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Jonathan Safran Foer’s online flirtation with Natalie Portman inspires a new play
(New York Jewish Week) — When Jewish literary power couple Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss divorced in 2014 — amid rumors that he was in love with his longtime friend Natalie Portman — it captivated the nation.
Well, maybe not the nation, but certainly the literary and media worlds, as well as the hipster set in brownstone Brooklyn. Safran Foer and Krauss were rare literary megastars, whose “extremely loud and incredibly expensive” Park Slope brownstone was the subject of numerous articles (and a hefty dose of envy) when it hit the market for $14.5 million in 2013.
Portman, of course, was an actual megastar, and when the confessional correspondence between the celebrated actress and the “Everything Is Illuminated” writer was later published in 2016 in the New York Times, it elicited a fresh round of jealousy, speculation and eye-rolls from the masses, as well as numerous journalistic “takes” on the topic.
I was a teenager at the time, and had only a vague idea of why any of this mattered. But apparently it stayed with me for nearly a decade, because when I saw “The Wanderers,” a new Off-Broadway play running at the Roundabout Theatre Company, it didn’t take long for me to make the connection between this fictional production and the very real but mysterious drama that occurred between these famous Jewish writers.
“The Wanderers,” directed by Barry Edelstein, follows two couples in two different timelines. In the present day are Abe and Sophie, secular Jews and writers who live in Brooklyn and have been together since they were teenagers. The other storyline, set in the 1970s, centers around Esther and Schmuli, a Hasidic couple living in Satmar Williamsburg. The latter are introduced to the audience on the eve of their wedding, one of the first times they’ve ever been alone together.
Throughout the play, the couples, seemingly from different worlds, try to balance their careers, personal lives, internal desires and family obligations.
Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is a writer who boasts a Pulitzer Prize and several other literary awards. But he struggles with certain aspects of his life — his frayed relationships, mostly — and is hamstrung by an immense ego that is tempered only by a hefty dose of insecurity. As I watched the play, I began to feel like I knew the man, but I couldn’t quite place him. Was he just a stand-in for every genuinely talented, semi-pretentious, self-important male writer living in Brooklyn?
Abe eventually finds an outlet for his woes by striking up an email correspondence with fictional Hollywood actress Julia Cheever (Katie Holmes, the real Hollywood actress), whom he met when she came to a reading of one of his novels. Eventually, he declares his love for her — a pronouncement that essentially goes ignored by the actress. (In the play, Holmes sports a chic brunette bob not unlike a Jewish actress near and dear to our hearts.)
It became pretty clear who served as the inspiration for this play — and when I asked playwright Anna Ziegler about it, she said I was one of the few she had spoken with who had made the connection.
“In the summer of 2016, when I was writing, Natalie Portman and Jonathan Safran Foer were writing to each other in a correspondence they published in the New York Times,” she said. “She was promoting a new movie of hers, and I guess they had a previous relationship — that sparked the idea for one of the storylines in the play.”
What’s funny, Ziegler said, was that most audience members haven’t made the connection. “We haven’t really been talking about [Safran Foer and Portman] as one of the inspirations, and not many people have raised it,” she said. “I assumed that that resonance would be there for a certain percentage of the audience but, to be honest, I don’t think it’s there for the vast majority of people.”
At one point in the play, after learning his father died, Abe even says the line “Hineni, here I am,” to ground himself and calm his emotions. It’s a phrase in the Torah that usually translates to “I am ready,” which Abraham says to God before being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as well as a prayer of humility chanted on Rosh Hashanah. But it’s also, possibly, a nod to Safran Foer’s 2016 novel “Here I Am.”
Neither Krauss nor Safran Foer responded to requests for comment on the play. “For people in my generation and younger, the recognition might be there, but it was also so many years ago now,” said Zielger, 44. “So I guess the only people who remember it are the people on whom it made an impact.”
Which is fine — “The Wanderers” stands on its own even if you don’t know the backstory. Plus, the themes of the play stretch far beyond infidelity: It also explores loneliness, free will and inherited family trauma.
Originally, Ziegler set out to write something about arranged marriages, specifically within the Jewish community. “I had always been kind of fascinated and beguiled by the idea of arranged marriage — thinking about what it would be like spending that first night together, that notion always kind of haunted me,” she said.
“I had these two different plays [one about Portman and Safran Foer and the other about arranged marriages], and they seemed thematically related,” she added. “At some point, I concluded that they really were two strands at the same play and so I started weaving them together.”
Ziegler chose to write about the Hasidic Jewish community in particular because she was “somewhat familiar with that culture and community,” she told me.
Still, as a secular Jew, it’s a topic she approached delicately. She hired a cultural consultant and an accent coach for the actors who were both from the community. Ziegler herself, who lives in Brooklyn, spent time in Williamsburg, and read memoirs and watched documentaries.
In the play, the Hasidic wife Esther (Lucy Freyer) struggles to be seen by her community and to feel in control of her life. She doesn’t know where to turn and wonders if she’s fulfilled her potential — as a parent, wife, human and Jew. “One of the great joys of being an actor is being able to learn and dive head first into a community that you ordinarily wouldn’t get to know,” Freyer said.
As the story unfolds, it’s revealed that Esther left the community with her infant son, who grows up to be the renowned Jewish author Abe, who marries his childhood friend Sophie (Sarah Cooper, the comic and actress who broke big with videos mocking Donald Trump). The younger couple is almost entirely secular, yet they grapple with the same search for meaning and belonging, the same doubt as to whether they’ve chosen the right path for themselves — or if it had been chosen for them.
“All five characters, not just Schmuli and Esther, are trying to figure out how can you be happy with what you have, with where you stand in your own skin,” said Dave Klasko, who plays Schmuli.
“We say in the play the Hebrew phrase, ‘Ein ba’al hanes makir b’niso,’ which [Ziegler] poetically translates to ‘We are never aware of the miracles, especially when we are inside them,’” Klasko added. “How can I, in my own life, realize the miracle that I’m living in before I’m on the other side of it?”
For Ziegler, these are very Jewish questions — and the questions of the “Xillennial” generation. “We’re left [with] the complex heritage of feeling chosen, but also self-hating,” said Ziegler, whose previous plays include “Photograph 51,” about Rosalind Franklin, the Jewish X-ray crystallographer who helped Watson and Crick crack the DNA model. “I think this is the most Jewish of my plays, and it’s funny because I’m not that religious, but I have found in my career that there seems to be a hunger for plays about Judaism.”
“At some point in my career, I began to be thought of as a ‘Jewish writer’ — for better or for worse,” she added.
Safran Foer, 46, and Krauss, 48, have also wrestled with the “Jewish writer” term, as well as the play’s big questions of identity, self-doubt and complicated family relationships. In fact, as Ziegler and the actors point out, issues of the play are universal, and have nothing to do with how famous you are, how expensive your home may be, or how strictly you adhere to religious law. The celebrity allusion — plus the chance to see an actual celebrity, Holmes — may be a reason to buy a ticket to see “The Wanderers,” but the timeless message is what will keep you in your seat.
“The Wanderers” is playing at the Roundabout Theatre Company (111 West 46th Street) through April 2. Find tickets and more information here.
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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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