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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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Anti-Zionist ‘Catholics for Catholics’ Group to Honor Carrie Prejean Boller at Event Featuring Candace Owens
Carrie Prejean Boller, who was ousted from the White House Religious Liberty Commission in February 2026 following outrage over her repeated downplaying of antisemitism. Photo: Screenshot
Right-wing, anti-Zionist activist Carrie Prejean Boller, who was recently removed from the White House Religious Liberty Commission over her conduct and repeated downplaying of antisemitism, will receive a “Catholic Champion” award next month at a gala organized by Catholics for Catholics, a group which urges Catholics to reject Zionism and promote American nationalism.
Prejean Boller’s behavior at a Feb. 9 commission hearing intended to address rising antisemitism in the United States included an impassioned defense of antisemitic personalities Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, as well as her peddling of unsubstantiated claims that Israel has intentionally starved and murdered Palestinian civilians.
“I would really appreciate it if you would stop calling Candace Owens an antisemite,” Prejean Boller said to Seth Dillon, CEO of the political satire site Babylon Bee, during the hearing. “She’s not an antisemite. She just doesn’t support Zionism, and that really has to stop. I don’t know why you keep bringing her up, and Tucker.”
In January, Owens blamed Zionists for directing US President Donald Trump’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and chose to repost rapper Ye (former Kanye West)’s “Death Con 3 on Jewish People” tweet from 2022, praising the sentiment as a “whole vibe.” She has labeled Jews as “pedophilic,” accused them of murdering Christians, and blamed them for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in addition to making comments casting doubt on the Holocaust. In November, Owens admitted she had grown obsessed with the Jewish people.
During the hearing earlier this month, Prejean Boller, a former Miss California, also pressed witnesses, including Jewish religious leaders, on Israel and Zionism, questioning whether opposition to the Jewish state should be considered antisemitic, and castigated Israeli military action in Gaza. She donned a Palestinian flag pin on the lapel of her suit. Prejean Boller’s conduct drew audible boos from the audience and confusion from her colleagues, as well as widespread backlash online.
The next day, Prejean Boller posted on X defending herself, writing, “I will continue to stand against Zionist supremacy in America. I’m a proud Catholic. I, in no way will be forced to embrace Zionism as a fulfillment of biblical prophesy [sic]. I am a free American. Not a slave to a foreign nation.”
The commission was established by US President Donald Trump to examine religious freedom issues and was intended to focus on concrete challenges facing Jewish communities, including bias and harassment. It is supposed to produce a report for Trump on religious liberty later this year.
Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas and chair of the commission, announced Prejean Boller’s expulsion from the panel on Feb. 11, saying she “hijacked” the hearing for her “own personal and political agenda.”
Then John Yep, president of Catholics for Catholics, announced on Feb. 12 that Prejean Boller would receive his group’s “Catholic Champion” award at its upcoming March 19 Catholic Prayer for America Gala in Washington, DC. Speakers announced for the event include Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Owens, her former Daily Wire colleague Matt Walsh, Father Chris Alar, Sister Dede Byrne, and Yep himself.
“Politics is always downstream from religion. While Catholics acknowledge that the modern 1948-State of Israel has a NATURAL right to exist, pushing a false ‘Biblical Mandate’ to support its domination of the entire Holy Land is neither Catholic, nor in America’s interests,” Yep stated. “Tragically, this theological error has often been used to justify both, horrific crimes against our Christian Palestinian brethren, and catastrophic foreign policy decisions by American leaders.”
Yep insists that his group only opposes Zionism and does not promote antisemitism.
“Of course as Catholics, antisemitism — hatred of Jews — is wrong,” Yep wrote. “But so is equivocating resisting ‘Zionism’ with hatred of Jews. This is what my fellow Catholic Carrie Prejean so boldly stood for on the panel for Religious Liberty.”
Yep frames his group’s purpose as defending Catholics for expressing their faith publicly. “When one of our own is out there bravely trying to stand up for what is right and is getting attacked, rest assured we won’t sit back,” he said. “We are a movement of faithful patriots that back frontline warriors like Carrie, who love God and the USA with the power of our Catholic faith.”
Simone Rizkallah, the director of the Coalition of Catholics Against Antisemitism, pushed back against Yep’s plans in a statement to the Christian Post calling Prejean Boller’s actions “inappropriate behavior that warranted her removal, as Lt. Gov. Patrick rightly determined.”
Rizkallah said that Prejean Boller “should not be rewarded for such conduct, nor should it be held up as a model of Catholic witness.”
“The violence against our Jewish friends that American Catholics have witnessed on American soil in the last few years should be enough to disturb us,” she added. “At the very least, it should alert us to the tone-deafness — if not outright malice — of Miss Prejean’s behavior and the scandal of celebrating it.”
After acknowledging that the Catholic Church disagreed theologically with Christian Zionists who come from an Evangelical tradition which regards the state of Israel through the lens of fulfilling Biblical prophecy, Rizkallah said that “while the Catholic Church does not embrace prophetic or eschatological forms of Christian Zionism, Catholic theology does leave room for distinctly Catholic theological reflection that affirms the enduring covenantal significance of the Jewish people and the moral legitimacy of Jewish self-determination in their historic homeland.”
Last month, Pope Leo XIV marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a statement reaffirming the Catholic Church’s “unwavering” opposition to antisemitism. He also concluded with a link to Nostra Aetate, a declaration from the Second Vatican Council and promulgated on Oct. 28, 1965, by Pope Paul VI, that called for dialogue and respect between Christianity and other religions. The theological reform called for a position of Christian-Jewish brotherhood, advocating “the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.”
Leo has made speaking out against rising antisemitism a topic of regular concern since his papacy began last year.
Catholics for Catholics, founded in 2022, describes itself as “a militant organization dedicated to the evangelization of this great country through public prayer, powerful media, and strategic political action. We’re warriors who love Christ, our Lady, and the USA.”
The group’s logo is a shield with the Virgin Mary in the foreground and a 1776 American flag in the background. It has received an endorsement from Trump who said “your love of God and Country is evident in everything you do. We admire your dedication to preserving America’s founding principles through your faith.”
In a statement, Catholics for Catholics claimed that Zionism “has too often warped the minds of Christians about their own faith, and deadened their hearts to the plight of their brethren in the Middle East.” The group said that Catholics were being intimidated to “speak about the 1948 State of Israel in a way they speak about no other nation. And if we don’t comply with their demands, they’ll slander us as ‘Antisemites.’”
On Feb. 10, Yep wrote on X that “if an American thinks it’s bad to have blind support for the Country of the VATICAN …for example send billions of tax pay dollars to them..or other things…We Catholics dont consider you ‘anti-catholic.’ We humbly ask you in return not to use your religion to make us blindly support a foreign nation and call us ‘anti semitic” if we dont. Thank you [sic]!”
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Israel’s Bobsled Team Clarifies It Withdrew From Last Day of Winter Olympics After Wanting Lineup Switch
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – Feb. 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Israel’s four-man bobsled team withdrew from the last day of the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics on Sunday after there were issues with how the team wanted to change its lineup mid-competition and allow its alternate to participate.
The team’s captain and pilot AJ Edelman explained in a series of posts on X that since the team knew it had no chance of winning in the third heat on Sunday, it wanted to give their alternative, 25-year-old Druze athlete Ward Fawarseh, an opportunity to compete in the Olympics for the first time ever before the Winter Games concluded. Farwarseh is the first Druze to make it to the Olympics, and this year marks the first time ever that Israel is competing in bobsledding in the Games.
However, changing push athletes midway through a competition is only permitted under special circumstances, including an illness or injury. As a result, the Israeli team – consisting of AJ Edelman, Menachem Chen, Uri Zisman, and Omer Katz – decided together to withdraw from the third heat on Sunday.
“We offered to withdraw before any action was taken,” Edelman told The Algemeiner on Monday, clarifying that his team was not disqualified from the competition, despite reports suggesting the contrary.
“Given that our placement going into the final run was all but predetermined, it was more important to us that our alternate could have the opportunity to compete in the Olympics. The team moved to make the replacement,” Edelman further explained in a post on X. “But the circumstances under which we made the substitution did not meet the bar that allows a team to make a lineup change, and we withdrew from our final run.”
“I will always remain proud that the team looked at their Druze brother, who had earned his place on the team, and unanimously said ‘we want this for you.’ I signed off on it and I take responsibility,” the American-Israeli athlete wrote in a subsequent post. He added that he apologizes “profusely” if fans were disappointed, but in a since-deleted post on X, he added that he does not apologize “at all” for the decision.
“The switch is not only common in our sport, we did it believing it was good for the country and to honor our teammate,” he said. “We thought we were putting country first.”
Team Israel finished the first two runs of the four-man bobsled competition with a combined time of 1:51.16, which placed them in 24th place out of 27 leading into the third heat on Sunday. Edelman and his teammate Menachem Chen also competed in the two-man bobsled race during the Winter Olympics.
In a statement given to The Times of Israel, the Olympic Committee of Israel claimed it did not allow the bobsled team to compete in the third heat on Sunday because they lied about a team member being sick in order to switch push athletes between the first two heats on Saturday and the third heat on Sunday.
“The bobsleigh team asked to include Ward, the substitute, in the competition. According to the rules, this is only permitted if one of the athletes is injured or ill,” the OCI said. “In order to make this possible, one of the team members — encouraged by his teammates — declared that he was unwell. He even went for a medical examination and signed an affidavit so that the Olympic Committee could request approval for a substitution.”
The OCI said that afterward, Zisman “admitted to the head of the delegation that he had acted improperly. This forced the Olympic Committee of Israel to withdraw the request and disqualify the move.” The OCI said that the team’s behavior was “improper” and “goes against fair and sportsmanlike conduct.”
In response to the OCI’s comments, Edelman told The Algemeiner that his team withdrew from the competition before the OCI took any action against them. “The process to change Ward to a primary accreditation is within the OCI control. The team’s withdrawal was within our own,” he said. “The team received a DNS, a ‘did not start,’ not a DSQ [disqualified].”
Bobsled was Israel’s only team sport at the Milan Cortina Winter Games. Edelman is Israel’s first multi-sport Olympian, after competing previously in skeleton, and he is also the first Jewish bobsled pilot to compete in the Olympic Games. He is additionally the most decorated observant Jewish Olympian and is believed to be the first Orthodox Jew to ever compete in the Winter Games.
Over the weekend, Italy’s state broadcaster RAI apologized after viewers heard on air someone tell others to “avoid” filming the Israeli bobsled team before it broadcast coverage of the four-man bobsled race at the Olympics on Saturday. Viewers heard, “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one.”
RAI condemned the remark as “unacceptable” and RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the network’s “principles of impartiality, respect, and inclusion.” He added that RAI had opened an internal investigation to determine responsibility for the remarks and disciplinary proceedings.
Before the start of the 2026 Winter Games, an apartment in the Czech Republic where the Israeli bobsled team was staying during their final training was robbed, and passports and personal belongings were stolen. Then, during the team’s two-man bobsled race on Feb. 16, a commentator on the Swiss network RTS claimed on-air that Edelman “supports the genocide in Gaza” and should have been banned from the Olympics. The commentator also described the athlete as a “self-defined ‘Zionist to the core.’”
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Jewish Community Advocates Urge US Civil Rights Commission to Take Campus Antisemitism Seriously
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a bullhorn during a protest at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on March 11, 2025. Photo: Daniel Cole via Reuters Connect.
Jewish community advocates and civil rights lawyers discussed the campus antisemitism crisis in American higher education during two days of briefings and public comment held by the US Commission on Civil Rights last week, urging the agency to fight anti-Jewish hatred as aggressively as with other forms of discrimination.
Titled “Antisemitism on America’s College and University Campuses: Current Conditions and the Federal Response,” the forum served as one component of the commission’s bipartisan investigation of campus antisemitism, an inquiry led by Peter Kirsanow, a Republican, and Mondaire Jones, a Democrat. Drawing from advocates as well as critics of the Jewish community’s response to campus antisemitism, it highlighted work that remains undone while exposing some differences in opinion on Zionism, free expression on campus, and interpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal funding.
During the proceedings, several students who witnessed the onslaught firsthand described how the administrative bureaucracy, a branch of higher education governance dominated by the American progressive movement, stonewalled discrimination complaints, ignored utterances of classic antisemitic tropes, and refused to acknowledge rising antisemitism on the political left while accusing Jewish community advocates of assaulting academic freedom.
“I raised concerns repeatedly with administrators — but was met with silence or deliberate indifference. My peers faced retaliation in classic DARVO tactic: deny, attack, and reverse victim-offender roles,” said Sabrina Soffer, research fellow for the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and a George Washington University alumna who sued the institution over alleged antisemitic discrimination. “We must stop this pipeline of hate in its tracks. Administrators must be held accountable for failing to enforce academic integrity and upholding their duty of care. We must scrutinize foreign funding, syllabi review, and the composition of academic departments.”
For several years before and since Hamas’s Oct.7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, The Algemeiner has reported daily on campus antisemitism incidents which involved identity-based physical assaults, verbal abuse, and others acts of discrimination. These included anti-Zionists spitting on Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley while calling them “Jew”; gang assaults at Columbia University’s Butler Library; swastika graffiti; the desecration of Jewish religious symbols; and the expulsion of a sexual assault survivor from a victim support group over her support for Zionism.
Other incidents include, a faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic political cartoon which marked Jews and Israel as enemies of people of color; a Cornell University student threatening to murder Jewish men, whom he called pigs, and to rape Jewish women, and perpetrate a mass shooting at the campus’ kosher dining hall; and professors praising Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, which included mass murder, sexual assault, and kidnapping as legitimate modes of “resistance.”
Many such incidents preceded the Oct. 7 massacre by several years and received little to no coverage in the mainstream press.
Lenny Gold, executive producer of the campus antisemitism awareness documentary “The Blind Spot,” said during the hearing that higher education has hidden from the problem in lieu of addressing it transparently and vigorously.
“Schools often invoke academic freedom to justify their indifference to antisemitism while failing to recognize freedom’s inseparable partner: responsibility,” Gold said. “Academic responsibility includes eliminating the blind spot towards Jews and our inextricable connection to our ancient homeland, and having zero tolerance for antisemitism in classrooms, on campus, and in curricula, academic departments, and administrative staffs.”
He continued, “Anti-discrimination programs and policies must treat Jews an antisemitism on an equal footing with other protected groups and forms of prejudice.’
Soffer and Gold’s point of view sustained a slew of opposition during last week’s gathering, with some critic isms being uttered by Jewish students from elite colleges who accused the media and pro-Israel Jewish community of exaggerating the antisemitism crisis in the name of profits, ideology, and bullying the Ivy League. They also accused US President Donald Trump — whose daughter is Jewish and whose administration has mounted a legal campaign against campus antisemitism and the ideological bias that fostered it — of exploiting antisemitism to promote a political agenda.
“Since the Gaza War, I’ve felt more hesitant to tell people I’m Jewish, not because I’m scared of being the victim of a hate crime, but because I’m scared people will assume I’m against Palestinian people and associate me with the Trump administration’s anti-Palestinian rhetoric,” American University student Ellie Sweet told the commission, insisting that what is being described as antisemitism is harmless, anti-Israel rhetoric.
Another student, Sarah Silverman of Harvard University, screamed her entire seven-minute statement, in which she at one point charged that “policy described as protecting Jewish students did not make me feel protected!” She added, “Instead, in a deeply troubling way, I felt blamed. I knew I had done nothing wrong, but when decisions are made in your name without ever speaking to you but are affecting your academic community in extremely negative ways, you begin to worry that others believed you asked for these actions.”
A highlight of the event was testimony delivered by Kenneth Marcus, who served as assistant secretary for civil rights during the first Trump administration and currently leads the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
“Antisemitism does have various disguises, and anti-Zionism in that sense brings forward to the present all of the same tropes, the same stereotypes, the same defamations that have historically befallen the Jewish people, viewing Israel as the collective Jew or Jew among nations” he told the commission. “That is the form of antisemitism that we see most commonly on colleges campuses and that we need to address.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.