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American rabbis, wrestling with Israel’s behavior, weigh different approaches from the pulpit
(JTA) — Rabbi Sharon Brous began a sermon at her Los Angeles synagogue last month with a content warning. “I have to say some things today that I know will upset some of you,” she began.
That same morning, across the country in New York City, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl was confessing something to her congregants, too: The sermon they were about to hear “kept me up at night.”
Both women — among the most prominent and influential Jewish clergy in the United States — went on to sharply criticize Israel’s new right-wing government, which includes far-right parties that aim to curb the rights of LGBTQ Israelis, Arabs and non-Orthodox Jews.
In taking aim at Israel’s government from the pulpit, the rabbis were veering close to what many in their field consider a third rail. “You have a wonderful community and you love them and they love you, until the moment you stand up and you give your Israel sermon,” Brous told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The phenomenon even has an informal name, she said: “Death by Israel sermon.”
Brous would know: A decade ago, she was the target of sharp criticism after she encouraged her congregants at IKAR, a nondenominational congregation, to pray for Palestinians as well as Jews during a period of conflict in Israel. The incident didn’t end her pulpit, but she has come to understand why many rabbis choose what she called “the path of silence” when it comes to Israel.
Now, she said, American Jews must depart from that path. “I want you to hear me,” she said in her sermon. “There is a revolution that is happening, and this moment demands an awakening on both sides of the sea, an honest reckoning.”
All over the country, non-Orthodox rabbis are making similar calculations in response to Israel’s new governing coalition, which has drawn widespread protests over its policy moves. (Orthodox communities, including their rabbis, tend to be more politically conservative and skew to the right of non-Orthodox communities on Israel issues.) Israel’s government is advancing an overhaul of the legal system that would sap the power of the Supreme Court, and is also contending with an escalating wave of violence.
Some rabbis feel more emboldened to speak aloud what they have long believed. Others are finding themselves reconsidering their own relationship to Israel — and bringing their congregants along on their journey. A few still feel that criticizing Israel from the pulpit is a misguided and even dangerous venture, one that could splinter American Jewish communities.
What cuts across the spectrum is a belief that Israel has been discussed too little from the synagogue pulpit. Brous said the tendency of liberal rabbis not to talk about Israel lest they anger their more conservative congregants has resulted in a painful reality: “American Jews have not developed the muscle that we now need to respond to this regime.”
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City launched a new program called Amplify Israel, which he hopes will encourage Reform movement leaders to embrace Zionism even as they navigate a “deeply problematic and even offensive” new Israeli government. (Shahar Azran/Stephen Wise Free Synagogue)
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, meanwhile, believes today’s rabbis must be vocal in fending off the influence of “competing values” about Zionism from “various organizations that are either cool on Israel or don’t like Israel or just downright anti-Zionist.”
Last year, angered by a letter signed by dozens of rabbinical students denouncing Israel’s actions during its 2021 conflict with Hamas in Gaza, Hirsch launched an initiative based at his New York City Reform synagogue to equip rabbis with tools to counter what he said was “the growing influence of an anti-Zionist element” in the next generation of Jewish clergy.
The initiative, Amplify Israel, is housed at his Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, and employs another rabbi, Tracy Kaplowitz, to work full-time to galvanize leaders from across the Reform movement to support Israel. Kaplowitz jokes that her new job won’t be complete “until every Reform Jew is a Zionist.”
Hirsch knows the new coalition is complicating his task. “The new government is going to make our promotion of Israel more difficult in the United States,” he said, noting that the government “has elements in it that are deeply problematic and even offensive to most American Jews.”
He and Kaplowitz contend that it is possible, in their view, for rabbis to criticize aspects of the Israeli government from the pulpit while still remaining broadly supportive of the Jewish state and encouraging their congregants to be the same. They also say the need to build Zionist sentiment within the American rabbinate transcends any particular moment, including this one.
“If we have to transform how we connect to Israel each time there’s an election, we’ll be driving ourselves a little bit batty,” Kaplowitz said.
Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz is a full-time Israel Fellow at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. She jokes that her job won’t be finished “until every Reform Jew is a Zionist.” (Ryen Greiss/Stephen Wise Free Synagogue)
Hirsch sits on the advisory board of another new pro-Israel initiative, the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition. Helmed by Stuart Weinblatt, senior rabbi at Conservative Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Maryland, the group is an interdenominational network of more than 200 rabbis who advocate to ”strengthen the ties between American Jewry and the State of Israel.”
Weinblatt hews to an early generation’s view of how rabbis should approach Israel from the pulpit. He told JTA that he believes his colleagues should always be supportive of Israel in public, even if they choose to pressure the Israeli government and advocate against certain policies in private — which, he says, is “the appropriate vehicle” for voicing concerns. “My position has always been that support for Israel should be unconditional,” he said.
“If we as rabbis are sharply critical of Israel, the result can often lead to a distancing from Israel, which ultimately may diminish the connection people feel to Judaism and the Jewish people,” he added. “People do not always distinguish and differentiate between opposition to a particular policy and broader criticisms of Israel which can do lasting damage.”
Asked whether the Israeli government could ever conceivably take a step that would necessitate a public response from American rabbis, Weinblatt ruminated for days. He ultimately told JTA that the current debate around proposed changes to the Law of Return, the Israeli policy that allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to claim citizenship, would be such an example, as that is a policy that would have a direct effect on Diaspora Jews.
Tightening who is eligible under the Law of Return is in fact a goal of some elements of Israel’s governing coalition, although the Diaspora minister assured an audience in the United States that, unlike with the proposed changes to the government’s judicial system — which have earned criticism across the political spectrum — there would be an effort to build consensus and no changes would happen overnight.
Still, the prospect of such a change so alarmed Rabbi Hillel Skolnick of Congregation Tifereth Israel in Columbus, Ohio, that he traveled to Jerusalem to address the Knesset, Israel’s lawmaking body.
“The members of my congregation and my movement have a spiritual connection with Judaism and also a political connection because we live in a democracy, so they see a Jewish democracy as an ideal that they can look to as a light unto the nations,” he said, in a speech he delivered as a representative of the Conservative/Masorti movement.
“By even questioning the idea of the Law of Return,” he went on, Israel “takes away from both the Jewish connection and the democratic connection they have with this country.”
Skolnick suggested that he was unsure of how to speak to his congregation about the new government and its agenda. “My question to you is, what message can I go home with?” he asked.
Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, founder and chair of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, shown with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Weinblatt believes American rabbis’ “support for Israel should be unconditional,” and that disagreements with its government should be hashed out in private. (Courtesy of Stuart Weinblatt)
This week, hundreds of American rabbis will be returning to their congregations with messages honed by a week in Israel. The Reform movement just concluded its biennial convention, which was held there for the first time since before the pandemic. Their visit coincided with major developments in the country’s twin crises: The Knesset advanced the judicial reform legislation, and three people were killed in a Palestinian shooting and subsequent settler riot in the West Bank.
In a sign of the balancing act that American rabbis are navigating, the Reform movement’s leader, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who has been among the earliest and most outspoken critics of the new Israeli government, will also be a featured speaker at Amplify Israel’s conference this May aiming to encourage Zionist sentiment among Reform Jews.
At the convention, the leader of the Central Conference of American Rabbis called for Reform clergy to move away from defining Israel in stark black-and-white terms — an apparent reference to Jews who speak of “pro-Israel” and “anti-Israel” forces.
“In order to connect better with those in our communities around Israel in a nuanced and meaningful way, we must be able to move beyond the pro/con dichotomy which only serves to divide us in ways that are a distraction to the actual issues at hand,” Rabbi Hara Person told the attendees. During the conference, the rabbis attended and voiced support for Israeli protests against their government.
“We are seeing a shift for the better, in my opinion, about how Jews are feeling comfortable critiquing Israel’s policies,” Rabbi Sarah Brammer-Shlay told JTA last fall, before the Israeli elections. Brammer-Shlay was a signer of the 2021 rabbinical students’ letter who graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and today is a rabbi and chaplain at Grinnell College.
That kind of shift has Weinblatt worried. “Sometimes, rabbis are actually out of sync and out of touch with their congregations, who do want to hear messages of support of Israel,” he said.
That may well be the case, particularly at synagogues with aging populations, but survey data suggests that American Jews are moving to the left on Israel at the same time that Israel itself has shifted to the right. The most recent Pew Research Center survey of American Jews, in 2021, found that most have a negative opinion of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; only one-third think Israel is making a sincere effort to achieve peace with Palestinians; and 10% support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel.
While rabbis typically consider what they think their congregants want to hear, they aren’t bound to say it. And some rabbis say this moment is a time to take a stand, even if there is blowback.
Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed, a Conservative congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, announced in December that his congregation would no longer recite the Prayer for the State of Israel, part of most congregations’ Shabbat morning liturgy since 1948. He said the extremism of Israel’s leadership meant the words no longer applied, and replaced the prayer with the more generally worded Prayer for Peace in Jerusalem.
”I couldn’t just say, ‘God, please guide our leaders well,’” Kalmanofsky said, pointing specifically to the fact that extremist politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were now government ministers who would be the beneficiaries of such prayer. “The things that they’re saying cannot possibly represent the Israel that I want to support.”
Kalmanofsky had not previously been outspoken as a critic of Israeli policy. He said he has faced some tough feedback from some in his community, including from those who believe this is a moment that demands more, not less, prayer for Israel — “not an unreasonable response,” he said. But a month into the liturgy change, he said he is confident he has made the right decision.
“Something really meaningful had changed in the public life of the state of Israel,” he said. “That deserved real recognition, and a real response.”
Continuing to focus on preserving a Jewish connection with Israel without “dealing like grown-ups” with its “very serious problems” would render the rabbinical voice irrelevant, Kalmanofsky said. “At best, we’re kind of like, ‘blind love, blind loyalty.’ And at worst, we’re totally obtuse, and have nothing meaningful to say about the real world.”
“If you’re going to have a pulpit,” Kalmanofsky added, “you’re going to have to use it once in a while.”
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After Platner’s collapse, Jewish Democrats say party can’t ignore candidates’ red flags
The collapse of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s campaign in the wake of rape allegations is prompting Jewish Democrats to assess what they see as lessons about the perils of piling on to support untested candidates who are winning voter support by targeting the Democratic establishment as too supportive of Israel.
Platner’s candidacy had already exposed deep divisions within the Democratic Party before a former girlfriend accused him of sexual assault while drunk — allegations he denies but that have fueled calls for him to drop out of the race.
For some, the latest allegations are a decisive breaking point after months of controversy surrounding Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer whose tattoo resembling the Nazi-era Totenkopf insignia and sharp criticism of Israel have alarmed some Jewish groups.
Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said the episode reinforces why her organization declined to endorse Platner, even after Gov. Janet Mills suspended her primary campaign and he became the presumptive nominee to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
“I think a lesson for Democrats is that we shouldn’t compromise,” Soifer said. “There were red flags about Platner from the outset. They just continued to compound on each other as more stories came out. But the Nazi tattoo for us alone was one too many.”
Changing minds
The breadth of calls for Platner to step aside intensified on Tuesday after a former girlfriend accused him of drunken rape.
Chief among them was Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who had been one of Platner’s earliest supporters and appeared with him at campaign rallies. The Maine Democratic Party urged Platner to withdraw as its Senate nominee, saying Democrats must “refocus this campaign” on defeating Collins.
The race has national significance — considered one of the party’s best opportunities to flip a Republican-held seat as Democrats seek to regain the Senate majority. Platner has until Monday to withdraw from the race and avoid appearing on the ballot, allowing Democrats to nominate a replacement before the July 27 ballot deadline.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose criticism of Israel and progressive politics align with Platner’s worldview, also called on Platner to quit. Platner’s campaign was advised by Morris Katz, the strategist credited with helping engineer Mamdani’s victories in New York City’s June Democratic primaries.
Some progressive politicians calling for Platner to drop out raised the Totenkopf skull-and-crossbones tattoo as an early sign he never should have run.
“Sorry to the well-intentioned people who made the mistake of supporting this guy,” New York State Sen. Julia Salazar, a democratic socialist, posted on X. “But: having a Nazi tattoo doesn’t pass the sniff test for running for US Senate, nor did his excuses. And far worse that he faces a credible allegation of rape.”
Yet not everyone believes the earlier controversies should have disqualified Platner.
Steve Sheffey, a longtime Chicago Democratic activist who writes an influential insider political newsletter, said he believed Platner had adequately addressed questions surrounding his tattoo — which he has since covered up — and prior Reddit posts. But the latest accusation “is a deal breaker,” he said.
“He’s not antisemitic,” Sheffey said. “But he is credibly accused of sexual assault, and that’s unacceptable.” The calls for his withdrawal, he added, show that Democrats haven’t lost their compass.
Others who had previously defended Platner have reached similar conclusions.
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, who had written favorably about Platner after meeting him on the campaign trail, reversed course on Monday.
“I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was ‘nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online,’” Goldberg wrote. “If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.”
The path forward
Maine Democrats are now racing to prepare contingency plans should Platner step aside, hoping to salvage one of their best opportunities in the midterms. Platner reportedly told campaign staff Monday he believes he can still influence who replaces him on the ticket.
Possible successors being discussed include former state Senate President Troy Jackson, former gubernatorial candidate Nirav Shah and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Shah said Monday that he opposes sending U.S. aid to Israel and believes Israel’s conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide.
For Jewish Democratic leaders, the moment has reopened a debate that began months ago, when many questioned whether the party should rally behind a nominee whose campaign had already generated repeated controversies. Soifer said she hopes that the next candidate selected will be one that everyone can get behind.
“A candidate must align with the Jewish community in terms of prioritizing its security and safety, recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, and support the U.S.-Israel security relationship,” Soifer said about JDCA’s broader approach to endorsements. “JDCA only supports Democrats, but we do not support all Democrats.”
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Jewish groups protest former California mayor appointed to lead local Rotary Club
A former California mayor who began posting conspiracy-tinged anti-Israel messages on her social media shortly after she left office has been tapped as a local goodwill ambassador in Orange County, infuriating Jewish residents who say their concerns about her appointment have been ignored.
Former Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan’s installation as president of the Rotary Club of Orange County L.A. last month came over the objections of the Jewish Federation of Orange County and other Jewish advocacy groups, including the regional chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Community Action Network (JCAN) and the local Israeli American Council.
Over the last 18 months, these groups say, Khan has spread unverified claims about the war in Gaza, making her a questionable choice to lead a public service-oriented club purportedly dedicated to promoting peace.
“This is somebody who’s a public figure who’s using a quasi-public account to spread blood libels,” said Julie Heiman, JCAN’s director of policy, legal and government affairs. “And a civil society organization, the purpose of which is to build goodwill, is kind of blessing this.”
Neither the Rotary International organization nor the Rotary Club of Orange County Los Angeles responded to inquiries. But Craig Livingston, governor of the Rotary Club district that includes the Orange County chapter, told the Forward in a statement that he did not have the power to make decisions regarding a club’s members or its leadership.
When Heiman initially raised the Jewish community’s concerns about Khan’s nomination, he discussed them with the club’s leadership, “including the potential implications for the club’s and Rotary’s public image should the matter receive broader public attention.” He added that the Rotary “values diversity and celebrates the contributions of people of all backgrounds.”
But critics say Khan — a Democrat and the first Muslim woman elected mayor of a large American city, in 2020 — does not reflect those values in her social media posts about Israel andw instead cross into antisemitism.
In one Facebook post, Khan responded to a report that Israel had bombed an Iranian girls’ school by writing that “the sick pedophiles/cannibals are doing what they do best.” Jewish groups said she was invoking antisemitic canards. Khan later clarified that she was referring to Israeli government officials and the military, not the general public, but Jewish groups were not satisfied with that response.
“It’s a proxy for saying ‘Jew,’” Heiman said. “Most of our community supports Israel, and therefore I think to the public writ large, if they’re reading that Israelis are cannibals and pedophiles, and then they see the Jewish community here flying an Israeli flag, saying we support our ethnic homeland, then we must be evil too.”
Other posts spread rumors and disinformation about the war in Gaza, including that handcuffed babies were found in a mass grave.
In another Facebook post, Khan wrote “the elite were caught with evidence worshipping evil, eating humans, engaging in rape and pedophilia…” but that “we continue to watch their movies, listen to their music, consume their products.”
Rotary International, founded in the early 20th century as a non-religious, nonpartisan service organization, has as its stated mission the promotion of service, integrity and peace. Its 45,000 clubs tend to fundraise for and organize volunteer projects around the world and in regular meetings host speakers, organize classes, promote volunteering and hold networking events.
Its credo is called the “Four Way Test”: truth, fairness, goodwill and general benefit.
When Jewish groups initially raised their concerns June 22, they wrote to the chapter’s past two presidents, Jenny Wang and Beth Fujishige, as well as Livingston, asking them to review whether Khan’s conduct aligned with the Rotarian Code of Conduct and the Four Way Test.
Wang and Fujishige did not respond to Heiman or to the Forward. Livingston told Heiman that he had consulted with Rotary International leadership, which told him the organization did not have policies governing what individuals say on their personal social media accounts when they’re not serving in a Rotary capacity.
Heiman said their choice to elevate someone who trafficked in antisemitic statements mattered because it at best normalized the behavior — at worst, it represented tacit approval. Rotary Club bylaws enable clubs to terminate membership “for good cause when they cease to have the qualifications for membership.”
“We have to be able to push this back into the dark corners where it belongs,” Heiman said. “We need for decent people to be willing to stand up and say this isn’t OK. I would have expected Rotary to be the front line of that, and it’s very scary to me that Rotary just is going along with this as if it were acceptable.”
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He was a shy, retiring, Jewish record store manager. How did he come to manage the world’s biggest rock band?
Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of The Beatles
By Philip Norman
Da Capo, $32.50, 368 pages
Brian Epstein was a most unlikely candidate to discover the Beatles playing in a subterranean music club in Liverpool and manage them toward becoming the biggest pop-rock band in the universe. The somewhat shy and retiring record store manager and classical music aficionado was convinced by an employee to join him during a lunch break to walk over from his family-owned NEMS record shop to the Cavern Club, where he stood out for his age (he was 27; the group’s oldest musician, John Lennon, was 21 and the crowd consisted largely of teenagers), his outfit (a formal suit and tie), and his mature deportment.
But despite being a fish out of water in the grungy club and with no experience working with musicians, within just a few weeks of getting to know the members of the Fab Four, Epstein signed them to a management deal for the purposes of getting them gigs, attracting a record deal, and freeing the foursome from business and logistical concerns. Along the way, Epstein cleaned them up, convincing them to trade their leather outfits for suits and ties, to all cut their hair in the same bowl-cut style that garnered them the nickname “mop-tops,” and to stop eating, smoking and cursing out the audience while performing.
Who was this character, and why did the Beatles put their trust in him?
The 5th or 6th Beatle
Brian Samuel Epstein was born on Sept 19, 1934, which happened to be Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, when Jews traditionally fast and spend the day in synagogue in an annual ritual of atonement. In some small but significant way, atonement would prove to be one of the themes of Epstein’s short, enigmatic life.
Brian’s paternal grandfather, Isaac Epstein, emigrated from Lithuania to Manchester, England, in 1894. He eventually moved to Liverpool, where he opened a furniture shop. The family expanded the business by taking over a nearby shop called North End Music Stores, which became the famous NEMS chain of furniture and record stores. Paul McCartney’s father once bought a piano from NEMS, and teenage Paul — along with his pals John Lennon and George Harrison — often went to NEMS to hear the latest pop and rock ‘n’ roll records from America.
Isaac Epstein’s son Harry married a woman named Malka Hyman (hence her nickname, “Queenie,” as “Malka” is Hebrew for queen), and the two became “prominent and popular members of the largest Jewish community outside London.” Brian and his younger brother Clive were raised in a household that kept a kosher kitchen and had weekly Shabbat dinners.
After briefly attending RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, where he had hopes of becoming an actor, Brian Epstein returned to Liverpool and went to work for his father, managing the NEMS record outlet.
As Beatles biographer Philip Norman recounts in Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles, Brian led something of a double life from a young age. He was gay at a time when engaging in homosexual activity was against the law as well as frowned upon socially. Epstein lived his gay life mostly in the shadows, attracted as he was to anonymous trysts with “rough trade,” which could and often did wind up with him getting into trouble with the law as well as being beaten up, robbed, or blackmailed. To make things worse, Epstein was a heavy drug user and drinker who combined alcohol and sleeping pills, and he was hospitalized several times for depression and drug abuse.
Nevertheless, Epstein steered the Beatles to fame and fortune, first in England, then in America, and then all around the world. He was tenacious in trying to score them a record deal in London. Bringing them to the attention of Parlophone staff producer George Martin proved to be auspicious. Although Martin had previously specialized in recording comedy records, he saw something in the Fab Four (who, at least in their early years, were something of a comic group — or at least John Lennon fancied them as such) that was distinctive and showed promise. Martin convinced the upper brass at EMI, which owned Parlophone, to take a flyer on the group. The pairing of Martin and the Beatles would prove as significant as anything Epstein did for them, and when talking about “who was the fifth Beatle?” the only honest answer is both Epstein and Martin (or one was the fifth and the other the sixth — take your pick). Martin’s influence on the Beatles’ musical development and his support of their more experimental tendencies in the recording studio would prove to be an essential ingredient in their magical mixture.
A genteel and not-so-genteel antisemitism
In early 1963, a Jewish Londoner named Helen Shapiro was one of the biggest pop stars in England. Epstein got the Beatles attached to a nationwide tour headlined by Shapiro, which wound up laying the groundwork that would evolve into the full-fledged Beatlemania that would erupt by the end of the year. By early 1964, Epstein convinced American TV variety host Ed Sullivan to have the Beatles appear as guests on his weekly program for three consecutive weeks, lighting the fire of Beatlemania in the U.S., on their way to total domination of the world’s airwaves.
Epstein also worked with Jewish-American concert promoter Sid Bernstein to get the Beatles booked at Carnegie Hall in New York City and later at Shea Stadium, for two massive concerts in 1965 and 1966. In the meantime, Epstein hooked up the Beatles with Dick James (born Isaac Vapnick) for the purposes of creating Northern Songs, a publishing company for their original compositions. Epstein also midwifed the Beatles entrance into moviemaking, making a deal with United Artists to make several films, including A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, both directed by American-born filmmaker Richard Lester (born Richard Lester Liebman). Lester, like George Martin, had previously worked with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, two of the Beatles’ favorite comedians.
For Epstein, it was not always smooth sailing. It was a time when a kind of genteel (and not-so-genteel) antisemitism permeated British life and culture, a time when the words “Jewboy” and “Yid” came tripping off the tongue. When Paul McCartney told his father that the Beatles were thinking of partnering with Brian Epstein, pere McCartney replied, “Jews are good with money,” leaving it to our imagination if this betrayed antisemitism or was meant as a compliment.
Even with his commercial and financial success, Epstein found certain doors closed to him. According to Norman, “As a permanent London base, [Epstein] favored the city’s two most exclusive neighborhoods, Knightsbridge and Belgravia, but for him, as he well knew, it wouldn’t be just a question of studying an estate agent’s brochure and requesting a viewing. Antisemitism flourished nowhere more vigorously than among those elegant white squares, many of whose ritzier apartment blocks made clear without stating explicitly they did not welcome Jews.” Brian recounted the anti-Jewish taunting he fell victim to in school in his memoir, writing, “even now [antisemitism] lurks around the corner in some guise or other.”
The godfather
No one was crueler to Epstein about being Jewish and gay than John Lennon, who, although perhaps best known for singing about peace and love, could be violent and cruel to those closest to him. Norman writes that Lennon treated Brian “abominably, at one minute sarcastically over-reverential, at the next blisteringly rude to his face about his clothes, his hair, his accent, his sexuality, even his religion.” When Epstein hired Tony Barrow to be the Beatles’ press agent, Lennon asked him (with Epstein within earshot), “If you’re not Jewish and you’re not queer, what are you doing working for Brian?” And when Epstein asked the band members what he should call his memoir, Lennon replied, “Queer Jew.”
Nevertheless, when Cynthia Lennon gave birth to Julian, the Lennons asked Epstein to be the boy’s godfather. And immediately following Julian’s birth, Lennon and Epstein went on holiday together for two weeks in Spain, where it has long been assumed the two of them had sexual relations of some sort.
When the Beatles decided to retire from touring in 1966, Epstein was left wondering what remained for him to do for them, since so much of his work had revolved around booking concert tours and negotiating deals. With the focus of the Beatles work now dedicated to the recording studio, Epstein spiraled. His drinking and drug use, as well as his expensive gambling habit, grew to epic proportions. He was found dead in his bed on August 27, 1967, at the age of 32. Surrounding him in bed were items of correspondence, the script for the Yellow Submarine animated film, and a novel called The Rabbi by Noah Gordon. Published in 1965, the American author’s debut was an instant hit, spending 26 weeks on The New York Times’ bestseller list.
An inquest ruled that Epstein died from an “incautious” drug overdose. On Oct. 17, a memorial service for Epstein was held at the New London synagogue in Abbey Road, attended by the Beatles, Cilla Black, George Martin, Dick James, and members of the Finchley Jewish Youth Club, for which Brian had served as president. Writes Norman, “The Beatles wore black paper yarmulkes which kept slipping off their shaggy hair.”
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