian ambassadors to Israel.
“Mr. President, Pesach is upon us. As we have for millennia, Jews everywhere will reflect on the promise of freedom and responsibilities of power,” the letter says. “We call on you to use your position to implore the government to put an end to the abomination of Jewish-extremist terror and the era of impunity for its perpetrators.”
The post Hundreds of Diaspora leaders call for action against ‘Jewish-extremist terror in the West Bank’ appeared first on The Forward.