Uncategorized
Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld, a mainstay for Orthodox audiences, is gay. So what?
(JTA) — Mordechi Rosenfeld, the Jewish comedian, insists that the recent Variety article in which he reveals he is married to a man is not a “coming out” piece.
“This article is showing that I’m a veteran comedian and I’m married to a man,” said Rosenfeld, who is known to his friends and fans by the nickname Modi. “This is it. It doesn’t feel like a coming-out piece to me because I’ve been out.”
Anyone who has listened closely to Rosenfeld’s podcast in the last year would know that he and his husband have been married since 2020. The pair talk about living and traveling together, and in a recent episode revealed they would be vacationing on Fire Island, which has a famous gay scene, with prominent gay Jewish cookbook author Jake Cohen.
But the news could easily have come as more of a surprise for one swath of Rosenfeld’s core audience: Orthodox Jews from communities like the one where he grew up, where LGBTQ inclusion remains an unfamiliar and often frowned-upon frontier. Rosenfeld has delivered his signature blend of highly informed Jewish comedy, which often digs into the technical details of Jewish law, on kosher Passover cruises; at benefits for Orthodox organizations including yeshivas, Young Israel chapters and Hatzalah, the Orthodox ambulance service; and on the annual Chabad-Lubavitch movement telethon. But until recently, his routine has contained little whiff of his personal life — in fact, some of his jokes suggested to his fans that he had a wife named Stacy.
“Stacy” is in fact his manager and husband, Leo Veiga, a millennial raised Catholic in South Florida whom the 52-year-old Israel-born, Long Island-raised comedian met on the New York City subway in 2015. The split content has reflected Rosenfeld’s long-espoused belief that the only way comedy can work is to tailor the set to the crowd.
“Even though some religious organization has brought me in and people are coming to see me, I understand I’m under the umbrella of a certain demographic that I need to respect and know the audience,” Rosenfeld told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “If you put me in front of an audience, I give them what they need. And they don’t need gay material — they need the material for this audience.”
“But when I’m on the road doing my material, I can do whatever I want,” he added. “They came to see me.”
The Variety article was born of Rosenfeld’s deepening belief that it’s possible to merge his Orthodox and gay identities more publicly — something that he has long done as a congregant and sometimes-cantor at the Modern Orthodox synagogue he attends in the East Village.
“The prayers are done in an Orthodox way. And somehow, gays have been attracted to come to this synagogue,” he said. “We have a whole group of gay people and we have a whole group of trans people welcome.”
“The rabbi’s thing is no one should ever feel bullied, no one should ever feel excluded,” Rosenfeld said. “Be you. Be a proud Jew and be you.”
Rosenfeld’s “not a coming out piece” is significant and part of a broader recent pattern, according to Rabbi Steve Greenberg, the founding director of Eshel, an advocacy organization for LGBTQ Orthodox Jews and their families.
“You used to leave. Coming out meant [you] had to go. Because you could either stay and be silent, or speak up and leave,” Greenberg said. “What has begun to change the story is people insisting on not choosing between their religious identities and their queer identities and insisting on staying in Orthodox communities.”
The Variety piece comes at a time of tension around LGBTQ inclusion in Modern Orthodoxy. Yeshiva University — where Rosenfeld studied at the Belz Cantorial School of Music — has made headlines for fighting for the right not to recognize an LGBTQ student club. This month, a synagogue affiliated with the Modern Orthodox flagship also made news for its treatment of a transgender congregant; Yeshiva’s top Jewish law authority said she could no longer pray there.
The episode ignited strong feelings for Rosenfeld.
“To torture someone like that, somebody who’s religious, who’s keeping the mitzvahs, who’s teaching, who’s doing that, and to open that up and to do what they did is so terrible,” Rosenfeld said. “It’s so, so terrible. That’s the only thing I can tell you.”
For Rosenfeld, there’s no tension between Jewish observance and being gay — although his articulation of why reveals an awareness of the pain that others might feel in trying.
“Being gay, you can keep Shabbos, you can keep kosher, you can keep anything you want to do,” he said. “You can learn Talmud, you can learn Torah, the only thing you can’t do is kill yourself. You can’t commit suicide. That’s not even on the table as an option.”
When Rosenfeld shared the Variety article on his Instagram page, the vast majority of the nearly 800 comments left by fans and friends showed support for his public embrace of his gay identity.
“It’s amazing that you announce that you are gay,” one fan wrote. “You are an example to all the Jews struggling with their gayness. You are a role model to me. Cheers.”
“I think it’s great you can be out with so many of your orthodox fans,” wrote Peter Fox, a freelance writer and Jewish community advocate. “What a wonderful gift of visibility.”
But a few commenters said they would boycott his work in the future, some citing interpretations of Jewish law.
“I can’t believe you are gay,” wrote one person. “What a giant Hillul HaShem [desecration of the name of God]. I lost all respect for you. Unfollowing now. And good luck to you when it’s time to be judged by The Almighty.”
Rosenfeld doesn’t anticipate that the Variety article will lose him any gigs. If anything, he says, it might actually increase his audience. Since he has started adding gay material to his repertoire, his audiences have been increasingly LGBTQ, like at some of the “Holidazed” shows he performed in December at Sony Hall in New York.
Still, he noted, “onstage, I’m more Jewish than I am gay.”
Rosenfeld began to dabble in comedy while working on Wall Street early in his career, when his colleagues realized he was good at impressions. In the last several years, he has emerged as a leader in a wave of comedians focusing on their Jewish identities, even playing himself on an episode of HBO’s “Crashing.” Five years ago, New York City’s then-mayor, Bill de Blasio, declared June 26 as “Mordechi Modi Rosenfeld Day” in honor of his contributions to the artistic community, and last August, Rosenfeld co-hosted the first-ever Chosen Comedy Festival on Coney Island with his frequent comedy partner Elon Gold to a crowd of 4,000. The Jewish comedy show has since gone on to an audience in Miami and will head to Los Angeles in February.
Meanwhile, Rosenfeld has embarked on a steady stream of sold-out shows on multiple continents himself, while enjoying several viral moments. In one bit that was shared thousands of times last year, he pilloried the practice of taking people who have made antisemitic comments to Holocaust museums, joking, “It just gives them ideas.”
Since comedy clubs reopened after their pandemic closures, Rosenfeld has worked on new material at New York’s iconic Comedy Cellar, where patrons’ phones are kept in sealed envelopes and filming is prohibited. The absence of phones gives comedians the freedom to workshop new material — and a lot of that new material, for Rosenfeld, has been focused on living with a millennial husband.
Rosenfeld and Veiga’s story is a classic New York City meet-cute: The comedian was riding the 6 train when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Veiga, then an intern at CAA, the talent agency, introducing himself.
“And then we went on a date,” Rosenfeld told JTA. “I picked him up and I brought him to the Comedy Cellar, where I was performing. And he didn’t know that.”
After his 15-minute set, Rosenfeld returned to the comedians’ table, where he had nabbed Veiga a seat, to gauge his date’s reaction. “I said, ‘So I’m a comedian.’ And then we had dinner, we had two more dates, and then he moved in.”
In the eight years they have been together, Rosenfeld credits Veiga with facilitating the evolution of his career as both his husband and manager. During the COVID lockdown, as comedians everywhere found themselves unable to perform in their usual crowded clubs, Rosenfeld says he thought he was getting a break from work — but it was Veiga who suggested a pivot to video. That’s when Rosenfeld grew his online presence and developed his now-beloved characters, like the Israeli know-it-all “Nir, not far” (married to the fictitious, off-camera Stacy) and the Hasidic Yoely, who reviews quarantine-era TV shows and runs for president.
While Yoely is a character, Rosenfeld, too, is religiously observant. He wraps tefillin in the morning, even while touring, and he and Veiga keep a kosher home. Though Veiga is not Jewish — the couple had a civil wedding — he attends synagogue with Rosenfeld, his Hebrew and Yiddish pronunciation is excellent, and he is extremely well-versed in Jewish ideas and lingo. That has occasionally enabled him to stand up for their relationship when encountering people who believe it is forbidden: In one anecdote on the podcast, Rosenfeld shared that at a Shabbat retreat at a yacht club in notoriously conservative Orange County, California, a man at the couple’s table told them that the Bible says two men should not live together. Veiga retorted that the Bible says people should not mix wool and linen — implying that not all strictures are always followed, and leaving the man dumbfounded, according to Rosenfeld’s account.
Veiga has been part of Rosenfeld’s podcast behind the scenes since it began in August 2021, and began appearing on-screen in the taped recordings in December of that year. (In a sign of how deeply Jewish content is woven into his own life, he once wore a kitschy shirt referring to “muktzeh,” the prohibition of touching or moving certain objects on Shabbat.) Rosenfeld co-hosts the podcast with Jewish comedian Periel Aschenbrand, where guests include a mix of mostly comedians with the occasional rabbi (one time, Alan Dershowitz made an appearance).
Leo Veiga, left, wears a t-shirt bearing the Hebrew word “muktzeh,” which refers to a prohibition of touching certain objects on Shabbat. (Screenshot via YouTube)
In the December episode with Jake Cohen, Rosenfeld and Veiga recounted their experience at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Las Vegas. The couple, who admitted to following RuPaul’s Drag Race more closely than American politics, learned what causes Republican Jews were almost universally excited by (Israel and antisemitism on college campuses) and what causes they were lukewarm on (abortion) solely based on the volume of applause in the room. They also said they were surprised by how welcomed they felt as a gay couple at a Republican event, and remarked on how many of the political figures and donors they met were excited to show them pictures of all the other gay couples they knew.
Veiga said in the episode that he didn’t learn until after they agreed to the gig that the conference lineup included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, whom Rosenfeld said he found “a little creepy.” Both men have advanced policies and ideas that are anti-LGBTQ.
Rosenfeld said he had no principled objection to performing for Republicans, or anyone else.
“If the Democrats want to invite me, I will go there,” Rosenfeld said. “If Al-Qaeda wants to invite me, we’re there. A check and a microphone, and I’m there. It’s simple.”
The aside came as Rosenfeld, Veiga and Cohen discussed one of Rosenfeld’s favorite ideas — what he calls “moshiach energy.”
“Moshiach energy,” as Rosenfeld puts it, is akin to the Jewish principle of loving your neighbor as yourself and then putting that energy into the universe in order to bring about the coming of the Messiah. The idea is inspired by the last leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox movement, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — a major source of inspiration for Rosenfeld, who studied at a Lubavitch yeshiva.
Comedian Modi Rosenfeld Rosenfeld speaks with Rabbi Manis Friedman, right, and comedian Periel Aschendbrand on his podcast in November 2021. A portrait of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last rebbe of the Chabad Orthodox movement, is behind Rosenfeld. (Screenshot via YouTube)
It’s an attitude that he says is embodied by his synagogue, which he has attended since it opened in the 1990s.
“I am so fortunate to belong to a synagogue, Sixth Street Community Synagogue, where when you put moshiach energy out, it comes right back at you,” he said.
Schneerson considered homosexuality a sin and advocated for Jews to choose not to yield to homosexual urges. Last year, on his podcast, Rosenfeld hosted a Chabad rabbi, Manis Friedman, the former translator for the Rebbe, who espouses the same view; he said he finds Friedman inspiring even though he may not agree with all of Friedman’s views. It’s one of many instances where Rosenfeld has been able to square his identities in ways that have proved challenging for others.
Greenberg, the executive director of Eshel, agreed with Rosenfeld’s hypothesis that the Variety article would have little effect on the comedian’s ability to book gigs — and he said Rosenfeld’s commitment to Orthodox ideas and practices could work in his favor.
“Maybe some of those organizations that have hired him before will actually think this is an even more important reason to have him,” Greenberg postulated. “Some people will see this as a kind of affirmative step that you don’t have to abandon your religious identity because you’re gay.”
It’s an idea that is central to one of Rosenfeld’s signature jokes. For him, being Jewish means praying with tefillin every day, eating kosher food and observing Shabbat — while also being married to his husband.
“I always say: the Jewish people — we’re not the chosen people, we’re the choosing people,” Rosenfeld said. “Being Jewish is a lifestyle — like Equinox.”
—
The post Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld, a mainstay for Orthodox audiences, is gay. So what? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
A new grocer is moving into Squirrel Hill. Its rival says the deal isn’t kosher.
PITTSBURGH — Mister Rogers was from Squirrel Hill, and it was here that he built a career on a small, perhaps radical idea: that showing up for your neighbor, day after day, is its own kind of moral work.
It is a strange thing, then, that the neighborhood that made him famous — the same one that gathered in 2018 after the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history — is now consumed by a fight over what neighborliness is worth when there’s money, and a family’s retirement, on the line.
For three decades, one grocery store has anchored Squirrel Hill’s kosher life. Soon it will have new company: a rival supermarket opening just blocks away. The family that runs the original store says the new store was built in part on their own private financial records, shared in confidence during a sale that fell through. The newcomer, for its part, says it has “acted properly” throughout.
The dispute is now headed to a rabbinical tribunal, where both sides will make their case.
This is a very Squirrel Hill kind of story, intimate enough that it’s hard to separate the business from the relationships underneath it. It’s also part of something bigger: the fight reflects a broader shift already underway in kosher retail, where small, single-location grocers are increasingly competing not just with each other but with regional chains and delivery networks that didn’t used to reach a market this size.
‘Cheek by jowl’
By midafternoon on a recent Thursday, Murray Avenue Kosher is deep into its weekly pre-Shabbat rush — cashiers ringing up customers as fast as they can, stockers racing to keep pace with what’s flying off the shelves. Behind the deli counter, a line of people wait while workers slice cold cuts and pack containers of whitefish and kugel.
On the front door hangs a sign reading “Israel — We Stand With You,” put up after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. A few feet away, on a window, is a Steelers poster — a small reminder that this is a Jewish community that is also, unmistakably, a Pittsburgh one.
For Ellie Feibus, 39, who lives within walking distance, the store is less an occasional stop than a daily habit: coffee some mornings on her way to work at a synagogue preschool, lunch, dinner in the evening, a Thursday wine tasting. She often has her dog, Anschel — a blind, toothless, 12-year-old pug — with her. She greets people by name, wishing “Good Shabbos” to those she passes and “Hi, honey” to several others.
When Feibus got COVID during the pandemic, she called Aryeh Markovic, who runs the store with his parents, Saul and Beth. He personally delivered groceries to her doorstep. Without being asked, he added a container of chicken soup.
It’s that kind of care, she said, that would be hardest to replicate in a new store: “the part that’s going to be missing.”
Step outside and you’re in the heart of Squirrel Hill, home to a large swath of Pittsburgh’s roughly 50,000 Jews, three day schools and about a dozen synagogues across the denominational spectrum — a community that has been here, largely intact, for generations.
“In Squirrel Hill, everybody lives cheek by jowl,” said Mark Oppenheimer, who wrote a book chronicling how the neighborhood held together after the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting. “Even the more liberal and Reform Jews will power-walk with the Orthodox on their lunch hour. In a lot of cities there’d be real distance between those worlds. Here, there isn’t.”
The neighborhood’s epicenter is the corner of Murray and Forbes avenues, adjacent to the Jewish Community Center, and the same intersection where the community gathered for a vigil the Saturday night after the shooting.
That corner was, until recently, home to a Rite Aid. But after the financially strapped drugstore chain declared bankruptcy in 2025, the building became available to lease.
Deal or no deal
Yitzchok Glassner, a transplant to Pittsburgh, wanted to get into the kosher supermarket business. The timing seemed fortuitous. Saul and Beth Markovic bought Murray Avenue Kosher in 1996; their son Aryeh joined as a partner in 2021. By last year, Saul and Beth were ready to retire — just as Glassner came looking for a store to buy.
In June 2025, Glassner expressed interest in Murray Avenue Kosher, and the two sides signed a non-disclosure agreement. Over the course of several weeks, the Markovic family handed over the store’s tax returns and profit-and-loss statements.
Glassner wanted to put his supermarket — with the name Murray’s Market — in the former Rite Aid building. Doing so meant winning approval from a bankruptcy judge working with Rite Aid, who needed proof the new venture could pay the rent. The Markovics allege that without their permission or knowledge, Glassner submitted their financial records along with a declaration stating that Murray’s Market was, in Glassner’s words, “acquiring Murray Avenue Kosher.” No such acquisition existed.
The Markovics say that they had yet to reach a deal with Glassner when he told the court he was acquiring Murray Avenue Kosher. They also claim that Glassner broke the non-disclosure agreement by sharing their private financial information, which is now in the public record as part of a filing in the Rite Aid bankruptcy case.
“Nobody is going to buy the business now if there’s a competing store opening 200 feet down the block,” said Shaya Markovic, Aryeh’s brother. “Had we known he intended to use the documents to open a competing store, my parents would never have given them.”
Talks between the Markovics and Glassner broke down.
Brandywine Communities, the owner and landlord of the former Rite Aid building, announced in August that Murray’s Market was granted the lease. Renovations are expected to begin in the coming months with a planned opening in 2027.
Whether it gets there without further complications is an open question. The underlying fight — over whether Glassner owes the Markovics anything and what should be done if he does — is now headed to the Beth Din of America, a rabbinical high court.
A different kind of court
Few outside the Orthodox Jewish world have ever heard of the Beth Din of America, let alone know that a fight like this one could end up decided there, by a panel of rabbis rather than a judge or jury.
Murray Avenue Kosher’s Markovic said what he wants is straightforward: financial compensation from Glassner for damages he believes were caused to his business.
Glassner struck a different note: “In the interest of peace, we attempted to reach an understanding with another establishment, but sadly, those efforts were unsuccessful,” read a statement he sent to the Forward. “Nevertheless, throughout the process, we have acted properly, and we remain confident that all matters will be settled amicably.”
The Beth Din of America functions much like private arbitration in the secular world. Both sides have to agree to bring a dispute there, and once they do, the ruling is binding. A losing party can’t simply refile the same case in civil court and abide by that ruling instead.
Cases like this one are typically decided by a panel of three rabbinic judges. The Beth Din of America, modeled after the rabbinical courts in ancient times, maintains a roster of rabbis it works with, each with different specialties — one might have more experience with family law, another with contracts and business disputes. Some of the rabbis are lawyers themselves.
The arbitration can take place at the Beth Din of America’s Manhattan offices, or any other location that the parties and the Beth Din agree to, with follow-up sessions sometimes held over Zoom.
Sources who have previously worked with the Beth Din of America expect a case like this to be litigated in the coming weeks — with perhaps a slight delay due to Yom Kippur and Sukkot. A written ruling can take additional weeks to finalize.
Rabbi Yitzi Genack of the Vaad Harabonim of Pittsburgh, which certifies kosher establishments in the city, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. A spokesperson for Brandywine Communities, the landlord and owner of the former Rite Aid building, declined a request for an interview.
A street with history
The new Murray’s Market is not facing off only against one other kosher option.
Directly across the street from Murray Avenue Kosher, the local Giant Eagle — a large regional supermarket chain — runs its own in-house kosher bakery and stocks a decent selection of kosher meat: cold cuts, chicken, beef, steak and brisket. There was already competition, in other words, long before Glassner decided to open a new store.
“For over a century, many important kosher establishments have served Pittsburgh’s diverse Jewish community, including Adler’s Delicatessen and Grocery, Kosher Mart, Murray Avenue Kosher, and Prime Kosher,” read a statement from Glassner. “For many years, these establishments — often operating side by side — contributed greatly to the Jewish community.”
In the 1940s, Murray Avenue supported at least 10 kosher butchers, a handful of kosher poultry stores, two fish stores, six bakeries and 14 grocery stores, according to Eric Lidji, director of the Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives at the Heinz History Center. Rabbi Bernard Poupko, who led Congregation Shaare Torah in Squirrel Hill from 1942 to 1996, once called the street the yidisher gas, the Jewish street, even as the businesses lining it kept changing hands.
Adler’s Delicatessen is a case study in how the markets have changed. Founded in the late 1910s, it became a Murray Avenue fixture — until the Adler family sold it, in 1974, to U-Se Chu, a Korean immigrant. Under Chu’s ownership, the deli kept its kosher-style menu and its Jewish character for decades, before the family retired and sold it in 1997.
On Murray Avenue, in other words, a kosher institution outliving — or even changing hands entirely from — its founding family is not a new story.
A larger trend
Kosher shopping in Squirrel Hill does not even require a storefront anymore. Evergreen, a kosher supermarket chain with locations in New York and New Jersey, makes bulk kosher deliveries to eight cities across the Midwest as well as to Pittsburgh — part of a broader pattern of national and regional players reaching smaller Jewish communities that, until recently, only had access to whatever their local grocer carried.
Customers have noticed. Feibus, a devoted Murray Avenue Kosher shopper, said some of Pittsburgh’s newer transplants from the northeast have grown used to bigger, more polished kosher chains like Seasons and want the same thing locally. The Grove, a South Florida-based kosher supermarket chain, has added locations in Ohio and Michigan in recent years. Many Costco and Trader Joe’s locations across the country stock kosher chicken and other products for Jewish customers.
This fight is bigger than one grocer and one new competitor. Mom-and-pop kosher stores no longer have these smaller Jewish communities to themselves.
Not everyone in the neighborhood sees a second kosher store as a threat. Ronna Harris Askin, 78, a longtime Squirrel Hill resident, said she plans to shop at both.
“Competition is always good,” she said. She’s fond of Murray Avenue Kosher — it “mostly meets my needs,” she said — but doesn’t think one store should have to carry the whole neighborhood. “It’s good for the economy to have two places. It makes everybody be on their toes to do a good job.”
Harris Askin has seen the alternative firsthand. Her daughter and son-in-law live in Toco Hills, a heavily Jewish Atlanta neighborhood, where both Kroger and Publix stock kosher meat and other products alongside two dedicated kosher markets — evidence, to her, that a bigger Jewish community can support more kosher retail without strain.
What comes next
Markovic isn’t waiting around to find out what the Beth Din of America decides.
He’s already working on what comes next at Murray Avenue Kosher. In the coming months, he plans to move the deli counter to a new space in the store and expand its offerings to include restaurant menu items like chicken sandwiches and hamburgers. He’ll be adding tables for seating. He has also hired a chef to make fresh sushi daily.
A year ago, Markovic was contemplating getting out of the business. Now he is doing the opposite: pouring money into the same store he nearly sold, betting that the surest answer to a rival two blocks away isn’t a rabbinical court, but a better rotisserie chicken.
“It’s imperative to get it done quickly,” Markovic said. One of his brothers is flying in to help him push through the vendor calls and the small decisions that used to take him weeks to get to. “I have ninety-seven phone calls in between everything I want to do,” he said, and laughed, a little wearily, before picking up to answer another one.
The post A new grocer is moving into Squirrel Hill. Its rival says the deal isn’t kosher. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israeli army weighs legal action against NAZA film makers amid calls to revoke their citizenship
(JTA) — The Israeli army chief of staff on Monday ordered the military to examine possible legal action over “NAZA,” a documentary alleging that Israeli forces knowingly killed large numbers of civilians in Gaza.
The 80-minute documentary by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, two days after its premiere there drew a 25-minute standing ovation. In Israel, it drew widespread condemnation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior military officials, former hostages and other public figures.
Eyal Zamir requested that Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Itai Ofir “examine security aspects and possible involvement in relation to the leak of classified materials used in the production of the film” as well as advance “possible legal actions regarding the film and those involved in it.”
Zamir also convened senior IDF officials, including the deputy chief of staff, the military advocate general, the air force commander and the commander of the elite 8200 military intelligence unit to address what the army says are the film’s distortions.
In a statement announcing the meeting, Zamir denounced the film’s allegations as “blood libels,” a “deliberate distortion of reality” and “false and grave accusations” against Israeli soldiers and commanders.
The film “adopts narratives of Israel-haters, defames our soldiers and commanders, and seeks to present the IDF as deliberately acting unlawfully,” he said.
“This is a dangerous attempt to deprive us of the legitimacy to defend ourselves against the worst of our enemies, and in the process, to put IDF soldiers and commanders in real danger,” Zamir added.
The IDF said in a separate statement that it “categorically rejects” the film’s allegations and questioned the credibility of its anonymous sources. It said some claims about national and military strategy were “clearly beyond the knowledge of junior-level soldiers” and that intelligence personnel cited in the film “by definition would not have been involved” in some of the situations described. It also rejected what it called the film’s portrayal of unintended civilian deaths from lawful strikes as deliberate killing or part of a “genocide.”
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says that over 70,000 people have been killed in the war launched by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, with deadly raids inside Israel. The army does not dispute the number, but says that a substantial portion of the dead are fighters. Gaza’s health ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
The military also disputed NAZA’s depiction of artificial intelligence in targeting, saying such decisions are made “by human personnel only.” It said anticipated civilian harm is weighed against the expected military advantage before a strike is approved and that attacks are not carried out when that harm would be disproportionate.
The IDF added that it had only seen excerpts and a trailer, and asked the filmmakers for a full screening before responding comprehensively.
Israeli government agencies, including the Foreign Ministry, also met Monday to coordinate a response to the film and sent Israeli diplomats abroad talking points rebutting its allegations. The talking points accused NAZA of turning “the truth on its head” and serving as a “disguise for Hamas propaganda,” according to a foreign ministry document cited by Ynet.
Netanyahu also condemned the film on Monday, calling it “shocking” in a video posted to X.
“We’re fighting worldwide antisemitic incitement, but when it comes from within us, it’s intolerable,” he said.
Culture Minister Miki Zohar went further, asking the Interior Ministry and Population and Immigration Authority to examine whether Abraham and Szor’s conduct could justify revoking their Israeli citizenship. Zohar accused the filmmakers of harming Israel abroad and said officials should examine whether the way material for the film was obtained or published could amount to treason or assisting the enemy during wartime.
Released hostage Eliya Cohen, who was held in Gaza for 505 days, also attacked the filmmakers, accusing them of spreading lies about soldiers who fought to bring him home and of endangering Israelis and Jews abroad. Cohen urged the public to hang posters with photos of the filmmakers so that “when they walk down the street they will feel ashamed.”
“People should spit on them,” he said. “The blood of our friends, the blood of Diaspora Jews, is on their hands.”
Abraham defended the film in a tense interview Monday with veteran Channel 13 journalist Raviv Drucker, who pressed him on how the filmmakers verified the accounts of the 24 anonymous soldiers.
“I have to tell you that as a journalist, I don’t think I would have aired this,” Drucker told Abraham, arguing there was “no supporting evidence” publicly available to independently confirm the claims.
“We don’t have their names, we don’t have their units,” Drucker said. “We don’t have the dates of the events, places, or who was hit. We basically have nothing to hold on to, to refute or confirm these very serious testimonies.”
Abraham said editors at The Guardian, which produced the film, had access to the underlying material. “The identities of the people were verified, the cases they discussed were verified,” he said.
He also accused Israeli television of failing to seriously investigate civilian casualties and rules of engagement in Gaza during the war. “NAZA” is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage.”
More than 700 Israeli film professionals signed a petition backing Abraham and Szor, accusing officials of waging an “unprecedented campaign of incitement and vitriol” against the filmmakers that they said came close to legitimizing of violence. Signatories included Ari Folman, Hagai Levi, Shlomi Elkabetz, Shira Geffen and Nir Bergman.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli army weighs legal action against NAZA film makers amid calls to revoke their citizenship appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Macklemore got canceled. Kanye is playing sold-out shows. What’s the difference?
Moments after Seattle rapper Macklemore led fans in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium in a call to “Free Palestine” that ended his opening spot on a national tour, another notorious rapper, despite years of toxic, antisemitic behavior, played to a sold-out crowd in Chicago’s Soldier Field for the second night in a row: the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
On Monday, Macklemore paid the price for that Sept. 4 show where he accused Israel of genocide and apartheid while opening for English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran. That gig ended when Robert Kraft, owner of Boston’s Gillette Stadium, said Macklemore was not welcome there for Sheeran’s two scheduled shows.
The shutout went beyond Gillette. With 10 more shows left on the tour, eight including Macklemore as the opening act, Kraft rallied other stadium owners to bar him too. Macklemore was removed.
“The venue’s and promoter’s decision was final,” Sheeran wrote on Instagram. “Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision. It was not mine. I have spent this week trying to build bridges, to find a solution and unfortunately, was unable to do so.”
On Tuesday, Sheeran’s three other opening acts and his back-up band withdrew in solidarity.
On that list of stadiums that barred Macklemore was AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, where tickets to see Ye in November went on sale last week. But there was no mention of canceling that show.
Neither Soldier Field nor AT&T Stadium responded to the Forward’s inquiries about why Ye was still welcome there despite his escalating antisemitism over the years.
In 2025, his antisemitic conduct hit a fever pitch when he ran a Super Bowl ad directing viewers to an online store that briefly sold a $20 T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. He also released a music video on X titled “HEIL HITLER (HOOLIGAN VERSION),” featuring the lyric “So I became a Nazi, I’m the villain,” which surpassed one million views. He was banned by Twitch after appearing in a livestream giving a Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler.”
So is hating Jews more acceptable than hating Israel?
Not exactly, said Ari Ingel, executive director of The Creative Community for Peace, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting antisemitism in the entertainment industry. Macklemore has shown no signs of remorse or intention to understand why his actions were harmful.
Meanwhile, Ye has paid a hefty price for his antisemitic rants over the years, losing lucrative deals with Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and Universal Music Group. And while some still question Ye’s sincerity and he has more work to do, he did apologize, Ingel said.
“Kanye is still being held accountable for his statements,” Ingel told the Forward. “He’s not working with the biggest promoters in the industry … We have not let go of all the harm he has caused yet, but his team has put him on a better path.”
Though Ye has performed in some European shows, his headline act at this summer’s Wireless Fest in London was canceled after the U.K. denied him a visa to travel to the country. Concerts in Italy, Russia and Poland also got nixed.
Here in the U.S., his promoter has only been able to book select stadiums for this 2026 tour, including the New Orleans Superdome, San Antonio Alamodome, and two shows at Soldier Field in his hometown of Chicago.
In San Antonio, Mayor Gina Maria Ortiz Jones unsuccessfully tried to prevent Ye’s July 4 show in the city-owned stadium. But backlash against pulling the plug was too intense and the show was allowed to go on. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott also sought to cancel Ye’s June shows at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, another publicly-owned venue scheduled to host Sheeran on Nov. 7.
Ye’s shows have featured the spectacle that he is known for – the artist performing on top of a gigantic spinning globe in the center of the stadium with billows of fog, laser light shows, fireworks and surprise guest appearances. His setlist covers the span of his career, minus the song “Heil Hitler.”
Macklemore, by contrast, commandeered what was supposed to be a family-friendly show to deliver a not-so-family-friendly, even hostile, message, Ingel said. He didn’t just speak briefly about the plight of Palestinians, which would have been within his right to do. While singing “Hind’s Hall,” his tribute to pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a building at Columbia University, he projected images of war and encampments on giant screens and led the crowd in a call and response, creating an atmosphere where Jewish fans felt threatened.
“Ye, despite the previous statements, is not doing that at his shows,” Ingel said. “He’s not whipping up the crowd into a frenzy of antisemitic hatred.” If he did, his tour would undoubtedly come to a screeching halt.
“Stadiums are not going to allow their venues to turn into forums for hate,” Ingel said. “This is about bringing people together.”
And so far, ironically, that’s what Ye’s shows try to do by sticking to the music. Unfortunately, Ingel said, Macklemore did not.
The post Macklemore got canceled. Kanye is playing sold-out shows. What’s the difference? appeared first on The Forward.
