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Meet the real-life rabbi in the synagogue scene of ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’
(JTA) — Rabbi Michael Wolk was nervous when he stepped foot onto his synagogue’s bimah in May 2021 — but not because his congregation was returning to in-person prayer after a pandemic pause.
The jitters were because he was about to debut as an actor, in a role for which he hadn’t auditioned: as the rabbi in “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” which debuted in theaters on Friday.
Wolk was initially brought on as a consultant for the synagogue scene in the film adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic coming-of-age novel, published in 1970 — more than a decade before he was born. He was elevated to on-screen talent when the original actor for the role of Rabbi Kellerman left the project.
“They called me that night and said he doesn’t feel that he can do it — would I be willing to play the rabbi?” Wolk told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said yes.
The story centers on a sixth-grader, Margaret (played by Abby Ryder Fortson), who has a Christian mother and Jewish father who have raised her in neither tradition. As part of Margaret’s grappling with her anxiety about growing up, she embarks on an effort to explore religion and visits a synagogue with her grandmother Sylvia, portrayed by Kathy Bates, who is pushing her to identify with Judaism.
Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret Simon in “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” with Kathy Bates as Sylvia Simon, her Jewish grandmother. (Dana Hawley/LionsGate Publicity)
In the story, Margaret and her family live in New Jersey, but the filming took place in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Wolk has been the rabbi of Temple Israel, a Conservative synagogue, since 2020. (That year, the synagogue petitioned to have its name removed from a local memorial to Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy’s most prominent Jew.) A Long Island native, he came to the synagogue from a pulpit in Louisville, Kentucky.
The film’s producers asked Wolk to prepare what he referred to as a “sermonette” and to stand in the prayer leader’s traditional spot on the bimah in Temple Israel’s sanctuary, surrounded by stained glass. Some of his congregants sat in the pews as extras, which Wolk recalled as a breakthrough moment for Temple Israel, coming a year into the pandemic.
“It was my first time being in the room, being on the bimah with the people in the congregation,” he said. “Even little things like that moment of people responding ‘Shabbat shalom’ when I said it to them, there was something very moving about that.”
But the moment was hardly a typical Shabbat service. For one thing, it was a weekday. For another, Wolk was wearing a black robe, commonly worn by Conservative rabbis and cantors in the mid-20th century but not in fashion today. And his sermon was interrupted repeatedly.
Margaret, the main character in “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” prays by herself as she searches for meaning in her life. (Screenshot from YouTube)
“It did not feel like I was leading a service at any given time because they would have me say ‘Shabbat shalom’ 100 times and have the people and the extras in the room respond ‘Shabbat Shalom’ over and over again,” Wolk said.
The synagogue scene, which is just a few minutes long, took 14 hours to film.
Besides the rabbi’s attire, there are a few differences between the American Jewish world of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” in the 1960s and 1970s and the one today. The film has a female cantor, which wouldn’t have been the case at the time the movie takes place. While the book and movie don’t specify which movement of Judaism the synagogue Margaret visits belongs to, women weren’t ordained in the Reform movement until 1972 and in the Conservative movement until 1985.
“I did point that out and they were interested in representation,” Wolk said. “And that doesn’t bother me that much, but I know that it’s historically inaccurate.”
There are some other continuity issues with the scene: The actors used the prayer books in Temple Israel’s sanctuary, which were only published in the last decade. While the congregation is well over a century old, its current building wasn’t constructed until 1992. And, Wolk confessed, he is wearing an Apple watch, though it is obscured by his robe.
But also, he said, norms around interfaith families like Margaret’s have changed over the decades. In the United States, Jews who married before 1970 married non-Jews 17% of the time, according to a 2013 population study; now, that number is well over 50%. But contrary to what some feared, many of those interfaith couples are raising their children at least in part with Judaism. Their synagogues have adjusted accordingly.
“At the point when the book was written, there was no expectation that an interfaith family would want to participate in the religious life and Jewish life of a synagogue,” Wolk said. “And we know that’s not true right now. We have any number of interfaith families who are active and involved in Temple Israel.”
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The post Meet the real-life rabbi in the synagogue scene of ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Pentagon Preparing for Weeks of Ground Operations in Iran
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, the Washington Post reported Saturday, citing US officials.
The plans could involve raids by Special Operations and conventional infantry troops, the Post reported. Whether President Donald Trump would approve any of those plans remains uncertain, according to the Post.
The Trump administration has deployed US Marines to the Middle East as the war in Iran stretches into its fifth week, and also has been planning to send thousands of soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne to the region.
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America’s oldest synagogue closed. Then an unlikely group tended its cemetery.
In 1833, Herald of the Times, a Newport, Rhode Island, newspaper, reported that the remains of Mrs. Rebecca Lopez had been brought from New York by steamboat and placed inside Touro Synagogue.
Dedicated in 1763, the building is now recognized as the nation’s oldest surviving synagogue. Newport had once been home to a thriving colonial Jewish community, but after the Revolutionary War and the city’s economic decline, that community had largely faded. The cemetery remained, and so did the synagogue. It was during that long interval of near-absence that Lopez’s funeral briefly reopened Jewish ritual life in Newport.
After prayers were read by Rabbi Isaac Seixas of New York, the body was carried to the cemetery on Touro Street, with “the clergy, town council, and a numerous concourse of spectators” joining the funeral procession. The paper noted that a Jewish ceremony had not been performed there “for the space of forty years.”
Newport’s Jewish burial ground dated to 1677. In 1822, Abraham Touro left money for the upkeep of the cemetery, the synagogue, and the street on which they stood. The fund was placed under trustees appointed by the Rhode Island legislature, and Newport’s Town Council was later authorized to use the interest for repairs.
While Newport’s Jewish population declined, the endowment ensured that the synagogue building and cemetery grounds continued to be maintained. In 1826, the Town Council reported that it had tried to repair the synagogue using the Touro fund, but could not proceed because it had not been able to obtain the keys from Shearith Israel in New York. Many of Newport’s former Jewish residents had relocated there, and the congregations had longstanding ties.
In 1842, the council contracted to enclose the synagogue lot with a substantial stone wall and an ornamental cast-iron fence, modeled on the fence around the Jewish cemetery. The work included a Quincy granite base and a gateway on Touro Street designed to correspond with the synagogue’s portico. The project cost $6,835.
The synagogue’s doors rarely opened, and often only for moments of mourning. In June 1854, Newport received the body of Judah Touro, one of the most prominent American Jews of his era, a native of the town and brother of Abraham Touro. The Herald of the Times reported that “the streets was [sic] crowded with people, the stores all closed, and the bells tolled.”
The City Council assembled at City Hall and marched in procession to the synagogue, where “thousands remained outside” during the service. At the funeral, Newport’s mayor, William C. Cozzens, spoke of the trust that had long existed between the city and local Jewish families, recalling that the synagogue and cemetery had been left in Newport’s care and maintained there “with ample means for their preservation.”
When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited Newport’s Jewish cemetery that same year, he wrote of the graves as “silent beside the never-silent waves.” He noticed, too, what endured there: “Gone are the living, but the dead remain,” he observed, “and not neglected.”
Newport’s preservation of Jewish sacred space was shared. Jews endowed these places and returned to bury their dead there. Christian officials repaired, protected, and publicly honored them. In this way, a Jewish inheritance was carried forward until communal life returned.
In 1883, Touro Synagogue was rededicated and a new Jewish community established in Newport. But even in the window of years when the congregation was gone, the dead were not abandoned.
The graves were kept.
The post America’s oldest synagogue closed. Then an unlikely group tended its cemetery. appeared first on The Forward.
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Milwaukee rabbi and son ordered to pay $1,000 to muralist who reportedly praised Hamas in court
(JTA) — A retired rabbi and his son were sentenced Wednesday in Milwaukee for having destroyed a local mural in 2024 that depicted the Star of David transforming into a swastika.
Rabbi Peter and Zechariah “Zee” Mehler were ordered to pay $1,000 total in restitution to Ihsan Atta, the property owner who had put up the mural. Peter, who pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge for criminal damage, was also fined $50, while Zee, who had pleaded guilty in December, was given a withheld sentence of 25 hours of community service.
The sentencing hearing took another turn when Atta, who is Palestinian, praised Hamas and walked out of the courtroom before being brought back in by deputies to finish the proceedings, according to local news reporters who were present. A transcript of the exchange could not immediately be obtained.
Zee Mehler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that, despite pleading guilty, he felt “vindicated.”
“What we did was illegal and needed to be answered for. But at the same time, what we saw was a very strong response from the city and the court that showed that they have no patience or time for this anti-Israel narrative,” he said. “They recognize the way that it has spread antisemitism, and they recognize the way that it’s caused so much global harm to the Jewish community.”
The case dates back to September 2024, when the Mehlers used a hammer and other tools to tear down Atta’s recently installed mural in full view of security cameras. They have long maintained that, while they understood it was illegal to destroy the mural, they did so out of concern for the safety of the local Jewish community.
Atta’s mural included the words “The irony of becoming what you once hated” surrounding a Star of David transforming into a swastika; the background of the mural appeared to depict scenes of destruction in Gaza. The Mehlers viewed the mural as incitement. At the time of their actions, it had already been condemned by local Jewish groups and the Milwaukee City Council.
In the courtroom, Zee, wearing long dreadlocks, escorted his father, who is 74 years old and has Guillain-Barre syndrome, in a wheelchair. Peter recently lost the ability to walk, his son said: “This has been a really rough few years for him.”
According to reports, circuit court judge Jack Dávila interrupted Atta when he began praising Hamas and instructed him not to make comments unrelated to the crime.
“We’re not going to solve the world’s problems with this hearing,” the judge reportedly told Atta, who apologized for his actions. In a video posted after the verdict, Atta called the proceedings a “kangaroo court” and stated, “We must have judges that are on the Epstein files, because we’ve got clowns running the courthouse.”
Atta’s actions in court, Zee Mehler said, meant “I didn’t really need to do much.”
“He was called to testify, and he absolutely buried himself,” Mehler said. “I can’t believe he said that he supports Hamas in a court, on the record. That’s a crazy thing to do.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Milwaukee rabbi and son ordered to pay $1,000 to muralist who reportedly praised Hamas in court appeared first on The Forward.