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‘The Gett,’ a play about Jewish divorce, stems from an unlikely marriage between a Brooklyn synagogue and a theater company

(New York Jewish Week) — Despite being named for a Jewish bill of divorce, ‘The Gett” is a new off-Broadway play that began as a marriage between a Reform synagogue in Brooklyn and a West Village theater company that specializes in “diverse, challenging and provocative” works.

At Park Slope’s Congregation Beth Elohim, Associate Rabbi Matt Green had been trying to expand programming for “cultural Jews” — those who don’t necessarily feel religious or connected to a denomination, yet know they are Jewish and want to be Jewish. 

Meanwhile, at the Rattlestick Theater, artistic director Daniella Topol had just put on a play about the Catholic nuns who started downtown’s St. Vincent’s Hospital in the 19th century, and wanted to direct a play about Judaism for her next project. 

When Topol and Green were introduced in 2018 by Rosalee Lovett, who sat on the boards of both institutions, co-commissioning a play seemed like a natural fit — however unconventional.

The result is “The Gett: Or How a Woman Created Herself,” an original play produced by Congregation Beth Elohim and showing at the Rattlestick through Dec. 11. The 95-minute production — written by and starring Liba Vaynberg — centers on Ida, a recent divorceé navigating her relationship with herself, her mother, her ex-husband Baal, Judaism and God. With the plot points structured around the seven days of creation, Ida’s relationship with her Baal (in Hebrew the word can mean “master” or “husband”) is laced with a double meanings. The viewer can see the couple’s sometimes dangerous and sometimes loving relationship as a metaphor for the Jewish people’s relationship with God. 

“These are organizations that have gone deeply into what they do and do it well,” Vaynberg told the New York Jewish Week. “CBE is bringing the best it has and Rattlestick is bringing the best it has — as opposed to a situation where everybody’s bringing half. It’s a very full marriage.” 

“What’s powerful about this play is that it has been a really community-based development and a really thoughtful development in partnership between a synagogue and a theater,” said Topol, noting that this is the Rattlestick’s first-ever Jewish play, and first partnership with a synagogue.

Despite the biblical trappings in “The Gett” — which also stars Jennifer Westfeldt, Ben Edelman and Luis Vega — the play is funny and modern. “We’ve tried a number of different things, but so far, this is one of our greatest successes to offer content that’s serious for people who call themselves culturally Jewish,” Green told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s really important to me that this play fosters a broader conversation, even in some small way, about what our institutions can be doing differently.”

Performances have been full so far at the 99-seat theater, with CBE encouraging congregants to see the show by offering group trips and programming surrounding the play, including talkbacks with Rabbi Green that explore the Jewish themes in the show. On Friday night performances, CBE holds Kabbalat Shabbat gatherings with the audience before the show.

Ben Edelman and Liba Vaynberg in “The Gett.” (The Chamber Group)

“We tend to deride cultural Judaism as if it’s somehow flimsy, or unserious, but if you look at the Pew study, it’s the fastest growing self-identified demographic in our community,” added Green, who also leads Congregation Beth Elohim’s “Brooklyn Jews” cohort, which is a community of younger congregants who are looking to engage Judaism through culture, food and ritual. “Yet we spend very little time as a Jewish establishment trying to really understand what cultural Judaism is.”

Other recent efforts to include these “cultural Jews” include reading and discussion seminars on queer Jewish writers, a meditation group and, perhaps most notably, an “intergenerational mixer” held in partnership with the lifestyle brand “Old Jewish Men of New York,” which got a write-up in the New York Times Styles section.

As for theater, the play really stemmed from CBE and Rattlestick’s desire to work together after realizing their mutual ambitions and interests. 

At the Rattlestick, “We really focus as a theater on finding ways to look at stories that deal with the complexity of our culture,” Topol said. “I had been thinking for a while that we wanted to do something that related to the complexity of the American Jewish experience.”

It was something the theater community clearly was interested in as well: When Topol and Green opened a call for submissions, they received over 100. Vaynberg’s play was selected in early 2020.

For Topol, who is Jewish but always saw her Judaism as separate from her directing career, it was a theme close to her heart. “In terms of what Jewish stories are represented on the stage, it feels like there’s some room to really explore some of those key questions that American Jews are wrestling with: identity, intermarriage, having children, ritual, how much do you carry on ritual or not, what your affiliation is or isn’t with Israel, with the Holocaust, with politics,” she said. 

“It’s a swirl of all of those sorts of questions that felt kind of worth some creative expression in terms of the theater,” Topol added. (As it happens, “The Gett” will be the last play Topol directs in her six-year career with the Rattlestick — next, she will switch careers and study to become a nurse.)

Once Vaynberg’s play was selected in early 2020, the playwright unexpectedly had extra time to finesse the show. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rattlestick closed temporarily and put the production on pause.

Vaynberg used the extra time to increase community involvement. She spoke with several women who are synagogue members who had gone through a divorce. She and Green conducted several roundtable discussions and focus groups to further explore congregants’ Jewish identities and how it has manifested in their relationships.

Vaynberg and Green created a “chavrusa,” a study partnership, to explore biblical and religious implications of the questions she had about creation, Jewish marriage and divorce and how much power a person has in their relationship with God. 

Some themes in the play probe the same questions about cultural Judaism that Green had been asking at CBE. Protagonist Ida, for example, deeply cares about her Judaism and Jewish identity, and yet has trouble explaining just why and how it’s so important to her on a date with a non-Jewish man.

“By going to this play, you are engaging with Judaism,” Green said. “It’s not just about inspiring people to be involved with Judaism, but actually, it is a Jewish act to see this play.” 

“This isn’t something synagogues do — it’s sort of strange,” Green remarked. “We want to do things differently and we as a congregation, want to inspire other congregations, other Jews, to do things differently.” 

—
The post ‘The Gett,’ a play about Jewish divorce, stems from an unlikely marriage between a Brooklyn synagogue and a theater company appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Romanians Stabbed Journalist in London at Behest of Iran, UK Court Told

People walk past a mural depicting the late leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the late Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

A team of Romanian men, acting as proxies for the Iranian government, carried out a knife attack on a journalist working for a Persian-language media organization in London, prosecutors told a British court on Monday.

Pouria Zaratifoukolaei, known as Pouria Zeraati, a British journalist of Iranian origin who works for Iran International, was stabbed in the leg three times as he was attacked near his home in Wimbledon, southwest London, in March 2024.

At the start of the trial of two of the three men accused of carrying out the stabbing, prosecutor Duncan Atkinson said they had targeted Zeraati, whose Saudi-funded TV employer is critical of Iran‘s government and has been designated a terrorist organization by Tehran.

‘DELIBERATE, PLANNED VIOLENCE’

“This was no robbery, no fight that got out of control, it was deliberate, planned violence to achieve what it did, that is serious injury to its target,” Atkinson told London‘s Woolwich Crown Court.

They had “committed a planned attack preceded by reconnaissance, and which was ordered by a third party acting on behalf of the Iranian state,” the prosecutor said.

Iran has denied any involvement in the incident.

Nandito Badea, 21, and George Stana, 25, both deny charges of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding. The third man accused of involvement, David Andrei, was arrested in Romania but is not involved in the trial.

Atkinson said Zeraati was an “obvious and readily identifiable target for violence to be inflicted by proxies” acting for Iran. He said posters had been put up in Tehran in November 2022 featuring pictures of journalists including Zeraati, under the heading “Wanted: dead or alive.”

“In recent years, since 2005, the Islamic Republic has turned less to its own operatives and increasingly to use proxies such as criminal gangs to meet their threatened violence on their behalf,” Atkinson said.

“That has included attacks on persons in this country who have become targets of Iranian intimidation and, effectively, terror.”

Atkinson said Zeraati had been subject to “extensive reconnaissance,” and a year before Stana had been arrested in the garden of his apartment with another man, in possession of latex gloves, scissors, and a mask.

On the day of the attack, Badea and Andrei confronted Zeraati as he crossed the street from his home to his car, the prosecutor said. Andrei held him, while Badea stabbed him at the top of his thigh before they fled to a getaway car driven by Stana, the prosecutor added.

The men, who were motivated by money, dumped the car and some clothing, and then took a taxi to Heathrow Airport from where they flew to Geneva, Atkinson said.

The trial, which is expected to last more than two weeks, continues.

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‘Beyond Ironic’: Mamdani’s ‘Nakba’ Video Features Non-Arab Woman Critics Say Has European Roots

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) speaking with the press in the Bronx, New York City, May 18, 2026. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked the Palestinian “Nakba” with an official City Hall video featuring a woman presented as a survivor of Israel’s founding war, but critics quickly identified her family as “European settlers” from Bosnia who left Arab-controlled territory.

The backlash came as leaders of mainstream Jewish groups said they would reject invitations to Mamdani’s “Jewish Heritage” celebration at Gracie Mansion on Monday evening.

The video, posted on Friday, features New York resident Inea Bushnaq, identified as a “Nakba survivor,” recounting her family’s departure from their home because, as she termed it, “the Zionists were coming into Jerusalem.”

Nakba is Arabic for “catastrophe,” a term Palestinians use for Israel’s founding and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. The Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for the refugees’ millions of descendants is viewed by many Israelis and Jews as a call that would end Israel’s existence by demographic means. Critics said the video’s assertion that the Nakba “continues to this day” echoed that position.

Text in the video says the Nakba refers to the “expulsion and displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel” and says Israel’s pre-state militaries, “the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi militias, among others, destroyed more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities, killing thousands of Palestinians and carrying out dozens of massacres.”

“May 15 is the annual commemoration of the Nakba. For Palestinians, their displacement and the Nakba continue to this day,” the video text reads.

The video makes no mention of Arab attacks on Jews before and during the 1948 war, the invasion by Arab armies after Israel’s declaration of independence meant to eradicate the nascent state, the rejection of the UN partition plan that would have created a Jewish and an Arab state, or the expulsion of Jews from parts of Jerusalem that came under Jordanian control.

Speaking in a British accent in the video, Bushnaq, who is described as Palestinian-American, explains how keys have become a Palestinian symbol of the right to return. “You have the key but not the house,” she says.

Tom Gross, a Middle East expert, noted that the video omitted the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries while relying on what he called a flawed account of Palestinian history.

“Not only does Mamdani’s video fail to mention the numerically greater 850,000 Jews driven out of their homes in the Arab world; he can’t even get his narrative right regarding the so-called Palestinian Nakba,” he told The Algemeiner.

In a post shared widely on social media, Gross cited research by the historian and influencer who posts as J0sh_a to challenge Bushnaq’s portrayal as a Palestinian refugee.

“It turns out that the ‘Nakba Survivor’ who stars in Mayor Mamdani’s official NY City Hall Palestinian propaganda video yesterday, is literally a ‘European settler,’” the post said. 

Bushnaq’s grandparents were Muslim Bosnians who left Bosnia for Ottoman Syria in the late 19th century after Austria-Hungary took control of Bosnia. The family later moved to Tulkarem, which came under Jordanian control after 1948, not Israeli control. Bushnaq was born in Jerusalem because of the city’s medical facilities, but her family remained based in Tulkarem, the post said. 

Bushnaq’s father worked in England in the 1930s, returned to what was then known as Mandatory Palestine under British administration, and then in 1948 the family chose to go back to England.

“They were not expelled, and no one forced them to move to England. In any case, Tulkarem, and the old city of Jerusalem remained under Jordanian Arab control. No Arabs were forced to leave from Tulkarem in 1948,” Gross wrote.

“So, in summary, this is a European with no strong roots in the land of Israel, whose family made the decision to immigrate back to the continent of their grandparents instead of remaining under Arab control in what was part of Jordan after 1948.”

Critics also pointed to a poster seen on Bushnaq’s wall in the video. The “Visit Palestine” image was not Palestinian nationalist artwork, they said, but a Zionist-era tourism poster designed by Jewish artist Franz Kraus to encourage travel to the Holy Land.

“It is beyond ironic that the only person featured to represent Palestinian Arabs in his video appears to be someone from a recently arrived European settler family – from Bosnia – and not Arab at all,” he told The Algemeiner. 

Gross also argued that Bushnaq’s family story pointed to a wider part of the history often left out of Palestinian nationalist accounts, saying many Arab families in the land in 1948 had arrived within a generation or two, drawn by British rule or by economic opportunities created by Jewish development. He cited surnames such as Al-Masri and Masarwa, both linked to Egypt, Fayumi, from Fayum in Egypt, Ismaili, from Ismailia, Al-Horani, from Hauran in Syria, Sidawi, from Sidon in Lebanon, and Al-Hijazi, from the Hijaz in Saudi Arabia. 

Jewish groups, leaders and members of Congress slammed the post.

The UJA-Federation of New York accused Mamdani of leaving out critical context, writing on X that “the refugees you post about exist because 22 Arab states launched a war to destroy Israel,” after rejecting the UN plan that also called for a Palestinian state.

Referencing the translation of Nakba, US Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wrote on X, “The only catastrophe here is a mayor of New York who lets antisemitic mobs run wild to terrorize law-abiding Jewish New Yorkers while he spreads anti-Israel propaganda.”

“Rewriting history to portray the existence of Israel itself as the original sin is not education or remembrance. It is propaganda,” said New York Assemblymember Sam Berger. “This mayor constantly tries to market himself as an ally to the Jewish community while amplifying narratives that fuel hatred against the Jewish people.”

New York State Assembly member Simcha Eisenstein wrote, “Still wondering why hatred against Jews is so high in NYC? We have a mayor who is using government resources to disseminate a narrative and incite hostile propaganda.”

The post came the same day as anti-Zionist demonstrators gathered in Manhattan for Nakba Day rallies, with footage showing protesters carrying a Hezbollah flag, stepping on Israeli flags, shouting for Israel’s destruction, and confronting police.

The timing also contrasted with Mamdani’s own statement days earlier praising law enforcement for arresting a man accused of planning an Iran-backed attack on a New York synagogue. Mamdani had said the arrest “comes amid an alarming rise in antisemitism across the country.”

“Let me be clear: Antisemitism, violent extremism, and terrorism have no place in our city. This kind of hate is despicable,” he said.

The UJA-Federation later said it would not attend Monday night’s Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at Gracie Mansion because it was being hosted by a mayor who “denies a core pillar of our heritage — the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people,” according to a statement carried by the New York Post.

Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said he would also skip the event. His group organizes the Israel Day Parade at the end of the month, which Mamdani has said he will not attend, breaking with past mayoral practice.

New Yorkers “expect leadership that lowers the temperature, brings people together, and makes every community feel seen, respected, and safe, including Jewish New Yorkers,” Treyger wrote in an X post criticizing Mamdani’s Nakba Day video.

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Pakistan Sends New Iranian Peace Proposal to US

A woman walks past an anti-US billboard depicting US President Donald Trump and the Strait of Hormuz, in Tehran, Iran, May 17, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Iran sent a new peace proposal to the United States with terms that appeared similar to offers Washington has previously rejected, although a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday that the US had softened positions on some issues.

A Pakistani source confirmed that Islamabad, which has conveyed messages between the sides in the war in the Middle East since hosting the only round of peace talks last month, had shared the latest proposal with Washington. But the source suggested progress had been difficult.

The sides “keep changing their goalposts,” the Pakistani source said, adding: “We don’t have much time.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed that Tehran’s views had been “conveyed to the American side through Pakistan” but gave no details. Washington did not immediately comment.

The Iranian proposal, as described by the senior Iranian source, appeared similar in many respects to Iran’s previous offer, which US President Donald Trump rejected last week as “garbage.”

It would focus first on securing an end to the war, reopening the Strait of Hormuz – a major oil supply route that Iran has effectively blockaded – and lifting maritime sanctions.

Contentious issues around Iran’s nuclear program and uranium enrichment would be deferred to later rounds of talks, the source said.

However, in an apparent softening of Washington’s stance, the senior Iranian source said the United States had agreed to release a quarter of Iran’s frozen funds – totaling tens of billions of dollars – held in foreign banks. Iran wants all the assets released.

The Iranian source also said Washington had shown more flexibility in agreeing to let Iran continue some peaceful nuclear activity under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency separately quoted an unidentified source as saying the US had agreed to waive oil sanctions on Iran while negotiations were under way.

Iranian officials did not immediately comment on Tasnim’s report, which a US official, who declined to be named, said was false.

FRAGILE CEASEFIRE

A fragile ceasefire is in place after six weeks of war that followed US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran. But talks mediated by Pakistan have stalled and Trump has said the ceasefire is “on life support.”

Washington has previously demanded Tehran dismantle its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas supply.

Iran has been demanding compensation for war damage, an end to a US blockade of Iranian ports and a halt to fighting on all fronts, including in Lebanon, where Israel is battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social at the weekend that “the Clock is Ticking” for Iran, adding that “they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

Trump is expected to meet top national security advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for resuming military action, Axios reported.

Baghaei said Tehran was prepared for all scenarios.

“As for their threats, rest assured that we are fully aware of how to respond appropriately to even the smallest mistake from the opposing side,” he told a televised weekly press conference.

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