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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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The post Jonathan Safran Foer’s online flirtation with Natalie Portman inspires a new play appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Everyone can be a war profiteer in Gaza or Iran, thanks to online betting markets
At any moment, an alert might pop up about a catastrophic world event. Maybe Israel has bombed Iran, or Iran has bombed Israel. Maybe the U.S. has bombed Iran’s nuclear programs, or its capital of Tehran. That’s the world we live in.
And, as long as things are so bad, you might as well profit on the start of World War III.
You may have noticed a sky-high number of ads for gambling sites. DraftKings, an online sports betting site, advertises during pretty much every game for every kind of sport. But the real game is on unregulated betting sites like Polymarket and Kalshi, where users can, from the comfort of their couches on their phones, bet on pretty much anything — what phrases Trump will use in his next social media post, or when the next snow will hit New York City.
Many of the bets are frivolous, but there’s a darker world. Betting on Middle Eastern geopolitics has become hot on the platform; the likelihood of the U.S. striking Iran is currently the top trending market on Polymarket, with $313 million wagered. Bets on Israel’s geopolitical moves are also hot.
Polymarket says its intent, “in gut-wrenching times like today,” is “to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society.” (Kalshi has fewer Middle Eastern betting markets — though not none.)
But it all seems rather ghoulish. Sure, war always leads to some profiteering, but the prediction markets have made profiting on death pretty literal. Over $3 million has been placed on dates Israel might strike Gaza in the month of February, with Polymarket users hotly debating what, exactly, counts as a strike and celebrating drone hits with the hope of a payout. One commenter posted that they’d heard a Palestinian man was killed on Feb. 16; “Let’s hope,” another excitedly replied.
People who wagered on Israel striking Gaza have already won on nine different days in February. Rates depend on the bet’s odds when placed; shares are priced between 1 cent and $1 based on the going odds, with a payout of $1 a share for a win. Based on February’s odds, most people doubled or tripled their money.
There’s a lot of fine print, however. Artillery fire does not qualify as a “strike,” according to the rules of the market. Neither does a ground or naval invasion. The rules are extensive and include the types of sources that can count as confirmation — government confirmation or “a consensus of credible reporting” is required. Reporting exclusively from Palestinian outlets seems not to count, making the resolution to each wager a fraught issue.
And the markets are easy to manipulate or game with insider information. Two Israelis — a civilian and a reservist — were charged by the IDF for betting on a geopolitical market based on classified information. And Israel is investigating this as a wider problem after one user on Polymarket cashed out on numerous correct bets related to Israel’s June 2025 strike on Iran.
Shayne Coplan, the founder of Polymarket, has called the site a “truth machine,” framing it as a source of knowledge on world events. And, in some ways, the markets do have access to a certain type of truth: public opinion. One market on Kalshi, worryingly, is betting on whether Nick Fuentes will become president in the next 20 years. His chances are currently sitting at 16%.
Yet the wisdom of public opinion is fallible. People can only make their best guesses based on public information, which can lead to big losses; users lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Romanian presidential election. Some traders, who make a living on Polymarket and Kalshi, rely on short delays in confirmation, managing to sneak in on a bet after news has happened but before it is officially confirmed. The best way to win, however, is insider information — without regulation, there’s nothing to prevent, say, Trump’s speechwriter from wagering on what topics the president will cover in his State of the Union.
Still, there are some zealots who will always bet on their favorite, though, no matter how bad the odds. The devout have put Jesus at a 4% chance of returning before the end of the year.
Everyone else is happy to bet against it. Sure, it’s a safe bet, but the “no” bettors still made a tidy 5.5% return last year.
The post Everyone can be a war profiteer in Gaza or Iran, thanks to online betting markets appeared first on The Forward.
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Why the Jews Survived When so Many Civilizations Collapsed
Pro-Israel demonstrators gathered at Bebelplatz in central Berlin on Nov. 30, 2025, before marching toward the Brandenburg Gate. Participants held Israeli flags and signs condemning rising antisemitism in Germany. Photo: Michael Kuenne/PRESSCOV/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Arnold Toynbee, the great 20th century historian, devoted his life to studying civilizations — how they rise, how they flourish, and then, inevitably, how they fall.
His conclusion was disarmingly simple: Civilizations rarely collapse because they are conquered from the outside. They collapse because they fail to adapt. They mistake their moment in the spotlight — even if it lasts for centuries — for permanence.
And almost always, that confidence attaches itself to a particular place — a city, a capital, a sacred center that seems to radiate eternity.
For the Aztecs, that center was Tenochtitlan — an island city rising out of Lake Texcoco. Majestic white temples gleamed in the sun, with the great central shrine, the Templo Mayor, dominating the skyline.
Priests in feathered headdresses moved through the sacred area with ritual precision. This was an empire utterly convinced that heaven and earth met right there — in the middle of its city.
Then, in 1519, a few hundred Spaniards appeared on the horizon. At their head was Hernán Cortés, a young, ambitious, calculating adventurer who had no interest in the Aztecs’ view of themselves as an eternal people. Within two years, Tenochtitlan was rubble. The sacred precinct was stripped — its stones repurposed to build churches.
Today, if you stand in Mexico City, you can see excavated fragments of the Templo Mayor beside traffic lights and fast-food stands. The empire that believed it stood at the center of the world survives only in stone, in memory, and in the scattered descendants of a civilization that long ago lost its sacred center.
It’s a similar story with the Incas — a civilization of perhaps 12 million people stretching down the western spine of South America. They, too, had their version of eternity. Their bustling center, brimming with wealth, was Cusco, in the Peruvian Andes. Their vast empire stretched across mountains, deserts, and jungles — all radiating outward from Cusco, which they called the “navel of the world.”
Then, in the 1530s, another small Spanish expedition arrived, this one led by Francisco Pizarro. The timing could not have been worse. A brutal civil war was already tearing the Inca empire apart. Smallpox — a disease carried unknowingly by Europeans — had spread ahead of them, weakening the Inca population and destabilizing their leadership.
But even that did not prepare the Incas for the ruthless rampage of the conquistadores. Pizarro seized the emperor, Atahualpa, holding him hostage until an enormous ransom room was filled with gold and silver. The ransom was delivered as promised, but Atahualpa was executed anyway, and by 1533, Cusco was in ruins.
As in Mexico, temples were stripped of their treasures, and the gold was melted down and dispatched to Spain. Churches rose where sun temples once stood. The imperial order that seemed as solid as Andean granite unraveled with astonishing speed.
And this is not just a story about the New World. It is the rhythm of history. Mesopotamia believed itself to be eternal. Assyria did. Egypt did. Greece did. Carthage did. Rome certainly did.
Each, in its moment, assumed it stood at the gravitational center of human civilization. And then it didn’t. Monuments rise. Architecture declares permanence. Believers insist: “We are not going anywhere.” And then the center of gravity moves. It always moves.
The Jewish story should have followed the same pattern. In fact, by any reasonable civilizational metric, we were the least likely people to survive.
We began in Egypt as slaves. We wandered through the desert. We settled in the Land of Israel. We split into two kingdoms. We were exiled by the Assyrians. Conquered by the Babylonians. Rebuilt. Destroyed again by the Romans. Scattered across continents. Ruled by ruthless powers we did not control, living under laws we did not write.
No nation in history has experienced so many shifts in its center of gravity. And yet — we are still here. The question is not only why – it is how. The answer, I think, begins in Parshat Terumah. Before there was even a single stone laid on the Temple Mount, we were given something else — a sacred center that was real, but not fixed.
At the beginning of Terumah, God commands the construction of a sanctuary — not a monumental edifice carved into mountains or anchored to bedrock, but something built of curtains and poles, rings and sockets, designed to be dismantled and rebuilt wherever the people found themselves.
You might imagine the Mishkan as a temporary solution — a stopgap until the “real” thing in Jerusalem could be constructed. But that is to misunderstand it entirely. The Mishkan was not a placeholder. It was a principle. Long before we had a permanent Temple, we were taught something far more revolutionary: Wherever you are, build Me a center there — and I will be among you. As the Torah puts it (Ex. 25:8): “Let them make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” Not in it — but among them.
The Temple in Jerusalem would later become the focal point of Jewish life. It was magnificent. It was the beating heart of the nation. Pilgrims streamed toward it three times a year. The Divine Presence rested there in revealed intensity.
And yet here is the astonishing fact: When the First Temple was destroyed, and the nation was exiled across the Persian Empire, we survived. When the Second Temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 CE, and the nation was scattered across the Roman world, we survived again.
Civilizations do not usually survive the destruction of their sacred center. The Aztec temples fell — and their world collapsed. Cusco fell — and the Inca nation unraveled. When Jerusalem fell, the Jewish people did not disappear. We regrouped. In Yavneh. In Sura. In Pumbedita. In Toledo. In Aleppo. In Frankfurt. In Warsaw. In Vilna. In New York. Even in Los Angeles!
The Temple may have been our center of gravity, but it was never the source of our gravity. That source had been implanted much earlier — in the wilderness — in the Mishkan.
The Mishkan precedes permanence. Long before we possessed a fixed center, we were taught how to create one that moves with us. Portable holiness was written into Jewish DNA. While other civilizations anchored holiness to geography, Judaism anchored holiness to covenant.
This does not diminish our longing for the Temple in Jerusalem. We pray daily for its rebuilding, and we turn toward Jerusalem in every Amidah. The Temple matters profoundly. But our survival without it proves something radical: God’s presence — and our identity as God’s people — was never confined to masonry.
The prophet Ezekiel, speaking in exile, refers to the synagogue as a מִקְדָּשׁ מְעַט — a miniature sanctuary (Ez. 11:16). In other words, a Mishkan. Wherever Jews gathered — in Babylon or Spain, in Poland or America — the portable sanctuary reappeared. In a synagogue. In a study hall. Around a Shabbat table. And God dwelt in our midst.
Which is why it is no accident that our first national sanctuary was made of curtains and poles, dismantled and reconstructed again and again over 40 years of wandering. Exile was written into the Jewish story from the beginning — but so was the architecture of survival.
And so today, as the global center of gravity threatens to shift yet again, the Jewish people remain what we have always been: a nation capable of carrying its center with it.
Wherever Jews gather — in Los Angeles, New York, London, Sydney, in a grand synagogue or a makeshift minyan in a dorm room, a hospital ward, or even a military base — if there is prayer, if there is Torah, if there is yearning for God — then God dwells among us.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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Qatar’s Olympic Ambitions: Soft Power Meets Hard Questions
Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaks after a meeting with the Lebanese president at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Emilie Madi
As athletes gather in Italy for the 2026 Winter Olympics, an unusual presence should be sparking concern. Over 100 Qatari public security officers, along with 20 camouflage SUVs and three snowmobiles, arrived in Italy this month to help safeguard the Winter Games, though the country has no athletes competing.
The presence of US Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) officials in Italy has drawn much of the flack around the Olympic security forces. But on a global level, it’s the chasm between Qatar’s carefully cultivated image and its actual conduct that deserves greater scrutiny.
The Qatar contingent’s arrival in Milan – marked by the Qatari military cargo plane hitting a lighting tower upon landing – is the latest example of Doha’s expanding role in global sports event security. That role reflects a calculated strategy to position the small energy-rich Gulf state as securing global cultural events while obscuring a troubling record of supporting Islamic fundamentalism.
Qatar has put in a lot of effort – and cash – to look like a solid Western ally, a respectable citizen of the world. But a closer look at the protection Doha has provided for terrorists over decades indicates that the respectability goes no deeper than a chicken costume worn by a fox – and is likely to prove at least as dangerous.
Qatar has made clear its interest in the soft power of global sporting events. In January, Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani became president of the Olympic Council of Asia, and Qatar is bidding for the 2036 summer Olympics after hosting the men’s FIFA World Cup in 2022.
Those upstanding roles on the global scene run in parallel to blatant support of antisemitism. As Italy prepared for the Games, Qatar hosted the Web Summit tech conference, which showcased the creator of a new social media platform who told the audience he doesn’t need to rely on “Zionist money” and deployed the classic antisemitic trope that Jews control the media.
Corruption scandals abound, with Qatar standing accused of buying its way into hosting the World Cup. Former FIFA vice president Reynald Temarii was banned by soccer’s world governing body for eight years for accepting hundreds of thousands of euros from a Qatari billionaire, and was indicted by France in 2023 on charges of entering into a 2010 pact to support Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Qatari media also plays a part, with France investigating the role that a $400 million deal between FIFA and Al Jazeera, the flagship network of Qatar’s powerful media arm, may have played in the country’s selection as host.
Qatar’s support for terrorism goes back at least to the pre-9/11 era. Qatar has regularly been in the business of moving money to terror organizations, and was an early supporter of Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, broadcasting his exhortations on Al Jazeera. Top Qatari government officials are thought to have tipped off 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allowing him to escape an FBI manhunt years before, when he was being investigated for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and plots to blow up international flights.
He was not the only terrorist the country accommodated. In 2013, Doha also became a safe haven for leaders of the Taliban, where they stayed as honored guests living in luxury even after exploratory peace talks with the US broke down, and of course for top Hamas leaders, including Khaled Meshaal, Khalil al-Hayya, and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Qatari officials have expressed support for Hamas, with the mother of the emir eulogizing the architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. Members of Qatar’s Shura Council declared that the events of Oct. 7 were merely a “preview.”
In another bid for an international leadership role, Qatar recently became a member of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza Executive Board, in one of the Gulf state’s latest attempts to build its reputation as a global keeper of the peace. But Qatar is not a neutral mediator. Giving Qatar a role in the future of Gaza means giving a role to a group that will likely support Hamas’s continued influence over Gaza. This is antithetical to Middle Eastern stability, which requires Hamas to be disarmed and removed from power. Giving Qatar a role perpetuates terrorism and corruption, and puts the security of the Middle East, the US, and the world at risk.
Qatar – which exports more liquefied natural gas than any other country and is one of the richest nations on earth – has managed to maintain good ties with the West, however, in part through the purchase of influence. For example, the US recently announced it will allow Qatar to build an Air Force facility in Idaho, and Doha is a major backer of US think tanks, universities, and politi
Soccer fields and ski slopes may seem like innocent enough playgrounds in which to let Doha romp. But such involvement only allows Qatar to polish its image and extend its influence, letting it build more empty legitimacy of the sort that allows it to be included in the Gaza peacekeeping force. Let’s also not forget that enabling Qatar to bill itself as a safeguard of international sporting events means that a committed sponsor of global terror is actively working to develop a reputation as a protector of some of the world’s most prominent terror targets. Before accepting the next offer of cash from Qatar or inviting the country to participate in peacekeeping activities, it’s well worth considering whether it’s really such a good idea to keep letting the fox guard the henhouse.
Dr. Ariel Admoni is a researcher specializing in Qatari policy at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.