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Lorraine Hansberry’s second play had a white Jewish protagonist. Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan are reviving it.
NEW YORK (JTA) — Sidney Brustein, Jewish Hamlet?
Anne Kauffman thinks so. She made the comparison in a phone interview about the play she’s directing — a buzzy production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” that opened on Monday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan.
“One artistic director who was thinking of doing this [play] was like, ‘You know, it’s not like he’s Hamlet, but…’ And I thought, well, no, actually I think he is like Hamlet!” she said.
She added another take: “I feel like he’s Cary Grant meets Zero Mostel.”
Hansberry saw just two of her works produced on Broadway before her death from cancer at 34 in January 1965. Her first, “A Raisin in the Sun,” which follows a Black family dealing with housing discrimination in Chicago, is widely considered one of the most significant plays of the 20th century. The other, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” ran for a few months in the fall of 1964 until Hansberry’s death and has only been revived a handful of times since, all outside of New York.
Now, the star power of Isaac and Brosnahan is driving renewed interest in the play, which deals with weighty questions about political activism, self-fulfillment in a capitalist world, and racial and ethnic identity — including mid-century Jewish American identity.
The Brustein character, as Kauffman alluded to, is many things. A resident of Greenwich Village deeply embedded in that historic neighborhood’s 1960s activist and artistic circles, he is somewhat of a creative renaissance man. At the start of the play, his club of sorts (“it was not a nightclub” is a running joke) called “Walden Pond” has just shuttered and he has taken over an alternative newspaper. As the script reads, Brustein is an intellectual “in the truest sense of the word” but “does not wear glasses” — the latter description being a possible jab at his macho tendencies. Formerly an ardent leftist activist, he is now weary of the worth of activism and a bit of a nihilist. He’s in his late 30s and is a musician who often picks up a banjo.
Brustein is also a secular Jew, a fact that he telegraphs at certain key emotional and comedic moments. Others, from friends to his casually antisemitic sister-in-law, frequently reference his identity, too.
At the end of the play’s first half, for example, Brustein brings up the heroes of the Hanukkah story in talking about his existential angst — and his stomach ulcer. He has become belligerent to his wife Iris and to a local politician who wants Brustein’s paper’s endorsement.
“How does one confront the thousand nameless faceless vapors that are the evil of our time? Can a sword pierce it?” Sidney says. “One does not smite evil anymore: one holds one’s gut, thus — and takes a pill. Oh, but to take up the sword of the Maccabees again!”
Hansberry’s decision to center a white Jewish character surprised critics and fans alike in 1964 because many of them expected her to follow “A Raisin in the Sun” with further exploration of issues facing Black Americans, said Joi Gresham, the director of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust.
“The major attack, both critically and on a popular basis, in regards to the play and to its central character was that Lorraine was out of her lane,” Gresham said. “That not only did she not know what she’s talking about, but that she had the nerve to even examine that subject matter.”
Hansberry’s closest collaborator was her former husband Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish New Yorker whom she had divorced in 1962 but maintained an artistic partnership with. Nemiroff was a bit Brustein-like in his pursuits: he edited books, produced and promoted Hansberry’s work, and even wrote songs (one of which made the couple enough money to allow Hansberry to focus on writing “A Raisin in the Sun”). But Gresham — who is Nemiroff’s stepdaughter through his second marriage, to professor Jewell Handy Gresham-Nemiroff — emphasized that his personality was nothing like Brustein’s. While Brustein is brash and mean to Iris, Nemiroff was undyingly supportive of Hansberry and her work, said Gresham, who lived with him and her mother at Nemiroff’s Croton-on-Hudson home — the one he had formerly shared for a time with Hansberry — from age 10 onward.
Instead, Gresham argued, the Brustein character was the result of Hansberry’s deep engagement with Jewish intellectual thought, in part influenced by her relationship with Nemiroff. The pair met at a protest and would bond over their passion for fighting for social justice, which included combating antisemitism. The night before their wedding, they protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and they would remain highly involved in the wave of activism that blossomed into the Black-Jewish civil rights alliance.
“Bob and Lorraine met and built a life together at a place where there was a very strong Black-Jewish nexus. There was a very strong interplay and interaction,” Gresham said. “I think Lorraine was very influenced by Bob’s family, the Nemiroffs, who were very radical in their politics. And so there was a way in which she was introduced to the base of Jewish intellectualism and Jewish progressive politics, that she took to heart and she was very passionate about.”
Robert Nemiroff and Lorraine Hansberry were married from 1953-62. They are shown here in 1959. (Ben Martin/Getty Images)
Hansberry didn’t hesitate to criticize Jewish writers who said controversial things about Black Americans, either. When Norman Podhoretz wrote “My Negro Problem — And Ours,” an explosive 1963 article in Commentary magazine now widely seen as racist, Hansberry responded with a scathing rebuke. She also sparred with Norman Mailer, who once wrote an essay titled “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.”
Gresham said Brustein’s nihilism represents what Hansberry saw in a range of Jewish and non-Jewish white writers, whom she hoped could be kickstarted back into activism. But Hansberry also nodded to the reasons why someone like Brustein could feel defeated in the early 1960s, a decade and a half after World War II.
“You mean diddle around with the little things since we can’t do anything about the big ones? Forget about the Holocaust and worry about — reforms in the traffic court or something?” Brustein says at one point in the play to a local politician running as a reformer.
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a Jewish scholar of literature who has written on Hansberry, said the resulting Brustein character is a very accurate depiction of a secular Jew at the time — both keenly attuned to prejudice in society and also lacking some understanding of the experience of being Black.
“I was just intoxicated that Hansberry could conjure that world, both so affectionately, but also so clear-sidedly that it seems like she can see the limitations of all of the characters’ perspectives,” he said. “But she also represents them with sympathy and humor.”
Kauffman, who also helmed a revival of the play in Chicago in 2016, is impressed with how “fully fledged” the Brustein character is.
“Who are the cultural icons who have sort of articulated the Jew in our culture in the last 50 years or 60 years, you know?” she said. “Brustein is not a caricature of a Woody Allen character, he’s not even ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’ or a Jerry Seinfeld character. He’s a fully drawn character.”
Isaac, who is of mainly Guatemalan and Cuban heritage, has played Jewish characters before, including a formerly Orthodox man in an Israeli director’s remake of the classic film “Scenes From a Marriage.” In the lead-up to this play, he has largely avoided getting caught in headlines focused on the “Jewface” debate, over whether non-Jewish actors should be allowed to play Jewish characters on stage and screen.
But when asked about the responsibility of playing a Jewish character in a New York Times interview, Isaac referenced the fact that he has some Jewish heritage on his father’s side.
“We could play that game: How Jewish are you?” he said to interviewer Alexis Soloski, who is Jewish. “It is part of my family, part of my life. I feel the responsibility to not feel like a phony. That’s the responsibility, to feel like I can say these things, do these things and feel like I’m doing it honestly and truthfully.”
When Kauffman directed a version of the play at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in 2016, her lead actor had “not a single drop of Jewish heritage…in his blood,” and she said she had to convey “what anger looks like” coming from a Jewish perspective. Working with Isaac has been different — instead of starting at a base of no knowledge, she has been pushing for more of an Ashkenazi sensibility than a Sephardic one.
“I believe that his heritage leans, I’m guessing, more towards Sephardic. And mine is pure Ashkenazi,” she said. “We sort of joke: ‘[The part] is a little bit more Ashkenazi than that, you know what I mean?’ Like, ‘the violence is actually turned towards yourself!’”
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We Should Be Welcoming All Jews and Bringing Them Closer — Despite Religious Differences
Reading from a Torah scroll in accordance with Sephardi tradition. Photo: Sagie Maoz via Wikimedia Commons.
We Jews have always liked to argue about religion, and everything from kashrut to conversion. Often these differences are far from polite. In every branch and variation of Judaism (as elsewhere), there are sects and extremes, iconoclasts and revisionists, insiders and outsiders. It pains me that we seem so incapable of overcoming such differences and conflicts amicably.
There is an axiom in religious life (all religions, not just Judaism) that those more religious than you are fanatics, and anyone less religious is a doomed sinner. The joke may be extreme, but I think we can all relate to the sentiment.
I could never understand why, for many years, the established Orthodoxy was opposed to going to and teaching at Jewish conferences simply because there might also be people there whose ideas about Judaism they did not share. Neither could I understand the argument that one should not go to Reform communities to teach Torah. On the contrary, if they are so misled by their heretical rabbis, surely it would only be beneficial to go and share another point of view — unless one is so insecure that there might be a risk of backsliding.
The Lubavitch movement is successful precisely because it does not prejudge, and regards every Jew as worthy of attention, regardless of background. And on the other side, anyone vaguely familiar with Reform Judaism in Israel and much of the Diaspora knows that much (not all) of it is seriously trying to come to terms with how to get back to a more traditional way of life with more Hebrew and study.
Of course, as a traditionalist, I disagree with those who make light of our religious traditions and laws. But to some extent, we all choose what to focus on and what not to. I can understand communities that want to preserve their specific identities by excluding those who wish to undermine them. But we can still treat others with tolerance and understanding out of simple good manners. We are such a small people, we cannot afford to lose even more people than we do through ignorance and defection. And thank goodness for those of all variations we welcome in with open doors.
I may not agree with much of Reform ideology and ritual, but I also believe Orthodoxy could have and should be much more flexible. I admire a great deal in the Haredi world, but I think they are seriously mistaken over their attitude to serving Israel’s military needs. And I deplore Neturei Karta’s support of Iranian mass murderers, as I do secular Israelis who want to undermine the Jewish State. Opposition comes from both sides.
There is a Talmudic principle that a Jewish child captured by non-Jews, a Tinnok SheNishba, could not possibly be found guilty of breaking Jewish law since he (or she) would have had no positive experiences of it to be able to make a positive decision. The saintly rabbi known as the Chafetz Chaim (Yisrael Meir Kagan 1838-1933) used this to argue that most modern Jews have never experienced the passion and intensity of genuine Torah spirituality, and therefore cannot be blamed for rejecting something they know nothing of. You can only be a genuine heretic if you really know what it is you are rebelling against!
I would welcome anyone, no matter who, from whatever background, who wanted to identify as a Jew, study and participate. They should be welcomed and encouraged to explore the varieties of Jewish experience and decide where they fit in. And we should do our best to draw them closer and help with any problems of integration they might face.
On Pesach, we will read about the four different sons including the “bad one” with different approaches to Torah. But at least they sat around the same table and were participating in the Seder.
We should use Torah to bring Jews closer — including those who have drifted, and the misguided ones — not to insult them and push them further away just because they have a different view than ours.
The author is a writer and rabbi, based in New York.
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Tehran’s Escalation Doctrine: Why Iran Is Targeting the Entire Middle East
Smoke rises after reported Iranian missile attacks, following United States and Israel strikes on Iran, as seen from Doha, Qatar, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Iran’s latest missile and drone strikes across the Gulf signal a dangerous strategic shift. What once appeared to be a confrontation primarily between Tehran, Israel, and the United States is rapidly transforming into a wider regional conflict. By conducting military assaults on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, the Islamic Republic has effectively widened the battlefield and placed the stability of the entire Middle East at risk.
On March 7, 2026, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian publicly apologized to Iran’s Gulf neighbors after Iranian missile and drone strikes triggered air defense alerts in those states. In a televised statement, he expressed regret for the attacks and claimed that Tehran would halt strikes on neighboring countries unless attacks against Iran originated from their territory. But even as he spoke, air defense sirens and missile interceptions were continuing across the Gulf region. Then the government walked the statement back.
For many countries in the Middle East, the contradiction is glaring. Iran’s apology appeared less a genuine effort at de-escalation and more a familiar Iranian tactic: spinning rhetorical damage control while continuing its aggression.
This pattern is hardly new. For decades, the Islamic Republic has pursued a strategy that blends diplomacy, denial, and deception with relentless expansionism. The result is a geopolitical doctrine aimed not merely at confronting Israel or the United States, but at reshaping the entire Middle East under Tehran’s ideological and strategic dominance.
Iranian leaders have long framed their military posture as defensive, but the reality unfolding across the Middle East tells a very different story. Missiles fired toward Saudi territory, drones intercepted over Gulf cities, and attacks linked to Iranian proxies across multiple theaters point to a broader strategy of coercion. Rather than confining its conflict to direct adversaries, Tehran is increasingly pressuring neutral or semi-neutral states in order to expand the battlefield.
The remarks of Muhammad‑Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, made this explicit. Ghalibaf declared on social media that Iran’s defense doctrine follows the ideological guidance of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary leadership and warned that peace will remain impossible as long as American military bases exist in the region.
This statement was effectively a strategic threat to every Middle Eastern state hosting American forces. It confirmed what regional leaders have long suspected: Iran views the entire Gulf security architecture, not merely Israel, as a legitimate target.
One of the most striking aspects of Iran’s recent escalation is that it has drawn states into the conflict that were actively attempting to avoid confrontation. Countries across the Gulf Cooperation Council had pursued diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions between Iran and its adversaries. Oman, for example, had played a leading mediating role in discussions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program.
Yet Iranian missiles and drones have now placed these very states directly in the line of fire. Strategically, this approach is baffling. By striking Gulf territories or allowing projectiles to fall near critical infrastructure, Tehran risks transforming potential mediators into determined adversaries. Analysts have long warned that attacks on Gulf states could collapse the region’s delicate neutrality and push Arab governments into closer alignment with the United States and Israel. In other words, Iran’s escalation may be strengthening the very coalition it claims to oppose.
The Islamic Republic’s behavior cannot be understood purely in military terms. At its core lies an ideological framework embedded in the doctrine of Vilayat-e-Faqih: “Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist.” This system, created after the Iranian Revolution, grants ultimate political authority to the clerical leadership rather than elected institutions. The result is a hybrid regime in which electoral politics exist but real power rests with a religious elite that defines foreign policy through ideological confrontation.
For this leadership, regional dominance is not merely a strategic ambition. It is a revolutionary obligation. From Iraq to Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, Tehran has cultivated proxy networks that extend its influence far beyond its borders. These networks allow Iran to wage asymmetric warfare while maintaining plausible deniability. The expansion of this strategy into the Gulf itself marks a new and dangerous phase.
Iran’s confrontation with Gulf states is not only militarily reckless. It is economically self-destructive. The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz form one of the most vital arteries of global commerce. Disruptions in the region affect energy markets, maritime trade routes, and strategic industrial supply chains.
Iranian actions that threaten shipping lanes risk destabilizing not only regional economies but also global technological industries. Qatar, for example, plays a significant role in the export of helium, a critical resource used in semiconductor manufacturing and advanced technologies. Any disruption in Gulf logistics reverberates across industries ranging from artificial intelligence to aerospace.
If Tehran’s objective is to impose costs on its adversaries, it must recognize that such disruptions will also inevitably damage Iran itself. Economic isolation, sanctions pressure, and investor flight are predictable consequences of escalating regional conflict. In strategic terms, Iran’s current approach resembles an “economic own goal” — a policy that undermines its own long-term stability.
The Islamic Republic’s external aggression reflects deep internal vulnerabilities. Years of economic hardship, corruption scandals, and political repression have eroded public confidence in the ruling establishment. Anti-government protests have repeatedly shaken the regime, revealing widespread dissatisfaction across Iranian society. The leadership in Tehran therefore faces a familiar dilemma.
Authoritarian systems often attempt to consolidate power by redirecting domestic frustration toward external enemies. Foreign confrontation becomes a tool for internal cohesion. In this context, escalation abroad may serve a political purpose at home: reinforcing the narrative that Iran is surrounded by hostile forces and must rally behind its revolutionary leadership. Yet such strategies carry enormous risk. History demonstrates that regimes relying on external conflict to sustain legitimacy often accelerate their own downfall.
The Middle East now faces a critical strategic question: Will Iran’s campaign of intimidation continue unchecked, or will the threatened regional states coordinate a collective response? The growing convergence of security interests between Israel and several Arab states represents one possible outcome. Iranian escalation may inadvertently accelerate regional cooperation against Tehran’s ambitions. The normalization processes that began in recent years could gain renewed urgency if the Gulf states conclude that Iran’s threats are directed not only at Israel but at the entire regional order.
At the same time, the United States remains a central factor in the strategic equation. In Tehran’s calculus, American military installations across the Gulf serve as both deterrents and potential targets. Iran’s repeated warnings about these bases indicate that the regime views the broader American security architecture as a critical obstacle to its regional ambitions.
Another factor shaping Iran’s future is the question of leadership. The Islamic Republic now faces a profound political vacuum. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with the regime, no unified opposition figure has yet emerged capable of mobilizing the population around a coherent alternative vision. This absence of leadership allows the ruling clerical establishment to maintain its grip on power even as public frustration grows. Yet history suggests that such conditions rarely remain static. The pressures created by economic stagnation, international isolation, and internal dissent can eventually converge to bring about transformative political change.
For Iran, the central challenge is whether a new leadership capable of reconciling the country with its neighbors and the international community will emerge before the current system pushes the region into wider conflict.
The Iranian regime’s recent missile and drone attacks across the Gulf reveal a dangerous strategic reality: Tehran’s confrontation is no longer limited to Israel or the United States. It is evolving into a broader campaign of intimidation against the entire Middle Eastern order.
By targeting or threatening Gulf states that had sought neutrality, the Islamic Republic risks uniting the region against it. By escalating military pressure while offering hollow diplomatic apologies, it exposes the contradiction at the heart of its strategy. And by prioritizing ideological confrontation over economic stability, it places the welfare of the Iranian people at risk.
If the current trajectory continues, Iran will not succeed in dominating the Middle East. Instead, it may accomplish the opposite — driving its neighbors, the United States, and Israel into an increasingly unified coalition determined to contain the ambitions of a regime whose revolutionary ideology has turned regional leadership into a permanent state of war.
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is editor of the Bangladesh-based publication Blitz and a commentator on Islamist extremism, terrorism, and South Asian geopolitics. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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The Truth About Israel’s Wartime Censorship
Fire ignited at the impact site following an Iranian missile strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in central Israel, March 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Gideon Markowicz
“There are censorship laws in Israel.” (NPR)
“Israel has imposed strict military censorship … for decades, but has tightened its restrictions.” (AFP)
“‘We have a partial understanding of the reality on the ground,’ the senior manager admitted. ‘Our coverage of the war is not truthful.’” (+972 Magazine)
Since the US-Israel war against the Islamic Republic of Iran broke out at the end of February 2026, one aspect of media coverage has drawn particular attention — Israel’s military censorship regulations and their effect on what journalists can publish.
While some have claimed that these restrictions are designed to hide the damage caused by Iranian missile strikes, the reality is far less conspiratorial.
As explained by CNN correspondent Oren Liebermann in a recent report, the purpose of Israel’s censorship rules is to prevent the release of sensitive military information that could assist Iran in its ongoing missile campaign.
This includes details such as the precise locations of missile impacts or the positioning of Israeli interceptor systems — information that could help Iranian forces adjust their targeting.
Liebermann notes that the regulations have not prevented CNN or other outlets from publishing footage of attacks, but they do prohibit livestreaming during missile strikes, which could inadvertently reveal operational details in real time.
This aspect of military censorship is separate from Israel’s policy restricting foreign journalists’ independent access to Gaza, allowing entry primarily through embedded tours with the IDF.
In this latter instance, the stated reasoning has not been the risk of publishing sensitive military information, but rather concerns about journalist safety and the potential disruption to ongoing military operations.
As former IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. (res.) Peter Lerner explained:
Indeed in Israel there’s a military censorship that gives guidelines to media on what can or cannot be broadcasted. Mostly around force protection and specific impacts of missile locations so that Islamic Republic cannot confirm targeting.
Here’s how CNN detailed it.
No…— Lt. Col. (R) Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) March 7, 2026
It should also be noted that Israel’s wartime censorship rules are not limited to journalists. In theory, they apply to civilians as well.
At the beginning of the war, the IDF issued a public warning on X urging Israelis not to share the locations of missile impacts online because such information could assist the enemy (a modern Israeli version of the classic “loose lips sink ships”).
The only difference is that enforcing such restrictions on millions of civilians posting on social media is far more difficult than regulating a much smaller number of professional news organizations.
Israel is not alone in enforcing military censorship of sensitive information during wartime.
As noted by AFP, the Gulf states facing missile and drone threats from Iran have implemented similar censorship measures, with some banning the spread of images of sensitive sites such as missile impact locations, while others restrict the spread of demoralizing or false reports online.
Outside of the Middle East, censorship rules exist in other modern conflict zones, including Ukraine and the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan.
In other words, Israel’s wartime censorship regulations are not an attempt to conceal damage from Iranian strikes or manipulate the narrative of the war.
They are a standard wartime measure designed to prevent sensitive information from helping the enemy — a practice widely used by countries facing active military threats.
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.