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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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If Trump makes good on offering Canadian Jews refugee status, will they come?
(JTA) — TORONTO –- Sari Watson was too afraid to attend Yom Kippur services. Concerned by rising levels of antisemitism in Canada, she was safely at home 25 minutes away when a gunman charged at her childhood synagogue.
“My internal alarm has been going off, and you begin to think about escape routes or backup plans,” said Watson, 39, who lives in Quinte West, Ontario, about 15 miles west of Belleville, where the attack during Kol Nidre on Sept. 20 culminated in a shootout that left the gunman dead and one policeman hospitalized. “The only reason I wasn’t at synagogue was because I have been terrified of this exact situation, or worse, happening.”
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and President Donald Trump himself, all Republicans, have proposed extending refugee status to Canadian Jews who fear the spike in antisemitism in their country.
“’It’s so amazing to know that the Republicans understand the level of antisemitism we’re dealing with here,” she says. “President Trump gets the climate and the danger.”
Still, Watson has mixed emotions about the thought of leaving her home country. “I want to stay here and fight for our safety in Canada,” she said. “The option to come to the U.S. is really important, but we shouldn’t have to need it.”
The Trump administration has imposed stringent restrictions on immigration and is carrying out mass deportations, but is inviting South African whites – and now, potentially, Canadian Jews – refugee status. Critics accuse Trump of playing politics with refugee status, but some Canadian Jews see it as a lifeline.
Talk of Jews feeling compelled to leave Canada gained momentum last week when a well-known Jewish journalist posted publicly on social media about getting a foreign passport. Neil Herland, a newsreader for the national broadcaster, the CBC, wrote on X about his encounter with pro-Palestinian protesters outside Toronto’s Meridian Arts Centre, where Yom Kippur services were being held. Herland said that, concerned about rising antisemitism in Canada, he recently acquired his Austrian passport as a safety precaution. (Independent Press Gallery, a press freedom advocacy group, condemned the CBCfor reportedly suspending Herland after pro-Palestinian advocates lodged a complaint about his post.)
Some Jews are past the precaution stage. Sheldon Shugal, 64, and his wife are currently researching how to move to the United States.
“If I were able to claim refugee status to come to the U.S., I’d do it without hesitation,” said Shugal, who lives in Calgary. “I used to love our country … but it’s just not a place that I want to continue to live in.”
Shugal, a property manager, said he has seen increased antisemitism in Canada in the wake of the deadly Hamas raid in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war it launched. He said he and his wife have been struggling to overcome the complexity of acquiring an American visa.
“The Jew-hatred is no longer rising in Canada, it’s fully immersed here,” says Shugal. “It’s not the country I grew up in. I don’t feel affinity to Canada anymore.”
Shugal’s concerns are reflected in the findings of B’nai Brith Canada, which recently reported a 9.3% increase in antisemitic incidents from 2024-2025. According to this report, online harassment has surged dramatically, while Ontario saw the greatest total number of antisemitic incidents out of all the Canadian provinces and territories.
Antisemitic attacks have proliferated. In March of this year, Toronto synagogue Temple Emanu-El was shot at following Purim celebrations. The next week, two more Toronto synagogues were hit with gunfire over Shabbat, causing damage to the buildings, though no injuries were reported. In late April, assailants allegedly fired replica guns at “visually-identifiable” members of the city’s Jewish community, with one of the men sustaining minor injuries.
Shugal said reports of antisemitism have rattled him as well as the pro-Palestinian encampment his daughter encountered on her campus. “There hasn’t necessarily been anything I’ve personally experienced. It’s just what I’ve seen throughout the country,” Shugal said.
Lauren Cohen, an immigration lawyer based in Boca Raton, Florida, said that since the Oct. 7 attacks, about half of her Canadian clients cite antisemitism as a primary reason for wanting to leave Canada for the United States.
“In the past three months, I’ve noticed a very significant increase in the number of people between 55-70 who are contacting me,” said Cohen, who is originally from Toronto. “They have grown children or no children, and they have a little bit more money,” she said. “They want freedom.”
Antisemitism is not the only consideration for her clients, Cohen said. “The economy’s struggling. It’s not just antisemitism,” she said. “That might be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it’s so many other factors as well.”
Cohen founded the Jewish Community Collective, an organization which helps Jewish Canadians and “displaced Jews” find connection in America. Another option for Jewish Canadians looking to make a new home in the States is Lech L’Tulsa, a program cosponsored by the Jewish Federation of Tulsa that helps settle Jewish newcomers, “designed to help Jewish Canadian citizens relocate to Tulsa.”
Some Canadian Jews do not see greener grass south of the 49th parallel, however. They point to Canada’s more expansive social safety net as one of the many reasons life in the Great White North” is better.. “Unquestionably, the answer to whether I’d consider moving to the States is emphatically ‘no,’” said Lawrence Stanleigh, a dentist in Calgary.
“I believe our country is a better place to live,” said Stanleigh, 67. “The U.S. doesn’t have a public healthcare system. Why would I want to leave our safety net for the U.S.?”
Stanleigh said the idea that the United States is a safe haven for Canadian Jews is misleading. “As bad as things are in Canada, I think they’re worse in the United States,” he said. “It’s not a better place for education or for healthcare. The whole idea of moving there for our safety is a fantasy that the Republicans believe in.”
Substituting the United States for Canada is shortsighted, Stanleigh said. “There are failures on behalf of Canadian leaders to stand firm in their support of the Jewish community,” he said. “But as bad as things are, I think they’re worse in the States. Our American cousins are blithely unaware of the problems they have at home.”
Anthony Housafather, a Jewish Canadian Member of Parliament representing a riding, or electoral district, in Montreal, is skeptical of the notion that the United States would offer Jews better protection.
“I think this idea is inspired by some right-wing Jews who have decided that their mission is to attack the Canadian government, and to make it look like somehow, Donald Trump and the Republicans are the savior of the Jewish people,” Housefather said in an interview.
Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are at a low point in their relationship, with tensions over trade intensifying – and Trump seeks opportunities to take potshots at Carney.
Housefather also does not believe that leaving for the United States is gaining traction among Canadian Jews. “There are some people who have decided that Florida or Israel is a greener pasture,” he said. “But that does not represent a significant or a predominant view, and the idea that everybody’s leaving Canada is actually not true.”
The increase in antisemitism is universal – and should be treated holistically, he said. “What I do agree with is everywhere there’s a very serious problem with antisemitism,” he said. “Everywhere Jewish communities don’t feel safe, and all levels of government need to keep doing more.”
Housefather encourages his Jewish countrymen to remain proud Canadians. “Antisemitism has grown to an unacceptable level in this country,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that you should have less pride in being Canadian because there’s a loud, angry, small group of Canadians trying to make us scared.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post If Trump makes good on offering Canadian Jews refugee status, will they come? appeared first on The Forward.
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UK foreign secretary: The threats to Israel don’t justify its treatment of Palestinians
(JTA) — British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called Palestinian suffering in Gaza and the West Bank a “stain on the conscience of the world” at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool, his most blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government yet.
His attack comes a number of weeks after he told the British Parliament that his country planned to reset its relationship with Israel and ban trade with its West Bank settlements.
In an initial nod of support to the Jewish state, Miliband, who is Jewish, described how three years ago “Hamas’ murderous attack on Oct. 7th united the vast majority of the world in rightful condemnation.”
The Labour Party, he said, will battle antisemitism and “will always recognise the threats Israel faces and stand emphatically against those who seek its destruction. But this cannot justify the suffering the Netanyahu government has inflicted in Gaza and the West Bank.”
He had a message, Miliband said, for the millions of people who had been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: “We hear you. You were right.”
He said the government would call out “ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank,” the “evidence of war crimes in Gaza” and Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestine.”
Britain remains committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, and to helping prevent the destruction of that option.
Miliband repeated his government’s pledge to ban West Bank settlement products and prevent his country’s financial institutions, construction companies and service industry from operating in Israeli-controlled areas beyond the pre-1967 lines.
Laying out the global challenges, he spoke of Iran, Russia, climate change and AI, but he focused on Israel more than on any other issue.
He recalled his Jewish parents’ experiences fleeing and surviving Nazi persecution and finding sanctuary in Britain, “a country that was a beacon of light against the darkness.”
Now, as then, Miliband said, Britain has to confront global challenges by fighting for its values, “the values my parents saw in Britain, values which today are more important than ever.”
His parents did not think it was enough to simply live in a country with values: “They taught me that I have a responsibility to fight for them too,” Miliband said as he spoke of the idea of survivor’s guilt.
“I think my parents had something else. Survivor’s responsibility,” he said, adding that it’s a message passed to the next generation to leave the “world a better place than we found it” by never being “bystanders to oppression and injustice.”
The Palestinian ambassador to Britain, Husam Zomlot, responded to Miliband’s speech on X: “Thank you to the millions of people in Britain and around the world who stood firmly on the side of justice, on the side of Palestine.”
Israel currently has no ambassador posted in the U.K. Tzahi Braverman, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, was appointed to the post but has been unable to take it up while under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, fraud and breach of trust and is barred from leaving the country.
Tensions have been rising between London and Jerusalem. Until the Gaza war, Britain had been one of Israel’s staunchest allies. Ties frayed under the former Labour government of Keir Starmer, which last year recognized Palestinian statehood. Relations have been even more strained since Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s new government was sworn into office in July.
In the aftermath of the U.K.’s decision to ban imports of Jewish West Bank settlement products, with France and Canada joining that move, Israel took a number of retaliatory measures. These included closing the British consulate in Jerusalem and removing its representatives from the International Gaza Support Center.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post UK foreign secretary: The threats to Israel don’t justify its treatment of Palestinians appeared first on The Forward.
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Republican incumbent Rep. Lawler and Democrat Conley spar over antisemitism, Israel in NY debate
(JTA) — Incumbent U.S. House Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, faced off against Democrat Cait Conley in a fiery debate on Monday night, sparring over their respective commitments to tackle antisemitism in America.
The friction was immediately palpable when the candidates, who are vying for New York’s hotly contested 17th District seat, one of the most Jewish districts in the country, jousted over everything from military assistance to Israel to the most effective ways to combat religious hatred.
“Israel is our greatest ally in the Middle East,” Lawler said. “They are a beacon of hope and opportunity and freedom and democracy.”
“They have not committed a genocide,” he continued, adding that some of his Democratic colleagues have “wavered in their support” for the country.
Lawler called out New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, on his anti-Israel positions, describing him as someone his “opponent says she respects.”
In response, Conley stressed that she is “absolutely disgusted by the rising antisemitism that is happening within both political parties,” describing the phenomenon as “fundamentally un-American.”
She then voiced her support for the bipartisan Jewish American Security Act, legislation that was introduced first as a Senate bill and then as a House companion bill co-led by Lawler.
When Lawler then pressed Conley on whether she denounced not only antisemitism but Mamdani himself, she deflected the question. But he continued to push the matter, noting that he denounced Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, right-wing personalities who regularly lash out against Israel and who Jewish organizations have said cross the line into antisemitism.
Conley responded by noting her “firm disagreements with members of the DSA,” referring to the Democratic Socialists of America faction that includes Mamdani.
When Lawler reiterated that she had not condemned Mamdani, Conley accused her opponent of failing to denounce President Donald Trump, whom Democrats revile as a bigot, and said he voted “with him 100% of the time” — a claim Lawler decried as “provably false.”
Lawler rattled off multiple bipartisan efforts with Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, to advance relevant legislation such as the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2025.
“Jewish Americans are under attack in this country, and we have a responsibility to stand up and ensure everyone’s safety,” Lawler said. “No one should be in fear of going to synagogue.”
Conley likewise recognized the rising hate against members of the Jewish community, stressing that this hostility has “absolutely no place here in America.”
New York’s 17th Congressional District, the lower Hudson Valley region north of New York City, is home to one of the biggest Jewish populations nationwide, as noted by News 12 debate moderator Tara Rosenblum.
“There are few places in the country where the conflict in the Middle East hits closer to home,” Rosenblum said.
More than one in five voters in the district, which includes all of Rockland and Putnam counties, as well as parts of Westchester and Dutchess, are Jewish, according to Rosenblum. She also noted, however, that there are growing Muslim communities across the Hudson Valley.
Asked whether there were any circumstances under which they would vote to withhold those funds, the candidates both voiced their support of Israel.
Conley, an Army veteran who served multiple combat tours in the Middle East, emphasized both Israel’s “right to exist” and the importance of ensuring “the safety and security of the people of Israel.”
“I also criticize Netanyahu when I believe he’s doing the wrong thing for Israel and for America,” she added.
Conley stressed that like her opponent, she would have voted against a House amendment that sought to cut $3.3 billion in annual aid to Israel. The amendment, authored by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, would have “stripped assistance packages and other forms of reconstruction,” Conley argued.
Lawler, meanwhile, described U.S. assistance to Israel as “in our interest, especially with respect to our military personnel in the region.” He noted not only the significant number of bases in the Middle East, but also the 700,000 Americans living in Israel.
Both candidates agreed that Israel’s actions in Gaza do not constitute a genocide and that U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state should be conditioned on the disarmament of Hamas. Where they differed was on the expansion of West Bank settlements. Conley opposed such growth, while Lawler said that Israel is operating within its legal authority.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Republican incumbent Rep. Lawler and Democrat Conley spar over antisemitism, Israel in NY debate appeared first on The Forward.
