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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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Her daughter left the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration just before the shooting, then asked, ‘Mommy, why do they hate us so much?’
The daughter of an American expatriate living about two miles from the mass killing at a Hanukkah celebration in suburban Sydney, Australia, escaped the carnage by coming home to change clothes, her mother said.
“She’d been there earlier that afternoon, on the bridge where they were shooting. She came home, changed her clothes, and was getting ready to go again,” said Michelle Stein-Evers, a former Los Angeles resident and a co-founder of the Alliance of Black Jews in 1995.
“She and her friends were on their way back to Bondi to go to the party and have something to eat, and they were stopped by the police,” Stein-Evers said. “She found out why, and she started calling everyone to let us know. Her best friend’s cousin was killed. Another best friend’s cousin was shot in the leg.”
Her daughter, who is 22, had previously locked down her Facebook account out of privacy concerns and requested that her name not be used. As the massacre unfolded Sunday, she turned to social media to search for information.
“‘Oh my God, there’s bodies everywhere,’” Stein-Evers said her daughter told her.
She also asked where her father was, amid rumors — later proven untrue — that the neighborhood where he had gone to play tennis was also affected.
Stein-Evers said the events were unfolding within minutes of their home, where she was alone after her daughter headed back toward the beach.
“It was scary. It was nothing but sirens — sirens and sirens — and helicopters,” she said.
Stein-Evers said she knew the first victim publicly identified among the dead, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who helped organize the celebration.
“He was, by consensus, one of the nicest guys in the Jewish community in Sydney,” she said.
Antisemitic incidents have been rising in Sydney and across Australia since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Stein-Evers said, adding that her daughter stopped attending the prestigious University of Sydney because of campus protests.
“She was constantly being heckled, asked, ‘Where are you from? Are you Jewish? Are you an Arab? Why aren’t you with us?’” Stein-Evers said. Her daughter would not respond to the questions and eventually enrolled in distance learning through a college in Melbourne.
Stein-Evers, who has lived in the Middle East — including in Muslim-majority countries — as well as Europe and the United States, said she now has concerns about her own safety.
“I was never scared to be a Jew in America. I was never scared in Germany,” she said — a fear she said is now shared by her daughter.
“When she came home last night, she was in tears,” Stein-Evers said. “‘Mommy, why do they hate us so much?’”
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Will laying tefillin make a difference? A rabbi responds to his cousin’s murder in Australia attack
The first thing I did when I heard news of the attack at Bondi Beach — at what must have been midnight Australian time — was to call my dear friend Michelle.
No response, though that’s not atypical: an American expatriate who’s lived in Sydney for a generation, she usually doesn’t get back to me for a day or two. Then I worked social media, searching for her and anyone else I might be connected to via Jewish geography — which often means a friend-of-a-friend among Facebook users.
While searching, the enormity of the horror set in. Fifteen people dead, about 40 wounded, hundreds under fire on the beach where the Chabad of Bondi, near Sydney, held its “Chanukah by the Sea” event.
If there were people I knew — one survivor had previously written for the Forward — the names of those killed weren’t released yet, except for Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who organized the celebration. His death was confirmed by his cousin, Rabbi Zalman Lewis of Brighton, England.
“My dear cousin, Rabbi Eli Schlanger was murdered in today’s terrorist attack in Sydney. He leaves behind his wife & young children, as well as my uncle & aunt & siblings,” Lewis posted on Facebook.
Lewis turned quickly from his cousin – “More about Eli later in the week” – to what to do next.
“Do a Mitzvah today,” he wrote. “Send pictures wearing Tefillin, saying a prayer, giving extra charity, lighting Chanukah candles.”
The suggestion instantly reminded me of another by a Chabad rabbi, in answer to a question by CNN’s Jake Tapper two weeks after the Oct. 7 attack. In the face of Hamas’s evil, that rabbi said, “Every Jewish woman should please before the Sabbath and before sundown light the Shabbat candles.”
I recall seeing Tapper’s baffled expression. It’s similar to what I’m sure many who saw Rabbi Lewis’s message must be thinking: There’s a major attack on Jews and all you can say is put on tefillin? How about kill all the terrorists?
At the other extreme are those cheering on the attackers — including one friend-of-a-friend (Jewish, I’m all but certain) who posted, “At this point, these random attacks are the only way to stop Israel. It should’ve never gotten this far but unfortunately the Zionists have brought us all here.”
I have to believe — or hope — the latter is an extreme minority opinion, and I’ll spare the poster’s name lest it incite any reciprocal violent reaction.
As for the former, kill-them-all reactions immediately run into the reality that it isn’t so easy to do, illustrated disastrously by the Gaza war. Measured purely in casualties and carnage, it was a military victory. Politically and morally, it was a public-relations disaster for Israel.
That reality has led some Jews to question the wisdom of celebrating Hanukkah as a Maccabean victory. Instead, many are accentuating Gemara rabbis who argued the holiday is more about the miracle of the oil than military might.
That doesn’t mean their successors have evolved into pacifists, but Chabad rabbis are largely speaking to Jews, about being Jewish, and, as they see it, things Jews can do themselves to repair the world.
“Let’s flood the world with goodness. As Jews, we know, as difficult as it might seem, that light & good will always win,” Rabbi Lewis wrote.
You don’t have to walk into a Chabad house to hear that. My own Reconstructionist rabbi in Duluth, Minnesota, said essentially the same thing, writing to congregants on Sunday, “Let us not succumb to fear or despair but rather embrace our faith that much more resolutely.”
Maybe some prayers are answered. Hours after my calls and messages — but much sooner than her usual replies — Michelle finally responded.
“Physically, we’re fine,” she said.
So she is safe. But too many others were not. And if faith prevents a similar fate for even a single human being, pray away.
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New York Jewish leaders at menorah lighting call for solidarity and pride after Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack
(New York Jewish Week) — Rivkah Rothschild was on her way to a public menorah lighting in New York City on Sunday evening when she decided to recite a specific Jewish prayer to herself.
“I actually said Shema Yisrael, which is the prayer that we say before passing away, just in the taxi coming over, just in case there were any terrorists here,” said Rothschild just after the event.
An attorney in Midtown East, Rothschild was planning to skip the menorah lighting at Carl Schurz Park until Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski, the executive director of the Chabad Lubavitch of the Upper East Side, asked her and her fellow community members to come out following the deadly shooting at a Chabad Hanukkah party in Sydney, Australia.
“I think we all are very shaken. We’re devastated by the news of what happened today in Sydney, Australia. All our hearts are all broken for the people that are suffering what they’ve experienced there,” said Rothschild. “I was fearful when I made the decision that I’m coming.”
The menorah lighting just outside of Gracie Mansion, which was hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York, Chabad of the Upper East Side and Kehilath Jeshurun, was one of dozens that took place across New York city to mark the first night of Hanukkah.
Hundreds of people crowded together on the ice-covered promenade of the park, enjoying sufganiyot and latkes, as sorrow and determination hung in the air.
“It was a very unified spirit and a strong energy, a resolute energy, an energy of conviction, determination,” said Rothschild following the event. “In my study of history, when Jews are in danger, we usually do three things. None of them work. We appease, we flee and we ignore. We’re not doing any of that now.”
Despite the attack, which killed 15 people and injured dozens more, Chabad officials and Jewish leaders across the country urged for planned Hanukkah celebrations to move ahead with added security measures.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the NYPD has significantly increased security around Hanukkah celebrations, menorah lightings, and Jewish houses of worship across all five boroughs,” wrote NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch in a post on X. “New Yorkers will see an enhanced uniformed presence, specialized patrols, counterterrorism resources, and additional protective measures deployed where appropriate.”
Indeed, over a dozen New York police officers and members of Chevra Hatzalah, the New York-based Jewish ambulance service, could be seen on the outskirts of the crowd as Hanukkah songs blared over the speakers.
Prior to the lighting of the menorah, which sat raised above the crowd, several rabbis, Jewish leaders and city officials gave speeches where they urged the crowd to counter the attack in Sydney by being proudly Jewish.
The incoming comptroller of New York, Mark Levine, who urged Jewish New Yorkers to attend menorah lightings earlier in the day, told the crowd that none of the public Hanukkah events throughout the city had been cancelled and that “turnout has been off the charts.”
“We are aspiring now to be modern-day Maccabees, this is who we are in New York City,” said Levine. “To those who hate us, know that we are not going anywhere. We will not let you intimidate us, not here in this park, not in front of Park East Synagogue, not in our schools, not in our subways, nowhere.”
Julie Menin, a Jewish politician who declared victory last month in the race for City Council speaker, told the children in the audience that “this too shall pass and things will be brighter.”
“This is an incredibly difficult day for the Jewish community, and it is really only by coming together and celebrating the fact that we are Jewish, that we are lighting the menorah tonight, that we are lighting the candles in the darkness, that we are going to heal, and it is only through education that we are going to fight antisemitism,” said Menin.
Throughout the speeches, many leaders also took aim at the increase in antisemitic rhetoric that has proliferated around the globe over the course of the war in Gaza.
Some also specifically decried the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a common pro-Palestinian slogan that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani declined to condemn during his campaign. He later said he would discourage its use.
“We are shocked and heartbroken about what happened, but we’re not surprised,” said Hindy Poupko, the senior vice president of community organizing and external relations at UJA-Federation of New York. “After two years of people shouting on our streets ‘Globalize the intifada’ from New York to Sydney, words have consequences. The violent rhetoric must end, and we call on all of our leaders and our elected officials to condemn that rhetoric.”
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, the leader of the Orthodox Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side, also directed his commentary to the use of the phrase.
“I need to make this very clear, because some don’t understand it. Globalizing the intifada is not an unfortunate phrase, it’s not something to be discouraged, globalizing the intifada is a call to murder,” said Steinmetz. “It’s time for us to tell the truth that this anti-Zionism has led to the death of Jews in Boulder, in Washington D.C., in Leeds and in Sydney. It’s time to say that anti-Zionism kills Jews.”
The alleged attackers in Sydney may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, according to news reports out of Australia. No reports have suggested that they made any specific comments during the attack.
In an extensive post on X Sunday, Mamdani condemned the attack and reiterated his commitment to “work every day to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe.”
“This attack is merely the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world,” wrote Mamdani. “Too many no longer feel safe to be themselves, to express their faith publicly, to worship in their synagogues without armed security stationed outside.”
Also on the stage at Carl Schurz Park Sunday night was Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a scholar in residence and rabbi for the UJA-Federation of New York whose brother-in-law, Arsen Ostrovsky, was shot during the attack in Sydney.
“I asked him just an hour ago, what should I say to your sisters and brothers in New York as your brother? He said, darkness will never triumph. We will prevail,” said Creditor. “We have a long history of doing better than surviving, friends. We have come back from so much darkness.”
Ben Axelrod, a 30-year-old Jewish resident of the Upper East Side who was in the crowd Sunday night, said he had cried that morning when he learned the news of the attack, but did not feel deterred from coming to the menorah lighting.
“Because at the end of the day, this is not new, it is scary, but we have to keep moving for all those who passed, and we can honor their memory by continuing to be proud Jews,” said Axelrod.
Rena Tobey, a 66-year-old Jewish resident of the Upper East Side, said that she had not planned to come but decided to attend the menorah lighting after learning of the attack.
“This is about light increasing every night, and we have to know that candles are temporary, but we have to carry that light with us no matter what the darkness is in the world,” said Tobey.
Another Jewish attendee of the menorah lighting, who identified himself by his first name, Steven, said that he was not afraid to come to the event despite the attack.
“We’re a strong, vibrant community, and we’re proud of who we are, and it shows how strong and proud we are given the weather conditions that we all came out,” said Steven. “Once we start to feel fear, you’re giving in, and we don’t give in.”
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