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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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The post Lorraine Hansberry’s second play had a white Jewish protagonist. Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan are reviving it. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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In a Mamdani-era primary, J Street backs pro-Israel incumbent — and, in a first, his challenger
Rep. Dan Goldman, a two-term Democrat facing a tough primary in New York’s 10th District, has been endorsed again by J Street, but in an unusual move, the pro-Israel advocacy group will also “approve” Goldman’s opponent, former City Comptroller Brad Lander, who has made Goldman’s centrist stance on Israel and ties to AIPAC central to his campaign.
J Street said it is “proud” to support Goldman for reelection for his “pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-democracy leadership” in Congress. “Goldman has worked toward a better future for the Middle East as Congressman, co-leading letters opposing demolition of Palestinian homes and calling for sanctions on some of the most violent extremist settlers in the West Bank,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s president, said in a statement shared with the Forward.
Goldman called J Street a “vital organization that squarely aligns with my support for Israel as a Jewish and democratic state” and one that “represents many of my Jewish and progressive values, like justice, equality, freedom, and the pursuit of peace.”
J Street first endorsed Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who was elected in a competitive primary in 2022, in the 2024 election; as an incumbent, he was automatically included on J Street’s early endorsement list of 117 House members. The group is now reaffirming its backing of Goldman as he faces an uphill battle in a district that voted for Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and strident critic of Israel, in the Democratic primary for Mayor — after Lander cross-endorsed him, and overwhelmingly backed him in the general election against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Mamdani is backing Lander’s bid, while Goldman has the support of Gov. Kathy Hochul, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
Palestinian rights and the Gaza war have increasingly become a litmus test for progressive candidates seeking to define themselves against establishment Democrats. The stakes are heightened by the makeup of the district’s electorate and the fact that both candidates are Jewish, making Israel a key issue in the race. Jewish voters are estimated to comprise more than 20% of the Democratic primary electorate in the 10th Congressional District, which encompasses the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park and Park Slope, along with a swath of lower Manhattan.
At his campaign launch in Chinatown last week, Goldman said that his Israel positions reflect where most voters in the district are: supportive of Israel’s security while finding a pathway for a two-state solution, sharply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, and opposed to settlement expansion and settler violence. Last November, Goldman co-led a letter to President Donald Trump urging for the re-imposition of the Biden era sanctions on West Bank settlers.
Goldman was also an early supporter of humanitarian pauses in the war against Hamas to allow the flow of humanitarian aid. Recently, he told The New York Times, he would “likely vote differently” on a resolution to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American House member, for her comments on Israel. More than 1,000 constituents protested outside his district office after his vote in favor of the Republican-led measure.
Goldman diverged from J Street on key Gaza-related efforts, including his opposition to Democratic-led measures to block or condition U.S. arms transfers to Israel or his refusal to sign onto a letter opposing Trump’s initial vision of the U.S. taking control of Gaza and turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Risa Levine, an advocate and an active member of J Street, said it’s a “no brainer” to reaffirm support for Goldman given that on Israel and issues related to the Jewish community, he is “100% where the J Street membership is” and “very amenable to everything that J Street says” even when there are disagreements about certain policies.
Levine, who as a constituent has attended private meetings with Goldman, said that describing Goldman as being owned or directed by AIPAC is “kind of silly,” given his personal wealth, estimated at up to $253 million. Goldman loaned his campaign $4 million in 2022; AIPAC’s super PAC later said it contributed $350,000 to a local super PAC opposing his chief rival at the time, Yuh-Line Niou, who supports the boycott Israel movement.
Lander’s J Street seal of approval
The endorsement of Goldman underscores the bind J Street now faces, placing itself squarely in the middle of a complex and contentious primary.
Lander is widely regarded inside the organization as a family figure. He is a regular speaker at its annual conferences, and activists and donors view Lander as a natural standard-bearer for the group in the post–Gaza war and Mamdani era.
J Street is expected to break with past practice and list Lander as one of seven “primary-approved” House candidates, but the only challenger to an incumbent it supports. That designation would allow donors to contribute to his campaign through the J Street PAC portal but stops short of organizing events or offering active campaign support.
In an interview on Monday, Lander called the group’s decision to approve his candidacy “significant.”
Lander also insisted that he is “better aligned” with the views of this district on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an issue, he said, which will be important for voters in the race.
Though Lander opposes the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, he supported Ben & Jerry’s decision to end sales in the occupied West Bank in 2021. Since Oct. 7, Lander has regularly attended a weekly rally against the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza, has backed calls for a permanent ceasefire and has met with families of Israeli hostages.
In September, he expressed regret for not doing enough “to speak out against Israel’s war crimes, against ethnic cleansing, against forced starvation of Palestinians.” More recently, he described the war as “genocide,” inspired by the writings of Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term, which his daughter had given him. J Street’s head said he was “persuaded” by arguments that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
As comptroller, Lander also ended New York City’s half-century practice of investing millions in Israeli government debt securities in 2023.
Ruth Messinger, the trailblazing Jewish political leader who in 1997 became the first and only woman to win the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor, praised J Street for having “flexibility” in maintaining their relationship with Goldman, but also designating Lander as an approved candidate.
Lander, she said, “speaks really directly to the perspective of the people in this district on these issues, and J Street is correct in recognizing that.” Messinger, who endorsed Mamdani after the primary and said his views on Israel were not central to the job he was seeking, added that Lander would be a strong fit to succeed retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler — the longtime dean of the Congressional Jewish Caucus — and to “play this critical role” in shaping the thinking of both Jewish and non-Jewish members of Congress.
Levine said the endorsement of Goldman “speaks for itself” and that she would prefer J Street not feature Lander’s name as a primary challenger, so as not to create divisiveness within the party. She added that the endorsement could help Goldman appeal to voters who may have supported Lander’s mayoral candidacy.J Street’s Ben-Ami told the Forward, “At the end of the day, it is a win for the district and the nation to have two J Street-aligned voices in this race.”
The post In a Mamdani-era primary, J Street backs pro-Israel incumbent — and, in a first, his challenger appeared first on The Forward.
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A hypnotic new album inspired by a unique Yiddish recording
Folklore scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett doesn’t remember interviewing and recording the Yiddish folksinger Rose Cohen in 1968 in Toronto. But this recording may turn out to be one of the most significant ones that made it into the storied archives at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
In it, Cohen sings ten songs from her childhood in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, in Yiddish, Hebrew, Ukrainian and Russian. A handful of these songs have never been found anywhere else.
Cohen, who came to Toronto after World War II, was from a dynasty of what she called khazonishe, or singing rabbis, and learned many of these songs listening to them singing in her home.
This recording became the inspiration for a new album, The Rose Cohen Experience, released last month on Borscht Beat Records. Her songs are performed here by Cantor Sarah Myerson and Ilya Shneyveys, a married couple of talented multi-instrumentalists. The duo, called Electric Rose, took nine of the ten songs Kirshenblatt-Gimblett recorded and created their own elaborate, imaginative versions of them.
In the recording, Myerson — who serves as spiritual leader and cantor at Roosevelt Island Jewish Congregation in New York City — sang them as she and Shneyveys played an array of instruments over loops, creating a surreal, hypnotic sound. Shneyveys was no stranger to this, having once been part of the Yiddish “psychedelic” rock group Forshpil.
One of the songs, Berosh Hashone (On Rosh Hashone) begins with a segment from the solemn High Holidays prayer Unetaneh Tokef, about how our destiny is determined by God, depending on what deeds we’ve done. But then there are other Yiddish verses about an unhappy woman asking her children if she should divorce their father. “We don’t have that as a Yiddish song elsewhere in the repertoire,” Myerson said in an interview. “We don’t know of that song existing in other languages either.”
The album is structured, at least at first, as an imagined narrative of Cohen’s own life. “Ikh heyb mikh on tsu dermonen” (I’m beginning to remember) possesses a driving rhythm and a powerful recollection of an immigrant in North America dreaming of going back to his wife in Europe. Even though it’s a folk song, it’s possibly autobiographical when she sings it, as Cohen’s father immigrated to Toronto before the rest of his family. Myerson and Shneyveys aimed to draw out the autobiographical aspect of this song by playing selections of the Cohen interview where she recalls where she is from and how old she is.
The song transitions to Bay mashin (At the machine), a folk song about a woman slaving over a sewing machine, looking forward to getting married after having assembled her dowry. In an interesting twist, Myerson actually uses the sound of a sewing machine throughout the track, both in recorded and live performances. It’s a small hand-crank sewing machine from the early 20th century, “possibly developed for child labor,” Myerson said.
Myerson contributed a special track, Kale Tfile (Bride’s prayer), to supplement the nine Cohen songs. Kale Tfile is taken from an excerpt of a tkhine (a Yiddish-language women’s prayer) that a woman would recite on the night before the wedding. She found the prayer in an 1897 prayerbook known as the Siddur Korban Minchah.
Myerson said she decided to include this text after trying to imagine how Cohen may have felt singing Bay mashin, where the ending indicates that the female narrator is about to marry. The words are plaintive (“O God, please hear my youthful prayer, receive my hot tears that I now spill before You”), raising the possibility that she is unhappy about the match. Myerson’s performance delivers the song in that spirit, utilizing a vocoder, a keyboard that allows her to harmonize with herself.
From here, the album drops its autobiographical train of thought and moves into a more experiential mode. Mayim Rabim (mighty waters), also known as Psalm 93 — a psalm recited during the Shabbat evening prayer service — is remarkable because, as Myerson said, “we just don’t have many recordings of women of her generation singing liturgy.” Here, we see how Electric Rose made use of ambient recordings; in this case — ocean waves from Miami Beach.
You can catch Electric Rose on their upcoming tours throughout the East Coast, California and Germany.
The post A hypnotic new album inspired by a unique Yiddish recording appeared first on The Forward.
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China Warns Against Foreign ‘Interference’ in Iran as Trump Mulls Response to Regime Crackdown
A demonstrator lights a cigarette with fire from a burning picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei outside the Iranian embassy during a rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, in London, Britain, Jan. 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville
China on Monday expressed hope that the Iranian regime would “overcome” the current anti-government protests sweeping the country, warning against foreign “interference” as US President Donald Trump considered how to respond to Iran’s deadly crackdown on nationwide protests.
“China hopes the Iranian government and people will overcome the current difficulties and uphold stability in the country,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters during a press conference.
“China always opposes interference in other countries’ internal affairs, advocates that all countries’ sovereignty and security should be fully protected by international law, and opposes the use or threat of force in international relations,” she continued. “We call on parties to act in ways conducive to peace and stability in the Middle East.”
The comments came as Iran continued to face fierce demonstrations, which began on Dec. 28 over economic hardships but escalated into large-scale protests calling for the downfall of the country’s Islamist regime.
If the regime in Tehran was seriously weakened or potentially collapsed, it would present a problem for a strategic partner of Beijing.
China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Tehran, has moved to deepen ties with the regime in recent years, signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.
China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, with nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports going to Beijing. Traders and analysts have said that Chinese reliance on Iranian oil will likely increase and replace Venezuelan oil after US forces captured Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month.
Iran’s growing ties with China come at a time when Tehran faces mounting economic sanctions from Western powers, while Beijing itself is also under US sanctions.
According to some media reports, China may be even helping Iran rebuild its decimated air defenses following the 12-day war with Israel in June.
The extent of China’s partnership with Iran may be tested as the latter comes under increased international scrutiny over its violent crackdown on anti-regime protests.
US-based rights group HRANA said by late Monday it had verified the deaths of 646 people, including 505 protesters, 113 military and security personnel, and seven bystanders. The group added that it was investigating 579 more reported deaths and that, since the demonstrations began,10,721 people have been arrested.
Other reports gave indicated the number of protesters killed by the regime numbers well into the thousands, but with the regime imposing an internet blackout since Thursday, verification has been difficult.
Trump has said he will intervene against the regime if security forces continue killing protesters. Adding to threats of military action, Trump late on Monday announced that any country doing business with Iran will face a new tariff of 25 percent on its exports to the U.S.
“This order is final and conclusive,” he said in a social media post.
According to reports, Trump was to meet with senior advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for Iran, including military strikes, using cyber weapons, widening sanctions, and providing online help to anti-government sources.
Iran has warned that any military action would be met with force in response.
“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories [Israel] as well as all US bases and ships will be our legitimate target,” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf told a crowd in Tehran’s Enqelab Square on Monday, adding that Iranians were fighting a four-front war: “economic war, psychological warfare, military war against the US and Israel, and today a war against terrorism.”
However, the White House stressed that Trump hopes to find a diplomatic resolution.
“Diplomacy is always the first option for the president,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” she said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Al Jazeera that he and US envoy Steve Witkoff have been in contact.
Trump said on Sunday the US could meet Iranian officials and he was in contact with Iran’s opposition.