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A new Jewish play imagines a New York were everyone gets along
(New York Jewish Week) — Lou Bettinger, a stubborn but discerning businessman, has run a dingy luggage shop on the Lower East Side for 60 years when the new play “Bettinger’s Luggage” begins.
“I know everything about luggage,” Lou (Richard MacDonald) says, as he give an interview promoting his family’s store on a fictitious news program. “Luggage is my middle name.”
Set on Delancey Street in 1974, “Bettinger’s Luggage” follows Jewish patriarch Lou Bettinger and his hapless son, George (Connor Chase Stewart), who eschews taking over the family business in favor of pursuing his dreams of stand-up comedy. The father and son spar about the future while their neighbors flirt and fall in love, reminisce about their lives before they came to the U.S., and come together to heal when tragedy strikes.
With its liberal use of Yiddishisms, combined with fast-paced, pithy dialogue stuffed full of 1970s pop culture references, “Bettinger’s Luggage,” now running at Midtown’s AMT Theater taps into a powerful nostalgia of a bygone New York.
But unlike the real-life 1970s, which saw a New York City besieged by “white flight,” economic woes and violence, “Bettinger’s Luggage” envisions a New York without racial or ethnic strife. “I needed to write something that showed that people really can get along,” playwright Albert Tapper said of his semi-fictional Lower East Side, which places the Jewish-owned luggage store next to a Greek restaurant and a hardware store owned by an Irish immigrant.
A veteran producer, composer and playwright, Tapper’s version of the Lower East Side has characters unite in a shared New York identity without compromising what makes them unique. Lisa (Katherine Schaber) shares pastries from her family’s Italian bakery with the Bettingers while Lou attempts to teach her Yiddish. Meanwhile Lou, fearing that his son, George, won’t succeed in comedy confides in Lisa that he doesn’t want his son to be “a balagula, a schlemiel” — Yiddish for a person of low standing and a fool.
“Oh, a stunad,” she replies, using the Italian word for an idiot or stupid person, eliciting laughter from the audience.
“The idea of my writing this was to be able to have a neighborhood filled with people of all different nationalities and ethnicities and [show] how well they get along,” Tapper, who is in his 80s, said. Even when Lou calls his luggage shop worker Angel (Sean Church-Gonzalez) a “dumb shaygetz,” or non-Jewish man, he does so in jest — and fights off a racist patron who threatens the store.
Tapper’s inspiration for the play, directed by Steven Ditmyer, is based on his late real-life friend George Bettinger, a comedian and the son of a luggage store owner. The genial image of a bygone Lower East Side business community got the wheels turning in Tapper’s head, and he ran away with his own vision of a family-owned luggage store.
Many of the neighborhood denizens in the play, however, were inspired by Tapper’s own family and his upbringing in Worcester, Massachusetts. Tapper would “merge George’s father with my father” throughout the writing process, he said, creating a world that is both familiar to Jewish New Yorkers and unique to Tapper’s milieu.
The comedic nature of the play strikes a comforting chord for Jewish New Yorkers and differs from other Jewish theatrical fare of the past year. Unlike recent Broadway hits “Parade” and “Leopoldstadt” — which are both focused on historical stories of violence and antisemitism — “Bettinger’s Luggage” uses a father and son’s day-to-day life to begin a conversation about discrimination and cross-cultural communication.
“I’ve written seven or eight shows — none of them have dealt with antisemitism,” Tapper told the New York Jewish Week.
At the same time, however, Tapper admits that antisemitism — where it comes from, how to combat it, or why it has increased so much in the United States — keeps him up at night. “It’s just my life’s quest, and I know that sounds dramatic,” Tapper said. “But my life’s quest is to find out why people hate the Jews.”
That driving question has led Tapper, who splits his time between Midtown Manhattan and Boca Raton, Florida, back to his alma mater of Boston University, where he co-wrote the musical “National Pastime” with Tony Sportiello when he was 20. After finding success as a playwright and producer of film and television, including the documentary “Broadway: The Golden Age,” he’s endowed scholarships for lower-income students. His goal is to increase the diversity of the student population at B.U., which the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies estimates is about 25 percent Jewish.
Tapper is also working with Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, where he has endowed a graduate scholarship, and with Brandeis University. “I told [university president Ronald D. Leibowitz], who’s a personal friend of mine, that I would like to contribute money to the school if they would put a course on antisemitism in their curriculum,” he said. He hopes that the scholarly research will be able to pinpoint why “people have hated the Jews for 3,000 years.”
Tapper is giving back to the theater community as well. When he and Sportiello, his frequent artistic collaborator since the 2008 musical “Sessions,” struggled to find an appropriate space to workshop “Bettinger’s Luggage,” they reasoned that raising the funds to buy a new theater space would both ensure their success and allow them to pay it forward for other artists. Sportiello now serves as the artistic director of Midtown’s AMT Theater, and Tapper as the venue’s main producer. “There’s not that many of them,” Tapper said of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theaters. “And the demand for theaters is enormous. So I said, ‘Well, let’s build our own theater.’”
Plenty of emerging artists create their own theater ensembles, but affording and securing a physical performance space is a different ball game. Tapper recognizes this and is proud that the theater is now rented out to other artists through the end of 2024. Now, said Tapper, “We can do our shows, and we can rent it out to others who are doing other works. We have the combination and it serves us well.”
Like the Bettingers and the other characters who populate their Lower East Side storefront, Tapper knows that people thrive best in community — whether a community of artists, of Jews, or both. When that sense of community is breached, we may feel that we face our struggles alone.
Another reason that Tapper felt compelled to write “Bettinger’s Luggage” in this moment is because of the loss of the real George Bettinger, who died by suicide five years ago. “I spent a great deal of time with him when he lived in New York, and he would tell me his life story with sadness and humor,” Tapper said. “I felt it was everybody’s story, so I put pen to paper.”
“Bettinger’s Luggage” is at AMT Theater, 354 West 45th St., through Oct. 25. Details and tickets here.
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The post A new Jewish play imagines a New York were everyone gets along appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Biden Lauds ‘Permanent’ Ceasefire, but Northern Israelis Warn It Opens Door to Future Hezbollah Attacks
Israeli soldiers gesture from an Israeli military vehicle, after a ceasefire was agreed to by Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, near Israel’s border with Lebanon in northern Israel, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
While US President Joe Biden hailed the new ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah on Tuesday as a “courageous” step toward peace, security experts and residents of northern Israel voiced starkly contrasting sentiments, criticizing the agreement as falling far short of addressing the ongoing threats posed by the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group.
“I applaud the courageous decision made by the leaders of Lebanon and Israel to end the violence. It reminds us that peace is possible,” Biden said one day before the ceasefire took effect on Wednesday.
He added that it was “designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” vowing that Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon, would “not be allowed to threaten the security of Israel again.”
But according to Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, a resident of northern Israel and the founder and director of Alma — a research center that focuses on security challenges relating to Israel’s northern border — the ceasefire deal, the details of which have not been made public, is nowhere close to establishing peace.
“Let’s not be mistaken. Ceasefire is not peace,” Zehavi told The Algemeiner. “There is a gap between the two and in order to bridge the gap, we need a thorough change in Lebanon and in the Iranian involvement in the region.”
According to Zehavi, the deal was problematic at the outset because it was based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War and has been criticized for its historical ineffectiveness. Zehavi highlighted the failures of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL [UN Interim Force in Lebanon] troops in enforcing the resolution in the past, warning that the same could happen again.
As part of the deal, Israel has insisted on retaining the ability to enforce the resolution independently, but this approach carries risks, Zehavi said. “If we enforce the resolution, it means that there won’t be a ceasefire. If there isn’t a ceasefire, it means that Hezbollah will retaliate, and we will continue the ongoing fighting.”
Hezbollah had already violated the terms of the deal within hours of its signing, with operatives disguised as civilians entering restricted zones in southern Lebanon, including the villages of Kila, Mais a-Jabal, and Markaba, despite warnings from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Another sticking point is the lack of safeguards preventing Hezbollah from rearming, leaving Israel reliant on Lebanese assurances. “After what happened on [last] Oct. 7, Israelis are not willing to enable Hezbollah to recover,” Zehavi asserted. “We cannot rely on just promises; we need to make sure that Hezbollah is not capable of threatening us and our families over here in the north.”
The international community, Zehavi argued, has a crucial role to play in pressuring Lebanon to sever its ties with Hezbollah. So long as Lebanon does not designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, she said, the Shi’ite Muslim group will continue to exert influence over the country and therefore pose a threat to neighboring Israel. Members of the group hold influential positions in the Lebanese government, including ministers who control border crossings and airports, facilitating the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon.
Zehavi also pointed to Iran’s declaration that it will help rebuild both Lebanon and Hezbollah, even while continuing to funnel weapons and financial aid into the terrorist group through smuggling routes.
“As long as the ayatollahs of Iran continue to nourish proxy militias in the Middle East against Israel, we are not going to see peace,” she said.
Other northern residents similarly argued that halting the fight against Hezbollah now would give the terrorist group an opportunity to rebuild its arsenal, strengthen its forces, and potentially replicate the scale of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel’s northern region.
“We never learn. Just like in 2006, and many other times, we stop at the brink of total victory, handing our enemies the opportunity to rebuild and return years later, stronger and deadlier than before,” said Moti Vanunu, a resident who was evacuated from the northern town of Kiryat Shmona.
Gabi Naaman, mayor of the battered northern city of Shlomi, expressed skepticism that the ceasefire would bring lasting security to Israel’s northern residents.
“Everything we’ve seen indicates that the next round is inevitable, whether it’s in a month, two months, or ten years,” he said.
Despite her reservations, Zehavi explained that Israel had no real alternative but to accept the ceasefire, citing the need to provide northern residents with a return to normalcy and to provide the opportunity to the IDF to resupply ammunition and allow soldiers time to recover. “We had to choose between two bad options,” she said.
Some 70,000 Israelis living in the north were forced to evacuate their homes amid unrelenting rocket, missile, and drone attacks from Hezbollah, which began firing on Oct. 8 of last year, one day after Hamas’s invasion of and massacre southern Israel from Gaza. Israel had been exchanging fire with Hezbollah across the Lebanon border until it ramped up its military efforts over the last two months, moving ground forces into southern Lebanon and destroying much of Hezbollah’s leadership and weapons stockpiles through airstrikes.
While Zehavi viewed the timing of the campaign’s start in September — ahead of the challenges of fighting during the winter months — and not in May as a strategic error, she applauded the army’s achievements of the past two months.
In a poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Tuesday night, half of those surveyed felt there was no clear winner in the war against Hezbollah. Twenty percent of respondents believed the IDF emerged victorious in the war, while 19 percent thought Hezbollah prevailed. A further 11 percent were unsure who had the upper hand.
The post Biden Lauds ‘Permanent’ Ceasefire, but Northern Israelis Warn It Opens Door to Future Hezbollah Attacks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.