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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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Christianity won in the midterm elections — but not Christian nationalism
The midterms saw the election of many new Jewish congressional representatives — Brad Lander in New York, Daniel Biss in Illinois, Scott Wiener in California, Zach Dembo in Kentucky. But another group was surprisingly well-represented in the Democratic wins: Christian pastors.
For decades, Christian clergy have usually been associated with the Republican party, thanks to evangelical groups like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. They have rallied Evangelical support for politicians around culture war issues like opposing abortion rights and gay marriage, and white Evangelicals have been one of the defining voting blocs for Republicans ever since.
In 2024, fundamentalist evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Trump, and they have been influential members of his cabinet and advisory team. Paula White-Cain, a charismatic Christian, is Trump’s personal faith adviser. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a member of an ultra-conservative denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches founded and led by Doug Wilson, a pastor who has said women should not have the right to vote and that slavery was good; Hegseth has instituted prayer services at the Pentagon, something once considered a violation of the separation of church and state, and he and his preferred preachers often promote Christian nationalism in the services.
But in the 2026 midterms, the pastors and seminarians who won their races were overwhelmingly Democrats. And they were not Evangelical — they were mainline Protestants.
This includes James Talarico, a seminarian currently enrolled in the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, who defeated Ken Paxton for the Texas Senate seat; Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist minister who became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas since 1932; and Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott, who won her House race in Iowa.
The shift in American Christianity that these wins represent, of mainline Protestantism over fundamentalist evangelicalism, may sound esoteric — both groups are, technically, Protestant, after all. And it can get confusing; Garriott’s mainline Protestant denomination is called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
But the difference between the two Christian movements is essential to understanding the appetite for, and power of, Christian nationalism in the U.S., and represents Americans’ changing relationship to Jews and Israel.
What is mainline Protestantism?
The term mainline — or, sometimes, oldline — Protestant emerged in the early 20th century, during a debate between an emergent fundamentalist church movement and more modernist denominations. It referred to a historical group of churches that were influential in earlier American history, known as the Seven Sisters of American Protestantism.
But more colloquially, the term refers to a broader set of churches that share a theologically liberal style of scriptural interpretation, a focus on ecumenism — or acceptance and understanding among different Christian movements — and, usually, a progressive-leaning politics focused on social justice.
While mainline Protestants do not vote as a liberal bloc, the theology is less focused on culture war issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights; instead, they center the Social Gospel — a form of theology oriented toward loving thy neighbor and serving the poor. Most mainline churches allow women to be pastors and are accepting of LGBTQ+ members.
For much of American history, these churches were also the mainstream of American Christianity; they were the churches associated with WASPs and with wealthy, influential families like the Rockefellers. In 1970, mainline denominations accounted for 30% of Americans.
But in the 1970s, with the rise of major political evangelical organizations and leaders like Jerry Falwell, the balance of power shifted, and conservative, fundamentalist churches began to gain power. By 2024, only 14% of Americans identified as mainline Protestants according to the Pew Research Center; 23% identified as evangelical.
But judging by the midterms, mainline Protestant progressivism might be making a comeback.
Mainline Protestantism squares off against MAGA fundamentalism
The battle between fundamentalism and progressive mainline churches was not an undercurrent in many midterm campaigns; religion was an overt theme of attacks from the right on the Democrat pastors, and Republicans repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Democrat’s Christianity.
In the race for Iowa’s second congressional district, Republican candidate Joe Mitchell jeered at the Christianity of the mainline Protestant ministers running for a variety of seats, including his opponent, Presbyterian minister Lindsay James, who ran as a Democrat.
“I call them PINOs,” Mitchell said at a conference; the term, he explained, means “pastors in name only.”
Republicans ripped Garriott, also a pastor, as “the wicked witch of Woke” and denounced her preaching as “fake.” Zachary Nunn, who lost to Garriott, took a similar tone in lambasting his opponent.
“I don’t need a lecture from someone who pretends to preach from the pulpit,” the Republican said in May during a Des Moines campaign rally with Republican Vice President JD Vance.
Talarico — who is not ordained but is a current seminary student, and who centered Christianity in his campaign — was meanwhile castigated by evangelical Republicans for statements they called un-Christian, such as saying God is “nonbinary.”
His rival, Paxton, castigated his theology, saying Talarico’s beliefs are “literally the opposite of Christianity,” while Texas’ Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, said he has “never seen anyone commit so much blasphemy against the word of God and the Bible” and that the now-senator-elect was “going to Hell.”
At a service in a CREC church — Hegseth’s ultra-conservative denomination — a night was devoted to preachers inveighing against Hamilton’s Christian bonafides. Pastors called on the Democratic candidate in Kansas, a preacher at a large United Methodist congregation, to “repent” for his teachings, including that non-Christians aren’t going to hell. Vance accused him of wearing Christianity as “a skin suit.”
The Democratic pastors’ voting records, such as James’ support for gender-affirming care for minors or Talarico’s support for abortion access, were also framed as damning evidence of fake Christianity by Republican evangelicals.
Meanwhile, the ordained Christian Democratic candidates were open about their hope to reclaim Christianity from Republicans. Talarico made similar accusations to his critics, saying that “Christians in the halls of power are blatantly violating the teachings of Christianity on a daily basis and hurting our neighbors in the process.”
Garriott even stated that the representation of Christianity in Republican politics upset her so much that it motivated her to run for office to offer a different Christianity. “Faith has something to say to politics. And what we are seeing labeled as the faith perspective is not faithful to me,” she said in an interview with Religion News Service earlier in her campaign.
A Christian repudiation of Christian nationalism
Numerous members of Trump’s administration are outspoken Christian nationalists. Hegseth has a Crusades tattoo, and his preacher, Doug Wilson of the CREC, opposes the right of non-Christian Americans to hold office. Numerous architects of Project 2025, which advocated for a government imbued with “biblical principles” are members of the administration. JD Vance has stated that “Christianity is America’s creed.”
For religious minorities in the U.S., however, the mainstreaming of open Christian nationalism has been worrying; the Christianity pushed by these Christian nationalist figures has roots in antisemitism and Islamophobia, and imposing a version of religion that does not allow for diverse beliefs feels dangerous.
For many of these conservative Christians, supporting Christian nationalism is synonymous with being a devout Christian; they equate biblical values with morality, and advocating for a moral country is simple obedience to their beliefs. Not all Christians believe this is part of their religion, however; the mainline Protestants who just swept the midterms preach a Christianity that is overtly opposed to Christian nationalism.
Garriott has preached about the topic directly, saying that “evangelicalism, from a Christian nationalist perspective, is trying to make the nation, the government, and everyone the same.” She argued that her faith requires a diverse republic founded on ecumenism.
Talarico has similarly argued directly against Christian nationalism: “I believe the separation of church and state is sacred. I think a nation with one supreme religion is not just un-American, I also think it’s un-Christian, given how Jesus taught about religious supremacy,” he told Ezra Klein of The New York Times. “I have a special moral responsibility to combat Christian nationalism wherever I see it.”
This repudiation of Christian nationalism from within the majority religion of the U.S. is an essential defense for the minority religions of the U.S. And it comes from the ecumenism at the heart of mainline Protestantism. Though ecumenism historically focused on Christian unity, and acceptance of other denominations of Christianity, the theological bent toward nonjudgment — instead of conservative evangelicalism’s fire and brimstone — opens doors toward interfaith dialogue. Mainline Protestants are capable of antisemitism, of course, but the less literal theological interpretation that defines the movement helps keep minds open.
There is one detail of mainline Protestantism that may concern some Jews, however. Evangelicals have long been a source of stalwart support for Israel, thanks to the conservative movement’s eschatology, which focuses on the End Times when, it teaches, Jews must all return to the Holy Land in order for Jesus to return. In the past several decades, evangelicals who subscribe to this apocalyptic theology, including the current ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, Christians United for Israel founder John Hagee and Texas senator Ted Cruz, have referenced their Christianity as grounds for supporting Israel unconditionally.
Mainline Protestantism has its roots in churches founded before this form of dispensationalism was popularized, and they are therefore less attached — at least theologically — to the state of Israel. And though most of the Democratic ministers are moderate on Israel, that’s far from the hawkish pro-Israel template for religious politicians that has previously been defined by evangelicals.
Still, in 2024, Americans voted for an evangelical, conservative, Christian nationalist government. That made for a government full of people defending their right to say that Jews killed Jesus, to post the Ten Commandments in schools, to make Christian prayer a part of military service. And in the midterms, the vision of Christianity the Republican party promoted couldn’t even accept other Christians, much less minority religions.
But that’s not what Christianity has to be. In 2026, Americans voted for a different Christianity: one that is tolerant of other religions, values and viewpoints. That can only be good for the Jews.
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Video: The queen of Yiddish cabaret
אַן אינטערוויו מיט דער אָנגעזעענער ייִדישער זינגערין, אַקטריסע און שרײַבערין עלענאָר ריסאַ איז לעצטנס אַרויפֿגעשטעלט געוואָרן אויף יוטוב.
אינעם שמועס געפֿירט פֿון אלי בענעדיקט פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע, דערציילט ריסאַ וועגן אירע ערשטע טריט אויף דער בינע, די מענטשן און פֿאָרשטעלונגען וואָס האָבן אויסגעבויט איר קינסטלערישן וועג, אירע אויפֿטריטן איבער דער וועלט, און דעם אופֿן ווי זי בויט אַ מוזיקאַלישע פּראָגראַם און קלײַבט אויס לידער. זי רעדט אויך וועגן איר בליק אויף דער צוקונפֿט פֿון ייִדיש־טעאַטער.
ריסאַ איז אַ געבוירענע ייִדיש־רעדערין פֿון פּויליש־ייִדיש, קאָן דער ווידעאָ אויך דינען ווי אַ גוטער לערן־מיטל פֿאַר ייִדיש־סטודענטן וואָס ווילן הערן אַ נאַטירלעכן ייִדיש.
עלענאָר ריסאַ איז אַן אַמעריקאַנער אַקטריסע, רעזשיסאָרין, דראַמאַטורגין און זינגערין, און ייִדיש איז איר מאַמע־לשון. זי איז אויפֿגעוואַקסן אין ברוקלין, די טאָכטער פֿון צוויי לעבן־געבליבענע פֿון פּוילן. אין משך פֿון לאַנגע יאָרן האָט זי געשפּילט, רעזשיסירט און געשאַפֿן סײַ אין ענגלישן, סײַ אין ייִדישן טעאַטער, און איז געווען די קינסטלערישע מיטדירעקטאָרין פֿון דער פֿאָלקסבינע.
זי האָט אויך געשריבן, רעזשיסירט און איבערגעזעצט אַ ריי פּיעסעס און מוזיקאַלישע פּראָגראַמען. אין די לעצטע יאָרן פֿירט זי דעם פּאָדקאַסט “Those Who Were There” בײַם פֿאָרטונאָף־אַרכיוו אין יעיל־אוניווערסיטעט און אַרויסגעגעבן אַ בוך זכרונות, The Letters Project.
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Israel is rich enough to live without American aid. But can it afford to lose what that aid represents?
Israel is a rich country, with a GDP per capita comparable to Germany’s and higher than that of France and Britain. It has one of the world’s most advanced technology sectors, a sophisticated defense industry and formidable military capabilities. Israel is not a developing country dependent on American charity.
But the argument that Israel no longer needs American military assistance because it can afford to pay for its own weapons misses the essential point: The $3.8 billion in annual American military assistance is not simply a financial transfer but part of a much larger strategic architecture that has sustained Israel’s security for decades.
That superstructure includes America’s repeated use of its veto at the United Nations Security Council, intelligence cooperation, access to advanced military technology, joint weapons development, and the projection of American power throughout the Middle East. Above all, it sends an unmistakable message to Israel’s enemies: The United States stands behind Israel.
On Election Day this week, President Trump seemed to throw all of that out the window. He told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” program that Israel no longer needed the funding and that some Democrats and left-wing politicians were using the financial arrangement to pummel Republicans. “Now, as far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year, and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping,” Trump said. “We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year we won’t be paying Israel.”
Ending the assistance would not automatically terminate intelligence sharing or American diplomatic protection – and it’s unclear what role Congress would play in changing the financial terms of the agreement with Israel, which was established in a Memorandum of Understanding that expires in 2028. But the aid is an important institutional expression of the special relationship, embedding Israel’s security in the American political, military and industrial establishments.
Consider the Iron Dome. Developed in Israel and subsequently supported by substantial American funding, it became a model of bilateral defense cooperation, involving joint production, technological exchange and close coordination between the two countries’ defense industries.
This is a strategic partnership, painstakingly constructed by generations of Zionists and their American supporters, encouraged by generous Jewish donations to both political parties in the U.S. – which in turn reflected, for decades, Jewish affinity with the values Israel represented.
Moreover, American military assistance to Israel is not simply a one-way transfer of money. Much of the assistance is required to flow back into the American economy through purchases of weapons, aircraft, missile systems and other military equipment from U.S. defense manufacturers, supporting American jobs, technological development and the country’s defense-industrial base. Joint projects created opportunities for shared research, production and technological innovation.
All of this has been subordinated to politics.
The relationship is now part of Trump’s damage containment strategy in a week during which the Republicans endured a midterm shellacking. Trump – and even more so Vice President JD Vance – seem to be concluding that American assistance to Israel, in all its forms, has become a political liability for Republicans.
American support for Israel, including among American Jews, has eroded dramatically during the Gaza war, in which tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, and so too has support for aid dropped, exposing a widening rupture in what was once a remarkably durable bipartisan and communal consensus.
There is a legitimate argument for transforming the financial relationship between two wealthy, technologically advanced countries. But that transformation requires careful strategic planning, not an Election Day declaration. And even more remarkable is Trump’s assertion that the initiative came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
Netanyahu has spent much of his political career presenting himself as the indispensable guardian of Israel’s relationship with Washington. His supporters have portrayed Trump as Israel’s greatest friend, often dismissing the quieter, institutional commitments of previous American administrations.
Yet it was Barack Obama, frequently vilified by Netanyahu’s political camp, who negotiated the historic $38 billion, 10-year military assistance agreement, just about a decade ago, in a different political epoch, before Netanyahu created scorched earth diplomacy in Israel’s relations with the Democrats.
And it is Trump, celebrated by so many on the Israeli right, who has now proposed bringing that assistance to an early end. The irony could hardly be greater, and the folly of putting all of Israel’s eggs in Trump’s basket could hardly be clearer.
“This is a function of the tremendous deterioration in the relationship with the United States to which the prime minister has led,” said former premier Ehud Olmert, speaking on Israel Radio. He argued that the principal requirement for repairing the relationship is a change of government. He pointed to the conduct of far-right Israeli ministers, including Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and to Jewish extremist violence in the West Bank as factors contributing to growing American alienation from Israel’s current leadership.
In a statement on Friday, Netanyahu’s office said the change “shows the strength and sophistication of our relationship, and its ability to adapt and stand strong over time.”
The possibility that Netanyahu himself initiated the accelerated termination of American assistance raises serious questions. Netanyahu had predicted an end to U.S. aid just before the Israeli elections and discussed in January phasing out the grants over a decade. Why, then, would he support ending them before the current agreement expires in 2028?
The timing is particularly striking. Trump endorsed Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s October election. Days later, on Election Day in the U.S., he announced that Netanyahu had proposed ending an assistance program that had become politically inconvenient for Republicans.
If Netanyahu subordinated a decision of such strategic importance to his own political interests, it would represent a grave failure of leadership, to say the least. The danger is that the financial component of the alliance will be dismantled without sufficient attention to the political and strategic architecture it has helped sustain.
For decades, the special relationship has been one of Israel’s greatest strategic assets. Its value cannot be calculated by adding up the annual assistance payments. Israel cannot afford to squander the confidence that America will stand behind it when its security is threatened.
Israel’s friends in the United States should not abandon the special relationship without thought for the consequences. And this entire affair is yet one more reason why Israel needs new leadership urgently.
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