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As landmark Saul Bellow documentary premieres, a look back at his life through the JTA archive
(JTA) — Given his place in the international literary canon, it’s hard to believe that there has never been a widely-released documentary made about the Jewish Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow.
That’s about to change, as PBS debuts “American Masters: The Adventures of Saul Bellow” on Monday night.
The documentary, which was filmed by Israeli director Asaf Galay between 2016 and 2019 and features what is being touted as the last interview Philip Roth gave before his death in 2018, digs deep into Bellow’s personal life and inspirations. Many know about his successful novels and memorable (usually Jewish) characters, but as the film shows, Bellow had a turbulent personal life that involved five marriages. Several of his closest friends and family members felt betrayed or offended by how Bellow wrote unflattering characters closely based on them. His moderate conservative political leanings put him at odds with the ethos of the 1960s, and some saw his framing of occasional Black characters as racist.
But the film also devotes time to explaining — through interviews with scholars, other novelists and members of the Bellow clan — how Bellow’s deep-rooted sense of “otherness” as the son of Jewish immigrants influenced his work, and how he, in turn, influenced many Jewish American writers who followed him. Roth, for instance, says on camera that Bellow inspired him to create fuller Jewish characters in his own work.
To mark the milestone film, we looked back through all of the Saul Bellow content in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s archive. What emerged was a portrait of a leading Jewish intellectual of his time who was deeply invested in the Soviet Jewry movement and Israel, and who was beloved by the American Jewish community — despite his complicated relationship to his Jewishness and his bristling at being called a “Jewish writer.”
The Soviet Jewry movement
Bellow was born in 1915 in Canada to parents with Lithuanian ancestry who first immigrated from St. Petersburg, Russia. In the 1920s, when Bellow was 9, the family moved to Chicago. By the 1950s, the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union — who were forbidden from openly practicing their religion and from emigrating — had become a rallying cry for American Jews. As a 1958 JTA report shows, Bellow was passionate about the issue; in January of that year, he signed a letter to The New York Times about “the purge of Yiddish writers, the refusal of the current Soviet regime to permit a renaissance of Jewish culture and the existence of a quota system on Jews in education, professional and civil service fields.” Other signatories included fellow Jewish writers Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin and Lionel Trilling.
Saul Bellow, Anita Goshkin (his first wife) and their son Gregory Bellow, circa 1940. Bellow’s turbulent personal life involved five marriages. (Courtesy of the Bellow family)
He signed another letter to the Times on the topic in 1965, and in 1969 he circulated an appeal for cultural freedom for Jews to the Soviet Writers Union, getting other prominent writers such as Noam Chomsky and Nat Hentoff to sign. By 1970, the issue had become widely publicized, and Bellow stayed involved, signing onto a petition with several other thought leaders that asked: “Has the government of the Soviet Union no concern for human rights or for the decent opinion of mankind?”
Israel
Like many American Jews, Bellow had complicated feelings on Israel. “If you want everyone to love you, don’t discuss Israeli politics,” he once wrote.
In the 1970s, JTA reports show that he followed Israeli diplomacy closely and was a strong supporter of the Jewish state in the face of international criticism. In 1974, at a PEN press conference, he called for a boycott of UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural heritage arm that has historically been very critical of Israeli policy.
In 1984, Bellow met with then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who was in the United States on an official state visit.
But Bellow wasn’t a blanket supporter of Israel — in 1979, he signed a letter protesting West Bank settlement expansion that was read at a rally of 30,000 people in Tel Aviv. In 1987, while in Haifa for a conference on his work, Bellow criticized the Israeli government for the way it handled the Jonathan Pollard spy case, bringing up an issue that still reverberates in Israel-Diaspora conversation — and in U.S. politics.
“I think the American Jews are very sensitive to the question of dual allegiance, and it is probably wrong of Israel to press this question because it is one which is very often used by antisemites,” Bellow said.
Nobel Prize
After garnering multiple National Book Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, Bellow won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. JTA’s report on the award noted that Bellow’s most recent book at the time, published right around the time of the Nobel announcements, was a memoir about his 1975 stay in Jerusalem, titled “To Jerusalem and Back.” The report added: “Two of his books, ‘Herzog,’ published in 1964 and ‘Mr. Sammler’s Planet,’ which won him the National Book Award in 1971, have been translated into Hebrew and were enthusiastically received by Israeli critics and public.”
(Bellow wasn’t the only Jew to win a Nobel that year: Milton Friedman won the economics prize, Baruch Blumberg shared the medicine prize and Burton Richter shared the physics prize.)
Bellow, center, with his fifth wife Janis Freedman-Bellow and longtime friend Allan Bloom, who is the subject of Bellow’s last novel, “Ravelstein.” (Courtesy of the Bellow family)
A “Jewish writer”?
The Anti-Defamation League also gave Bellow an award in 1976. According to a JTA report, Seymour Graubard, honorary national chairman of the ADL at the time, said that Bellow “has correctly rejected all efforts to pigeonhole him as a ‘Jewish writer.’ Rather, he has simply found in the Jewish experience those common strains of humanity that are part of all of us — and therein lies his greatness as an American writer.”
Debate over whether or not Bellow should be labeled a “Jewish writer,” and what that meant, dogged him for much of his career. After his death in 2005, at 89, a New York Jewish Week obituary focused on Bellow as “a literary giant who did not want to be bound by the tag of Jewish writer.”
“Mr. Bellow bridled at being considered a Jewish writer, though his early novels, most notably 1944’s ‘The Victim,’ dealt with anti-Semitism and featured characters who spoke Yiddish and Russian,” Steve Lipman wrote.
Bellow’s biographer James Atlas added in the obituary: “He always said he was a writer first, an American second and Jewish third. But all three were elements of his genius. His greatest contribution was that he was able to write fiction that had tremendous philosophical depth.”
In a JTA essay at the time of Bellow’s death, academic and fiction writer John J. Clayton argued: “No good writer wants to be pigeonholed or limited in scope. But he is deeply a Jewish writer — not just a Jew by birth.
“Jewish culture, Jewish sensibility, a Jewish sense of holiness in the everyday, permeate his work.”
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Hamas Blocks Rafah Reconstruction, Halting Gaza Rebuilding Effort Amid Ceasefire Stalemate
The damaged Al-Shifa Hospital during the war in Gaza City, March 31, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas members have reportedly blocked international efforts to begin reconstruction work in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, in what appears to be the Palestinian terrorist group’s latest attempt to undermine a US-backed peace plan, as it continues to reject disarmament and stall progress on the ceasefire agreement with Israel.
According to a report by the Israeli broadcaster Kan News, armed Hamas operatives threatened contractors who were set to enter an area under Israeli control in Rafah in coordination with Israeli and American forces to begin reconstruction work funded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The team was forced to abandon the operation and turn back after Hamas members appeared on site and blocked access, derailing what was expected to be a key reconstruction project.
As the Palestinian terrorist group continues to refuse disarmament and negotiations have yet to yield any results, the UAE has reportedly tightened conditions for its continued funding of a new reconstruction project in Gaza.
Abu Dhabi has informed Israel that the reconstruction initiative — still in its planning stages — cannot proceed in any form unless the Hamas threat is neutralized.
The UAE has also conditioned progress on the project on Israel providing assurances that reconstruction infrastructure would not be damaged if fighting resumes.
For months now, the US-led Board of Peace has been conducting parallel negotiations with Israel and Hamas, attempting to tie the large-scale reconstruction of the war-torn enclave to the complete dismantling of the terrorist group’s weapons arsenal.
However, Hamas has consistently refused to relinquish its weapons, insisting that Israel must first fully comply with phase one of the ceasefire — including expanded humanitarian aid deliveries, full reopening of the Rafah crossing, and withdrawal of Israeli forces to the agreed Yellow Line — before any disarmament process can proceed.
For its part, Israel has warned that the Islamist group must fully disarm for the second phase of the ceasefire to move forward, pointing to tens of thousands of rifles and an active network of underground tunnels still under the terrorist group’s control.
In a joint operation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad weapons production site in the northern Gaza Strip was destroyed this past weekend.
According to an IDF spokesperson, the site had also recently been used by Hamas to manufacture explosive devices and store weapons “intended to harm IDF troops operating in the yellow line area and Israeli civilians.”
Israeli forces additionally destroyed two underground tunnel routes, where they found several living quarters and weapons, and recovered dozens of rockets and explosive devices.
In the midst of stalled negotiations, Israel has expanded its control over the Gaza Strip, with the IDF now holding 64 percent of the territory, reportedly with the knowledge and approval of the Board of Peace, Israel Hayom reported.
The new boundary line, dubbed the Orange Line, replaces the more limited Yellow Line and expands Israel’s security zones by 34 kilometers (13 miles), covering roughly 11 percent of the war-torn enclave.
Israeli officials have vowed not to withdraw any troops from Gaza unless Hamas surrenders its weapons, warning that reconstruction efforts will also be blocked, effectively stalling the ceasefire agreement.
In its latest counterproposal, the terrorist group said that any transfer of its weapons would only be possible as part of a wider process leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Should negotiations collapse entirely, Israeli officials are now weighing contingency plans for a renewed military campaign, pushing the army to prepare for a potential return to combat and initiate a wide-ranging reassessment of its ground maneuver strategy and operational approach.
According to multiple media reports, Hamas has been quietly exploiting the pause in fighting to tighten its control over civilian life while simultaneously rebuilding its military capabilities behind the scenes.
The Palestinian terrorist group has been gradually reestablishing its civilian governance structures across the war-torn enclave, through checkpoints, strict regulation of goods, and control over key public institutions, including hospitals.
Hamas has also been reactivating internal security mechanisms to enforce day-to-day order, while conducting extensive intelligence operations aimed at identifying alleged collaborators with Israel and suppressing any opposition.
Even after more than two years of war, the group is also rebuilding its military capabilities, including recruiting new operatives, conducting field and command-level training, restoring intelligence and surveillance networks, and reconstructing underground tunnel systems and weapons stockpiles.
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Gen Z New Hampshire Congressional Candidate Refuses to Acknowledge Israel’s ‘Right to Exist’
New Hampshire state Rep. Heath Howard, a Democrat who is running for US Congress in the 2026 election, speaks during televised interview. Photo: Screenshot
A Democratic state lawmaker in New Hampshire now running for US Congress is facing mounting criticism after comments in which he refused to affirm the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, reigniting a broader political debate over antisemitism and the boundaries of criticism of Israel.
During a new interview on WMUR’s “Close-Up,” congressional candidate Heath Howard rejected the idea that Israel possesses a unique “right to exist” as a Jewish nation. Howard also drew an equivalence between Israel, the closest US ally in the Middle East, and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, a US-designated terrorist organization.
“While there are a number of condemnable actions that they’ve taken, like any sort of government, I don’t think that Hamas has a right to exist. I don’t think Israel has a right to exist. I think that people have a right to exist,” Howard said.
Howard then appeared to defend the prospect of Hamas’s continued rule over Gaza as a form of Palestinian autonomy, saying, “We need to respect the will of the Palestinian people, and we need to make sure that they have access to democracy. We need to make sure that we allow the people to have self-determination.”
Heath has criticized the US relationship with Israel, saying that it has “furthered a lot of conflict in the Middle East,” and called for imposing enhanced restrictions on military assistance to Jerusalem.
He has also hand-waved suggestions that Hamas could be a danger to Jewish people and called for the transformation of Israel into a “secular state.”
Skeptics claim the comments crossed a line from criticism of Israeli government policy into opposition to Israel’s existence as a homeland for the Jewish people, a distinction many Jewish organizations say is central in determining when anti-Israel rhetoric becomes antisemitic.
Benjamin Sharoni, consul general of Israel to New England, rebuked Howard’s commentary.
“To suggest that Israel has no right to exist is not a nuanced policy position. It is a denial of history, reality, international law, and the very principle that grants legitimacy to every nation on earth,” Sharoni told NHJournal.com.
“Israel is a sovereign state, a member of the United Nations, and the national home of the Jewish people,” he continued. “Invoking universal rights while calling for the dismantling of a recognized state is not humanitarianism. Those who are genuinely committed to the rights of people must begin by acknowledging the right of nations to exist and defend their citizens.”
Howard’s policy platform contains a number of unorthodox suggestions, such as implementing a complete arms, trade, and intelligence embargo on Israel, forging closer ties with China, and the removal of the US blockade on Cuba.
“It is essential that we immediately cease our involvement in these endless imperial wars and adopt non-interventionism as a general policy. Moreover, we must immediately end all military aid and weapons sales to both Israel and Saudi Arabia and impose a complete arms, technological, and cultural embargo on Israel,” Howard’s campaign website reads.
“We must also work to restore and improve our relationship with China and work with them, not against them, to make technological, political, and societal progress — and above all, we must honor our commitments to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Charter of the United Nations,” his website continues.
The controversy comes at a particularly sensitive moment in American politics, as tensions surrounding Israel and the war in Gaza continue to divide parts of the Democratic Party following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The massacre, which killed roughly 1,200 people and saw hundreds taken hostage, prompted widespread expressions of solidarity with Israel across much of the US political establishment. Since then, however, divisions have emerged between mainstream Democrats and a growing activist wing increasingly critical of Zionism and American support for Israel.
Supporters of Israel argue that denying Jews the right to self-determination to maintain a nation-state is discriminatory, especially given the existence of dozens of countries organized around national, ethnic, or religious identities. They also note that Israel serves as a refuge for Jews facing centuries of persecution.
Critics argue that Howard’s comments may fuel concerns among some Democratic strategists that rhetoric perceived as hostile to Israel could alienate moderate voters and Jewish Americans, particularly in swing districts. Several prominent Democrats nationally have faced similar scrutiny in recent months over statements questioning Israel’s legitimacy or character as a Jewish state.
The dispute reflects a broader ideological battle playing out inside the Democratic Party, where debates over Zionism, antisemitism, and Middle East policy have increasingly become litmus tests in some progressive circles.
Howard, a 25-year-old left-wing candidate, may be reflective of a newer generation of Americans which are broadly skeptical of the US-Israel relationship. Recent polling suggests that overwhelming majorities of younger Americans disapprove of the Jewish state.
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Mamdani supersizes NYC hate crimes office, as tensions simmer over synagogue protests
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a nearly ninefold increase in New York City’s budget for preventing hate crimes as part of his budget proposal announced Tuesday, fulfilling a campaign promise that was central to his outreach to Jewish voters amid concerns about his stance against Israel.
The Jewish community overwhelmingly did not support his election, and his proposal comes amid rising tensions stoked by anti-Israel protests — most recently on Monday night, when dozens descended on a heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood where a synagogue hosted a real estate sale that included West Bank properties.
Mamdani’s $26 million for the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes would significantly expand an agency created in 2019 to combat rising antisemitism and other forms of hate, which currently has a $3 million annual budget
The office is tasked with addressing all hate crimes, and Mamdani did not specify how much of the $26 million would be directed specifically toward combating antisemitism, since the office is. According to the New York City Police Department, antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of all reported hate crimes in 2025. The Anti-Defamation League’s 2025 annual audit found that while antisemitic incidents in New York declined by 19%, last year was still the third-highest year on record.
“Too often, the only response offered to a hate crime is exactly that, it’s a response,” Mamdani said. “Today we want to also do the work of preventing those hate crimes.” The mayor said most of the funding would go toward expanding existing city programs that have proven effective, alongside the rollout of the city’s first comprehensive municipal strategy to combat antisemitism, which is expected this fall.
Most of the office’s current funding goes towards a program called the Partners Against the Hate FORWARD initiative — in partnership with the NYC Commission on Human Rights — that offers grants up to $10,000 for community-based initiatives.
The proposal resembles a plan authored by Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, a progressive organization that supported Mamdani during the election. The JFREJ proposal called for between $26 million and $30 million in hate violence prevention initiatives, including expanded reporting systems, proactive relationship-building and anti-bias education.
In a statement Tuesday, the group hailed the investment as a “huge win” for advocates of a broader approach. “The Mamdani administration has significantly raised the bar for what it looks like to seriously address antisemitism and hate violence,” said Audrey Sasson, JFREJ’s executive director.
The hate crimes office expansion drew swift praise from Jewish elected officials, including some who have distanced themselves from Mamdani in their support for Israel. “Promises made, promises kept,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal posted on X. Rep. Dan Goldman — whose primary challenger, Brad Lander, is backed by Mamdani — said the funding is a worthy tool to combat hate: “It is vital that we all work together to ensure we do everything possible to keep New Yorkers safe.”
Hasidic leaders of both Satmar sects also applauded the mayor, with one organization calling the investment a “massive increase of resources to stop the rising tide of antisemitism in NYC.”
Still, Mamdani’s prevention strategy does not include measures in response to protests outside synagogues, which have included antisemitic displays and slogans.
On Monday night, pro-Palestinian protesters marched through the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Midwood in Brooklyn, chanting slogans including calls for “intifada revolution” during a demonstration outside a synagogue hosting an event marketing real estate in Israel and West Bank settlements. The protest also drew a crowd of pro-Israel counterprotesters, many of them teenage boys, as police intervened to keep the groups apart. The NYPD reported four arrests, including two Jewish teens.
Under a new law recently passed in the City Council by a veto-proof majority, the NYPD is currently devising a synagogue protection plan that it must make public. But meanwhile, police officers accompanied the protesters as they circled residential blocks chanting anti-Israel slogans.
Many Jewish residents have said such protests leave them feeling intimidated or unsafe. The administration has yet to outline a more robust enforcement or public safety approach to demonstrations, and Mamdani — who has not commented on the Brooklyn confrontations — recently defended a similar protest of a real estate sale held on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
In a statement shared with the Forward, Mamdani condemned the violence at the protest and counter-protests on Monday night “alongside antisemitic, anti-Muslim and racist rhetoric, as well as racial slurs, displays of support for terrorist organizations, and calls for the death of others” as “despicable.”
“New Yorkers have the constitutional right to protest and to counter-protest, but no one should face violence, intimidation, or hatred because of who they are or what they believe,” the mayor added. “We can simultaneously protect both public safety and civil liberties, and our city remains committed to doing exactly that by upholding the right to peaceful protest while keeping every New Yorker safe.”
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