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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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These Bundist pioneers were heroes in their time. Would they be in ours?
Academic stars in high school, Abrasha Blum and Luba Bielecka shared a slow burn romance and fervor for radical change. That hardly set them apart amid the ferment after the tsarist empire crumbled in 1919. No one would have predicted that Bielecka would go on to be awarded global nursing’s highest honor and Blum Poland’s equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
But their story poses a provocation in today’s hyper-polarized politics: Blum and Bielecka were devoted Bundists, and as such, they were not only socialists but anti-Zionists.
That combination can get you labeled today as anti-Israel and antisemitic, and even anti-American. Yet at the time they were Jewish heroes.
Bielecka repeatedly risked her life smuggling children out the Warsaw ghetto under Nazi occupation while directing the sole Jewish nursing school, sustaining its rigorous professional standards even as it was squashed into oblivion. Blum, a physically frail man, was dubbed the “ideological father of armed resistance” in the Bund; he led his band of militants into joining forces with the detested Zionists in the historic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. When the insurgency was crushed — as all the combatants knew it would be — Blum, an engineer by training, led the surviving remnant through the cavernous sewer system to safety. But soon thereafter, in fleeing the police, he plummeted three stories from an apartment building. Badly injured, he was taken to Gestapo headquarters and never seen again.
Blum and Bielecka engaged the world as they found it and fought for justice for Jews and humanity. Blum’s photo is on display at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum.
A lot has changed in 85 years. In 1939, most Americans Jews opposed Zionism and feared it would be misused by antisemites to justify allegations of dual loyalty. At the time, twice as many Jews lived in Warsaw as in all of British Palestine. The Bund swept 17 of 20 Jewish-designated seats on city council (Blum held one of them), far outdistancing all the Zionists parties together. Socialism made sense to Jewish voters, who were overwhelmingly “blue collar.” And so did doikayt (“hereness”), the doctrine that Poland’s three million Jews belonged there, not in a far-off desert, as the Zionists maintained.
The Holocaust radically and irrevocably changed the landscape. Ninety percent of Polish Jewry was exterminated. Even after the Nazis were vanquished, Jews continued to endure pogroms and were largely purged from Poland’s ruling communist party. By then, Israel was the sole destination in the world that welcomed large numbers of Jews.
Blum and Bielecka’s daughter, 17-year-old Aviva (née Victoria), was among the pioneers who migrated to a kibbutz in the new State of Israel. Zionism offered her the promise of milk and honey in a sanctuary free of antisemitism.
For years, her younger brother, Olek, held fast to his parents’ politics. But he too ultimately exited Poland, not for Israel but for the US, saddened that his father’s dream of “a prosperous Jewish minority inside Poland was impossible to realize.”
Like their parents, Aviva and Olek too engaged the post-WWII world as they found it and sought a better world.
Today, socialism and anti-Zionism are each experiencing something of a revival in the U.S. Self-described socialists have won mayoral elections in New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C. DSA-supported candidates won the Senate Democratic primary in Florida and narrowly lost Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary. A recent CBS News poll found that 58% of Democrats now hold a favorable view of socialism, whereas only 32% view capitalism positively. The gap is even wider among young people. Jews, despite their relative affluence, remain among the most liberal voters in the U.S., although their current views on socialism have not been scientifically surveyed.
Anti-Zionism looks quite different in 2026 than in 1939, at least to Jews. Israel, approaching its 80th anniversary, is far from the desert mirage ridiculed by pre-war Bundists. While only a minority of American Jews self-describe as Zionists, an overwhelming majority support Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Yet they are deeply troubled by Israel’s direction: Polls show that Zohran Mamdani, a socialist and anti-Zionist, is more popular among American Jews than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
We’re left with this thought experiment: What if Abrasha and Luba resided in America today? What would they view as justice and how would they engage to achieve it? What if they resided in Israel?
And finally, a question about the rest of us: Would we recognize them as heroes?
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AIPAC couldn’t stop Michigan’s El-Sayed in the primary. Now it’s trying again.
AIPAC’s super PAC has re-entered Michigan’s closely watched U.S. Senate race less than a month before the general election, spending nearly $100,000 on mailers attacking Abdul El-Sayed, despite earlier concerns by allies of his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, that it would boost the Democratic nominee.
The spending of $94,620 by United Democracy Project (UDP) on direct mailers was disclosed in a Friday campaign finance filing. It comes after Rogers publicly welcomed AIPAC’s support during a televised debate last week, reversing the position initially taken by people close to his campaign who worried the pro-Israel group’s involvement could hurt his chances.
A spokesperson for the group told Jewish Insider that the mailers target 130,000 identified Jewish voters in the swing state. It focuses on El-Sayed’s response to an attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield earlier this year. El-Sayed drew criticism for saying “hurt people hurt people” when discussing the attacker, whose brother was reportedly a Hezbollah commander killed in an airstrike on Lebanon. El-Sayed later apologized, saying he had been trying to provide broader context for the attack.
UDP spent more than $30 million trying to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary this summer and in support of Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost by about one percentage point.
Following the primary, allies of the Republican nominee reportedly asked AIPAC not to run ads to boost him, fearing that the group’s involvement would give El-Sayed the same political foil that helped him overcome its massive spending in the primary. Axios reported that AIPAC officials didn’t take that rejection easily.
But Rogers appeared to change course last Thursday when asked whether he’d welcome AIPAC’s support.
“Anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country because he’s so close to the people who are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, again, I’ll take all of that help,” Rogers said at Thursday’s televised debate. El-Sayed interrupted to say he had condemned terrorism.
A new super PAC, Together for Michigan, aired an ad during the debate featuring Taylor Weintraub, whose child attends the Temple Israel preschool that was attacked in March.
Rogers went further on Friday at a campaign event with Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, accusing El-Sayed of being “so anti-Jewish” that a single mailer had upset him. Rogers said he welcomed help from Jewish supporters seeking to defeat his opponent. Kennedy also attacked El-Sayed, saying AIPAC would not be involved in the race if the Democrat did not “sleep in a Bin Laden jersey.”
El-Sayed, an Israel critic who has made opposition to AIPAC a central part of his campaign, responded by accusing Rogers of desperation. “You know Mike Rogers is in trouble when he begs AIPAC to start spending against me,” he wrote on X.
Some Jewish Democrats are publicly supporting Rogers, saying El-Sayed has failed to assuage concerns in his outreach to Jewish voters and in campaign appearances in recent months. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate.
Recent polls show El-Sayed with a narrow lead in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. Recent elections in Michigan have been decided by narrow margins. Trump won the swing state in 2024 by about 80,000 votes, while Democratic incumbent Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers in the Senate race that year by fewer than 20,000 votes. Four years earlier, Joe Biden won Michigan by about 2.8 percentage points.
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In Israel’s election, Netanyahu faces a reckoning over Oct. 7 failure
With barely two weeks remaining before Israel’s Oct. 27 election, the country has been consumed by an extraordinary confrontation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior former aides over what he knew before the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, what he did with that knowledge and whether his office subsequently sought to rewrite the historical record.
The immediate catalyst was a bombshell television interview in recent days with Maj. Gen. (res.) Avi Gil, Netanyahu’s former military secretary, who served alongside him before and during the attack that killed approximately 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Gil had remained largely silent for three years, expecting to present his evidence to a state commission of inquiry. But with Netanyahu blocking such an inquiry, amid transparent scheming to deflect blame, Gil decided to speak publicly.
What he described went considerably beyond the failures of intelligence and military preparedness that have already been extensively documented. Gil accused Netanyahu’s office of attempting to falsify an official record from the morning of the attack. He challenged the prime minister’s account of early warnings he received. He confirmed that Netanyahu rejected recommendations for preventive military operations against Hamas. And he described how political considerations influenced decisions over hostage negotiations, potentially prolonging the captivity of people who could have been brought home earlier – and alive.
His testimony is particularly consequential because it directly challenges a 55-page document Netanyahu released in February, presenting his version of the events preceding Oct. 7. Submitted to Israel’s state comptroller, the document portrayed Netanyahu as having repeatedly advocated tougher action against Hamas while security officials underestimated the threat. It has become central to his defense against accusations that his longstanding policy of containing Hamas helped create the conditions for the catastrophe.
Gil, who attended the relevant meetings and recorded his experiences in 16 notebooks, described the published document as a profoundly incomplete and misleading account, containing lies and half-truths. It failed to reflect even half of what he witnessed.
A separate investigation published Friday by Yedioth Ahronoth, comparing Netanyahu’s account with original records of security deliberations, reported significant omissions and distortions, including instances in which Netanyahu allegedly rejected proposals to target Hamas leaders that his February document presented as initiatives of his own.
Most explosive was Gil’s account of an alleged attempt by Netanyahu’s then-chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, to change the official time of a telephone conversation on Oct. 7 from 6:40 a.m. to 6:29 a.m. Moving the time backward could create the impression that Netanyahu had been issuing instructions from the first moments of the assault. Gil said a stenographer told him she had been instructed to alter the record, prompting him to notify the attorney general.
Nitzan Alon, another retired general who headed the government’s hostage release operation, and took part in negotiations throughout much of the war, also told reporters that “it was possible to end the war a year earlier” and save the lives of numerous hostages who eventually died in captivity.
Another remarkable confrontation involves Ronen Bar, the former head of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, whom Netanyahu has repeatedly blamed for the failures of Oct. 7. In late September, Bar announced plans to sue Netanyahu for defamation, accusing him of conducting a campaign of false allegations about his conduct before the massacre. Bar said he had warned Netanyahu about a looming security disaster and demanded disclosure of the original records of security meetings, communications and warnings, including the prime minister’s contacts with foreign officials.
Those demands have acquired additional significance amid reports that senior officials from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates warned Netanyahu about Hamas preparations shortly before the attack. Netanyahu categorically denies receiving such warnings and has threatened legal action over the reporting.
Gil’s revelations arrived alongside another striking intervention from a former Netanyahu confidant. Yoav Horowitz, , once Netanyahu’s chief of staff and director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, told Kan’s Reshet Bet radio last week that he had gradually come to understand that Netanyahu’s decisions were driven primarily by considerations of personal political survival rather than the national interest.
Now a senior aide to leading opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot, Horowitz attributed that transformation to the corrosive effects of prolonged power, observing that “too much time in power corrupts,” and framed the approaching election as being about saving the country.
Horowitz now heads the team preparing its first 100 days in government. His criticism therefore comes from a former trusted aide who has become an active political opponent, adding another dimension to the dispute over Netanyahu’s leadership.
The question of political survival also figured prominently in Gil’s account of the hostage negotiations. Asked whether coalition pressures had influenced decisions that delayed agreements to free hostages, Gil said some hostages could have returned earlier and that political calculations had played a role in the decisions that kept them in captivity.
Netanyahu has rejected Gil’s allegations, and his Likud party has characterized the latest revelations as politically motivated propaganda. Netanyahu and his supporters maintain that senior security officials failed to recognize the imminent danger.
The country is still struggling to establish a common factual account of its most traumatic day in decades, while the officials who participated in the crucial decisions offer sharply conflicting versions of what happened. Meanwhile, the families of those killed on Oct. 7, survivors of the massacre and former hostages continue demanding answers about the decisions that shaped their lives.
The public appetite for an inquiry into the disaster is overwhelming. A September 2025 survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 74 percent of Israelis supported establishing a state commission of inquiry, including 68 percent of Jewish respondents identifying with the political right. A subsequent survey conducted in February 2026 found that 92 percent of Israelis considered it important to investigate the events.
The absence of such an inquiry has left journalists, former officials, politicians and bereaved families conducting an increasingly contentious public investigation of their own. Documents appear selectively, witnesses offer competing recollections, and allegations that might otherwise be tested through sworn testimony and access to classified evidence become weapons in an election campaign. With spiraling suspicions being leveled at Netanyahu, the election will take place amid unresolved questions – and a rage that grows more toxic by the day.
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