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Just in time for Hanukkah, an irreverent Jewish adaptation of ‘A Christmas Carol’ debuts on stage
(New York Jewish Week) — A selfish social media influencer, an all-knowing, benevolent ghost known as “Harry the Hanukkah Fairy” and “Tiny Tim” Cratchet, the good-natured ill child from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” may seem like they all come from different worlds, but each appears as a character in “A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT TRIP! The Musical” — a show its creators hope will become a winter tradition for years to come.
For co-creators Harrison Bryan, Rob Berliner and Aaron Kenny, the lighthearted “A Hanukkah Carol” is their answer to inundation of Christmas material and cheer throughout December.
“There is a plethora of Christmas entertainment options that we get every holiday season, especially in New York City,” said Jewish actor and playwright Bryan, a native of Brooklyn. “For me, growing up, there was a sense that Hanukkah is the second-place holiday.”
His new musical, however, “feels like this is an opportunity to join the party in a way that feels authentic,” he said. “It’s just allowing the season to feel more inclusive in a city that prides itself on being a melting pot.”
The plot of “A Hanukkah Carol” centers around Chava Kanipshin, a cruel and manipulative social media influencer who hides her Jewish identity because she was bullied as a child. But on one memorable Hanukkah, Chava is visited by spirits of the past, present and future to reckon with her life’s work — namely, her pursuit of internet fame by posting mean and embarrassing videos of her friends and family — before it is too late.
It’s a very obvious Jewish take on Dickens’ 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol” — which has already been adapted into various plays, movies and more in what feels like a thousand times over. (Did anyone else suffer through the 2009 Matthew McConaughey flick “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”?) But to remake this classic in a Jewish way feels refreshing, adding new depth by exploring themes of Jewish pride, tradition, family and tikkun olam. After all, what is “A Christmas Carol” if not a guilt trip (or, erm, a “gelt trip”) — that stereotypical purview of Jewish mothers everywhere?
Bryan claims the show is “authentically Jewish, but not exclusively,” meaning he and partners want their version of “A Christmas Carol” to be something Jews can participate in and love for themselves. At the same time, however, due to the musical’s inclusive and heartwarming holiday message, it can be appreciated by anyone.
“There’s no Hanukkah classic yet — there’s not a Hanukkah film or show that people go to see as a matter of tradition,” lyricist Berliner told the New York Jewish Week. “We have the opportunity to take our decades of Jewish life and pop culture and comedic sensibilities and love of musical theater and sense of what’s commercial and merge it all together and see how we could present something that even non-Jewish friends would love.”
Perhaps unexpectedly, the show is rife with references to “Fiddler on the Roof,” both implicitly and explicitly. For example, main character Chava, the Scrooge-like social media maven, has nearly lost her parents’ goodwill due to continually blowing them off for holidays and acting superior to them. When Chava has a visit from the ghost of Hanukkah future, she hears her father say: “She’s dead to us.” This, of course, is a callback to “Fiddler,” when protagonist Tevye says something similar when his third daughter — also named Chava — marries a non-Jew.
The creators of “A Hanukkah Carol” see their musical as “in conversation” with the classic Jewish musical. “There are no smartphones in Anatevka, but exploring what it means to be Jewish — both in a contemporary moment and looking backwards and forwards — is a core part of ‘Fiddler,’” Berliner said. “It asks, ‘what is tradition and how can we change with the times?’ Oddly, the framework of ‘A Christmas Carol’ is perfectly aligned with that.”
Bryan, for his part, describes “A Hanukkah Carol” as “Dickens meets ‘Fiddler’ meets Mel Brooks.”
The show, which had an “industry reading” at a Midtown rehearsal studio on Tuesday, has been a long time coming — the trio has been working on it since 2018, all while juggling day jobs and navigating a hiatus during the worst months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Kenny, a composer, and Berliner, a lyricist, met as songwriters through the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, which is considered a “top training ground” for up-and-coming theater artists. The two loved working together, and wanted to find a playwright to collaborate with. Kenny, an Australian — whom the group calls their “token goy” — reached out to Bryan, whom he had worked with on his masters thesis film at NYU. Bryan immediately sent over 20 short plays he had written — “A Hanukkah Carol” rose to the top.
Berliner, who is Jewish and grew up in Westchester, was sold immediately on Byran’s “A Hanukkah Carol” script. “The reaction that I had is the reaction that we’ve experienced a lot of folks have when we tell them the title of our show, which is, ‘how does this not exist yet?’” he said. “I would have been drawn to it at any point in my life. I certainly was in this moment.”
After working together on the script and songs, the trio put out an animated “proof of concept” trailer in early 2022. When they saw how much interest the trailer garnered, they opened up a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $33,000 in a month — which will allow them to stage a one-night-only performance at The Green Room 42 (570 10th Ave.) on Sunday, Dec. 18, the first night of Hanukkah. The concert will also be livestreamed.
Meanwhile, Bryan, Berliner and Kenny are in the process of searching for a producer — whether that be for Broadway, off-Broadway or an animated or live-action movie. During the Dec. 6 reading at Ripley-Grier Studios, where an all-Jewish cohort of eight Broadway actors played the more than 80 parts in the show, steady laughter throughout and a standing ovation at the end felt like finally seeing a dream come true.
“It felt amazing,” Bryan said about the first full run-through. “The sky’s the limit!”
“A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT TRIP! The Musical” will be performed at The Green Room 42, 570 10th Ave., on Sunday, Dec. 18. Livestream also available. Tickets from $15.
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The post Just in time for Hanukkah, an irreverent Jewish adaptation of ‘A Christmas Carol’ debuts on stage appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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You Can’t Promote Hate Against the Majority of the World’s Jews and Just Call It Politics
“Show Your Jewish Pride” rally at George Washington University G Street Park on May 2, 2024. Photo: Dion J. Pierre
The recent decision by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice v. MIT has been widely mischaracterized as a judicial declaration that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” It was not that.
The court did not issue any sweeping statement about the nature of anti-Zionism. Rather, it affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Jewish students and a pro-Israel group, focusing narrowly on the legal threshold for harassment under Federal civil rights law (Title VI).
The First Circuit held that campus protests and anti-Zionist rhetoric, however offensive, are generally forms of political speech protected by the First Amendment. It concluded that the plaintiffs’ allegations failed to show “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” harassment or “deliberate indifference” by MIT — emphasizing that the university had taken steps to address the situation. In doing so, the court avoided the broader debate over when anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism.
That legal restraint is understandable. But the case highlights an urgent cultural and moral failure: the persistent unwillingness of elites, including some in the Jewish world, to recognize and address anti-Zionism for what it is — the latest mutation of the world’s oldest hatred.
Anti-Zionism as the Heir to Older Hatreds
As the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks — the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and one of the foremost moral philosophers of our age — warned, “The greatest mutation of antisemitism in our time is the denial to the Jewish people alone the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.”
Antisemitism, Sacks wrote, never disappears; it mutates — from religion to race to nation.
Anti-Zionism borrows from each earlier form. From Christian antisemitism, it inherits the charge of Jewish moral corruption — the idea that Jews act with singular malice. From racial antisemitism, it takes the belief in a people collectively tainted and unfit to belong among others. From modern Henry Ford style antisemitism, it adapts the conspiracy that Jews secretly control governments and media — projected now onto Israel instead of individuals.
The same libels that once fueled pogroms — Jews poisoning wells, murdering children, or orchestrating global cabals — now reappear in “human rights” reports and social media threads. “Jews rule the world” has become “Israel controls Washington,” a trope embraced by overt Jew-haters like David Duke as “ZOG” (Zionist Occupied Government). The medieval libel that Jews “murder children for their blood” has become “Zionists murder children.”
The Globalization of an Obsession
The First Circuit’s failure to see how this ideological continuity operates in practice leaves Jewish citizens vulnerable in an environment where anti-Zionism functions as socially acceptable antisemitism.
Before 1948, antisemites were obsessed with Jews as a source of cosmic evil. Today’s anti-Zionists display the same fixation — only now it is directed at the one Jewish state. Israel, smaller than New Jersey and home to less than one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population, faces opprobrium with an intensity no other nation faces.
China can imprison a million Uyghurs without prompting global boycotts. Russia can annex Crimea and level Mariupol without igniting campus “divestment” campaigns. Yet Israel alone — the world’s only Jewish state — becomes the singular object of global condemnation. The United Nations has passed more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined. That is not mere “criticism.” It is pathology.
A Movement Against the Majority of Jews
This obsession also targets most Jews themselves. Surveys consistently show that over 80% of Jews worldwide identify with Zionism — the belief that the Jewish people have the right to a national home in their ancestral land. Nearly half of the world’s Jews live in Israel.
To be anti-Zionist, therefore, is to oppose the national aspirations of most Jews and the existence of the state that is home to roughly half of them. The claim that anti-Zionism is merely “political” collapses under this reality. Imagine a movement dedicated to dismantling Italy while insisting it is not anti-Italian, or one demanding the abolition of Armenia while professing no hatred of Armenians. No other nation’s legitimacy is contested this way. Only the Jewish State — and by extension, the Jewish people — is told its existence is conditional.
Old Tropes in New Garb
Haviv Rettig Gur, senior political analyst at The Times of Israel and a brilliant commentator on Jewish history and identity, has written that antisemitism “does not persist because it hates Jews; it persists because it needs Jews — as a canvas on which societies project their anxieties and hatreds.” Anti-Zionism performs precisely this role today. It allows movements and governments to define their virtue by condemning Israel, recasting Jews once again as the world’s moral scapegoat.
The pre-1948 demand that Jews prove their loyalty and moral purity has been transferred to the Jewish state. Every Israeli act of self-defense becomes a test of Jewish worthiness. Every imperfection becomes proof of collective evil. It is no coincidence that antisemitic incidents spike worldwide whenever Israel is forced to defend itself. The emotional and rhetorical link between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is direct, measurable, and undeniable.
The Need for Legal and Moral Clarity
Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute and author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (2018), writes that, “Zionism is the most audacious attempt in modern times to unite faith and peoplehood, memory and sovereignty.” To deny that attempt its legitimacy is to strip the Jewish story of coherence — to say Jews may exist only as victims, never as a nation capable of defending itself.
The US Supreme Court will likely have future opportunities to address cases like StandWithUs v. MIT. When it does, it should affirm that discrimination does not always come wearing a swastika or a white hood. Sometimes it arrives cloaked in the language of “social justice” or “anti-colonialism.” But its targets are the same, and its logic — denying Jews what it grants all others — is unchanged.
This challenge is not only legal but cultural. It demands that we gain the moral and intellectual clarity to recognize anti-Zionism for what it is: the latest mutation of an ancient hatred.
If Jewish history teaches anything, it is that ideas matter — especially poisonous ones. The Supreme Court now has a chance to affirm that civil-rights protections apply to Jews too — even, and especially, when the hatred against them pretends to be virtue.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish history and serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Israel’s Humanitarian Mission: Saving Lives Across Borders
IsraAID teams respond to Typhoon Mangkhut in September 2018. Photo: IsraAID.
Israel is often portrayed in the media as a nation defined by conflict and controversy — but this narrative overlooks an equally important reality: a country deeply committed to humanitarian aid and medical care, including for Palestinians.
Contrary to widespread accusations of apartheid or genocide, Israel and numerous Jewish organizations worldwide are actively engaged in saving lives and promoting coexistence, providing critical support regardless of faith or nationality.
Many are unaware of the scale of Israel’s medical outreach.
Organizations like Road to Recovery ensure that Palestinian children reach Israeli hospitals safely and promptly, while Project Rozana invests in medical training and improved healthcare access for Palestinian communities.
Save a Child’s Heart offers life-saving cardiac care to children from Gaza and beyond, and the Peres Center for Peace brings Palestinian children to Israel for essential surgeries at no cost. Beyond medical treatment, groups such as IsraAID deliver humanitarian aid in crises worldwide, including support for Palestinian communities.
Israel’s humanitarian efforts extend far beyond charity work. Dozens of NGOs, private donors, and companies coordinate with the Israeli government’s COGAT to facilitate cross-border aid. Since the easing of the Gaza blockade in May 2025, approximately 4,500 aid trucks have entered Gaza, averaging 70 deliveries per day, with extraordinary spikes reaching 915 trucks in a single day. This steady flow of assistance underscores Israel’s consistent commitment to providing humanitarian relief despite ongoing conflict.
Israel’s approach to conflict also reflects a profound concern for civilian safety. Warnings, leaflets, and phone calls alert residents to evacuate combat zones, while hospitals treat patients from Gaza, Syria, and Iran alike. Essential aid — food, medicine, and medical care — is delivered year after year, highlighting a stark contrast with the tactics of Hamas, which endangers civilians and uses human shields.
The reality of Israel’s careful, life-saving measures stands in sharp contrast to the narratives often presented in international media.
Misinformation about Israel is widespread, but the facts tell a different story. Accusations of genocide or apartheid ignore the countless instances of compassion, medical care, and humanitarian support that Israelis provide daily. From heart surgeries for children in Gaza to volunteers navigating checkpoints and aid trucks delivering essential supplies, Israel’s actions consistently demonstrate moral responsibility and a commitment to human life.
Ultimately, Israel’s story is one of empathy and action. Compassion transcends borders, religion, and politics, and Israel’s humanitarian initiatives prove that helping others is a core part of its national identity.
For anyone willing to look beyond the headlines, the evidence is clear: Israel is saving lives and fostering hope across the region.
Sabine Sterk is CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel
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New Film Tells a Powerful Story of Teenage Resistance to Hitler
The arrest photos of Helmuth Hubener.
While students of the Holocaust may know about Sophie Scholl’s defiance of Hitler, which resulted in her execution, Helmuth Hubener is less known.
A new film called Truth & Treason shows the improbable path of Hubener, who risked his life by listening to the BBC and leaving cards/pamphlets in different spots that mocked Hitler.
Hubener, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was eventually executed at the age of 17, the youngest German to be sentenced to death for anti-Nazi activity. His head was sliced off by a guillotine.
In an early scene, we see actor Ewan Horrocks as a young defiant man. He tells two of his accomplices that if any of them are caught, they won’t rat each other out. Of course, they didn’t anticipate the torture that would be used and how in some ways, the Nazis feared well written sentences more than bullets.
Horrocks is excellent and we believe him as he goes step by step.
Directed by Matt Whitaker, this is a somewhat simple film that works well, even if the courtroom scene at the end strays somewhat from the truth.
In the films, we see that Hubener’s friends, Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and Rudi, reluctantly agree to take part.
In a documentary about this story, Schnibbe says Hubener was so brazen, he once shouted from across the room, “Hey, have they caught you yet?” Whether or not Hubener had a death wish, or believed he could get away with what he was doing without getting caught, is unknown.
One flaw of the film is that it doesn’t properly show what gave Hubener and his accomplices away, as he got into trouble when he attempted to translate the messages into French so prisoners could see it, and someone informed on him.
Many people often wonder if they would have hidden a Jew if they were Christian and lived in the time of the Holocaust. But to risk one’s life by leaving messages calling out Hitler was also remarkable.
Hubener was a hero, and it is a shame there were not more like him. The film shows that in real life, the Nazis thought the pamphlets were written by a professor and not a teenager. A scene where Hubener has a brief romance could have been done better, but the acting is all stellar, including that of Rupert Evans, who plays somewhat of a villain who gains respect for Hubener.
Born in January 1925 in Hamburg, Hubener would grow up to see the folly of those who followed Hitler, and after illegally listening to the BBC, he determined that Germany would lose the war and people were foolishly following Hitler, unaware that the news they were getting was whitewashed propaganda.
In one of his pamphlets, Hubener wrote: “Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding.”
It is unlikely Hubener believed he would be able to take down the Nazi regime. Most likely, he hoped he would inspire others to listen to the BBC or at least question their allegiance to Hitler.
The scene where he is arrested at his workplace has the right amount of tension. And the best moment of the film is when he tells the judge that the court officials will one day be judged by God.
Hubener was found guilty of conspiracy to commit high treason. His friends were not executed, and given sentences of five and ten years.
It is a wonder that a teenager could have more conviction than millions of adults, and that he chose to act on it. Kudos to those involved in this project, as this is a film that does a good job of showing a remarkable true story.
Truth & Treason is a great film for all audiences, but especially for young people who believe that they are being asked to make sacrifices that are too great.
The author is a writer based in New York.