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2 Off-Broadway shows offer fresh perspectives on Anne Frank’s story
(New York Jewish Week) – A young woman imagines herself standing inside the office of a fast-talking, bowtie-wearing, pipe-smoking editor of a major publishing house in New York City.
She’s just submitted her diary — a memoir of her life in hiding from Nazis and subsequent detention in a concentration camp — for his review, and stands in front of him as he scrutinizes her experiences, deeming them plausible or not, appropriate or absurd.
The woman is Anne Frank, and the imagined scene is the premise of “Anne Being Frank,” one of two shows based on Frank’s diary that are running Off-Broadway in New York City this fall. The other is “Anne Frank, a Musical.”
The one-woman show, which opened on Sept. 4 at Manhattan’s Emerging Artists Theatre, presents a new version of the Anne Frank story in which she pens her diary while she is dying in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, rather than writing it while in hiding in Amsterdam. The show depicts her suffering from starvation and sexual assault in the camps, and eventually contracting a lethal case of typhus, all of which changes the tone of her writing.
“Instead of leaving people with this idea that all these people are really good at heart, she’s grown up and seen the atrocities and the things that have happened to her,” Amanda Lerner, the director of “Anne Being Frank,” told the New York Jewish Week, referencing a famous passage of the diary in which Frank writes, “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
Lerner added that she wanted to represent the experience of Holocaust victims in the camps and depict the “truth of all of the other people who have lived these stories — without apologizing for it,” she said.
Frank’s story is among the most well-known Holocaust narratives, and the creators of both shows said that they saw it as an avenue for conveying the gravity of the Holocaust to audiences, especially non-Jewish ones. The two productions come during a time when works about Frank’s life have taken a central place in national debates about education and censorship. Recently, multiple school districts have banned a graphic novel based on Frank’s diary, and in September, a teacher was allegedly fired in Texas for reading it aloud to students.
Earlier this year, the National Geographic limited series “A Small Light” told the Anne Frank story from the perspective of Miep Gies, the woman who helped hide the Frank family.
“For me, the Anne Frank story is, and really should be, universal,” said David Serero, who directed and produced “Anne Frank, a Musical,” and stars as Frank’s father, Otto. “Of course, it’s a Jewish story, but I think it’s important to share that story so it will never happen again. It’s important for others to know the damage that such a thing can do.”
The diary has been adapted dozens of times in the more than seven decades since its publication, beginning with the 1955 Broadway show, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play.
“In the 1950s when her diary came out, Anne Frank became probably the most well known victim of the Holocaust,” said Dr. Alex Sagan, a historian affiliated with Harvard’s Center for European Studies who has written extensively about adaptations of Frank’s diary. “It’s a very famous and resonant story. Everybody knows it, and it’s understandable that lots of people are inspired to retell it. The question is, what should our judgment be about what they produce?”
He said adaptations should be judged based on whether they “impart inaccurate information,” and added that observers should “ask to what extent does it teach us or make us feel something about the story of Frank, or about her diary, that is really meaningful.”
Sagan added that while adaptations and retellings should stay accurate to the diary, there is still plenty of opportunity for artistic license.
“They’re going to reflect the moment in which they’re created, the medium in which they’re created and the creators,” he said. “So it doesn’t mean that they have no individuality, and it means that when they’re created, they see where they might seem very relevant if they’re well done.”
The publishing house scene in “Anne Being Frank” speaks to the question of whether and how future generations will receive Holocaust stories. In the play, Anne (played by actress Alexis Fishman) imagines the conversation with the editor as she lays dying in her bunk in Bergen-Belsen.
She considers how an editor — and the world — might perceive her and her story after they learn the truth about humanity. The editor, while praising her as a writing prodigy, finds the details, especially the events in the camps, implausible.
“The reason that I have spent such a great chunk of my career in writing speculative history is that I truly believe that truth is stranger than fiction — that no writer can match the sheer unpredictability and madness of the real world,” said Ron Elisha, the play’s writer. “There’s nothing that happens in my play that could not have happened. These things happened. They need to be explained.”
“Anne Frank, a Musical” premiered at the Center for Jewish History in 2019. (Courtesy David Serero)
The second show out this fall, “Anne Frank, a Musical,” is less speculative about what happens after Frank was discovered in the annex in Amsterdam. Instead, it reinterprets the events depicted in Anne’s diary through song.
The musical, which was originally written in French by Jean-Pierre Hadida in 2007, was adapted for an American audience in English by Serero. It premiered in 2019 at the Center for Jewish History and opens this year on October 11 at the Actor’s Temple Theater.
“Of course, people in America and in New York were a little bit reluctant when they heard, ‘a musical about Anne Frank,’ but a musical doesn’t have to be about something joyful. It’s emotive,” Serero said. “I can assure you, I have a lot of respect in the approach of all the characters in order to make them believable onstage.”
The musical opens in the present day, with a group of teenagers visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. When they start to ask questions about her life, they are quickly transported back in time to the same place in 1942.
“To bring it through the medium of music is very important because we sing what we cannot say — there are things that only music can express,” Serero said. “When you add music, the diary of Anne Frank becomes the life of Anne Frank.”
And though the productions approach the story differently, they each reflect contemporary perspectives on the world. “Anne Being Frank” aims to show the graphic, violent suffering and death of Jews in the Holocaust, and to invite viewers to think about what happened next — rather than solely the hope reflected in the most famous passage of Frank’s diary. The show, in some ways, asks its viewers to interrogate other places or moments where the full story isn’t being told.
For Serero, the “secret of the musical’s success,” is that it connects Frank’s story to atrocities today.
“You could say that this story is over,” he said. “But still today, people are killed because of who they are.”
“Anne Being Frank” is playing at the Emerging Artists Theatre (15 W. 28th St.) through Oct. 29; tickets start at $59. “Anne Frank, a Musical” is playing from Oct. 11 through Nov. 5 at the Actors Temple Theatre (339 W. 47th St.). Tickets start at $36.50.
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The post 2 Off-Broadway shows offer fresh perspectives on Anne Frank’s story appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Former NFL Players Take Solidarity Trip to Israel, Advocate for Release of Hamas Hostages
Tony Richardson, far left, and Nick Lowery, far right, posing for a photo with Israeli President Isaac Herzog during their recent trip to Israel. Photo: The Office of the President of Israel
NFL legends Nick Lowery and Tony Richardson, who are former Kansas City Chiefs teammates and members of the team’s Hall of Fame, took a tour of southern Israel recently to see areas and meet families impacted by the deadly Hamas terrorist attack that took place on Oct. 7, 2023.
Lowery, one of the NFL’s greatest placekickers, and Richardson, a former NFL star fullback, toured Kibbutz Kfar Aza and the Nahal Oz base of the Israel Defense Forces, as well as the site of the Nova music festival massacre. They met with families of those kidnapped during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in an effort to help advocate for the release of the hostages. Their five-day visit to Israel that started on Dec. 29 was sponsored by Project Max and the nonprofit organization Athletes for Israel, which aims to bring well-known sports figures to the Jewish state.
The goal of Project Max is to fight racism, antisemitism, and intolerance through sports. Lowery is part of the #SportSpeaksUp campaign that is led by Project Max CEO Eric Rubin.
During their time in Israel, Lowery and Richardson spoke with Yoni and Amit Levy, father and brother of Naama Levy, who has been held hostage by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip for over 450 days. Naama, 20, is one of five young women kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas-led terrorists from the IDF base in Nahal Oz near the Israel-Gaza border. She was filmed being dragged into a jeep by terrorists, with her hands tied behind her back, during her abduction. Her ankles were cut, her face was bleeding, and her sweatpants were blood-stained.
“As a father, nothing to be proud more than to have a daughter like Naama,” Yoni told the NFL legends in a video that was shared on social media. “She’s quite shy, but very, very strong inside. It gives us a lot of hope that she is surviving.” Amit, 22, further told Lowery and Richardson: “I think it’s so important what you are doing because it’s been so long, it’s easy for people to move on. It’s not just a poster. [She’s] my sister and she has dreams.”
In response, the athletes expressed hope that Naama will return home soon. They also said they will do what they can to speak up in support of the hostages. “One of our goals is to help her dream and give voice to it,” said Lowery, 68. “The connection with Naama as a triathlete, to work through pain, to work through challenge … I hope that the athletes that are watching this … if Naama can’t speak up for herself, we must speak for her and the others. She will be back. We love this place. We love the people.”
Lowery and Richardson also visited the soccer field in the Druze-majority town of Majdal Shams in northern Israel, where 12 Druze children and teenagers were killed, and at least 42 were injured, by a Hezbollah rocket on July 27, 2024. During the stop they met with 13-year-old Jwan Ibraheem, who survived the rocket explosion and is having a difficult time moving on with his life after blaming himself for not being able to save his best friend who was killed by the Hezbollah rocket.
The former NFL teammates also toured Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, and met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana, and IDF soldiers. “We will be a voice to those who don’t have one,” they told Herzog. They also took a tour of religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall, and Lowery was re-baptized at the Sea of Galilee. They also stopped by the StandWithUs center in Jerusalem, where they learned more about the history of Israel and antisemitism.
The post Former NFL Players Take Solidarity Trip to Israel, Advocate for Release of Hamas Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Jews Need to Be United’: Artist Elizabeth Sutton Promotes Jewish Values With New Dinnerware Collection
Elizabeth Sutton. Photo: Provided
Jewish artist, designer, and entrepreneur Elizabeth Sutton recently released a new dinnerware collection that she told The Algemeiner is inspired by Jewish values and her dedication to having resilience and faith in the face of adversity.
A sixth generation New Yorker and single mother of two children, Sutton, 35, is a self-taught artist and avid supporter of Israel. Her past projects include fine art paintings, tiles — such as five award-winning tile collections for Tilebar — wallpaper, fashion accessories, rugs, and office chairs. Her designs can be found in hotels and resorts around the world, as well as Whole Foods, restaurants, residential spaces, Benjamin Moore, Bloomingdale’s, and Capital One Banks. The artist — whose past clients include Paris Hilton, Kourtney Kardashian, Andrea Bocelli, and Pitbull — was recognized as a rising and ambitious entrepreneur in 2021 as part of Forbes magazine’s “The Next 1000” list, and she owns a fine art gallery in Chelsea, New York.
It has been a dream of hers to create a dinnerware collection since she got divorced in 2017, Sutton told The Algemeiner. However, those plans were derailed when six months post-divorce, her best friend and art assistant was killed in a car accident, in Sutton’s car, after leaving her birthday party. Sutton said the car accident “completely shifted my life, and this dream fell by the wayside” – until now.
Sutton launched her melamine dinnerware collection in December, and it features plates, bowls, placemats, and linen napkins in 10 artistic styles. The designs incorporate many elements for which Sutton is famous in her artwork, including floral patterns, colorful and vibrant butterflies, and rainbows. She told The Algemeiner that she believes rainbows represent beauty after a storm and are a metaphor for resilience and tenacity in overcoming challenges, especially the recent global increase in antisemitic incidents. Sutton has personally experienced antisemitism in the past 15 months — since the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — for being a proud Jewish Zionist, including the loss of many business partnerships and contracts.
“What I’ve learned time and time again is another value within Judaism — hishtadlut (putting in effort) and emunah (faith),” she added. “We have our obligation to put our best effort, but at the end of the day, God is in control. My reaction to all my lost contracts was to bring my dinnerware collection to life. Everything happens in the time that God decides, not in the time that we decide. My dinnerware collection truly is a representation of Jewish values — resilience, faith, family, and gratitude.”
“Another lesson I’ve learned since 10/7 is that as a community, Jews need to be united,” Sutton explained. “Considering all the lost business, I truly believe that we need to create a self-sustaining Jewish ecosystem within business, keeping parnasah (livelihood) within the tribe, so to speak. Upon bringing this collection to life, it was of utmost importance to me that all facets attached to the creation of this collection were Jewish — every single vendor and contractor, from my factory liaison, to my digital marketing team [and] 3PL (third-party logistics).”
Sutton’s Jewish faith is a big part of her life. She told The Algemeiner that she leans on God quite a lot and trusts him to help her get through tough times in her personal life and career. She now has the mindset that “challenges are opportunities,” she said. “I’m almost grateful for the antisemitism I’ve experienced because it has taught me valuable lessons, which is that we need to be united as a [Jewish] community [and] support one another.”
Elizabeth Sutton and her new dinnerware collection. Photo: Provided
Elizabeth Sutton Home. Photo: Provided
Sutton is not the only well-known name in her family. Her grandmother, Honey Rackman, was a founder of the Agunah International organization, and the artist’s great-grandfather was Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, a pioneer and leading figure in the Modern Orthodox movement in the US. He held many distinguished positions throughout his life, such as being president of the New York Board of Rabbis and the Rabbinical Council of America, and president and chancellor of Bar Ilan University. One of his biggest accomplishments was founding a religious divorce court in the late 1990s that granted annulments to agunot, which is the Hebrew term for Jewish women trapped in marriages to husbands who refuse to grant them religious divorces.
Sutton credits her grandmother for fostering a strong sense of Jewish culture and values in her life starting from an early age.
“As a child, I sat around my grandmother’s Shabbat and holiday tables every week, accompanied by my great-grandfather, where I was instilled with Jewish values — family, philanthropy, and the concept of hachnasat orchim (welcoming guests),” Sutton told The Algemeiner. “These memories are precisely what fostered in me a love for entertaining — cooking, tablescaping, and hosting my loved ones around the table … Nothing would thrill me more than to see Jewish families around the world celebrating moments and creating memories with their loved ones — whether Shabbat meals, holidays, or just a regular Tuesday — enjoying my recipes on my dishes.”
Sutton’s dinnerware collection is now available for purchase at local home decor stores and on the website for Elizabeth Sutton Home, after having a soft-launch at Bloomingdale’s in May 2023.
“It’s not just dinnerware; it embodies my values of family, love, and resilience,” she said. “My passion for cooking and hosting has culminated in a collection that transforms tables into a work of art.”
The post ‘Jews Need to Be United’: Artist Elizabeth Sutton Promotes Jewish Values With New Dinnerware Collection first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘F—k Him’: UN Special Rapporteur Blasts Netanyahu With Profane Social Media Post, Sparking Calls for Punishment
Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health in October 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the United Nations’ “special rapporteur on the right to health,” has come under fire for recently lambasting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a profane post on X/Twitter, expressing her discontent over the Jewish state’s military operations in Gaza.
“F—k him,” Mofokeng wrote last Sunday in response to a report that Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Force (IDF) not to begin the ceasefire in Gaza until the Hamas terrorist organization named the hostages it had agreed to release. Notably, the UN special rapporteur was responding to a news article from Al Jazeera, which receives funding from the government and has long been criticized for pushing an anti-Israel bias.
Israel insisted that Hamas violated the terms of the recently brokered ceasefire deal by refusing to submit the names of the three hostages to be released — Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher — 24 hours prior to their planned release.
“We will not move forward with the outline until we receive the list of hostages to be released, as agreed. Israel will not tolerate violations of the agreement,” Netanyahu said at the time. “The sole responsibility lies with Hamas.”
The dispute was later resolved and the hostages were released in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Warning: The social media post embedded below contains explicit language.
BREAKING: Top U.N. official deletes “F**k him” tweet about Israel’s leader. This comes despite Mofokeng’s expletive-filled tirade calling me an “evil scum” “white man” for having demanded that she be disciplined for her reckless and inappropriate conduct. https://t.co/ARhEj5l5mg https://t.co/EiIzsr728L pic.twitter.com/oIIvx5cTA1
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) January 23, 2025
Mofokeng’s post caught the attention of Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that monitors the UN. After Neuer called for Mofokeng to be punished for her posts, the special rapporteur went on a tirade, rebuking Neuer as an “evil man, a “bastard,” and “scum” in a string of posts.
The UN special rapporteur has a history of issuing condemnations of Israel on social media. In February 2024, for example, Mofokeng wrote “that Hamas are not terrorists is fact.” She argued that previous UN resolutions defended the “legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity [the] liberation from colonial domination, apartheid [and] foreign occupation by ALL means, INCLUDING armed struggle.”
Then earlier this month, Mofokeng seemingly compared the Palestinian experience to her plight as a black South African under apartheid, writing, “I will continue to fight like hell for Gaza, Sudan, Congo because someone once fought like hell for me.”
She has also explicitly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza multiple times.
In October 2024, Mofokeng wrote that she felt “rage and fury” regarding the supposed “horrific genocidal acts” occurring “in real time in Gaza without any result from the international community.”
Last month, she penned a letter to Pope Francis, asking him to speak on “the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
“I reiterate the call to end the genocide, and for you Pope Francis to take all measures to end this evil,” Mofokeng wrote.
Israeli officials have long accused the UN of maintaining a bias against the Jewish state. In 2023, the UN General Assembly condemned Israel twice as often as it did all other countries. Meanwhile, of all the country-specific resolutions passed by the UN Human Rights Council, nearly half have condemned Israel, a seemingly disproportionate focus on the lone democracy in the Middle East.
Weeks following Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the UN adopted a resolution calling for a “ceasefire” between Israel and the terrorist group. The UN failed to pass a measure condemning the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.
In June, the UN put Israel on its so-called “list of shame” of countries that kill children in armed conflict. Israel is considered to be the only democracy on the list.
During US Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who is President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as the next US ambassador to the UN, lambasted the “antisemitic rot” in the international body, vowing to restore “moral clarity” at the intergovernmental organization.
“If you look at the antisemitic rot within the United Nations, there are more resolutions targeting Israel than any other country, any other crisis combined,” Stefanik said.
The post ‘F—k Him’: UN Special Rapporteur Blasts Netanyahu With Profane Social Media Post, Sparking Calls for Punishment first appeared on Algemeiner.com.