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Alex Edelman’s very Jewish show, ‘Just For Us,’ is heading to Broadway
(New York Jewish Week) – After a successful off-Broadway run, Orthodox Jewish comedian Alex Edelman will bring his one-man show “Just For Us” to Broadway this summer.
The show had a sold out run in 2021 and 2022, starting at Cherry Lane Theater and then moving to the SoHo Playhouse and the Greenwich House Theater. It closed on September 2.
The show focuses largely on Edelman’s infiltration of a white supremacist meeting in Queens. At the same time, however, Edelman, 34, weaves in tales of his childhood, from celebrating Christmas — despite growing up in an observant Jewish family — to his brother’s unlikely journey representing Team Israel at the Winter Olympics.
Throughout the show, Edelman, who hails “from a racist part of Boston, called ‘Boston,’” confronts his own Jewishness and how it interacts with his whiteness, including the times they are at odds with one another and the times they afford him privilege. In doing so, he forces his audience to as well.
Edelman — who made a name for himself by heckling neo-Nazis on Twitter — has been a rising star in the comedy world since he was named “Best Newcomer” at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards in 2014. “Just For Us” premiered at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2018 and, since then, Edelman has been performing, tightening and tweaking aspects of the show, as he told the New York Times.
“Just For Us” won a special citation at this year’s Obie Awards, which honors Off and Off-Off Broadway productions. Edelman was also named one of the New York Jewish Week’s “36 to Watch” in 2022.
Preview performances for the Broadway run start on June 22 and the show will open on June 26. It is scheduled to last eight weeks at the Hudson Theatre (141 West 44th St.), taking over after “A Doll’s House” starring Jessica Chastain and Arian Moayed closes. It is being produced by Jenny Gersten, Rachel Sussman and Mike Birbiglia, who helped produce the Off-Broadway production as well. The show will be directed by Adam Brace.
“The best and most surreal experience of my life,” Edelman wrote on Twitter of the announcement. “Could not be more excited and nervous and everything everything everything.”
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‘Hamas in a Suit’: Melanie Phillips Says the US Must Stop Treating Qatar as an Honest Broker
British author and journalist Melanie Phillips speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels, Belgium in April 2024. Photo: Nicolas Landemard / Le Pictorium via Reuters Connect
The war against terrorism will never end “until the West stops pretending Qatar is neutral,” according to British author and journalist Melanie Phillips.
The prominent commentator told The Algemeiner that Doha’s patronage of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and its influence on Western media and universities are among the many reasons not to trust the Middle Eastern monarchy.
“Qatar is Hamas,” Phillips said in a conversation on the “J100” podcast with host David M. Cohen, the CEO of The Algemeiner. “It sponsors Hamas, it shelters Hamas, it protects Hamas’s leadership.”
Speaking from Jerusalem, Phillips called Qatar’s role “the great unspoken scandal” of modern diplomacy, describing how the regime has bankrolled Hamas while posing as a mediator in negotiations with Israel over the Gaza war.
“You can end this war tonight,” she said, “by doing what should have been done long ago: throw Qatar overboard.”
Negotiations have hit several hurdles in recent weeks to halt the advancement of last month’s Israel-Hamas ceasefire, including the refusal of the terrorist group to disarm in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s pace plan for Gaza.
Despite Qatar’s support for Hamas and far-reaching financial entanglements within American institutions, the US has designated the country as a major non-NATO ally and committed, via executive order, to defend it if attacked.
For Phillips, the danger runs deeper than money or politics. “It’s Hamas in a suit,” she said. “A power that wears respectability while advancing terror by other means.”
Since 2012, Doha has housed Hamas’s political bureau and funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into Gaza, often with Western approval. Simultaneously, it has built vast soft-power influence, financing Al Jazeera, sponsoring academic programs on Middle Eastern studies, and endowing think tanks and universities across the West.
That dual role, Phillips argued, has distorted the world’s moral compass. “You cannot be both patron and peacemaker,” she said. “That is moral incoherence masquerading as strategy.”
She connected Qatar’s reach to what she called the “eighth front” of Israel’s war against Iran’s terrorist network including Hamas — the cognitive front, where perception and truth are under siege. By funding educational and media institutions that frame Israel as the aggressor, Phillips said, Doha helps export the same ideological rot that excuses terrorism.
“You cannot build coexistence on a curriculum of hatred,” she warned. “And you cannot defend civilization if you reward the people funding its destruction.”
Cohen noted that Washington’s posture toward Doha remains contradictory. “You can’t confront a sponsor of terror,” he said, “while treating it like an ally at the same time.”
Phillips concluded that lasting peace requires more than military victory — it demands confronting the global enablers that dignify extremism. “If the West continues to pretend Qatar is neutral,” she said, “then Hamas will never truly be defeated.”
The full conversation — “The Eighth Front Is the Mind” — is available now on “J100” via Apple Podcasts, Substack, and YouTube.
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Australia Lists Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard as State Sponsor of Terrorism
Commanders and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps meet with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Australia has listed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a state sponsor of terrorism, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday, following an intelligence assessment that it had orchestrated attacks against Australia‘s Jewish Community.
Australia in August accused Iran of directing two antisemitic arson attacks in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne and gave Tehran’s ambassador seven days to leave the country, its first such expulsion since World War II.
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After Meeting Pope, Erdogan Praises His ‘Astute Stance’ on Palestinian Issue
Pope Leo XIV and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan shake hands as they meet at the Presidential Palace, during the pope’s first apostolic journey, in Ankara, Turkey, Nov. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan praised Pope Leo’s stance on the Palestinian issue after meeting him in Ankara on Thursday, and said he hoped his first overseas visit as Catholic leader will benefit humanity at a time of tension and uncertainty.
“We commend [Pope Leo’s] astute stance on the Palestinian issue,” Erdogan said in an address to the pope and political and religious leaders at the presidential library in the Turkish capital Ankara.
“Our debt to the Palestinian people is justice, and the foundation of this is to immediately implement the vision of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. Similarly, preserving the historic status of Jerusalem is crucial,” Erdogan said.
Pope Leo’s calls for peace and diplomacy regarding the war in Ukraine are also very meaningful, Erdogan said.
In September, Leo met at the Vatican with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and raised the “tragic situation” in Gaza with him.
Turkey has emerged as among the harshest critics of Israel’s military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.