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New Holocaust Musical Gives Hope Amid Despair of Global War on Israel
Watching actor Jacob Ben-Shmuel refer to a boy whose parents were killed by Nazis in the stunning new musical Amid Falling Walls, I could not help but think of 12-year-old Ariel Zohar from Kibbutz Nahal Oz. His parents, Yaniv and Yasmin, as well as his sisters, Techelet and Keshet, were murdered by Hamas when he went out for a jog on the morning of October 7.
Two days later, the team at The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbeine (NYTF) began rehearsals for its musical, which takes the audience to ghettos in Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz, Cracow, as well as labor camps and forests from 1939 to 1945. The show is now playing at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, and the company had decided to do Amid Falling Walls a year earlier.
“Every moment in rehearsal was infused with our concern,” Zalmen Mlotek, artistic director of the NYTF, said in an interview. He also said that his daughter is in Israel, and that many cast members have relatives there.
Yael Eden Chanukov, who was born in Haifa and grew up in San Diego, plays Esther, and had the most emotive facial expressions of any cast member.
“I felt myself connecting so much to the material,” Chanukov said. “Before, I would have said the only thing that separates me from these Holocaust survivors is time. My family are all Holocaust survivors. Seeing these horrific things that I never thought I would see in my lifetime informed a lot of the work and weirdly made it healing and therapeutic to do every night, especially with how the show ends. I’m helpless to do anything in the sense that I’m not in Israel, but this feels like a small way to do something.”
Steve Skybell, who starred at Tevye in the Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof that ran off-Broadway and at NYTF, here is Mordkhe, and he grounds the show with a palpable intensity.
Rachel Zatcoff, who plays Mina, nailed two epic high notes. While nearly all of the 28 songs were stellar, one standout was “Mues,” or “Money,” a jazzy upbeat tune with plenty of wow factor and sass, due to the delivery of Daniella Rabbani, who plays Khane. Some of her relatives are Holocaust survivors, and others are from Iran.
“I feel like if I wasn’t doing this show I might collapse in grief,” Rabbani said. “I have the opportunity to step into the shoes of my ancestors who never lost their dignity, never lost their creativity, and never lost their connection to the divine, to music, to each other, and to rage. It gives me peace, perspective, and chizuk [strength] to perform. One of the songs I sing, ‘Moshe Halt Zikh’ is about not losing hope, because at the time people were committing suicide. The message is not to give up.”
Two actors who light up the stage are Abby Goldfarb and Eli Mayer, who respectively play Sore and Moyshe. Both have movie-star looks and ooze with charisma.
“A show like this is important no matter what’s going on or what century we’re in,” Goldfarb said. “The plan was to do this a year ago. Selfishly, this is a distraction from everything online. But it’s amazing that during the Holocaust these people were able to create music and performances. I think it says a lot about the capacity of the human spirit.”
The show includes testimony from noteworthy figures, including Holocaust survivor Wladislaw Szpilman, famously played by Adrian Brody in The Pianist. I cried at three different moments, and many in the row I sat in did as well.
The show is a rush of oxygen in a time when it has been difficult to breathe. While we cannot unsee the horrors we have seen, or unhear the haunting screams we have heard, we can be presented with the power of our people and a history that tells us those who seek to cause our demise end up sealing their own fate.
Not long after the performance I saw, a kosher restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was vandalized, with its main window shattered.
Slated to run until December 10, this production is a gem of a show, and you should not miss it. Presented in Yiddish, with subtitles in English and Russian, the experience is user friendly. Several audience members told me the show gave them a sense of hope.
While I don’t know if there is any intention to try to push the show to a bigger life, the musical performances are certainly good enough. It might require scenes with more exposition by Skybell, as well as a love story between the characters played by Goldfarb and Mayer. Many of the songs are obscure, but some are well known, like “Ani Maamin” and “Piskhu Li.”
The show is directed by Matthew “Moti” Didner, with choreography by Tamar Rogoff.
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post New Holocaust Musical Gives Hope Amid Despair of Global War on Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.