New York City’s most senior Jewish elected officials are urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to do more to address the concerns of Jewish New Yorkers directly, including acknowledging the community’s deep emotional connection to Israel and reconsidering his pledge not to visit the country.

Mamdani, who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism and is the city’s first Muslim mayor, has declined to recognize Israel specifically as a Jewish state and vowed not to continue the tradition upheld by previous mayors to travel to Israel. New York City has the largest concentration of Jews outside Israel.

“We understand that in the city of New York, for a great number of Jewish people, Israel is a core issue to our identity and even our feeling of personal safety,” said Mark Levine, the city’s comptroller and its highest-ranking Jewish elected official, during a panel on “the future of being Jewish in New York” hosted by the 92NY on Wednesday. Also on stage were City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

Holyman-Sigal, who as a state legislator visited Israel weeks after the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack, said that it would be “an enormous step forward” if Mamdani followed the tradition of every mayor preceding him, going back to 1951, to demonstrate solidarity with their Jewish constituents. “Maybe now is not the right time exactly, but to get that on his radar screen is going to be meaningful to a large segment of New Yorkers,” he said. “If Nixon can go to China, I think the mayor might consider that in the future.”

Mamdani, a supporter of the boycott Israel movement who co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Maine’s Bowdoin College, was met with suspicion from the start as he rose in the polls during the mayoral race last year. His statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unsettled many of the city’s more than 1 million Jews, who were divided in the competitive race, including his refusal to explicitly condemn the “globalize the intifada” slogan used at some pro-Palestinian protests and his refusal to recognize Israel specifically as a “Jewish state.” Mamdani also faced backlash from his hard-line anti-Israel base for saying the country has a right to exist.

Three months into his mayoralty, Mamdani is still struggling to find a governing posture that reassures the largest Jewish community in America, as he insists he will not retreat from his criticism of Israel.

He has faced backlash from Zionist Jewish organizations, particularly after revoking executive orders on his first day in office tied to antisemitism and campus protests and his recent refusal to back legislation aimed at curbing disruptive protests outside synagogues and schools. He also promised to divest from city investments in Israel and pledged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York in compliance with an International Criminal Court warrant. Legal experts doubt Mamdani would have the authority to do that.

Nonetheless, Mamdani has increased his Jewish outreach efforts since taking office. Mamdani has also appointed Phylisa Wisdom, a progressive Jewish leader, to run the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism. Wisdom has laid out an ambitious early agenda focused on building trust across the city’s diverse Jewish communities.

In March, Mamdani convened a roundtable with Orthodox and Hasidic leaders at City Hall, his most visible outreach yet. But the meeting also underscored the administration’s uneven engagement. Mainstream organizations — including groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of New York — were not invited. Mamdani attended Passover Seders hosted by his progressive allies.

At the 92NY event, Menin, who is seen by some as a counterweight to Mamdani on Jewish issues, said that signing the legislative package to combat antisemitism, at a time when anti-Jewish incidents continue to make up a majority of reported hate crimes in the city, would be a key test. The bill directs the NYPD to craft a plan within 45 days for managing protests around houses of worship. It passed by a 44-5 vote, a veto-proof margin. Mamdani has declined to say whether he will sign measures or oppose them.

“I really hope that there is not a veto of that legislation, because I think that will lead to more division when we need less divisiveness,” Menin said.

Hoylman-Sigal said Mamdani’s approach would signal whether he is committed to protecting the Jewish community. He added that he “would be disappointed to say the least” if the mayor chooses to veto the legislation.

City Hall did not respond to multiple requests to interview the mayor about his outreach to the Jewish community during his media tour marking his first 100 days in office.

The future of Israel Bonds

Levine, the city’s chief fiscal officer, who is responsible for auditing agencies and nonprofits, has remained consistent in his promise to resume the purchases of Israel Bonds, debt securities issued by the Israeli government with a roughly 5% return. New York held the bonds between 1974 and 2023, when then-comptroller Brad Lander, who is also Jewish, ended the city’s investment of $39,947,160 in them.

Mamdani had urged Lander to end it permanently, although the mayor can neither prevent the investment nor overrule it.

Levine defended his position on Wednesday. “This is about the fiduciary responsibility that I have and that we have in safeguarding these assets and deploying them in a globally diverse way,” he said. “Israel bonds have never missed a payment in 70 years, ever, not once. They pay excellent interest.”

The comptroller also called out critics who have been protesting outside his office. “We have had no protesting about our investments in Saudi Arabia, our investments in Pakistan or China, only this one little, tiny sliver,” Levine said. He added, “I have many criticisms of the policies of the current government of Israel, have many criticisms of the policies of the current government of the United States, but we own treasury bills because it’s a financial instrument that meets an important need for us.”

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(JTA) — Sam Firstenberg, the Israeli-raised director behind cult B-movie staples like “American Ninja” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is getting an unexpected career revival — thanks to one of his most overlooked films.

“Riverbend,” his little-seen 1989 action drama, will screen for one night at Alama Drafthouse theaters in five cities on April 29, offering a fresh look at a film about a group of Black Vietnam veterans who arrive in a Southern town and liberate it from a racist sheriff.

It could also revive interest in the 25 or so films Firstenberg directed between 1981 and 2002, which fans celebrate for their unironic commitment to over-the-top action, niche cultures, and pure entertainment value. In films such as “American Samurai,” “Cyborg Cop,” “Delta Force 3: The Killing Game,” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” Firstenberg has been a prolific purveyor of what some critics praise as “earnest shlock.”

It’s a career rooted in the long afternoons a young Firstenberg spent at Smadar, the movie theater in Jerusalem’s German Colony neighborhood. Firstenberg watched the best that midcentury Hollywood had to offer.

Firstenberg, whose given first name was Shmulik, was born to a Jewish family in March of 1950, in Wałbrzych, Poland. His parents had returned to Poland after fleeing east to the Soviet Union during the Nazi invasion.

The family arrived in Jerusalem when Firstenberg was 6 months old. Once in Israel, Firstenberg became immersed in cultures other than his own, which, he says, was key to his versatility behind the camera.

“I grew up in a neighborhood that consists of a lot of immigrants from all over the world,” Firstenberg said in an interview. “So, you know, we came from Poland with a Polish background, but around us, there were Hungarian Jews, Romanian Jews, Jews from Morocco, Jews from Tunisia, from Iraq, from Yemen, from all over the world, Indian Jews.

“So my neighborhood was a melting pot of all kinds of cultures from all over the world. I didn’t understand it. I’m telling you all of this [retrospectively], but I grew up in this, all kinds of different food and cooking and languages, and everybody was talking different languages,” he said. “We grew up in a kind of chaos of listening to 30, 40 different languages and cultures.”

Eventually, this led the future filmmaker to the movies. Smadar, now known as Lev Smadar, began screening films for the public in 1950. Firstenberg would spend afternoons watching double features.

“That’s where we were exposed to cinema. So from a very early age, maybe 7 or 6 years old, I would go, and every week he would change the two movies,” he said.

It was a crash course in genres.

“Those movies were mainly Hollywood movies, mainly Westerns, adventure movies, World War II movies, organized crime, gangster movies. Here and there are some musicals,” he said. The showings ranged from classics like “High Noon” and “Bridge on the River Kwai” to escapist movies like “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.”

“This was the diet of movies that I grew up. And that’s how I was exposed,” he said, adding that Israel didn’t yet have much of a domestic film industry.

By the time he was 18 or 19, Firstenberg realized that he was interested in pursuing a career in cinema.
After finishing his Army service in Israel at age 21 — which included a stint as a projectionist when movies were shown to soldiers — Firstenberg decided to go to Hollywood.

“When I finished the military service, I decided, OK, I want to go and study how to make movies. How do you make cinema?” he said. “Now, I’m not fascinated by European movie-making. I’m not crazy about any of that French, Italian, I don’t know, Swedish movie-making. I like Hollywood. I always liked Hollywood movies. I like bullets. I like James Bond.”

In 1972, he enrolled in film school at the L.A. campus of Columbia College. He still lives in Los Angeles, although he continues to speak with a distinctly Israeli accent. He and his wife both have family back in Israel, and they try to visit annually.

While his connection to Israel remains strong, he also regards the film industry as his people.

“I immediately kind of had this feeling that I arrived at home. I was surrounded by people who all had the same language, we all wanted the same thing: ‘Let’s put a story on the screen,’” he said. He relished getting to know people from all walks of life, from Vietnam veterans to students from Japan to aspiring Black filmmakers from the South.

Eventually, his Israeli connection helped him when he met Menahem Golan, the flamboyant Israeli-born producer who helped pioneer Israel’s film industry in the 1960s and set out to conquer Hollywood in the ’70s. Golan later took over Cannon Films and produced several of Firstenberg’s films, along with Golan’s cousin Yoram Globus.

Golan invited Firstenberg to work on “Lepke,” Cannon’s 1975 film starring Tony Curtis as a Jewish gangster in New York. Firstenberg described his job on the film as a “really nothing, very low job, like bringing and taking and schlepping and nothing serious, whatever, you know, drive the car here, drive the car back.”

He ended up taking the advice of the film’s cinematographer, Andrew Davis — who went on to direct “The Fugitive” in the 1990s — to “get next to the director,” to learn how movie sets really work. So he stayed close to Golan, and “forged a connection” with Golan’s Ameri-Euro Pictures, which specialized in low-budget films. Firstenberg spent five years as assistant director on various films, both in the United States and in Israel.

Quentin Tarantino, at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2021, described Firstenberg as “my favorite” of Cannon Films’ in-house directors, and listed Firstenberg’s “Ninja 3: The Domination” as one of his favorite Cannon pictures.

In 1979, Firstenberg went back to school to earn a graduate degree at Loyola Marymount. While there, taking advantage of his access to equipment, he set to work on his first feature, the 1981 drama “One More Chance,” which also marked the film debut of actress Kirstie Alley.

Firstenberg soon became a prolific director, churning out “Revenge of the Ninja” in 1983 — which got major distribution and was successful — and “Ninja III: The Domination” in 1984, both for Cannon Films.

In late 1984, Firstenberg directed “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” a sequel to the successful break-dancing movie “Breakin.’” The sequel — or its title, anyway — has earned a sort of immortality as a joking reference, in shows like “Family Guy” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” to any unnecessary or ridiculously named sequel. The film was released just seven months after the arrival of the first “Breakin,’” a film with which Firstenberg had no involvement.

“I had nothing to do with the title of the movie,” Firstenberg said. “It became a big deal through the years.”

Firstenberg kept up a breakneck pace in the 1980s and ‘90s, sometimes completing two or three movies in one calendar year. In 1985, he directed “American Ninja,” which he calls his most popular movie, and its sequel two years later. He continued directing movies until after the turn of the millennium.

“I was busy with other movies. I was still directing. I was getting directorial jobs,” he said. “And then at some point I stopped directing, and I started to look into the movies that I have done, what happened to them.”

Some of them are easy to find. Much of the director’s work, including “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is available on the free streaming service Tubi. But other movies have proven harder to track down.

“Out of 25 movies that I directed, some of them became very famous,” he added. “But some other movies … stuff happened.”

Firstenberg came to direct “Riverbend” after he was approached by a group of private investors from Texas — a pair of married couples, one white and one Black — who weren’t experienced in the movie business. But they were familiar with his previous work, and were hoping to lure actor Steve James, who had starred in Firstenberg’s “American Ninja,” and ended up starring in “Riverbend.”

“Riverbend,” which had a minor theatrical release in 1989 and was later relegated to VHS, has been restored thanks to the efforts of Philadelphia-based archivist Michael J. Dennis. Dennis, who hosts a YouTube channel and film screenings focused on African-American-oriented film, had discovered the film in his days as a video store clerk in the early 1990s, only to find it had almost completely dropped out of sight.

“Riverbend” is “the best movie you’ll see that you never heard of,” Dennis told cinéSPEAK Journal. “One of the things we talk about on my channel is self-reliance and empowerment, and ‘Riverbend’ is a rare film in that it shows Black people standing up for one another. It shows Black people teaching and training one another to fight for their rights.”

Dennis got in touch with Firstenberg and, during the pandemic, tracked down a 35-millimeter copy of the film in South Africa. He eventually obtained the original negative, which led to a crowdfunding campaign and, ultimately, the film’s full restoration. This has led to a series of one-off screenings around the country, hosted by Firstenberg, Dennis, and actors from the film. A Blu-ray release is also planned.

“I feel very comfortable with different cultures,” Firstenberg said. “This is exactly the way I grew up when I was a kid. I grew up with many, many people. So, for me to understand, I believe so: understanding a different culture is easy. It’s no problem for me.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post A lost film by Israeli B-movie director Sam Firstenberg gets a new life  appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — During his three days in Israel this week, Argentinian President Javier Milei made a strong impression.

There he was, weeping again at the Western Wall. There he was, receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor for his leadership and support for Israel. And there he was, lighting a torch for the Independence Day festivities as the first foreign leader ever to do so.

There Milei was, grabbing a microphone and dancing raucously on stage to the Spanish-language song “Libre” at both the rehearsal for the national ceremony and the live event on Tuesday.

And there he was, ostensibly the reason that the far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir left the ceremony before it began. Ben-Gvir left after being asked to vacate his seat to make way for Milei, in an arrangement that some speculated was meant to prevent Ben-Gvir from being photographed in the same frame as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Milei’s presence in Israel Sunday through Tuesday offering a powerful symbol of his continued support for Israel even as so many other world leaders have distanced themselves. Milei is a longtime philosemite who has said he aims one day to convert to Judaism.

“In life there are partners and there are friends,” Milei said in Spanish during the Independence Day ceremony. “Partners come together for a moment of shared interest. Friends forge unbreakable bonds for life. I am pleased to say that Argentina and Israel are not merely partners, but friendly nations.”

The Independence Day ceremonies projected an image of resilience at a challenging time for Israel, where wars on two fronts are currently in ceasefires announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Among the others chosen as torch-lighters, seen as one of Israel’s most significant honors, were soldiers who have participated in the years of war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Two of the chosen torch-lighters drew sharp criticism. One was Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, a rabbinical judge who has drawn scrutiny for publicly praising demolition operations in Gaza. In February, the Ombudsman of the Israeli Judiciary ruled that Zarbiv had violated a code of ethics by expressing his views on controversial issues.

“I light this torch in honor of the bulldozer and excavator operators, the trailblazers, destroyers of the enemy and the dismantlers of terrorist infrastructure who protect the lives of our soldiers,” he said at the ceremony.

A cousin of a woman killed in captivity also also denounced the selection of Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, who faced calls for his resignation in February after telling Haaretz that demonstrations demanding the release of hostages were aiding Hamas. Gil Dickmann, a cousin of Carmel Gat, wrote in a post on Instagram that his selection was “spitting in the faces of families” of the hostages.

Last year, torchlighters for the ceremony included former Israeli hostage Emily Damari, NBA player Deni Avdija and the American Jewish conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, whose appointment was criticized by some Israeli leaders as inappropriately political.

The day’s official programming will end with a ceremony awarding the Israel Prize, the nation’s top civilian honor. Among those receiving the prize this year are the artist Yaacov Agam and Chantal Belzberg, the CEO of a nonprofit that aids the families of fallen soldiers.

Trump was also invited to receive the prize, getting a public invitation in February following an earlier announcement by Netanyahu. He will not be present.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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