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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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TikTok Removes Videos by Antisemitic Polish Lawmaker After Hate Speech Complaint
Grzegorz Braun, member of far-right political alliance Confederation, speaks during a session at the Parliament in Warsaw, Poland, Dec. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Aleksandra Szmigiel
TikTok has removed six videos posted by a Polish far–right politician best known for provoking international outrage by using a fire extinguisher on Hanukkah candles in the country’s parliament, an anti-racism organization said on Wednesday.
Once viewed by many Poles as a fringe extremist, Grzegorz Braun has become an increasingly important figure in right-wing politics, with his Confederation of the Polish Crown party regularly polling in double digits.
Those numbers could give it a say in the formation of a future coalition, but Braun’s antisemitism and aggressive social media stunts have led the government to say his party may be banned, while the leader of opposition nationalists Law and Justice (PiS) has ruled out working with him.
Rafal Pankowski, from the “Never Again” Association, which advises social media companies on eliminating hate speech and flagged the videos to TikTok, said the films, including one about the Hanukkah candles, were just the “tip of the iceberg.”
“There is simply a whole lot of such material, such content, which is evidently saturated with hostility, primarily towards Jews and often also towards various other minorities … I think that the worst thing in all this is that there is this element of glorification, incitement to violence,” he said.
TikTok confirmed that it had removed certain videos for violating its rules on hate speech.
A spokesperson for the Confederation of the Polish Crown did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Braun has said he is trying to protect predominantly Catholic Poland from the influence of Jews and Ukrainians.
Pankowski said the “Never Again” Association had reported more of Braun’s films to TikTok.
From launching into an antisemitic tirade outside the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where Nazi Germany killed more than 1.1 million Jews, to tearing down Ukrainian flags or demolishing exhibitions about LGBT rights, Braun’s actions have outraged many Poles but have also generated significant publicity.
Braun, a Member of the European Parliament, has had his immunity from prosecution lifted by the legislature. Polish prosecutors have charged him with seven offences including public disorder and offending religious sentiments.
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Clashes in Syria’s Aleppo Deepen Rift Between Government, Kurdish Forces
A woman carries her child as she flees, following renewed clashes between the Syrian army and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in Aleppo, Syria, Jan. 7, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Karam al-Masri
Fierce fighting in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo between government forces and Kurdish fighters drove thousands of civilians from their homes on Wednesday, with Washington reported to be mediating a de-escalation.
The violence, and statements trading blame over who started it, signaled that a stalemate between Damascus and Kurdish authorities that have resisted integrating into the central government was deepening and growing deadlier.
Deadly clashes broke out on Tuesday between Syrian government troops and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
After relative calm overnight, shelling resumed on Wednesday and intensified in the afternoon, Reuters reporters in the city said.
A spokesperson for Aleppo‘s health directorate told Reuters that four civilians had been killed on Tuesday and more than two dozen wounded on Tuesday and Wednesday. Security sources separately told Reuters that two fighters had also been killed.
The health directorate said there were no civilian fatalities on Wednesday, and that it was not authorized to comment on deaths among fighters.
By Wednesday evening, fighting had subsided, the Reuters reporters said. Ilham Ahmed, who heads the foreign affairs department of the Kurdish administration, told Reuters that international mediation efforts were underway to de-escalate. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters the US was mediating.
THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS FLEE
The directorate for social affairs said on Wednesday night that more than 45,000 people had been displaced from Aleppo city, most of them heading northwest towards the enclave of Afrin.
The Syrian army announced that military positions in the Kurdish-held neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyah were “legitimate military targets.” Two Syrian security officials told Reuters that they expected a significant military operation in the city.
The government opened humanitarian corridors for civilians to flee flashpoint neighborhoods, ferrying them out on city buses.
“We move them safely to the places they want to go to according to their desire or to displaced shelters,” said Faisal Mohammad Ali, operations chief of the civil defense force in Aleppo.
The latest fighting has disrupted civilian life in what is a leading Syrian city, closing the airport and a highway to Turkey, halting operations at factories in an industrial zone and paralyzing major roads into the city center.
The Damascus government said its forces were responding to rocket fire, drone attacks, and shelling from Kurdish-held neighborhoods. Kurdish forces said they held Damascus “fully and directly responsible for … the dangerous escalation that threatens the lives of thousands of civilians and undermines stability in the city.”
During Syria’s 14-year civil war, Kurdish authorities began running a semi-autonomous zone in northeast Syria, as well as in parts of Aleppo city.
They have been reluctant to give up those zones and integrate fully into the Islamist-led government that took over after ex-President Bashar al-Assad’s ousting in late 2024.
Last year, the Damascus government reached a deal with the SDF that envisaged a full integration by the end of 2025, but the two sides have made little progress, each accusing the other of stalling or acting in bad faith.
The US has stepped in as a mediator, holding meetings as recently as Sunday to try to nudge the process forward. Sunday’s meetings ended with no tangible progress.
Failure to integrate the SDF into Syria’s army risks further violence and could potentially draw in Turkey, which has threatened an incursion against Kurdish fighters it views as terrorists.
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Israel-Backed Militia Says It Killed Two Hamas Operatives in Gaza
Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard at a site as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
An Israeli-backed Palestinian militia said on Wednesday it had killed two Hamas operatives in southern Gaza, marking a renewed challenge to Hamas after Israel empowered its rivals in areas under Israeli military control.
The armed group, known as the Popular Forces, said in a statement it had carried out a raid in Rafah, killing two Hamas members who refused to surrender and detaining a third. It shared a photo that it said depicted one of the slain men.
Hamas, which brands such groups as “collaborators,” declined to comment on the claim, which Reuters couldn’t independently authenticate. Rafah sits in territory under Israeli control under the terms of an October Israel–Hamas deal.
The Popular Forces, founded by an anti-Hamas armed Bedouin leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, is believed to be the largest group operating in Israel-controlled areas.
Abu Shabab was killed in December in what the group described as a family feud. He was replaced by his deputy Ghassan Duhine, who vowed not to let up in the fight against Hamas, the terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades. The Popular Forces and others have reported more recruits since the October deal took effect.
The emergence of the groups, though they remain small and localized, has added to pressures on Islamist Hamas and could complicate efforts to stabilize and unify a divided Gaza, shattered by two years of war.
Nearly all of Gaza‘s two million people live in Hamas-held areas, where the group has been reestablishing its grip and where four Hamas sources said it continues to command thousands of men despite suffering heavy blows during the war.
But Israel still holds well over half of Gaza – areas where Hamas‘s foes operate beyond its reach. With US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza moving slowly, there is no immediate prospect of further Israeli withdrawals.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged Israeli backing for anti-Hamas groups in June, saying Israel had “activated” clans. Israel has given little detail since then.
The Popular Forces deny receiving support from Israel.