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Jewish Comic Leah Forster Is a Force On Stage
Leah Forster. Photo: provided.
It is the rarest of shows when a performer will make the Hebrew blessing over Gatorade, and then ask a woman in the front row if her coat is made of real fur.
But one should expect nothing less from Leah Forster, and her hilarious and inspirational show, That’s Yentatainment! at the Theater for the New City in Manhattan through December 15.
Forster sings a Yiddish version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and original comedic songs including “Shabbos Goy,” about how when she was growing up Hasidic in Borough Park, her father would ask if someone walking by was a gentile, and would then ask them to turn on a light.
Forster explains how she was a top comic in the Hasidic community performing for women only, and how a number of traumatic events that took place beginning about a decade ago changed her path.
She was outed as a lesbian online, fired from a teaching job at a yeshiva in Brooklyn, and made headlines in the New York City tabloids in 2018 when a restaurant cancelled a scheduled New Year’s show due to her being a lesbian.
While most performers would use their outrage at these events to make a scene in their shows, Forster doesn’t do that. Instead, she recounts some nice moments, as well as some tough ones, and breaks into some of her hilarious characters that she’s made famous on Instagram (including one with several businesses in her apartment), where she has 133,000 followers.
“I’m not p***ed off,” Forster told me in an interview before the show. “I took my anger, and I turned it into art.”
She said she feels a freedom to pursue any artistic vision she wants, unlike some influencers who fear backlash from fans.
“I don’t [care] about (losing) followers,” Forster said. “I was fired from my job, my parents stopped speaking to me, my community threw me away and threatened to take away my child. I’m not afraid. I love and appreciate my followers. The whole world focuses on engagement and algorithms. I got cancelled by my own mother. I keep getting cancelled because I’m a queer and I refuse to stick to one spectrum. I feel that way about my sexuality. I feel that way about my religion. I feel that way about entertainment … why can’t I be like what Hasidim do, which is we make a cholent with all kinds of beans and that’s what makes it so savory and there isn’t a need to fit into one category.”
While there is not a lot of glitz and glamor in the show, That’s Yentatainment has a palpable power of a Jewish soul wanting to speak out. Of the many shows I’ve reviewed, this one is likely the easiest to perform on a technical level, but the most difficult to perform on an emotional one.
While some performers make themselves vulnerable by jumping in the air or wearing strange clothing, Forster does so in a way that makes you feel like she is a member of your family.
It is clear that Forster has taken the “gam zu letova” approach — which essentially means that whatever happens is for the good. Forster, who will be releasing a book in January, has an authenticity that is hard to rival and a sharp wit that could cut through a turtle’s shell.
I would like to see her do more crowd-work, as she is a great kibitzer, but that may vary from night to night.
“Who goes to a theater?” Forster asks in her show, mimicking her mother’s voice, saying that’s not a heimish — or a properly Jewish thing to do.
Forster also jokes that in her community, for young women, there is the “getting married season” and “when are you getting married season.”
“What size is the girl?” she recalls in the show, as one of the questions that would be asked when setting up matches. She details several funny scenes, including how a woman who charged people to use a treadmill in her basement turned it into a bakery, selling wonderful rugelach on Thursdays.
Forster has done standup comedy for Jewish and secular audiences, but this is her first one-woman show. It will make you laugh, tap your foot, and think about the great power of being kind and sweet in a world where some are unsavory.
“They say that you can’t go home again,” Forster says near the end of her show. “But maybe home isn’t a place. Maybe home is just the courage to be yourself…”
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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