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A monthlong celebration of Israeli arts and culture comes to the 14th Street Y
(New York Jewish Week) — For the three weeks between the first day of Rosh Hashanah and the end of Simchat Torah, it’s hard to get anything done in Israel. With so many holidays in rapid succession, businesses open sporadically, bureaucratic necessities remain pending and many cultural events are put on hold.
In New York, though, a community of Israeli artists is overflowing with activity: Throughout the month of October, the Israeli Artists Project (IAP) is hosting the Stav Festival: A Celebration of Israeli Arts and Culture at the 14th Street Y. Featuring dozens of artists working in an array of media, festival events include performances by standup comics and musicians alongside productions of award-winning Israeli plays. Artists will provide workshops on everything from folk dancing or belly dancing to painting.
Named for the Hebrew word for autumn, the Stav Festival was originally slated for May 2020, when it would have been the Aviv (or Spring) Festival, but the COVID-19 pandemic meant that it had to be postponed. In his opening remarks at last week’s kickoff event, IAP president Yoni Vendriger said that the more than three-year delay may have been for the best. “We’ve had plenty of time to curate a month of events that bring together artists from so many walks of life,” he said.
Among the many and varied events is the New York debut of “The Holylanders,” an original play by Moria Zrachia. Originally commissioned and presented by Israel’s Cameri Theatre in Hebrew as “Shalom Lach Eretz,” this new, English-language version was adapted and directed by her brother and longtime collaborator, Matan Zrachia.
Moria’s work presents four stories of Israelis who have left their homeland, seeking their fortunes in various locales. In Matan’s version, the storylines remain intact but the locations are all in the United States. The couple who opened a hummus restaurant in Berlin are now in New York; the techie start-up crew trying to sell their company to a sheik in Dubai are now in Silicon Valley.
“I kept a lot of the original text because the humor itself is universal,” Matan Zrachia told the New York Jewish Week. “It doesn’t matter if a person has immigrated from Israel, or Mexico, or Guatemala, or Berlin — the feeling of strangeness is common to everyone. It’s about experiencing a cultural divide, relinquishing certain habits or customs because they’re no longer acceptable in a new place — all of that is the comedic engine of the original, and I left that as it was.”
While it’s true that any immigrant experience is one of foreignness, “The Holylanders” is not just any immigration story — it’s a very Israeli play. The protagonists are passionate, hotheaded, loyal to a fault — all character traits that were important to Matan to portray. “The jokes are, first and foremost, based on myself and my friends,” he said, explaining that he especially wanted to “accentuate the emotional way in which Israelis speak.”
Each of the play’s four scenes is a standalone story; together, the individual “episodes” seem to tell a tale of a generation having an identity crisis. None of the characters feel at home in their chosen American city, though all are handling these feelings of displacement in different ways. In the final “episode,” a group of four young women are in Atlanta, where they’re conning unsuspecting Americans into buying more Dead Sea skincare products than they need, when one of them, Michi, becomes overwhelmed with a longing for Israel.
It’s Yom Kippur and the secular group of friends had been planning to go to the swimming pool. Michi insists on going to synagogue, despite having no connection to religious practice, just to feel a connection to home. Across a cultural divide, they find a connection to the American Jewish community once they join the praying community in the sanctuary.
“What we see with that interaction is how, even though there are cultural differences, when a Jewish person sees another Jewish person, there’s a click. That connection that Jewish people have is unlike any other I’ve seen,” said Michael Kishon, a lead actor in “The Holylanders.”
Kishon, who was raised in Manhattan by Israeli parents, said that, above all, the play is about connection. “In that first scene, which takes place in New York, you see how the couple is full of warmth, offering food and wanting to be themselves even though they also want to fit in.”
With their play, the Zrachia siblings aim to raise questions about identity, belonging and cross-cultural understanding. “Looking around, I see more questions than answers, both in the community in the U.S. and in the community I left behind in Israel,” said Matan, who has lived in Brooklyn for more than five years. “We’re trying to figure out how and why to go forward. Why is the second or third generation born in a country that was dreamed of for 2,000 years getting up and leaving? I think it’s important to represent the questions we’re asking through cultural events, and I think that can best be done through humor.”
There are no tense, quiet moments in “The Holylanders” — all interactions are aggrandized to the point of satire. The exaggerated comedic language also extends the American characters in the play: The dreamy Angeleno in episode three is fashioned after every stereotypical rom-com hero. The kindergarten teacher from New York is overly polite and cloying as she tries to wrangle Israeli parents into a conversation about their son. The rabbi from the synagogue in Atlanta might as well be a Christian pastor, standing in white robes and orating on seeking one’s way back to oneself. The effect is not one of viewing a reflection of Israeli and American interactions, so much as one of peering at the relationship in a fun-house mirror.
At a time in which Israel itself stands at a crossroads over its government’s effort to weaken the judiciary, among other controversial policies — trying to decide how and why to go forward — the play is a fascinating glimpse into the identity crises of those who choose to put down roots elsewhere.
“There were a lot of identity questions, especially in the Yom Kippur scene,” Bar Tenenbaum, an Israeli audience member who has lived in New York for three years, told the New York Jewish Week. “Who am I? Who am I missing? Am I Jewish? Am I an American all of a sudden? It felt like watching my group of friends — with all the secular Israeli culture. Usually when you go and watch a show about Judaism and Israelis it’s a different population, more religious, than the one that’s being presented here.”
Other notable events at the Stav Festival include a second New York run of “Best Friends,” a captivating take on the complexities of female friendship written by acclaimed Israeli playwright Anat Gov. The play, which won the 1999 Israeli National Theater Award for Best Comedy, had its NYC debut in March of 2023 to a series of sold-out performances, leading the cast to reprise their roles as part of the festival. Musical events run the gamut from the experimental, indie-jazz vocals of Chanan Ben-Simon and Noa Fort to traditional Yemenite music brought to stage along with intimate storytelling by Shlomit Levi. The calendar reflects an effort to curate a diverse experience that showcases the spectrum of Israeli creativity.
As Yael HaShavit, Israel’s Consul for Cultural Affairs in North America, indicated at the festival’s launch, there is no such thing as a monolithic Israeli culture — it’s complex and textured. “Our culture is the best form of diplomacy we have,” she said.
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‘Little Gaza’: US Sen. Tom Cotton Introduces Legislation to Combat Campus Radicalism
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has proposed two new bills which would impose legal sanctions on purveyors of seditious, pro-terror ideologies on university campuses and the higher education institutions that harbor them, advancing the Republican Party’s offensive against the pro-Hamas student movement.
Shared first with Breitbart News, a news outlet that was instrumental in launching US President Donald Trump’s populist movement, the “No Student Loans for Campus Criminals Act” and “Woke Endowment Security Tax (WEST)” come amid a series of riotous demonstrations promoting antisemitic ideas, as well as the goals of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and a widespread perception that elite universities have not done enough to combat them.
“First, any pro-Hamas protester convicted of a crime should be ineligible for federal student loans, and federal student loan relief. The American people should not be on the hook for the tuition of Little Gaza inhabitants,” Cotton said in a social media post on Tuesday announcing his introduction of the bills. “Second, our elite universities need to know the cost of pushing anti-American and pro-terrorist agendas.”
He continued, “The WEST Act would tax the largest university endowments to help pay down national debt and secure our southern border.”
As Cotton mentioned in his social media posts, the No Student Loans for Campus Criminals Act would prevent any campus protestor convicted of a crime from receiving federal student loans or student loan relief. Meanwhile, the WEST Act would institute a 6 percent excise tax on the endowments of 11 American universities, using the proceeds to pay down the national debt and secure the southern border shared with Mexico. According to Cotton’s office, the bill would generate $16.6 billion in revenue.
Republican lawmakers have called for holding higher education accountable since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel set off an explosion of antisemitic sentiment on college campuses, causing a succession of conflagrations which still are still burning hot at schools such as Columbia University.
In December, the Republican-led US House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued a report, which said that nothing short of a revolution of the current habits and ideas which constitute the current higher education regime can prevent similar episodes of unrest from occurring in the future. Colleges, it continued, need equal enforcement of civil rights laws to protect Jewish students from discrimination and “viewpoint diversity” to prevent the establishment of ideological echo chambers. It also said that “academic rigor,” undermined by years of dissolving educational standards for political purposes, would guard against the reduction of complex social issues into the sloganeering of “scholar activism,” in which faculty turn the classroom into a soapbox and reward students who mimic them.
The new Trump administration has taken steps to convert this vision into policy since assuming power in January.
On Friday, it canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia University as punishment for the school’s alleged harboring of antisemitic faculty, students, and staff and shielding them from disciplinary sanctions. Prior to that, US President Donald Trump issued a highly anticipated executive order which calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
A major provision of the order authorizes the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses. That policy is currently being challenged in the courts, as a federal judge in Manhattan has halted its application to the case of a male alumnus of Columbia University who was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after being identified as an architect of the Hamilton Hall building takeover, which took place during the closing weeks of the 2023-2024 academic year.
On Monday, US Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that dozens of colleges and universities will be investigated for civil rights violations stemming from their alleged failure to address campus antisemitism. McMahon named 55 institutions, public and private, in total that were not included in the administration’s February announcement of five investigations of antisemitism at Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
The new schools include: Harvard University, Swarthmore College, Drexel University, and Princeton University — all of which have struggled with antisemitic anti-Israel activity and pro-Hamas agitation, as The Algemeiner has previously reported.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Little Gaza’: US Sen. Tom Cotton Introduces Legislation to Combat Campus Radicalism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Disney Curtails ‘Snow White’ Premiere Events Amid Scandals With ‘Free Palestine’ Supporter Rachel Zegler
Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot present the award for Best Visual Effects during the Oscars show at the 97th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Disney has not invited media outlets to attend the Hollywood premiere of “Snow White” on Saturday and canceled the film’s premiere in the United Kingdom in a reported effort to manage controversies involving the movie’s lead actress Rachel Zegler, an outspoken pro-Palestinian activist.
Disney will host a pre-party and screening at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday for the live-action remake of the beloved 1937 animated film, and guests will include the “Snow White” title star as well as Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen. A number of media outlets are typically invited to premieres to interview talent on the red carpet. However, Disney is not allowing red carpet press at the LA premiere except for photographers and a house crew in order to avoid having Zegler and Gadot answer questions on the spot, Variety reported. Disney said they will instead have “a more celebratory, family-friendly afternoon event to match the tone and target audience for the film,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The film, directed by Marc Webb, will be released in theaters March 21.
Plans for a star-studded premiere in the UK have also been nixed, and Disney will instead host a “handful” of tightly controlled press events, a source told the Daily Mail. “Disney are already anticipating an anti-woke backlash against ‘Snow White’ and have reduced the media schedule to just a handful of tightly controlled press events,” the insider said. “That is why they have taken the highly unusual step not to host a London premiere for the film and are minimizing the amount of press questions that Rachel Zegler gets.”
Zegler, 23, has made a number of controversial remarks about her role in the film but also triggered a political media storm when she posted on social media in support of a “Free Palestine.” In August last year, three days after the trailer for the new “Snow White” film was released, the Golden Globe-winning actress took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to thank fans for their support of the film. Zegler wrote in part, “I love you all so much! thank you for the love.” In a separate post on X, she added: “And always remember, free palestine [sic].” Zegler was heavily criticized for the comment by many pro-Israel supporters, especially in light of the fact that Gadot, her lead co-star in “Snow White,” was born and raised in Israel, and is a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces.
Gadot, who is the eighth generation in her family to be born in Israel, is an avid supporter of her home country, and has several times condemned on social media the Hamas terrorist attack that took place in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Earlier this month, the “Wonder Woman” star addressed hundreds at the Anti-Defamation League’s 2025 Never is Now Summit on Antisemitism and Hate, expressing pride in being Israeli and Jewish. She told the crowd: “My name is Gal … I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, an actress, I am an Israeli – and I am Jewish. Isn’t it crazy that just saying that, just expressing such a simple fact about who I am feels like a controversial statement? But sadly, this is where we’re at today.” She also declared on stage “Am Yisrael Chai (Long Live Israel).”
When Ziegler’s casting was first announced in 2021, some Disney fans took offense to the fact that the character of Snow White will being played by an actress of Colombian descent even though the character is meant to famously have skin “as white as snow.” Some also questioned the studio’s decision to have Snow White be played by Zegler after the “West Side Story” star called the 1937 original film “weird” and “dated,” and said the prince “literally stalks Snow White” in various interviews two years ago. Supporters of US President Donald Trump also criticized Zegler for her negative comments about his reelection. “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace. There is a deep deep sickness in this country,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. She later apologized for her remarks.
Others took offense to the fact that the film’s title makes no mention of “seven dwarfs,” even though they are critical characters in the movie, while the original film was titled “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Famed actor Peter Dinklage accused Disney of promoting negative stereotypes with the film’s portrayal of little people. “Literally no offense to anything, but I was sort of taken aback,” the “Game of Thrones” star said in January 2024. “They were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White, but you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there.”
Not long afterward, Disney clarified how it will handle Dinklage’s concerns in the new film. “To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community,” the studio said in a statement to “Good Morning America.” They will appear as CGI characters in the new film.
The post Disney Curtails ‘Snow White’ Premiere Events Amid Scandals With ‘Free Palestine’ Supporter Rachel Zegler first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Seeking to Normalize Ties With Lebanon in New Border Talks: Reports
Smoke billows after an Israeli Air Force air strike in southern Lebanon village, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, as seen from northern Israel, Oct. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jim Urquhar
Israel is seeking to normalize ties with Lebanon in upcoming talks that could potentially bring an end to decades of tensions and conflict, according to Israeli media reports.
Upcoming discussions between Beirut and Jerusalem to demarcate their countries’ shared border are part of “a broad and comprehensive plan,” with Israel aiming to establish formal diplomatic relations with Lebanon, unnamed sources told multiple Israeli news publications on Wednesday,
“The prime minister’s policy has already changed the Middle East, and we want to continue the momentum and reach normalization with Lebanon,” a political source told the Israeli news outlet Ynet. “We and the Americans think that this is possible after the changes that have occurred in Beirut.”
“Just as Lebanon has claims regarding borders, we also have claims and we will discuss these matters,” the source continued.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported similar quotes, as did the Times of Israel, the latter of which cited an unnamed official as saying that “the goal is to reach normalization.”
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that Israel and Lebanon will begin negotiations to resolve border disputes.
“During the meeting, it was agreed to establish three joint working groups aimed at stabilizing the region which will focus on the following issues: the five points over which Israel controls southern Lebanon, discussions on the Blue Line and points that remain in dispute, and the issue of Lebanese detainees held by Israel,” the statement read.
Following US and French mediation, Israel and Lebanon agreed to establish “working groups” to discuss the demarcation line between the two countries and keep the process on track. The groups would also address Israel’s ongoing presence at five strategic points in southern Lebanon, which borders northern Israel.
“Everyone involved remains committed to maintaining the ceasefire agreement and to fully implement all its terms,” US Deputy Presidential Special Envoy Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. “We look forward to quickly convening these diplomat-led working groups to resolve outstanding issues, along with our international partners.”
Despite a brief peace agreement in 1983 and past military and economic ties with Christian factions in Lebanon, Israel’s relations with Beirut have remained tense, with no formal diplomatic ties, an unstable border, and ongoing concerns about a major conflict.
A key reason for conflict has been the role of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist group that for years has wielded significant political and military influence in Lebanon, especially the country’s south. Hezbollah leaders have long stated their goal is to destroy Israel.
Since 2020, as part of the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries — Jerusalem has expanded defense and economic cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Bahrain, and Morocco. Israel also has long-standing peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
On Wednesday, the editor of the Hezbollah-affiliated news outlet Al-Akhbar said that Israel is trying to disarm Hezbollah by force, arguing that this”“will lead to civil war” and “devastating results.”
“Opening the door to negotiations under these conditions means that there are those in Lebanon who do not read history and who do not know the risks inherent in such a step,” editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin said. “Those responsible must understand that they bear responsibility for everything that results from this process of normalizing relations, and there will be devastating results.”
He also accused Israel of kidnapping Lebanese prisoners from their villages and forcibly occupying Lebanese territory.
“There are no security or military considerations that justify their continued occupation, other than to exert pressure on the residents of the border villages to prevent their return to their villages and to prevent the rehabilitation process,” Amin said.
According to local media reports, a total of 11 Lebanese nationals are currently being held by Israel. In a post on X, the Lebanese president’s office announced that Beirut had already received four Lebanese “hostages” from Israel, with a fifth to be handed over on Wednesday.
In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah. Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from Beirut’s southern border, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
However, Israel announced last month that it would keep troops in five locations in southern Lebanon past a Feb. 18 ceasefire deadline for their withdrawal, as Israeli leaders sought to reassure northern residents that they can return home safely.
Tens of thousands of residents in northern Israel were forced to evacuate their homes last year and in late 2023 amid unrelenting barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones from Hezbollah, which expressed solidarity with Hamas amid the Gaza war.
Last fall, Israel decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, which ended with the ceasefire.
The post Israel Seeking to Normalize Ties With Lebanon in New Border Talks: Reports first appeared on Algemeiner.com.