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For theatergoers at Broadway’s recent spate of Jewish shows, attendance is a form of witness
(JTA) — Jewish stories have had top billing on Broadway this season — and Jewish audiences have been flocking to the theater.
Audiences have lined up to see Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” the multigenerational saga of a Jewish family in Vienna, and the devastating consequences of the Holocaust upon its ranks. They have packed the house for “Parade,” a musical retelling of the infamous antisemitic show trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915. And just off Broadway, “The Wanderers” (which closed April 2) invited us into the slowly disintegrating marriage of two secular Jews born to mothers who dramatically left the Satmar sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, a show replete with intergenerational trauma and a pervasive sense of ennui.
None of these shows offers a particularly lighthearted evening at the theater. So why have they proven so popular? Critics have penned countless reviews of the three plays, analyzing the quality of the productions, the scripts, scores, performances of principal actors, set and design. But for our new book exploring what audiences learn about Judaism from Jewish cultural arts, my colleague Sharon Avni and I have been interviewing audience members after seeing “Leopoldstadt,” “Parade” and “The Wanderers.” We are interested in turning the spotlight away from the stage and onto the seats: What do audiences make of all this? What do they learn?
Take “Leopoldstadt,” for example, a drama so full of characters that when it left London for its Broadway run the production team added a family tree to the Playbill so that theatergoers could follow along. “Leopoldstadt” offers its audience a whistle-stop introduction to modern European Jewish history. In somewhat pedantic fashion, the family debates issues of the day that include Zionism, art, philosophy, intermarriage and, in a searing final scene, the memory of the Holocaust.
For some of the theatergoers that we interviewed, “Leopoldstadt” was powerful precisely because it packed so much Jewish history into its two-hour run time. It offered a basic literacy course in European Judaism, one they thought everyone needed to learn. Others, however, thought that this primer of Jewish history was really written for novice audiences — perhaps non-Jews, or assimilated Jews with half-remembered Jewish heritage, like Stoppard himself. “I don’t know who this play is for,” one interviewee told us. “But it’s not me. I know all this already.”
Brandon Uranowitz, left, who plays a Holocaust survivor, confronts Arty Froushan as a young writer discovering his Jewish roots, in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.” (Joan Marcus)
Other interviewees thought the power of “Leopoldstadt” lay not in its history lessons, but in its ability to use the past to illuminate contemporary realities. I spoke at length with a woman who had been struggling with antisemitism at work. Some of her colleagues had been sharing social media posts filled with lazy caricatures of Jews as avaricious capitalists. Upon seeing “Leopoldstadt,” she realized that these vile messages mirrored Nazi rhetoric in the 1930s, convincing her that antisemitism in contemporary America had reached just as dangerous a threshold as beheld European Jews on the eve of the Shoah.
We heard similar sentiments about the prescience of history to alert us to the specter of antisemitism today from audiences who saw “Parade.” Recalling a scene where the cast members wave Confederate flags during the titular parade celebrating Confederate Memorial Day, Jewish audiences recalled feeling especially attuned to Jewish precarity when the theater burst into applause at the end of the musical number. “Why were we clapping Confederate flags?” one of our interviewees said. “I’ve lived in the South, and as a Jew I know that when you see Confederate flags it is not a safe space for us.”
“Parade” dramatizes the popular frenzy that surrounded the trial of Leo Frank, a Yankee as well as a Jew, who was scapegoated for the murder of a young Southern girl. Jewish audience members that we interviewed told us that the play powerfully illustrated how crowds could be manipulated into demonizing minorities, comparing the situation in early 20th century Marietta to the alt-right of today, and the rise of antisemitism in contemporary America.
What we ultimately discovered, however, was that audience perceptions of the Jewish themes and characters in these productions were as varied as audiences themselves. Inevitably, they tell us more about the individual than the performance. Yet the fact that American Jews have flocked to these three shows — a secular pilgrimage of sorts — also illustrates the power and the peril of public Jewish storytelling. For audience members at “Leopoldstadt” and “Parade,” especially, attending these performances was not merely an entertaining evening at the theater. It was a form of witnessing. There was very little to be surprised by in these plays, after all. The inevitable happens: The Holocaust destroys Jewish life in Europe, Leo Frank is convicted and lynched. Jewish audiences know to expect this. They know there will be no happy ending. In the secular cultural equivalent to saying Kaddish for the dead, Jewish audiences perform their respect to Jewish memory by showing up, and by paying hundreds of dollars for the good seats.
The peril of these performances, however, is that audiences learn little about antisemitism in reality. The victims of the Nazis and the Southern Jews of Marietta would tell us that they could never have predicted what was to happen. Yet in “Parade” and “Leopoldstadt” audiences are asked to grapple with the naivete of characters who believe that everything will be all right, even as audiences themselves know that it will not. By learning Jewish history on Broadway, audiences are paradoxically able to distance themselves from it, simply by knowing too much.
In the final scene of “Leopoldstadt,” Leo, the character loosely based on Stoppard himself, is berated by a long-lost relative for his ignorance of his family’s story. “You live as if without history,” the relative tells Leo. “As if you throw no shadow behind you.” Audiences, at that moment, are invited to pat themselves on the back for coming to see the show, and for choosing to acknowledge the shadows of their own Jewish histories. The cold hard reality, however, is that a shadow can only ever be a fuzzy outline of the truth.
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Some people are learning the wrong lessons from Ahmed al-Ahmed
Ahmed al-Ahmed’s seizure of a gun from one of the two killers in the Bondi Beach massacre over the weekend was irresistible to anyone looking for a sliver of hope in an otherwise completely devastating attack.
And yet that wasn’t how some chose to spin it.
On parts of the left, the focus on al-Ahmed seemed to eclipse what should have been the dominant story — simmering antisemitism exploding into shocking violence — while some on the right scrambled to erase al-Ahmed’s religious identity or claim he was an aberration rather than a reminder of our shared humanity.
Rosy Pirani, a liberal social media influencer, told her nearly 700,000 followers on Instagram that the massacre was “evil” but emphasized another “truth buried under agenda-driven narratives.”
“The man who put his life on the line, stopped the attacker and saved countless Jewish lives was Muslim,” she wrote in a Monday post shared thousands of times. “Muslim violence is amplified. Muslim heroism is buried. Good Muslims don’t fit the narrative, so they’re edited out.”
In fact, al-Ahmed’s courage was being so widely celebrated that Mehdi Hasan, the veteran journalist, focused his analysis of the Bondi shooting on what it meant for Muslims.
“Even the well-meaning liberals who say, ‘Hey, look, look a Muslim saved the day! See, it proves Muslims are peaceful,’ — well it shouldn’t require a hero,” Hasan argued.
A fair point, but one that elided any discussion of the antisemitism that motivated the original massacre, which he described more simply as an inexcusable act of terrorism.
It should be indisputable by now that, among the scores who have protested Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past two years, are some who were motivated by antisemitism — or who have gravitated toward antisemitism over time — and are willing to vent their anger at Israel through violence and discrimination against Jews in the diaspora.
While the motives of the Bondi Beach perpetrators remain less clear than the D.C. and Boulder killers — who both shouted anti-Zionist slogans while carrying out their attacks — police said the younger gunman, Naveed Akram, had ties to an Islamic preacher who was recently convicted of inciting hatred for referring to Jews as a “treacherous” and “vile people” who were “descendants of apes and pigs.”
Wissam Haddad, the preacher, said that he was simply trying to convey that “what the Israeli government is doing to the people of Gaza” is “not something new.”
This kind of antisemitic logic — either that Israel’s faults are the result of it being a country run by Jews, or that its faults justify animosity toward all Jews — has become prevalent. Yet that received little discussion among many prominent left-wing figures who responded to the Sydney attack as if it were a natural disaster.
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The lack of introspection was also glaring among Jewish leaders who seized on the attack as proof that the framework they’ve used to understand antisemitism in recent years was right all along. As Em Hilton, policy director at the left-wing Diaspora Alliance and an Australian Jew, wrote in +972 Magazine:
Before the blood of the victims had even dried, right-wing politicians and public figures — in Australia and around the world — were declaring the attack a consequence of growing anti-Zionist sentiment and pro-Palestine activism, without any proof or indication of the attackers’ motivations.
Deborah Lipstadt, President Joe Biden’s former antisemitism envoy, claimed that Zohran Mamdani had helped “facilitate” the Sydney killings by declining to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” a term Mamdani has never used but which he has been asked about for months.
Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman, a darling of the pro-Israel crowd, rather bizzarely responded to the attack by writing on X, “I stand and grieve with Israel.”
And that’s to say nothing of how some on the right responded to al-Ahmed’s bravery. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially claimed that al-Ahmed was Jewish, while others online tried to insist he was a Maronite Christian rather than a Muslim.
“There were zero Ahmed al-Ahmeds in Gaza,” an anonymous pro-Israel influencer who goes by Max Nordau posted on X.
This kneejerk insistence that any political opposition to Israel — including the Australian government’s recent recognition of a Palestinian state — is to blame for the worst instances of antisemitic violence inevitably pushes Israel’s critics into a defensive posture from which they’re loath to consider whether some of their their broad demonization of “Zionists,” for example, might be fueling antisemitism.
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The Australian massacre might have put some things in perspective, suggesting that the biggest problem facing Jews is not “globalize the intifada” — a slogan that is neither especially popular, nor described as a call for violence by many of its proponents — but rather murderous violence carried out by antisemitic zealots.
And similarly, those focused on defending Palestinian rights should perhaps have viewed the attack as a wake-up call for considering who they accept as part of their movement and who they shun, whether that’s antisemitic preachers in Sydney or protesters outside a Manhattan synagogue chanting for Hamas to “take another settler out.”
Yet sadly, I have seen tragically few good faith efforts to take stock of how we got here, and to draw an honest line in the sand that sets aside one’s views on Israel in favor of a divide between antisemites who would perpetrate or encourage this kind of horrendous violence from those who believe Jews deserve to live in safety and dignity.
Instead, the discourse on antisemitism has calcified to the point that now it seems like little more than a proxy for views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which those most invested are loath to reconsider their positions even in the face of shocking events.
The post Some people are learning the wrong lessons from Ahmed al-Ahmed appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Expands US Travel Ban to Include Syria, Palestinian Territories Due to Security Concerns
US President Donald Trump meets with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, Washington, DC, US, Nov. 10, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced sweeping new restrictions that will bar individuals with Palestinian Authority–issued travel documents along with all Syrian nationals from entering the United States, citing persistent security, vetting, and identity-verification failures.
The White House released a fact sheet explaining that nationals from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and South Sudan will also be denied entry. Trump administration officials framed the move as a response to what they described as systemic deficiencies in governance, cooperation, and counterterrorism controls.
“The restrictions and limitations imposed by the proclamation are necessary to prevent the entry of foreign nationals about whom the United States lacks sufficient information to assess the risks they pose, garner cooperation from foreign governments, enforce our immigration laws, and advance other important foreign policy, national security, and counterterrorism objectives,” the fact sheet said.
The proclamation places Palestinian Authority travel papers in the same category as documents issued by states deemed unable or unwilling to meet minimum US security standards.
“Several US-designated terrorist groups operate actively in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and have murdered American citizens. Also, the recent war in these areas likely resulted in compromised vetting and screening abilities,” the fact sheet provided by the administration read.
In explaining its decision, the White House cited the “weak or nonexistent control exercised over these areas” by the Palestinian Authority, arguing that governmental failure to mitigate terrorist threats in these areas have made it impossible to ensure that civilians in the West Bank are “properly vetted and approved for entry into the United States.”
The administration said the decision reflects long-standing concerns raised by US security agencies regarding the lack of reliable civil registries, inconsistent identity verification, and the presence of terrorist networks operating in areas under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. The restrictions are based on documentation and vetting standards rather than ethnicity or religion, underscoring that lawful permanent residents and certain narrowly defined exceptions remain in place.
In addition, the administration has placed an expansive travel ban on Syria, noting that the country is “emerging from a protracted period of civil unrest and internal strife.” The administration also said that the country possesses a high visa overstay rate.
“While the country is working to address its security challenges in close coordination with the United States, Syria still lacks an adequate central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures,” the administration wrote.
The White House has signaled a cautious warming in its relationship with Syria’s new leadership, marked by increased diplomatic engagement. In November, Trump hosted the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to Washington, DC, vowing to help Syria as the war-ravaged country struggles to come out of decades of international isolation.
“We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful,” Trump told reporters after his White House meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander who until recently was sanctioned by the US as a foreign terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head.
Sharaa led Islamist rebel forces that toppled longtime Syrian autocratic leader Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran, last year. Since taking power, he has sought to depict himself as a moderate leader who wants to unify his country and attract foreign investment to rebuild it after years of civil war. Many foreign leaders and experts have been skeptical of Sharaa, however, questioning whether he is still a jihadist trying to disguise his extremism.
The US has moved to lift many crippling sanctions it had imposed on Syria for years when Assad was in power.
In June, Trump had announced that citizens of 12 countries would be banned from visiting the US and those from seven others would face restrictions. The expansion of the policy announced on Tuesday will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.
The White House framed the travel ban expansion as part of the administration’s broader efforts to secure the nation’s borders and minimize threats from malicious foreign actors.
“It is the president’s duty to take action to ensure that those seeking to enter our country will not harm the American people,” the fact sheet read
The administration also emphasized the legality of the act, citing Supreme Court precedent which upheld previous travel bans, ruling that it “is squarely within the scope of presidential authority.”
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At White House Hanukkah party, Trump says Congress ‘is becoming antisemitic’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump said Congress “is becoming antisemitic” and warned about what he said was the fading influence of the “Jewish lobby” and “Israeli lobby” in an address to his Jewish supporters at a White House celebration marking the third night of Hanukkah.
During his remarks, the president also honored the victims of the recent Hanukkah terrorist attack in Australia and joked with his largest Jewish benefactor about her bankrolling a third presidential run prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
“My father would tell me, the most powerful lobby that there is in this country is the Jewish lobby. It is the Israeli lobby,” Trump mused. “It is not that way anymore. You have a lot of people in your way. They don’t want to help Israel.”
Trump celebrated his own Israel policies, including a recent ceasefire agreement brokered with Hamas that returned Israeli hostages from Gaza but has not ended violence in the region. He has vowed to move the ceasefire into its second phase, accounting for Gaza’s postwar governance, in early 2026.
He also warned the room, “You have a Congress in particular which is becoming antisemitic.” He singled out “AOC plus three” — a reference to the progressive House “Squad” led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom Trump says “hates Jewish people.”
Trump also blamed universities for inculcating anti-Israel sentiment, and predicted that Harvard, with which his administration has been embroiled in lengthy settlement talks over antisemitism-related fines, “will pay a lot of money.”
Trump’s audience included Jewish Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Holocaust survivors, and conservative pro-Israel megadonor Miriam Adelson. He brought Adelson to the podium with him, calling her his “number one” financial supporter.
Adelson, in turn, implied that she and pro-Israel legal scholar Alan Dershowitz believed there would be a way to keep Trump in power beyond his two-term limit.
“I met Alan Dershovitz, and he said, ‘The legal thing, about four more years,’ and I said, ‘Alan, I agree with you.’ So, we can do it. Think about it,” Adelson told a smiling Trump as attendees chanted, “Four more years!”
“She said, ‘Think about it, I’ll give you another $250 million,’” Trump quipped.
Early in his remarks, Trump turned to the Bondi Beach massacre at a Chabad-hosted menorah lighting. “Let me take a moment to send the love and prayers to the entire nation, to the people, of Australia and especially all those affected by the horrific and antisemitic terrorist attack — and that is exactly what it is, antisemitic — that took place on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney,” he said. “What a terrible thing. We don’t learn.”
He also reflected on the meaning of the holiday.
“Against overwhelming odds, a small band of Jewish fighters rose up to defend the Jewish people’s right to worship freely,” Trump said. “The miracle of Hanukkah has reminded us of God’s love for the Jewish people, as well as their enduring resilience and faith in the face of centuries of persecution, centuries. And it continues.”
Absent from the Hanukkah party was the White House’s own, first menorah, added to its collection in 2022 under President Biden.
The post At White House Hanukkah party, Trump says Congress ‘is becoming antisemitic’ appeared first on The Forward.