Uncategorized
Novel about Chinese rescuer of Jews raises questions about facts vs. fiction in Holocaust stories
TAIPEI (JTA) — Ho Feng-Shan, the Chinese diplomat stationed in Vienna who helped thousands of Jews escape from Europe during World War II, never met Adolf Eichmann.
But in “Night Angels,” a novel based on his life, Feng-Shan comes face to face with Eichmann several times — and his wife Grace’s Jewish tutor, Lola, tries to kill the architect of the Holocaust.
That detail is one of many that has spurred Ho Manli, Feng-Shan’s daughter, to speak out against “Night Angels,” the fourth novel by the Chinese-American author Weina Dai Randel. Manli says the book distorts elements of her father’s story, which was unknown before she spent decades documenting his heroic efforts to issue visas allowing Jews to escape to Shanghai.
“What I have found in doing this story is it’s very difficult to try to maintain the historical integrity of the facts,” Manli told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Countless people … want to use this for their own means, whether it be commercial like this novelist, whether it be political, or whatever. So over the two decades that I have been doggedly trying to uncover more and more, I’ve been constantly fending off these sorts of opportunistic assaults.”
The dispute is casting a shadow over the novel, released this month, and reinvigorating longstanding debates over the importance of truth in historical fiction — particularly in stories about the Holocaust.
“Night Angels” follows Feng-Shan and his wife, Grace, as they risk their lives by issuing visas that allow thousands of Jews escape Germany and Austria to Shanghai. Grace, one of the novel’s narrators and main characters, is based on Feng-Shan’s real second wife with the same name who was no longer in Vienna after the Anschluss — Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, and the period in which the novel is set. By that time, Feng-Shan had already sent Grace away to Boston. She never witnessed Nazi rule or Feng-Shan’s efforts to save Jews, Manli writes.
Several other events in the book, including Grace’s friendship with a Jewish woman who attempts to assassinate Eichmann and her development of a morphine addiction, are fully fictional.
Manli first took aim at the book in a column last month in China Daily. The novel, she wrote, “exploits real names, real people, real events and places, in what is essentially a Holocaust-themed melodrama.”
“In online reviews, readers say that they are thrilled to learn of my father and this history — except of course, what they have learned is not really history, my father’s, or anyone else’s,” she wrote.
Randel and her publisher, Amazon Publishing, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Randel dedicated the novel to “Ho Feng-Shan, his family, and all the angels in Vienna and beyond.” The book includes a disclaimer disclosing that its contents are a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination.
But that’s not satisfactory to some readers, including Tina Kanagaratnam, co-founder of the heritage group Historic Shanghai, whose book group read a previous Randel story set in Shanghai.
“If you’re talking about a historical character, you have to get the history right. Otherwise, just create a fictional character,” Kanagaratnam told JTA. “This is written for people who don’t know the history, but as Manli said, that’s dangerous, because then that’s what they remember. That’s what they take away.”
Ho Monto, left, and Ho Manli stand in front of the Righteous Among the Nations wall at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Jan. 23, 2001. (Isaac Harari/AFP via Getty Images)
“Night Angels” has accumulated thousands of positive reviews on Amazon and has been promoted by Jewish organizations across the country. On Wednesday, the Jewish Book Council, in collaboration with Tablet Magazine and the Jewish Museum in New York City, will hold an event with Randel and journalist Jonathan Freedland that will explore “fact, fiction, and the sometimes blurred line between them.”
Randel’s book adds to a long list of Holocaust stories occupying that blurry territory, dating from the genre’s early days. Many readers believed, for example, that “The Painted Bird,” the pivotal work of Holocaust fiction from the 1960s, was based on author Jerzy Koszinski’s experience during the Holocaust; it was not. Scholars and booksellers have long agonized over whether to call Elie Wiesel’s “Night” a memoir or a novel, and whether the distinction matters when it is taught in American classrooms.
The fight has extended to questions over who can tell which stories from Holocaust. In 2014, Haaretz journalist Judy Maltz filed a lawsuit against Penguin Canada and author Jenny Witterick alleging that Witterick’s novel, “My Mother’s Secret,” copied Maltz’s documentary film about her family’s rescue during World War II. The court ruled in favor of Witterick on the grounds that copyright protection does not apply to historical events.
“An author is only ever responsible to their own fiction. They have creative license. And fictionalization of other people against their will is part of the history of literature,” said Helen Finch, a professor at the University of Leeds who studies representations of the Holocaust in German literature. “But that doesn’t absolve the writer from criticism.”
Manli — a journalist who has worked for the Boston Globe and helped found the China Daily, a state-backed media outlet, in 1981 — has made it her mission to set the record straight on Feng-Shan’s story. She began researching her father after his death in 1997, while writing his obituary. One line in his memoir from 1990 that recalled “saving who knows how many Jews” piqued her interest and led to a 25-year quest to document the extent of what her father did during the war.
His story of defying both his own government and the government of Germany to write Shanghai visas for thousands of persecuted Jews had been previously unknown, even to the refugees themselves — most of whom never met Feng-Shan.
Manli’s research led to Feng-Shan’s recognition by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial authority, in 2000 as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor given to those who risked their own lives to help Jews during World War II. Since then, greater attention has been paid to his story, and memorials across the world, from Israel to China to Italy, bear his name today.
Manli said Randel reached out to her several times before her book was published but after it had already been written. According to Manli, Randel sought out her blessing on the book by phone and email, saying that “the Holocaust history and your father’s history is now being forgotten” and adding that she wanted to help spread that history. Manli, who is working on a book of her own about her father, said she refused to answer, “just from the tone of her letter and what she wanted.”
“I have been burned before by this,” Manli told JTA. “I knew immediately that this was not something that I wanted to participate in and certainly that I wasn’t going to endorse.”
In an email shared with JTA in response to Manli’s editorial, Randel wrote that she has “great respect for Dr. Ho Fenghan[sic] and his family. I’m surprised to hear such strong negative criticism. I’m puzzled to see my gesture of respect is viewed in such a hostile way. If Ms. Manli Ho wishes to speak to me, I’m here.”
Randel, according to a biography on her website, came to the United States from China at 24 and became “the first Asian American novelist who intertwined Chinese history with the Jewish diaspora in Shanghai during WWII.”
Her previous novel, “The Last Rose of Shanghai,” follows a Chinese woman who falls in love with a German Jewish refugee living in the Shanghai Ghetto, the restricted area in which over 20,000 displaced Jews lived during World War II, under brutal oversight by Japanese officials who occupied the area. In interviews before the book’s 2021 release, Randel recalled hearing about Jewish refugees while she was living near the district that housed the ghetto.
After moving to the United States, she married an American Jew and is raising her children with both cultures in Boston. She has said “The Last Rose of Shanghai” was inspired by her interest in the history she saw in Shanghai and a desire to pay homage to her Jewish side of the family.
“I think it’s apt to say the survival of Shanghai Jews is also a story of how we as different races and as human beings shine and triumph over war and adversity,” she said in a January 2022 interview with World Literature Today.
But other researchers and authors deeply familiar with Feng-Shan’s story and Jewish history in Shanghai told JTA that “The Last Rose of Shanghai” also contained historical inaccuracies, including misrepresentation of real people who appear as characters, such as Victor Sassoon, a Jewish businessman and member of the dynasty known as the “Rothschilds of the East,” and Laura Margolis, the first female Joint Distribution Committee representative.
The book also includes a character named Goya, described as “a shameless Jew … who somehow had won the Japanese’s trust.”
The Jewish character is based on the real Kanoh Ghoya, who was not Jewish, but a notoriously cruel Japanese officer who had dubbed himself “king of the Jews” and “was infamous for his inhumane treatment of ghetto inhabitants,” according to the USC Shoah Foundation.
According to Publisher’s Marketplace, “The Last Rose of Shanghai” was sold to Lake Union Publishing — an imprint of Amazon Publishing — in 2021 as half of a two-book deal worth between $100,000 and $250,000. It was a finalist for a Jewish National Book Award that year. (The Jewish Book Council, which confers those awards, did not respond to multiple requests for comments about the “Night Angels” event.)
Kanagaratnam said Historic Shanghai’s book group read “The Last Rose of Shanghai” in 2021 and hosted Randel for an event. The group was unsatisfied by Randel’s response when factual issues were brought to her attention, particularly the characterization of Ghoya as Jewish, Randel dismissed them, Kanagaratnam said.
Randel’s novel is only part of a growing consciousness among the general public of the Shanghai Jewish refugee story. In recent decades, especially following the normalization of Israel-China relations in 1992 and Feng-Shan’s recognition by Yad Vashem, both governments have promoted the history, sometimes distorting facts to push different narratives about their wartime past.
New books and other media adaptations about the Shanghai Jewish refugee story have proliferated, such as the musical “Shanghai Sonatas” (2022) and the novels “Someday We Will Fly” (2019),“The Lives Before Us” (2019), and “The World and All It Holds” (2023). Other films and books are forthcoming.
“The audience of people who are interested in, if you will, an ‘exotic’ Jewish story, I think has meant that we’re seeing more and more of these. Everyone’s heard the Holocaust story. But now here’s one in an exotic setting,” said Kanagaratnam. “I think authors need to take responsibility. But honestly, I also blame the publishing industry, because where are the fact-checkers? A lot of the stuff in this can be really easily googled.”
Finch said novels that are set during that period are “always a work of fiction about the present.”
“So the question is, why is this author writing this book now? What does that say about the current moment when she’s writing? And what is with Randel trying to reflect either consciously or unconsciously in contemporary politics as well?”
—
The post Novel about Chinese rescuer of Jews raises questions about facts vs. fiction in Holocaust stories appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
A play about racism in America was a hit in Warsaw in 1935
„מיסיסיפּי“ פֿון לײב מלאך האָט געבראַכט די אַמעריקאַנער ראַסע־פּראָבלעם אױף דער ייִדישער בינע אין פּױלן
סקאָטסבאָראָ, אַ שטעטל אין אַלאַבאַמע, איז אין די 1930ער יאָרן באַקאַנט געװאָרן איבער דער גאַנצער װעלט צוליב דעם געריכט־פּראָצעס איבער נײַן אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער יונגע לײַט, װעלכע זײַנען פֿאַלש באַשולדיקט געװאָרן אין פֿאַרגװאַלדיקן צװײ יונגע װײַסע פֿרױען.
די געריכט־פּראָצעסן האָבן זיך געצויגן פֿון 1931 ביז 1937 און האָבן אַרויסגערופֿן אַ סך אױפֿמערק צוליב זײערע אױסגעשפּראָכן ראַסיסטישע פּניות. ייִדישע ליטעראַטן האָבן געװידמעט דעם דאָזיקן ענין אַ היפּשע צאָל אַרטיקלען, רעפּאָרטאַזשן און ליטעראַרישע װערק.
צװישן די קינסטלערישע אָפּקלאַנגען אױף דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין איז געװען די דראַמע פֿון לײב מלאך (אַריה לײב זאַלצמאַן, 1894־1936) „מיסיסיפּי“, װאָס דער באַרימטער פּױליש־ייִדישער רעזשיסאָר מיכאל װײַכערט האָט אױפֿגעפֿירט אינעם װאַרשעװער „יונג־טעאַטער“ אין 1935.
דער טעקסט פֿון דער פּיעסע איז פֿאַרעפֿנטלעכט געװאָרן נאָך מלאכס טױט אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס אין 1949. איצט איז „מיסיסיפּי“ אַרױס אין דער ענגלישער איבערזעצונג פֿון עלען פּערעצמאַן און אַליסע קװינט, אונטער דער רעדאַקציע פֿון אַליסע קװינט.
קװינטס גרונטיק געפֿאָרשטער הקדמה דערצײלט די געשיכטע פֿון דער דאָזיקער מערקװירקידער אױפֿפֿירונג.
„מיסיסיפּי“, האַלט קװינט, איז אינטערעסאַנט הײַנט ניט אַזױ װי אַ װערק פֿון קונסט נאָר װי אַ „װערק פֿון דער הומאַניסטישער עמפּאַטיע“ און די ערשטע פּיעסע װעגן אַמעריקאַנער ראַסיזם אױף דער פּױלישער (ניט נאָר ייִדישער) בינע.
אָבער װײַכערטס טעאַטראַלישע אױפֿפֿירונג איז טאַקע יאָ געװען אַ װיכטיקע טעאַטראַלע דערשײַנונג. די 1930ער יאָרן זײַנען געװען די בלי־תּקופֿה אין דער ייִדישער טעאַטער־געשיכטע, װען דער ייִדישער טעאַטער איז געװען אָפֿן צו אַנדערע קולטורן, דערקלערט קװינט. דעמאָלט האָט מען אױפֿגעפֿירט אױף ייִדיש דראַמאַטישע װערק פֿונעם אַמעריקאַנער דראַמאַטורג יודזשין אָ׳ניל, דעם פֿראַנצױזישן שרײַבער ראָמען ראָלאַן, דעם דײַטשישן מחבר פֿרידריך װאָלף און אַנדערע.
לכתּחילה איז װײַכערט ניט געװען זיכער, אַז דער ענין פֿון ראַסיזם אין אַמעריקע װעט געפֿינען אַן אָפּקלאַנג בײַם פּױליש־ייִדישן עולם. אָבער ער האָט געגלױבט, אַז זײַנע „פּראָגרעסיװע צושױער“ װעלן דערקענען אין די אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער פּערסאָנאַזשן פּשוטע מענטשן און אַרבעטער גלײַך װי די פּױלישע ייִדן.
„מיסיסיפּי“ האָט װײַכערט אױפֿגעפֿירט אינעם סטיל פֿון אַװאַנגאַרד. די פּיעסע האָט העכער װי 30 פּערסאָנאַזשן, װאָס זײַנען געטײלט אין צװײ גרופּעס, שװאַרצע און װײַסע. די פּױליש־ייִדישע אַקטיאָרן האָבן געשפּילט אין „בלעקפֿײס“, מיט שװאַרץ־געשמירטע פּנימער.
הײַנט באַטראַכט מען אַזאַ שטיק װי אַ סימן פֿון ראַסיזם, אָבער עס װאָלט געװען ניט קאָרעקט צו משפּטן דעם ייִדישן טעאַטער אין פּױלן אין די 1930ער יאָרן לױט די איצטיקע השׂגות.
מען האָט געשפּילט דעם ספּעקטאַקל אױף דרײַ רונדע בינעס, געשטעלט אין דער מיט פֿונעם זאַל. די צוקוקער האָבן געדאַרפֿט פֿאָלגן דאָס ליכט, װאָס האָט באַשײַנט אײן בינע נאָך דער צװײטער, װוּ פֿאַרשײדענע גרופּעס אַקטיאָרן האָבן געשפּילט עפּיזאָדן פֿון דער דראַמע. דער עולם האָט זיך געפֿילט אין דער מיט פֿון די געשעענישן, װאָס האָבן זיך אַנטפּלעקט אַרום זײ.
די דאָזיקע בינע־אַראַנזשירונג האָט באַטאָנט דעם קאָנטראַסט צװישן דער „װײַסער“ און דער „שװאַרצער“ װעלט. אין אײן עפּיזאָד זעט מען װאָס ס׳קומט פֿאָר אױף דער באַן צװישן די אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער און די װײַסע פֿרױען, דערנאָך װערט מען איבערגעטראָגן אין דער דירה פֿון די פֿרױען, װוּ זײ באַדינען זײערע װײַסע מאַנצבלישע „קליענטן“; װײַטער רוקט זיך די האַנדלונג אינעם געריכטזאַל, און אַזױ װײַטער. יעדער עפּיזאָד האָט אַן אײגענע דראַמאַטישע אינטריגע, װאָס האַלט די צוקוקערס געשפּאַנט.
מלאך איז געװען אַ געניטער זשורנאַליסט און האָט געשריבן רעפּאָרטאַזשן פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע לענדער פֿון אײראָפּע, אַמעריקע און פֿון ארץ־ישׂראל. ער האָט אָנגעזאַמלט מאַטעריאַלן װעגן דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין, װאָס איז צו יענער צײַט נאָך ניט געהאַט פֿאַרענדיקט געװאָרן.
מלאך האָט באַשלאָסן ניט צו שרײַבן קײן „דראַמאַטישן רעפּאָרטאַזש“ און האָט אױסגעטראַכט אײניקע פּרטים, װאָס האָבן אים דערלאָזט דערקלערן דעם אַמעריקאַנער פּאָליטישן און געזעלשאַפֿטלעכן קאָנטעקסט פֿאַרן פּױליש־ייִדישן עולם.
אין דעם שײכות קאָן מען זיך דערמאָנען אָן אַן אַנדער פּיעסע פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן אינעם זשאַנער פֿון געריכט־רעפּאָרטאַזש, אַלטער קאַציזנעס „שװאַרצבאַרד“. פֿאַר זײַן פּיעסע האָט קאַציזנע גענוצט מאַטעריאַלן פֿונעם פּאַריזער משפּט איבער שלום שוואַרצבאַרדן — דעם ייִדישן זייגערמאַכער, וועלכער האָט דערהרגעט דעם אוקראַיִנישן נאַציאָנאַליסט סימאָן פּעטלוראַ כּדי זיך נוקם צו זײַן פֿאַר די בלוטיקע פּאָגראָמען בעתן בירגערקריג אין אוקראַיִנע אין 1918־1919. דער פֿראַנצױזישער געריכט האָט אים דערקלערט פֿאַר אומשולדיק.
אין 1934 האָט די פּױלישע מאַכט פֿאַרװערט צו שפּילן „שװאַרצבאַנד“ אין װאַרשע װײַל מען האָט מורא געהאַט פֿאַר אוקראַיִנישע נאַציאָנאַליסטן אין פּױלן. אין דער געשפּאַנטער פּאָליטישער אַטמאָספֿער פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן האָט מען געדאַרפֿט זײַן אָפּגעהיט, און מלאך און װײַכערט האָבן אױסגעקליבן אַ „פּאַרעװען“ קעפּל, „מיסיסיפּי“. דאָס װאָרט סקאָטסבאָראָ איז צו יענער צײַט באַלאָדן געװאָרן מיט לינקע פּאָליטישע אַסאָציאַציעס.
סך־הכּל האָט מען געשפּילט „מיסיסיפּי“ בערך 200 מאָל אין פֿאַרשײדענע שטעט אין פּױלן. די ייִדישע פּרעסע פֿון כּלערלײ פּאָליטישע שאַטירונגען אױף ייִדיש און פּױליש האָט מיט התלהבֿות געלױבט דעם ספּעקטאַקל. דער קריטיקער משה קאַנפֿער האָט געשריבן, אַז „ייִדן און אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער זעען אין זיך אַ קעגנזײַטיקע אָפּשפּיגלונג פֿון אײנעם אינעם צװײטן“.
די ענגלישע איבערזעצונג איז זײער פֿליסיק. די רײד פֿון די פּערסאָנאַזשן קלינגט װי די אַמעריקאַנער שמועסשפּראַך פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן, װאָס איז גוט באַקאַנט לױט די דראַמאַטישע װערק פֿון יענער צײַט. כּדי אָפּצוהיטן דעם צײַטגײַסט האָט די איבערזעצערין באַשלאָסן צו נוצן די װערטער װי „נעגראָ“ און אַפֿילו דאָס „נ־װאָרט“, װאָס זענען הײַנט װי באַלײדעװדיקע נעמען פֿאַר אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער.
אַן אַנדער פּראָבלעם פֿאַר דער איבערזעצונג האָט צו טאָן מיט די ענגלישע װערטער, אַזעלכע װי „מיס“, „קאָנדאָקטאָר“, „באָי“, מיט װעלכע מלאך האָט באַפֿעפֿערט זײַן טעקסט כּדי צו שאַפֿן אַן אַמעריקאַנער קאָלאָריט. אין דער איבערזעצונג זײַנען די דאָזיקע װערטער באַצײכנט געװאָרן מיט שטערנדלעך.
דער ענין פֿון ראַסע און ראַסע־באַציִונגען איז אין די לעצטע פּאָר צענדליק יאָר געװאָרן אַ װיכטיקע טעמע אין ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג. דאָס איז אַ ניצלעכער מעטאָדאָלאָגישער קוקװינקל, װאָס לאָזט פֿון דאָס נײַ באַטראַכטן די מאָדערנע ייִדיש־קולטור. אָבער ביז הײַנט האָט מען דער עיקר באַהאַנדלט דעם אַמעריקאַנער מאַטעריאַל.
די פּובליקאַציע פֿון „מיסיסיפּי“ איז אַ װיכטיקער בײַטראָג אין דער דאָזיקער בראַנזשע פֿון ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג. זי באַװײַזט, אַז די פּראָבלעם פֿון ראַסיזם אין אַמעריקע האָט געהאַט אַן אָפּקלאַנג אױך בײַ ייִדן אין מיזרח־אײראָפּע.
The post A play about racism in America was a hit in Warsaw in 1935 appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Nithya Raman, LA mayoral candidate who clashed with DSA on Israel, wins their endorsement
Ever since Councilmember Nithya Raman’s last-minute entry into the Los Angeles mayoral race, questions have loomed about her relationship with the Democratic Socialists of America — and whether her stance on Israel would chill the group’s support for her underdog campaign.
Raman, a dues-paying DSA member, had criticized the group for a statement the national organization made after Oct. 7. In 2024, she was censured by the LA chapter for courting a pro-Israel group in her campaign for re-election to city council.
But following weeks of debate in the local chapter, Raman won its official endorsement Wednesday, paving the way for the leftist group to organize for her campaign to unseat incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
The endorsement, which reportedly came with the support of more than 60 percent of some 1,400 voting members, vindicated Raman’s breaking with the group on Israel and other issues. It also comes after the councilmember stated definitively that she believed the war in Gaza constituted a genocide — a basic litmus test inside the hardline anti-Zionist group.
Raman, 45, seemed to allude to the conflict in a statement thanking the organization.
“This endorsement means something because of what it represents: a coalition of people who don’t always agree on every question, but who agree that LA needs real change,” Raman wrote on Instagram, adding. “It’s not about everyone thinking alike. It’s about building power together toward the same goal.”
The contentious endorsement process around Raman, one of the group’s national success stories and its first member to win citywide office in Los Angeles — three more have since joined her on city council — underscored the fierce ideological commitments in the DSA. Yet its outcome may not be entirely in her favor, as mainstream Jewish groups have come to hold DSA and its candidates in contempt.
Raman has rarely fit neatly into the group’s political conventions. On Oct. 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 people were killed in Israel, the national DSA club publicly blamed Israel for incurring the Hamas-led attack. Raman — whose district included heavily Jewish neighborhoods like Hancock Park and Sherman Oaks — had quickly issued a statement standing with her Jewish and Israeli constituents. A few days later, she also disavowed the DSA response, calling it “unacceptably devoid of empathy.”
Her positions on the Middle East frustrated Israel’s supporters, too. In June 2024, she helped pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire and release of hostages, infuriating the local Jewish federation and other Jewish groups, which said she was selling out Israel’s ability to defend itself.
Nevertheless, she earned the backing of Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles in her run for re-election that year, with the president of the liberal Zionist group crediting her statement that Israel had a right to exist and her general engagement with Jewish constituents. Outraged, DSA’s members voted to censure her.
In the runup to June’s mayoral primary, Raman joined the livestream of leftist firebrand Hasan Piker, telling him she agreed that it was committing genocide in Gaza. But DSA did not endorse any candidate in the June 2026 primary — even as Raman was locked in a tight race with the conservative reality star Spencer Pratt for a spot in the November runoff. (Another DSA candidate, Rae Huang, placed a distant fifth.)
Asked whether she believed Israel was an apartheid state, Raman said, “Yeah, I think that they’re treating people unfairly, that they’re not treating people equally, and I’m critical of that.”
Israel is not the only wedge issue for Raman in DSA. She split with the group — and her democratic socialist peers on city council — on a local “mansion tax,” saying that it discouraged new multifamily housing construction. And she was one of only two councilmembers who railed against a controversial multibillion-dollar expansion of the LA convention center — even as the other DSA members, who have strong backing from the building trades unions, voted for it.
The debate within DSA was framed as ideological purity versus political pragmatism. Bass, a historically unpopular incumbent whose tenure included the most catastrophic wildfire the city had seen in decades, has governed as a centrist Democrat; though Raman is broadly aligned with DSA policy, some of the group’s members who opposed the endorsement wrote in a communist magazine this week that it should not be “rewarded based on ideological proximity.”
The DSA’s endorsement was the second major pickup for Raman in the last week; the powerful hospitality workers union, Unite Here Local 11, officially threw its support behind Raman Tuesday, though organized labor still largely backs Bass.
Now a new question emerges: whether the endorsement of a group with a few thousand members came too late. Peer-to-peer betting markets currently have Bass as a roughly 2-to-1 favorite.
Sean Wakasa, co-chair of the Los Angeles DSA chapter, told The New York Times the group was warming to the challenge.
“We have thousands of members who are ready to organize, talk to their neighbors, knock on doors and build power to shake up Los Angeles and build a brighter future,” Mr. Wakasa said.
The post Nithya Raman, LA mayoral candidate who clashed with DSA on Israel, wins their endorsement appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Why is this chef opening a kosher Israeli restaurant in LA right now?
How do you explain Malka, the new kosher Israeli restaurant in Beverly Hills?
I’m not talking about the food — I haven’t eaten there yet — I’m talking about the fact that it’s opening at all. Why would Eyal Shani — many of whose restaurants worldwide have faced protests, vandalism and physical attacks — dare to open another restaurant at this particularly fraught time?
“The whole situation is leading me to open more, more, more,” Shani told me when we met last week. “That is my reaction as a Jewish man. If they are trying to kill you, you should make a lot of children. And these are my children.”
We were sitting in the empty restaurant on the ground floor of the boutique SIXTY Hotel. Shani, who is 67, wore a T-shirt and dark khakis. With his stubbly beard and unruly gray hair, he could pass for an intense, very post-grad philosophy major. He put a plate of farmers market green grapes between us.
The night before, at a pre-opening event for journalists, influencers and, it seemed, models, the same space was packed. Piles of fresh raw vegetables — a Shani signature — filled the long bar counter along with perfect rectangles of toasted focaccia topped with either steak tartare or smoky eggplant caviar. The crowd swelled, the music blared, trays of mojitos and palomas disappeared. It was signature Shani — a frolic of nature, noise and Israeli food.
Now, the large, modern space — a rare high-end restaurant in Los Angeles’ ever-struggling kosher restaurant scene — was quiet. Shani leaned back into an earth-toned banquette and reflected for a moment on how those two words, “Israeli food,” have become so toxic, especially following Oct. 7.
Demonstrators accuse Israeli chefs of passing Palestinian food off as Israeli and of being complicit in their government’s actions. Shani’s business partner, Shahar Segal, did engage in marketing work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the controversial U.S.-Israeli organization established to feed Gazans. But Israeli restaurants around the world with no such involvements have faced similar protests, as have Jewish-owned restaurants with no ties to Israel.
Malka’s opening follows the closure of Shani’s restaurants Miznon in Melbourne and Gila & Nancy in Berlin, both targeted by mobs chanting anti-Israel slogans.
The rioters in Melbourne entered MIznon, threw chairs, chanted “Death to the IDF!” and only stopped when the two owners of a nearby pizza place — both Lebanese — confronted them.
“In the end, they succeeded to kill the restaurant,” Shani said. “They almost killed our staff there.”
Shani happened to be at the restaurant in Berlin when dozens of protesters surrounded it, shouting, “Stop feeding genocide!”
He raced into the kitchen, put together some food platters and went outside to offer the demonstrators the opportunity to eat and talk.
“They didn’t want to eat,” he said. To them, he added, “Eating from an Israeli is like eating from Satan.”
Shani rejected the charge commonly leveled at Israeli chefs — that they have stolen Palestinian foods and recast them as Israeli.
“I always declare that I took a lot of inspiration from the Palestinians,” he said.
In 1989, Shani opened his first restaurant, Oceanus in Jerusalem. He was 29 and, he said, he knew nothing about food except that he loved bringing people together around it. He wanted to make something like the fresh focaccia an Italian Jewish neighbor once served him. The closest thing to it was the Arabic laffa Shani would buy from a closet-sized bakery in West Jerusalem.
“I had a cook, a Palestinian man from Hebron, a very talented man,” Shani said. “I loved him. He said, ‘Eyal, no problem, my grandmother makes it every day.’ He showed me.”
Shani brushed the finished bread with olive oil and showered it with fresh rosemary.
I told Shani that I ate at the now-closed Oceanus at the tim and to this day remember being served, when we sat down, fragrant sheets of his focaccia-laffa.
“It was a hybrid,” Shani said, “Palestinian, Italian and new Israeli. Each one is getting influenced by the other. You can’t do it with just one brain.”
Malka, a strictly kosher restaurant, presents a different kind of challenge to Shani, who is not an observant Jew. His Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant Shmone offers, for instance, “A mountain of grilled calamari, okra, tomatoes and yogurt.”
But the chef who turned flour, yeast and water into a hybrid Palestinian-Israeli-Italian flatbread revels in facing constraints like kashrut.
“Each culture leads with its limitations,” he said. “These limitations are a blessing — they’re shaping your creation.”
The kosher stricture against cooking meat together with dairy products didn’t faze him.
“Take me off dairy, put a beautiful bottle of olive oil in front of me — what are the limitations?” he said. “And if there would be no olive oil anymore in the world, I would quit, I would not cook.”
Beyond the kitchen, Shani said he wanted to reach more Israelis with his food. About 70% of Israelis are strictly kosher or prefer it.
“So how can it be that we’re only cooking for the hipsters in Tel Aviv?” Shani said. “It’s unfair.”
The marketplace has rewarded Shani’s ability to combine local ingredients and techniques with creativity and showmanship. The chef has around 70 restaurants — neither he nor his publicist knew the exact number — including Malka’s in Tel Aviv, Miami and New York.
And the backlash isn’t close to stopping him. Shani just announced a new restaurant project in, yes, Melbourne.
“It doesn’t make me frightened,” he said. “It’s the way my personality reacts. I think it’s the instinct of survival. You just keep going.”
The post Why is this chef opening a kosher Israeli restaurant in LA right now? appeared first on The Forward.
