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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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US Owners of Irish Soccer Team Fire Chair for Saying Ireland Should Not Compete Against ‘Genocidal’ Israel
Soccer Football – UEFA Nations League Draw – Brussels Expo, Brussels, Belgium – Feb.12, 2026, General view during the draw. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
The director and co-chairperson of the professional Irish soccer club Drogheda United has been fired after saying that Ireland should not compete against Israel in the upcoming UEFA Nations League and that the Jewish state should be “banned and boycotted by all.”
The Trivela Group, the American investment firm that owns the League of Ireland team, said in a statement on Monday that Joanna Byrne was dismissed and thanked her for her “longstanding and ongoing dedication to the Club and its success.” The move came after Byrne said in February that the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) should not play their scheduled UEFA Nations League match against Israel and accused the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” against Palestinians.
Ireland was drawn to go head-to-head against Israel and will play an away game against the Jewish state on Sept. 27 before hosting the Israeli team in Dublin on Oct. 4.
“Trivela Group can confirm that, pursuant to its authority as sole shareholder of Drogheda United FC, Joanna Byrne has been removed by Trivela Group as a director of the Club,” read a statement posted on Drogheda’s website. “At this time, the Board of Directors consists of Benjamin Boycott, Marc Koretzky, Barton Lee, and club CEO Rian Wogan. Mr. Boycott for the time being, will serve as the sole Chairperson, and the club will look to appoint a local director and Co-Chair in due course.”
In a Facebook post on Monday, Byne reiterated her “strong stance” that Ireland “should not play Israel in the UEFA Nations League while a genocide against the Palestinian people continues.” She called her firing a “cold, underhand move by Trivela, initiated in the dark of the night, which was planned and coordinated without any consultation with me. This is symptomatic of the way they do business.”
“I am deeply committed to Drogheda United and want to see it flourish,” she added in part. “I will continue to elevate it, and the League of Ireland more broadly at every opportunity.”
Byrne is the Sinn Féin spokesperson on culture, communications, and sport. Drogheda United was the first League of Ireland Club to appoint a female chairperson.
In February, after the FAI confirmed that it would compete against Israel in the UEFA Nations League, Byrne released a statement denouncing the decision. She noted that the FAI submitted a motion to UEFA in November to ban Israel from its European club and international competitions.
“In November, the FAI voted to submit a motion to UEFA to ban Israel … That was the correct moral and principled position to take,” she said in February. “Therefore, I am extremely angry and dismayed that the FAI have confirmed they will play against Israel. It appears that their morals, and principled position, was only on paper – not in actions where it counts. Israel should not be in this competition.”
“UEFA should have expelled them as soon as Israel went into Gaza on a genocidal, ethnic cleansing mission that has seen tens of thousands of innocents murdered, including hundreds of sports men and women,” she added. She said Israel “should be treated the same as Apartheid South Africa was, and be banned and boycotted by all.”
Byrne also accused the UEFA of having “double standards” for banning Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022 but not banning Israel following its military actions in Gaza. Israel launched a military campaign against Hamas after the Palestinian terrorist group invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, massacring 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza.
“I hope the FAI knows the furor that will be coming for them from the Irish football fans – the vast vast majority will not want to see our Boys In Green in the same stadium as the Israeli team,” she said in her statement at the time. “I have said it before when I was asked about Israel’s participation in Eurovision and in other sporting fixtures and I will repeat it again now: Israel is an apartheid state who have engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide. Their behavior cannot be accepted or normalized.”
After she made the anti-Israel comments in February, Bryne claimed the board of Drogheda United said her position as chairperson of the club “was no longer tenable” because of her remarks. The board also expressed “an expectation that I would resign, something I have told them that I intend to resist,” she added.
Trivela Group confirmed last week that it issued a written instruction demanding she resign as director and co-chair of the club.
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Bahrain Pushes UN-Backed Action for Hormuz Shipping; France Tables Rival Text
A map showing the Strait of Hormuz is seen in this illustration taken June 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
UN Security Council members have begun negotiating resolutions to protect commercial shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz, including a Bahraini draft that would authorise the use of “all necessary means” — language France has warned will be difficult to adopt.
The move underscores mounting regional concern that Iran could continue to threaten the strategic chokepoint, which carries about a fifth of global oil supplies and underpins Gulf economies.
Shipping through the waterway has already slowed to a near‑halt after Iran struck vessels amid its conflict with the United States and Israel.
Diplomats said Bahrain‘s draft, seen by Reuters and backed by other Gulf Arab states and the United States, uses diplomatic language to authorize force.
France circulated a more conciliatory alternative text, also seen by Reuters, and diplomats said talks were under way to assess whether the two drafts could be reconciled.
France‘s Foreign Minister Jean‑Noel Barrot told lawmakers that there was little certainty Bahrain‘s bid to permit the use of force — a power the Security Council can grant under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows measures from sanctions to military action — would win enough backing among member states. “The coming days will tell,” he said.
BAHRAINI RESOLUTION DETAILS
The Bahraini resolution describes Iran’s actions as a threat to international peace and security.
It would authorize countries — acting alone or through voluntary multinational naval coalitions — to use “all necessary means” in and around the Strait of Hormuz, including in the territorial waters of countries along its shores, to ensure passage and to prevent moves that block or interfere with international navigation.
It also expresses readiness to impose measures, including targeted sanctions.
Bahrain‘s Ambassador to France, Essam al-Jassim, told Reuters discussions were at an early stage.
“External protection has clear limits. International coalitions help secure sea lanes and stabilize markets, but their response remains largely reactive,” he earlier told a defense forum in Paris.
“They do not address, for example, escalating state-backed attacks, and without doing so, disruptions will persist.”
The Bahraini and US missions to the United Nations did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The text “demands that the Islamic Republic of Iran immediately cease all attacks against merchant and commercial vessels and any attempt to impede lawful transit passage or freedom of navigation in and around the Strait of Hormuz.”
FRENCH RESOLUTION MAKES NO MENTION OF IRAN
Diplomats said there was little prospect of such a resolution being adopted by the Security Council as Iran’s partners Russia and China were likely to veto it if necessary.
A Security Council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, the US, Britain, and France. The Russian and Chinese missions to the United Nations were not immediately available for comment.
France on Monday submitted its own draft, taking a more conciliatory tone and aiming to build broader support within the council.
President Emmanuel Macron, who has suggested having a UN framework for any action in the Hormuz, has refused to take part in any immediate operations to secure the strait, saying that international efforts could only happen once hostilities calm, insurance and shipping firms are consulted and with Iran’s consent.
The French resolution makes no mention of Iran and is not under Chapter VII. It “urges all parties to refrain from further escalation, calls for a cessation of the ongoing hostilities in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, and calls for a return to the path of diplomacy.”
Rather than authorizing action, the text encourages states with an interest in commercial maritime routes in the strait to coordinate strictly defensive measures — including escorting merchant vessels — in full respect of international law, including the law of the sea.
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Airstrikes Target HQ, Leader of Iran-Backed Shi’ite Militia Umbrella Group in Iraq
Mourners carry the coffin of Saad al-Baiji, the Popular Mobilization Forces’ Anbar operations commander, who was killed in airstrikes that targeted a PMF site in Iraq’s western Anbar province, during his funeral, in Baghdad, Iraq, March 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Saad
Airstrikes hit a headquarters of Iraq‘s umbrella group for Iran–backed Shi’ite militias and a residence belonging to its leader on Tuesday, killing at least 15 fighters in an escalation of US-Israeli strikes on one of Tehran’s main regional allies.
At least 30 other people were wounded in the strikes on a headquarters of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq‘s Euphrates valley province of Anbar, according to medical officials who said some were in serious condition and the death toll could rise. Reuters filmed ambulances bringing the wounded to hospital in the regional capital Ramadi during the night.
The dead included the PMF’s operations commander in the province, Saad al-Baiji. Later on Tuesday, a large crowd of angry mourners carried his coffin and portraits through the streets of Baghdad.
Two security sources said the strikes had hit the PMF headquarters during a meeting attended by senior commanders.
A separate airstrike hit a residence belonging to the PMF’s leader Falih al-Fayadh in the northern city of Mosul. He was not present at the building which he uses only during visits to the city, according to the two security sources. A PMF statement said its office in the city was destroyed and one fighter wounded there.
Such damaging strikes against the PMF create political difficulty for Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al‑Sudani, who has to walk a careful line maintaining the support both of Washington and of factions in the Shi’ite-majority country that are aligned with Iran.
Sudani ordered an emergency meeting of the Ministerial Council for National Security to be convened, said a statement from the Iraqi military’s joint operations command.
The statement said the 15 PMF fighters were killed in a “US-Zionist airstrike”, the first time Iraq‘s military has blamed Israel alongside the United States for bombing the PMF.
The PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi, is an umbrella group of mostly Shi’ite paramilitary factions that was formally integrated into Iraq‘s state security forces and includes several groups aligned with Iran.
Tehran-backed armed groups have launched attacks on US bases in Iraq and the US embassy since the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran on Feb. 28. Washington has had an influential presence in Baghdad since its 2003 invasion that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, and replaced him with Shi’ite-led governments friendly with Iran.
The US-Israeli war on Iran has spilled across Iran‘s borders, with Tehran launching strikes on Israel and Gulf Arab states hosting US military installations, while Israel has carried out attacks in Lebanon following cross-border fire by Iran-aligned Hezbollah.