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‘And Just Like That…’ star Alexa Swinton is having her bat mitzvah in Israel
A version of this story originally appeared on Kveller.
Last year, Alexa Swinton brought us arguably one of the most high profile TV b’nai mitzvah ceremonies of all time — or rather, the “they mitzvah” that wasn’t.
Swinton, who plays Rock Goldenblatt in “And Just Like That…”, gave viewers a relatable portrayal of a teen struggling with their gender identity and their connection to Judaism. In the final episode of the first season of the show, Rock refuses to celebrate their Jewish coming of age, and their mom, Charlotte York Goldenblatt — one of the main “Sex and the City” characters — takes to the bimah instead, both in affirmation of her own faith and as her own way of accepting her child’s choice.
In real life, Swinton, a prolific actress who has starred in shows like “Billions” and “Emergence,” is celebrating the debut of the second season of HBO’s “And Just Like That…”, which premiered last week — and her own bat mitzvah.
Swinton and her family are currently in Israel, where she and her older sister, Ava, who didn’t get to experience the Jewish rite of passage because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will celebrate together in a joint ceremony. It will take place next week at Apollonia National Park in Herzliya, her mother told Kveller.
It’s Swinton’s first visit to Israel, where she has many relatives she has never met before. Swinton is also part of a program that allows her to honor a child who was killed during the Holocaust.
“You get to learn about their history and kind of give them a chance to also have their own bat mitzvah while you have yours. I think it’s really beautiful,” she said.
Just like Rock and her upcoming character in the Netflix movie “Maestro,” Swinton comes from a mixed background. Swinton’s Jewish mother, Inna, immigrated from the Soviet Union as a child. Her father’s family is Scottish and she is distantly related to Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton. After the ceremonies in Israel, the family will travel to Scotland on a heritage trip of sorts.
“I get to celebrate both parts of my culture and who I am as a person,” Swinton said.
While Rock may have flubbed their bat mitzvah readings, Swinton is highly invested in hers.
“My portion is from Pinchas,” an ebullient Swinton tells me over Zoom, sitting side by side with her Jewish mom. “It’s a lot about feminism… and how women have been trying to make history and a name for themselves for so long.”
Swinton is very connected to her Judaism in part because her grandmother could not practice her faith in the Soviet Union. “Being Jewish to me is more about who I am as a person than the religion,” she said. “It’s beyond God.”
She celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah (“I’m not going to complain about eight nights of gifts,” she joked) and her favorite food is her grandmother’s chicken soup (she knows it’s a basic choice, she said it’s really unbeatable). She loves going to temple where she lives in New Jersey, where she talks to friends of her mother and grandmother and learns about their Jewish childhoods.
Swinton has also played her mother onstage and onscreen, in the off-Broadway play and the upcoming short film “Kooky Spook,” which tells the story of Inna’s young adulthood and first Halloween as a new immigrant in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. They filmed the movie in both Fair Lawn, where Inna’s family landed after immigrating to the United States, and in Riga, Latvia.
Swinton has been up for a lot of Jewish roles — from Hannah in “Fleishman Is In Trouble,” where her younger brother, Maxim, got the role of Solly, to Anne Frank in Disney’s “A Small Light.” That role went to another Jewish actress, Billie Boullet, and losing it left Swinton a little heartbroken.
“Being a young Jewish girl, like an actor, your dream role is going to be Anne Frank,” she said. But she was up for roles in both “Maestro” and “A Small Light” at the same time, and at the end of the day “we were super happy” to get that role, she said.
“Maestro” is a biopic about Jewish music legend Leonard Bernstein, and Swinton will be playing Bernstein’s youngest daughter, Nina in the upcoming Netflix movie. She did know of the Jewish composer beforehand — “we’re a very musical family” — but she’s done a lot more research to prepare for the role, including spending time at the Bernstein family home.
When she and her mother got the “Maestro,” script “we were like, oh my god, this is beautiful, this is about Leonard Bernstein. It’s incredible script about a Jewish family,” she said.
Unfortunately, the timing was not great — Swinton had to film her audition in a hotel closet during a trip with her mother and sister and did not think she would get the role. But she soon earned a direct audition with Bradley Cooper.
“I don’t really know if I met Bradley,” she jested to me about working with Cooper on “Maestro,” “I think I might have just met a modern rendition of Leonard, because he was always on.”
Swinton is also proud of the Jewish representation she’s been able to bring to her projects.
“I think it’s wonderful that I’ve gotten to play so many Jewish people,” she said. “It’s nice just to have something in common with the character you’re playing, and it makes you feel much more connected.”
For now, viewers can watch Swinton playing the moody and lovable Rock in the new season of “And Just Like That,” which airs a new episode every Thursday until Aug. 3.
This season, Rock will be investing a lot more time in their hobbies. “I think they find a lot about themselves,” Swinton said, “and they wear some pretty cool clothes.”
Swinton added that she didn’t know her character would be gender nonconforming at first. “One of the audition scenes was the scene where Rock was like, oh, I don’t really feel like a girl. So I was like, ‘Oh, I’m interested to see where this will go.’”
She was happy to see representation of young people questioning their gender make it into the plot.
“A lot of times, kids that are exploring their identity don’t really have a lot to back off of,” she says. “Like, maybe there’ll be one random TikToker who is 25 years old. It’s great, because finally, there’s someone who’s 13 years old on television, who is trying to figure out who they are as a person.”
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The post ‘And Just Like That…’ star Alexa Swinton is having her bat mitzvah in Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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