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A Jewish producer of ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ sees his family history in the Oscar-nominated Netflix film
(JTA) — The film producer Daniel Dreifuss has only one surviving photo of a distant relative: his grandfather’s cousin, who fought for Germany in World War I and died in combat two days before the war’s end.
He has a few more photos of his grandfather, who also wore the German uniform in WWI — only to be rounded up by the Nazis two decades later during Kristallnacht and thrown into a concentration camp, as even the Jews who had fought for their country were not safe from its campaign of race extermination.
Dreifuss, who was raised in Brazil after his surviving ancestors fled the war to Uruguay, held up these weathered black-and-white photos to his Zoom camera as he spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his home in Los Angeles. One shows his grandfather’s cousin in his military uniform, the other shows his grandparents posing together, between the wars.
“Twenty years later, your country, that you just gave your health for and your cousin for and your family for, sends you to a camp,” he said. “It’s a lot of trauma to have to go through in one lifetime.”
These family stories echoed through Dreifuss’ mind when he first read the script for a proposed modern take on “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the classic 1928 novel about the German army’s hellish experiences during World War I. Nearly a century later, author Erich Maria Remarque’s descriptions of trench warfare and of the utter lack of heroism, valor or patriotism felt by its soldier protagonists resonated with Dreifuss.
“I said, ‘I know these people,’” he recalled. “Not because they are some distant relatives that I’ve heard of, but because I am the grandson of one of those kids who were in the film.”
Dreifuss’ parents met at a Jewish youth group in Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s. “My father was my mother’s madrich,” he recalled, using the Hebrew word for a youth group counselor. After they were later married, they moved to Israel partially to avoid Brazil’s military dictatorship and became left-wing political activists. They left Israel just before the Yom Kippur War and relocated to Scotland, where Dreifuss was born, before returning to Brazil to raise him.
Dreifuss had his bar mitzvah in the city of Belo Horizonte before later moving to Rio, which has a much larger Jewish community. “My family was never at all religious, but culturally Jewish,” he said, recalling Passover celebrations and gefilte fish recipes. He did not have many Jewish friends growing up, but his Brazilian friends were interested in Judaism and would attend his family’s Jewish events.
Daniel Dreifuss, a producer of Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” holds up a photo of his grandfather Max Dreifuss from 1919, recovering from his German military service in WWI. Max was sent to a concentration camp once the Nazis took power. (Courtesy of Daniel Dreifuss)
This global upbringing is reflected in Dreifuss’ interest in international film. It took a decade for him to mount his remake of “All Quiet,” which was eventually set up with a German production company and released by Netflix this past fall amid another endless military conflict in Europe. No one, he said, wanted to fund a resolutely anti-war film that refused to glorify its combatants, a film that was “never a hero’s journey, not the story of someone who came, you know, beat 1,000 people with their bare hands, triumphs and looks down on top of a hill at the end with some sweeping score.”
But that journey has been validated by the film’s impressive Oscar total, which surprised industry observers. At the nomination ceremony last month, “All Quiet” received nine total nods, the second most of any film this year, including for best picture — which the novel’s original 1930 Hollywood adaptation, directed by Jewish filmmaker Lewis Milestone, won. (This year’s Academy Awards will be held March 12.)
Considering the Nazis had once led a campaign of book burning against the source material and terrorized German movie theaters that showed the original movie adaptation, accusing it of being a “Judenfilm,” Dreifuss sees the new film’s success as a historical victory, too. “I love that my name will be associated with a story that was deemed degenerate by that regime,” he said.
When he was first presented with an early draft of the new “All Quiet” script, in 2013, Dreifuss was coming off of the success of another international historical film he had produced. “No,” a 1980s-set Chilean political drama, starred Gael Garcia Bernal as an ad executive tasked with convincing his country to vote the dictator Augusto Pinochet out of office. The film netted Chile’s first-ever Oscar nomination for international feature film, although Dreifuss himself is not Chilean.
In researching “No,” Dreifuss said, the film’s team had trouble finding Chileans who would admit to having cast their real-life vote in Pinochet’s favor — even though 40% of the population did so. “We couldn’t find one single person who supported him,” he recalled. “At some point, years later, no one wanted to say, ‘I supported it, I voted, I was on that side.’” He saw a parallel to the history of geopolitics in the run-up to WWII, when many Western countries — including his family’s adopted homeland of Brazil — were initially sympathetic to the Nazis.
When Hollywood studios turned down the proposed remake of “All Quiet,” forcing Dreifuss to turn to European financing, he saw an opportunity to mount the first-ever German adaptation of the property, which would allow the film to open up a “historical perspective” on how the aftermath of WWI led to the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.
German filmmaker Edward Berger, who also helmed several episodes of the espionage miniseries “Deutschland 83,” stepped into the director’s chair, and he also has a co-writing credit. German star Daniel Brühl, who has played many historical villains to the Jewish people in films ranging from “7 Days in Entebbe” to “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” took a key supporting role as the lead negotiator for the armistice agreements — the sole figure in the movie trying to find a peaceful resolution for his country. (The historical figure Brühl portrays, Matthias Erzberger, was vilified as a traitor by the German right and assassinated in 1921 by antisemitic nationalist radicals who were precursors to the Nazis.)
Though there are no explicitly Jewish characters in the film, Dreifuss believes it still speaks to the fate that would soon await Europe’s Jews.
“We know what followed in the decade in Germany,” he said. “So we could bring that to the film in subtle ways.”
He pointed to the armistice plotline that foreshadows how the Treaty of Versailles left Germany in a deeply disadvantaged position, creating an opportunity for Hitler’s brand of national populism. There are also scenes in which thoughtless German generals, driven by nationalistic fervor and wounded pride, send entire squadrons to their deaths mere minutes before the armistice is set to take effect. In one sequence, the film’s lead, the soldier Paul (Felix Kammerer), steals a goose from a French farming family of non-combatants and says: “It’s a hatred of the other, of not understanding, of being raised to have an enemy.”
Dreifuss is dipping into a different chapter of world Jewish history with his next project: a Showtime miniseries produced with the co-creators of the Israeli Netflix series “Fauda” that explores CIA operations in the Middle East and is partially set during the Lebanon War in which Israel had a heavy, and oft-criticized, military presence. The series will air this summer.
He has also been pitched a host of WWI and WWII-related projects in the wake of the success of “All Quiet.” But, he joked, “I would love for people to not only think of me as the war guy, or as the dictator guy.”
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The post A Jewish producer of ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ sees his family history in the Oscar-nominated Netflix film appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Investing in Early Career Nonprofit Professionals Strengthens the Entire Jewish Community
Demonstrators at pro-Israel rally in Hamburg, Germany. Photo: Screenshot
The Jewish community and the nonprofit organizations that sustain it are facing major challenges today, including rising antisemitism and deep polarization around Israel. These are exacerbating already high rates of burnout and turnover among those who work at Jewish nonprofits, especially early-career professionals.
According to a 2025 Leading Edge report on the “state of Jewish nonprofit talent,” only half of employees under age 30 expect to remain at their organization two years from now. This poses a serious threat to the sector’s talent pipeline and raises an urgent question: How can Jewish organizations, foundational for communities and Jewish life, keep early-career professionals passionate and engaged for the long-run?
Research from M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education’s recent Hope Study highlights two factors linked to sustained engagement among Jewish communal professionals: work energy, defined as feeling energized by one’s work, and Jewish belonging, a meaningful connection to the Jewish people and community. Professionals who experience both are more likely to remain in the field over time. For organizations focused on retention, cultivating these conditions early in a professional’s career should be a strategic priority.
Professional development (PD) has long been one of the primary tools that organizations use to build a sense of belonging and purpose among staff. However, traditional models often reserve this type of investment for mid-career or senior staff who have already demonstrated staying power. If a substantial portion of young professionals leave Jewish nonprofits within their first two years, waiting until mid-career to invest does not make sense.
Instead, we advocate for Jewish nonprofits to invest in early-career PD, starting from the onboarding process. Alongside tangible skill-building, PD should also draw on Jewish values and learning to help professionals think through the real responsibilities and tensions of communal work. When colleagues explore these questions together, they deepen their connection to the mission and build peer relationships that support them in their roles.
Over time, we believe that PD rooted in both tangible skill-building and Jewish purpose will create internal leadership pipelines for people who are actually invested in the community’s future. It strengthens organizational continuity, reduces turnover costs, and ultimately benefits the Jewish communities these institutions exist to serve. To realize these gains, however, organizations must approach early-career development intentionally.
Professional Development Begins With Onboarding
Professional development should begin on day one. Organizations have an opportunity to equip new employees during their first year with foundational skills in navigating the workplace, teamwork, and sector knowledge. This includes engagement with Jewish texts and ideas that offer language for working through tensions that arise in daily workplace dynamics as well as in broader communal conversations, including Israel and antisemitism. Understanding the language, history, and structure of the field strengthens an employee’s connection to mission and purpose, and helps them succeed, all fostering retention.
This is particularly important in a workforce where 38 percent of employees are not Jewish. Thoughtful onboarding helps ensure that talented professionals are not left to navigate cultural norms or communal rhythms on their own and increase belonging. New early career PD programs, including M²’s Aleh Summit and Leading Edge’s Onboarding Intensive, are responding to these needs by integrating Jewish learning into PD and making what is often implicit, explicit.
Articulate a Clear Growth Trajectory
Early-career professionals benefit from clear direction from upper management. Organizations should encourage supervisors to outline a six-to-twelve-month growth arc and identify the skills, responsibilities, and capacities the employee is expected to develop and ultimately own in that time. This may include naming particular leadership competencies or framing stretch assignments as deliberate developmental steps. Professional growth in Jewish nonprofits should also focus on ways to explore and deepen employees’ understanding of the Jewish values and organizational norms that drive the organization. This strengthens long-term commitment to service and can contribute to motivation at work.
Setting measurable goals also helps with retention. Research shows that employees who feel they are making progress, engaging in challenging work, and understand how their role contributes to organizational goals are significantly more likely to intend to stay.
Build an Implementation Plan
Professional development programs often focus on introducing new ideas and skills. However, without structured follow-through, what participants learn rarely makes it into their day-to-day work. Organizations can change that by encouraging supervisors to work with returning program participants to identify two or three concrete practices to integrate into their daily routine. A well-executed plan should anticipate obstacles and clarify what support will be needed to sustain and deepen the new practices.
This kind of intentional follow-through can be a game changer in the “engagement crater,” a period, often two to five years into a role, when initial enthusiasm can decline before stabilizing. Without continued growth and reinforcement, early-career professionals may experience that dip more acutely. But attention to growth and progress by both the employees and their managers can help avoid this decline.
For the employee, this practice strengthens competence and confidence. For the organization, it reduces the likelihood that initial enthusiasm dissipates.
Show Genuine Interest in Employee Growth
Managing early-career professionals requires ongoing communication. When organizations encourage supervisors to invest in these conversations, they can learn what motivates an employee and how to help them individually succeed. At the same time, a strong supervisor will affirm specific strengths they have observed, both before and after a professional development experience, and help the employee see their growth as part of a cohesive trajectory.
Opening a conversation about what early career professionals need, how they work best, and what support would enable them to thrive responds to patterns increasingly seen among Gen Z employees. They want clarity, feedback, and meaningful partnership at work. When managers co-create the work environment in this way, employees are more likely to feel heard and valued. These are the conditions that build and strengthen long-term retention.
A Long-Term Investment in Jewish Communal Leadership
In a sector where people are the primary asset, cultivating emerging professionals must become a strategic priority. Many early-career employees initially demonstrate strong alignment with mission and purpose. The question is whether organizations will maintain that alignment over time.
Sustaining professional commitment requires consistent attention. Early-career development should include an arc with multiple touchpoints, beginning with structured onboarding and continuing through the next several years as responsibilities deepen. The foundation built in the first months supports later growth.
In summary, when Jewish nonprofits invest early and consistently in their staff, professionals are equipped to develop confidence and deepen their understanding of the community they serve. Over time, this will foster pride in working on behalf of the Jewish community and encourage long term commitment to the field.
Kiva Rabinsky is the Deputy CEO and Chief Program Officer at M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education. He holds an MPA in Nonprofit Management and an undergraduate degree in Education and Archeology.
Dana Childress is a Vice President, Program at Leading Edge. She focuses on programming designed to strengthen workplaces so all employees can thrive. She is based in Washington, DC.
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JD Vance praises Tucker Carlson-Mike Huckabee interview as ‘a really good conversation’
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance has weighed in on the Tucker Carlson-Mike Huckabee interview that has ignited widespread antisemitism allegations as well as a diplomatic row with Arab states, calling it “a really good conversation that’s going to be necessary for the right.”
Vance made the comments to the Washington Post, which published them Friday morning. He said he had not seen the entire interview, which was more than two hours long, but had viewed “clips here and there.”
Vance is a longtime ally of Carlson, a leading far-right figure who has stirred a rift among conservatives by platforming antisemites, at times promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories himself and increasingly campaigning against Israel. (Carlson says he is not antisemitic.)
Vance’s refusal to criticize Carlson or seek to end the rift has increasingly alarmed Jewish conservatives. To the Washington Post, he reiterated what he said before when asked about Carlson and the antisemitism rift — that he believes the Republican Party should be an open marketplace of ideas.
He said he was pleased that the right has stoked “a real exchange of ideas,” even when it includes “the people that I find annoying on our side,” whom he did not specify. That exchange, he said, was also essential for electoral success.
“If you think of the Trump coalition in 2024 — and the way that I put it is, you had Joe Rogan, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and JD Vance and a coalition of people — but to do that, you have to be willing to tolerate debate and disagreement,” Vance said. “And I just think that it’s a good thing.”
Vance is seen as likely to run for president in 2028.
The post JD Vance praises Tucker Carlson-Mike Huckabee interview as ‘a really good conversation’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Amid Iran tensions, Huckabee tells US embassy staff in Israel they should leave ‘TODAY’ if they wish
(JTA) — Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has told U.S. government employees and their families that they may leave the country and should do so expediently, amid mounting signs of a possible U.S. attack on Iran.
Huckabee emailed embassy staff on Friday morning saying that if they want to leave, they should do so “TODAY,” according to a letter first reported by The New York Times. He noted that commercial flights could become scarce and urged them to accept passage to any country before returning to Washington, D.C.
“There is no need to panic, but for those desiring to leave, it’s important to make plans to depart sooner rather than later,” he wrote.
The letter comes a day after U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva ended without public breakthroughs. Iranian officials, as well as the Omani mediators, said additional conversations were planned for next week; the United States did not comment. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kusher, two Jewish advisors to President Donald Trump who successfully brokered a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war last year, are leading the U.S. delegation.
Trump has been threatening to attack Iran for weeks over its nuclear program and has built up U.S. military forces in the Middle East to levels not seen in decades. In recent days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance have both said military intervention could be needed while saying the president continued to prefer diplomacy.
Vance’s comments were particularly notable because he typically opposes U.S. intervention overseas. He told the Washington Post in comments published Friday morning that there was “no chance” that the United States would get involved in an extended Middle East campaign.
Iran has said it would consider Israel a valid target in the event of a U.S. attack. Last year, Iranian missiles killed more than two dozen people in Israel during a 12-day war initiated by Israeli strikes on Iran’s military program. Now, Israelis have been living in limbo for weeks while waiting to learn whether a new war, expected to be more destructive, will begin.
In the past, when expecting Iranian retaliation, the embassy has warned staff against leaving population centers in Israel. Now, the Department of State has updated its Jerusalem embassy website to reflect “the authorized departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel and family members of U.S. government personnel to leave Israel,” setting a status that means flights will be paid for by the U.S. government.
While El Al, Israel’s national carrier, does not fly during Shabbat, other airlines typically do run some flights to and from Ben Gurion Airport on Friday nights and Saturdays. Many of those are budget European airlines that have only recently resumed flying to Israel after last year’s Iran war; some airlines, including KLM, have already suspended Israel flights in anticipation of another conflict.
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