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A Jewish expert on monuments on what Philly’s famous Rocky Balboa statue can teach us about memory
(JTA) — Paul Farber was shocked when he first watched “Rocky” and saw a Star of David on the grave of Rocky Balboa’s coach, Mickey Goldmill.
As a Jew and as the founder of the Philadelphia-based Monument Lab, which has explored collective memory through art installations across the country for over a decade, Farber was well positioned to think about the deeper meaning of that brief shot.
“Anytime I see a Jewish funeral in a film, there’s some kind of call to attention. And I always want to know what that means, especially for a Hollywood production, especially when it may not be branded as a Jewish story,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“We’re not there in a prolonged series of mourning, but in a split second, seeing a Jewish site of a memory is really fascinating,” he added.
That outlook lies behind Farber’s work as the host of the new NPR podcast “The Statue,” a deep dive into Philadelphia’s famed statue of Rocky Balboa, the fictional prizefighter at the center of “Rocky.” The series delves into what sports and society can convey about memory, and in his research, Farber discovered a few Jewish nuggets found in the film series — including the fact that Rocky’s love interest was originally supposed to be Jewish.
“They made an actual gravestone [for her character] and it’s in Philadelphia’s most famous cemetery, Laurel Hill. And you can go there and see this gravestone where a movie character is ‘buried,’” he said. “People leave offerings on the gravestone, including small pebbles as if it’s a Jewish site of memory.”
In an interview with JTA, Farber shared his inspiration for the series, how his Jewish upbringing informed his life’s work and the role statues — such as that of Jewish baseball legend Sandy Koufax — do, and should, play.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: To start off, I’d love to hear about how you first got interested in studying monuments.
Paul Farber: I’m really interested in the ways that, in cities, we innovate toward the future, and also come to terms with our past, and it happens often in the same exact places. That could be a statue, a street, a corner store. And so that’s a big part for me.
What really inspired this project is a conversation I had with my mother, quite a few years ago. My mother is a lifelong Philadelphian. Her parents were Jewish immigrants in South Philadelphia. And when I told her I was teaching a class at the University of Pennsylvania about Philly neighborhoods, she asked me if I was covering Rocky. When I said, “Oh, it’s not on the syllabus” — and I may have said it in a way that felt dismissive — she gave me this look that I think a lot of us know: “How could you.” So for her birthday, we watched “Rocky” and we went to see “Creed.” My grandfather went to South Philly High and was in the boxing club. He shared stories in our family about what it meant to have sport and culture and belonging go together in South Philly. I started to see that across generations, from long before “Rocky” to this moment now, almost 50 years after the release of the film, many people’s family stories could be channeled through this statue, including my own, and that was enough of a prompt to go dive in.
“Rocky” is obviously not a Jewish story, but there are some nuggets. There’s the funeral scene, and you mentioned something about Adrian almost being Jewish. I’m curious what you think about the little Jewish pieces you can pull out of this famous story, and what those mean to you as a Philly sports fan.
It blew me away that Rocky’s coach, Mick, passes away and the character Rocky goes to his funeral, and you see a Star of David. Anytime I see a Jewish funeral in a film, there’s some kind of call to attention. And I always want to know what that means, especially for a Hollywood production, especially when it may not be branded as a Jewish story. And it just opened up a whole set of questions for me that blurred between art and life, between the film series and the city of Philadelphia.
In episode two, we showcase this monumental art book that Sylvester Stallone [who played Rocky] created. There was this passage in it that just blew me away, about the first draft of “Rocky,” where he says, “As for Adrian, she was Jewish in the first draft.” And he got feedback and cut that character. We never hear about Mickey’s Judaism. We never hear about Rocky’s bond across culture. But the fact that the first scene in the “Rocky” series is in a place called Resurrection Gym — that is obvious Christian iconography — and to put Jewish characters in is really fascinating to me.
There is another famous grave that is involved in the series. The character Adrian eventually passes away, and like the statue, which was made as a bronze sculpture, for the “Rocky” film series they made an actual gravestone and it’s in Philadelphia’s most famous cemetery, Laurel Hill. And you can go there and see this gravestone where a movie character is “buried.” People leave offerings on the gravestone, including small pebbles as if it’s a Jewish site of memory.
People talk about representation on screen, and I’m not sure a Jewish funeral necessarily does that, but I would imagine for some people, seeing Rocky Balboa say the “Mourner’s Kaddish“ was maybe their first interaction with Judaism in some way. What do you make of that?
Every shot is deliberate. And it’s actually that kind of attitude and outlook that created the Rocky statue, because Sylvester Stallone was the director of that film, and they could have made a styrofoam version or a temporary one, but they spent over a year making a bronze version so that when the camera faced it, it would make contact. I think very similarly, this is part of the artistry of Stallone that plays out in our podcast series. We’re not with him when he sits shiva. We’re not there in a prolonged series of mourning, but in a split second, seeing a Jewish site of a memory is really fascinating. And to see the coach Mickey, to have his Wikipedia page say he’s Jewish, all that we have is mourning.
I think about how for immigrant Jewish communities, there are gaps in our narratives. Throughout the series, and one of the reasons I wanted to share my perspective as a queer Jewish person who grew up loving sports in Philly, I’ve been informed by my own family’s history, and what we’re able to recall and what gaps there are. And I see that being echoed for so many people in the Rocky story.
It’s clearly a very personal story for you. Why did you think it was important to start the podcast with your own identity, and to include your Jewish mother?
I think it’s important that when we talk about sites of memory, we understand that there are shared and collective ways that we bring the past forward, and there are others that are incredibly personal. My hope was to find, in this case, to spotlight, a significant site of memory in the city, but ask questions about it. And I think it was important to note what position I would take, because I don’t believe there’s one story to the Rocky statue. To tell a biography of a statue, you actually have to tell it of the people who make meaning from it. So in the series, we do a lot of work where we want to know other people’s stories and backgrounds, whether they are refugees from Afghanistan, or community organizers in Kensington [a neighborhood of Philadelphia]. My hope was by positioning this from my perspective, almost as a memoir in a way, that it opened up space for others to have their experiences be valued and made meaning of.
The official artwork for Farber’s podcast. (Courtesy)
Both with the podcast and in your work with the Monument Lab, how do you feel that your Jewish identity informs what you do? Do you see overlap between your Jewish values and the values you work on in your organization?
I absolutely think so. I grew up in a Jewish community in Philadelphia, and tikkun olam was a constant refrain. The work of tikkun olam meant a worldview that necessitated building coalitions and understanding across divides, to not diminish or under-emphasize them, but to appreciate how we work in solidarity, whether that’s around racial justice, gender justice, in various struggles. I am a co-founder and director of an organization that focuses on memory, and that I really get from the stories of growing up in a Jewish household, in a Jewish community, where memory lived in different ways. We were always aware of the stories of trauma and loss, as well as reconciliation and transformation, and how you work with the gaps that you have, and you listen, and you learn and you carry the story with you. Because that is the way to bond generations. Jewish memory really grounds what I do, and I seek to use it as a tool to learn more and to feed connection across divides.
Rocky takes on this almost mythical, godlike status, and his statue in Philadelphia is a bit of a pilgrimage site. Do you see any tension there as a Jew, given the prohibition against idol worship?
I think about the importance of memory, against forces of violence and erasure. I also understand that, in a world that is full of pain and difficulty and loss, we seek places to release that. And so I understand the pull to monuments. What I would like to see, and what we try to do through this series, “The Statue,” and also with the work of Monument Lab, is to look on and off the pedestal, and really think about how history lives with us. As we say in the series and other places, history doesn’t live inside of statues, it lives with people who steward them, who create other kinds of sites of memory, who are vigilant in their modes of commemoration. What I try to do in this work is understand the ambivalence around monuments, the pull to try to remember and be enduring through time, and just that constant reminder that whenever you try to freeze the past, or freeze an image of power, you cut out the potential to find connection and empowerment, and thus forms of survival.
In sports, there are so many ways to honor people, especially different ways that, like a statue, take on the idea of permanence. When Bill Russell died, the NBA retired his number 6 across the league. On Jackie Robinson Day, every April 15, the whole MLB honors Jackie Robinson by wearing his uniform number. But statues just have a different level of oomph. Sandy Koufax has a new statue in Los Angeles that was unveiled last year; Hank Greenberg has one. What do you think it should take for an athlete to reach that status?
The pinnacle in sports is to have a statue dedicated to you outside of the stadium. And I do believe the cultures of social media have amplified that, because we grew up with the story of Sandy Koufax not pitching in the World Series during the High Holy Days, and that wasn’t because we learned it from a statue or a plaque. We learned it because it was carried forward and put into different forms of remembering and recalling its importance. I went to several Maccabi Games in the U.S. — I used to be a sprinter. And the culture of memory and sport, they were one in the same.
In professional sports, the pinnacle is the statue, but I think you brought up other really important ways of remembering that operate in non-statue forms that feel like they are living memorials. The idea of retiring someone’s number, and keeping their number up, is a way to acknowledge, in this really public of all public spaces, an intimacy and a care, and especially when an athlete passes away, how that transcends the lines of city geography. Jackie Robinson Day is something that did not occur immediately after Jackie Robinson was the first Black player to play in the major leagues, but was a product of a later moment when people around Major League Baseball sought to activate his memory. So yes, a statue outside of a stadium is like a particular kind of professional accolade. But the other forms are really meaningful.
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The Black Jewish experience, and Black-Jewish relations, take center stage on Fifth Avenue
The civil rights movement represented a kind of pax romana in Black–Jewish relations — symbolized most enduringly by the image of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching beside Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery.
While many Jewish and Black Americans recall that era with a sense of wistful nostalgia, the relationship has become increasingly strained amid debates over racial justice, Israel and Palestinians.
This week, Temple Emanu-El on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, one of the country’s most prominent Reform synagogues, is launching a new five-year effort as a contribution toward rebuilding those ties while also foregrounding Black Jews.
Shared Histories, Shared Futures: The Arielle Patrick & Aaron Goldstein Initiative on Black-Jewish Relations promises to bring scholars, activists, and religious leaders to the synagogue for a series of conversations on race, antisemitism and coalition-building. Its first event, set for May 29, will take place during a Friday night service.
“This is not a performance or a gimmick,” said Patrick, the Chief Communications Officer at Ariel Investments, a global investment firm, who endowed the initiative alongside her husband Goldstein. “This is intentionally not during Black History Month, it’s intentionally not on MLK Day. It’s embedded in how we’d like people to think about creating a better society for our children and grandchildren.”
A frayed bond
Patrick, who is a Black Jew, said part of the inspiration behind the initiative came from her sense that the relationship between the two communities is not what it once was.
“I think a lot of Jews felt that their Black brothers and sisters were silent after Oct. 7, and perhaps jumped into the conversation about Palestine versus Israel without having the full context,” she said. “And then I also think that for a long time, the Black community has felt almost deserted by the fact that Jews were enabled to be upwardly mobile from the communities we once lived in and shared because of assimilation.”
In recent years, debates over Israel have fractured many progressive spaces, leaving some left-wing Jews who refused to disavow Israel feeling isolated from circles they once felt a sense of belonging to. Segments of the Black Lives Matter movement have explicitly linked racial justice in America to the cause for Palestinian liberation, and some of its chapters have even endorsed militant resistance to that end.
At the same time, rising antisemitism in the aftermath of Oct. 7 has shifted how some Jewish organizations engage with social justice work. The Anti-Defamation League, which for years invested in broader civil rights and democracy initiatives, pivoted from much of that programming to focus its resources on the rise in antisemitism.
Fostering the relationship is also complicated by divisions within both communities themselves. “When we think about Black-Jewish relations, we have a tendency to assume that everyone who is Black thinks one way and everyone who is Jewish thinks one way,” said Dr. Susannah Heschel, the head of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth and the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. “Of course, there’s enormous diversity of all kinds: political, cultural, religious,” she added.
Relations in New York City reached a low point in 1991 after a Hasidic driver struck and killed a Black child in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, setting off days of unrest that left a Jewish student fatally stabbed and two communities grieving.
Though strain has reemerged in recent years, particularly during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and the war in Gaza, organizations have emerged during that same period seeking to rekindle Black-Jewish dialogue.
“I think a lot of Jews are inspired by the civil rights era, by the fact that so many Jews participated,” said Heschel. “I know that photograph of my father marching in Selma is very important to a lot of people.”
She considers that photo a spur to new generations to continue the work. “The question is, what do you do with a photograph like that?” she asked. “Do you say, ‘Isn’t that great, what we did,’ in the past tense? Or do you take it as a challenge?”
Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism launched a partnership with Hillel and UNCF in 2024 to host unity dinners bringing together Jewish students and students at historically Black colleges and universities.
One might recall the viral Super Bowl ad, sponsored by Kraft’s Blue Square Initiative, where a Jewish boy is taunted by his classmates for being Jewish before his Black classmate fearlessly comes to his aid. The two boys walk off together in an idyllic (and, as critics have noted, somewhat antiquated) display of Black-Jewish solidarity.
Other groups, including Rekindle and CNN commentator Van Jones’ Exodus Leadership Forum, have launched programs aimed at fostering conversations between Black, Jewish, and Black-Jewish leaders. And this month, in a significant development, a National Convening on the Black-Jewish Alliance will be hosted in Miami, bringing together representatives from 75 organizations focused on cultivating the relationship.
A recent PBS series, Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History, which came out in February also shed a light on the relationship, leaving many hoping to engage in the present — though also received pushback for not engaging seriously with the perspectives of Black Jews.
Centering Black Jews
Rabbi Joshua Davidson, the senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, grew up in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement and came to deeply value the stories of Black and Jewish communities working together.
“I knew that ultimately it would become an important part of my rabbinate too,” he said.
He says has been engaged in intercultural work for years, cultivating friendships with faith leaders across New York City, including at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn.
“One doesn’t enter into a relationship with the expectation that you’re going to get something in return,” Davidson said. “There’s a difference between allyship and friendship. The way I approach this is I want to establish friendships.”
Davidson said those relationships have allowed him to stand together with clergy members from those communities during difficult moments. Following the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, for example, he participated in a solidarity service at Abyssinian Baptist Church.
“There are times when a crisis hits, and you need allies, and so you reach out. You have no choice. But if you’ve been fortunate enough to be able to build the friendships when things were calm, you’re in a much better position,” he added, referring to the sense of abandonment many Jews felt after Oct. 7.
“I know around the country there’s been a great deal of frustration that expectations of one community showing up for another during moments of distress weren’t met. I can only say that my own experience has been different,” he said. “When something has happened to the Jewish community, I get the phone call from colleagues of other faith communities, and certainly among the leadership of the Black community in the city.”
The initiative also seeks to foreground Black Jews themselves, whose experiences are often absent from conversations about Black-Jewish relations.
“We have a tendency, all of us, to talk about Black–Jewish relations as if all Jews are white and all Black people are not Jewish,” Heschel said. “It’s gradually dawning on Jews that we have Black Jews in our community.” Estimates suggest Black Jews make up roughly 1% to 2 % of American Jews.
Patrick said she has often encountered those assumptions firsthand.
“When I go to synagogue or when I’m in a social setting, the first thing a person asks me is, ‘Did you convert?’” she recounted. “That’s not a normal question to ask anyone.”
According to a 2021 study by the Jews of Color Initiative, 80% of respondents who identified as Jews of color said they had experienced discrimination in Jewish settings. Another survey, conducted by the Black Jewish Liberation Collective, found that of 104 Black Jewish respondents, 62% reported feeling increased marginalization in Jewish spaces after Oct. 7.
Davidson hopes that bringing Black Jews to the fore, like Rabbi Tamar Manasseh — a Chicago-based activist and community leader known for her work combating gun violence, who will be Temple Emanu-El’s first speaker in the initiative — will encourage more Jews of color to feel at home in the congregation.
“If you don’t acknowledge that there are Jews of color, and if you don’t find opportunities for them to be front and center, then you’re less likely to actually have that segment of the Jewish community join you,” he said.
Temple Emanu-El has committed to the initiative for at least five years — a timeline Patrick said was intentional.
“I knew that just having one fun lecture was not going to do anything,” she said. “It has to be a sustained commitment.”
Still, she hopes the work will continue long beyond that.
“In my perfect world,” she said, “I’m 95 and still doing this.”
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A Yiddish lecture in Munich by literature scholar Nathan Cohen
דעם 17טן יוני וועט נתן כּהן, אַן אָנגעזעענער פֿאָרשער פֿון דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור בײַם בר־אילן אוניווערסיטעט, האַלטן אַ רעפֿעראַט אויף ייִדיש בײַם אוניווערסיטעט אויפֿן נאָמען פֿון לודוויג מאַקסימיליאַן אין מינכן, דײַטשלאַנד.
כּהן וועט רעדן וועגן דער געשיכטע פֿון דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור און די וועגן און אָפּוועגן פֿון איר אַנטוויקלונג אויף די זײַטן פֿון דער ייִדישער פּרעסע, ווי אויך וועגן דעם פֿענאָמען פֿון דער שונד־ליטעראַטור.
די „שלום־עליכם לעקציע“, ווי מע רופֿט אָט די אונטערנעמונג, איז אַ יערלעכער רעפֿערעט אויף ייִדיש אין אָנדענק פֿון עוויטאַ וויעצקי, ז״ל, וואָס האָט די ערשטע געהאַט דעם שיינעם אײַנפֿאַל מיט 15 יאָר צוריק. „זי האָט אַרויסגעפֿירט ייִדיש פֿון די קליינע דײַטשישע אוניווערסיטעט־קלאַסן און פֿאַרבעטן אַ ברייטן עולם צו הערן אַ ייִדיש וואָרט – און דווקא אין אַקאַדעמישן פֿאָרמאַט,“ האָט דערקלערט דאַשע וואַכרושאָווע, אַ ייִדיש־פֿאָרשערין בײַם אוניווערסיטעט.
יעדעס יאָר האַלט אַ היסטאָריקער, שפּראַך־וויסנשאַפֿטלער, ליטעראַטור־פֿאָרשער אָדער שרײַבער אַ רעפֿעראַט פֿאַרן ברייטן מינכנער עולם אין גאַנצן אויף ייִדיש. „אין עולם זיצן אי ייִדיש־קענער אי אַזעלכע וואָס ווייסן גאָר ווייניק וועגן דער שפּראַך, אָבער האָבן דעם מוט זיך אײַנצוהערן און זיך לאָזן טראָגן פֿונעם ייִדישן וואָרט, וויסנדיק אַז זיי ריזיקירן ניט צו פֿאַרשטיין דעם מיין אָדער צו פֿאַרשטיין אים פֿאַלש,“ האָט וואַכרושאָווע געזאָגט.
פֿאַראינטערעסירטע קענען בײַזײַן די לעקציע אָדער אויפֿן אָרט אין מינכן, אָדער דורך דער אינטערנעץ. כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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Hundreds of Jewish leaders call on Israeli ambassador to apologize for attack on J Street
(JTA) — More than 500 rabbis, cantors and Jewish communal leaders have signed onto a letter calling on Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, to rescind and apologize for remarks describing J Street as a “cancer within the Jewish community.”
The letter, which J Street shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday, accused Leiter, a Netanyahu appointee and former settler leader, of using language that “dehumanizes fellow Jews” during his remarks in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
J Street is the leading liberal pro-Israel lobby, and has increasingly staked out positions that have departed from other mainstream pro-Israel groups. Last month, the group announced its opposition to continued U.S. military aid to Israel, which Leiter decried in his remarks.
The signatories wrote that while Judaism embraces vigorous debate, disagreements must be conducted with “humanity, humility and respect for the dignity of every Jew.”
“At this painful and polarized moment in Jewish life, leaders on both sides of the ocean bear a heightened responsibility to lower the flames rather than fan them further,” the letter read. “We therefore call on you to retract your remarks and issue a public apology to the many American Jews, rabbis, cantors and communal leaders who have been hurt by them.”
Among the signatories were New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, former U.S. ambassadors to Israel Daniel Kurtzer and Tom Nides, National Council of Jewish Women CEO Jody Rabhan, Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs and Rabbi David Saperstein, the director emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami told JTA that his initial reaction to Leiter’s comments was “simply dismay on behalf of Israel and on behalf of the Jewish community.”
“It’s a shame, because Israel, right now, needs all the friends it can get, and it really needs diplomats who seek to open doors and not slam them in people’s faces,” Ben-Ami said.
The Israeli Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment from JTA.
The comments from Leiter follow a long history of criticism of the lobby from pro-Israel officials. In 2017, former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman called the group “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jews who aided the Nazis during WWII.
While Ben-Ami said that the latest attack was “not new,” he felt spurred to craft a communal rebuke of Leiter’s rhetoric because he felt it was “breaking” not just the US-Israel relationship, but the relationship between the “American Jewish community and the Israeli Jewish community.”
“Within 24 hours we had hundreds and hundreds of people, and I think it just shows what a raw nerve Ambassador Leiter has touched here, and just what a big mistake it is for the Israeli government to write off the majority of Jewish Americans who are deeply critical of the government but supportive of the state and the people,” Ben-Ami said of the number of signatories.
While Ben-Ami said that J Street had long been invited to meet with former Israeli ambassadors, he claimed that since Leiter arrived, the group had been “blacklisted by the Embassy, and there’s been no engagement whatsoever.”
The letter comes as J Street has also faced scrutiny from across the political aisle, with the Zionist Organization of America calling for Hillels, Jewish Community Relations Councils and federations to cease relations with the group, while the student government of Sarah Lawrence College rejected an application to form a chapter of the group on its campus.
“There’s going to be people to our left who are intolerant and you know engage in similar tactics to folks on the right who are intolerant and try to shut out those they disagree with, and that is just as disturbing,” Ben-Ami said.
Looking ahead, Ben-Ami said that he hoped the letter would serve as a reminder that Jewish leaders need to make room for ideological differences rather than treat dissent as disloyalty.
“The message more broadly here is, we need to embrace the diversity of opinion,” Ben-Ami said. “We need to embrace our disagreements and recognize that that is indeed part of Jewish tradition.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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