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The legacy of Isaac Babel, Russia’s Jewish Hemingway, is dissected in new Chicago play
CHICAGO (JTA) — All writers strive for a good story. How far they will go to find it depends on their ambition, their wherewithal and their sanity.
Isaac Babel, a Russian-Jewish writer who came from a relatively stable, privileged background in Odessa in the late 1800s, would go to war among Cossacks who murdered Jews, make friends with Soviet agents and then cuckold one of them. The reason why Babel constantly put himself in harm’s way may have been simple, according to another writer.
“I think he wanted something to write about,” said Rajiv Joseph, whose play at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, “Describe the Night,” centers on Babel. “He was a young man who had wanted to be a writer but had nothing to write about.”
“Describe the Night” blends three stories from different eras that engage with questions of who controls the truth. The first portrays Babel, the Soviet secret police head Nikolai Yezhov and Yezhov’s wife, Yevgenia, with whom Babel begins an affair. The second follows a young Soviet agent rising through the ranks just before the Berlin Wall falls, and the third dives into a conspiracy behind a 2010 plane crash near Smolensk, Russia.
Babel himself may not rise to the ranks of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky in terms of immediate name recognition in the United States, but the journalist, author and playwright is remembered as one of Russia’s preeminent 20th-century writers. His modernist and bloody tales in “Red Cavalry,” a collection of short stories inspired by his time on the frontlines of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919, vaulted him to the status of a Russian Hemingway. The pithy American war correspondent once expressed his admiration, perhaps even jealousy, of Babel’s writing, saying “Babel’s style is even more concise than mine.”
Like Hemingway, Babel went to war in search of a good story. Combat itself was not the only threat to him: as a Jew, he bore witness to the Cossack cavalry’s antisemitic atrocities. Babel tamped down his Jewish identity while covering the war, though he would feel a sense of isolation in both societies or as his grandson would later describe him “a Jew among the Cossacks, and a Cossack among the Jews.” In his own diary, Babel wrote “Talking to the Jews, I feel kin to them, they think I’m Russian and my soul is laid bare.”
Joseph, who is not Jewish and authored the Pulitzer-nominated play “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” had read “Red Cavalry” years ago but was inspired to write “Describe the Night” after discovering the poetic journal Babel had kept during the war. The title of the play comes directly from the diary, which repeats the word several times in Babel’s own prompts to describe things ranging from kitchens to marketplaces to women to horses. Sometimes Babel successfully answers his own prompts by forcing himself to write, and other times he doesn’t, Joseph said.
Lead actor James Vincent Meredith is also not Jewish and admitted he had concerns about “the choice of casting a black man in the role of a Jewish man living in the world of Russia, the Ukraine and Paris.” He partly found his way to the character by watching the 2015 documentary “Finding Babel,” which follows Babel’s grandson across Russia and Ukraine as he searches for his famous ancestor’s remains.
“I can read Babel’s work (I have), I can travel to Israel (I have, decades ago), I can take Hebrew as an elective in college (I did, not very well), I can read Chaim Potok (I have). But these are at their best, however well intentioned, tourist pursuits for one who is not Jewish,” he said. “I will never come close to knowing the true soul of a Jewish person. Thankfully, Rajiv has created this character that by his design, anyone can inhabit.”
Yasen Peyankov and James Vincent Meredith in a scene from the play about Isaac Babel. (Michael Brosilow)
He added that the play isn’t meant to be historically accurate. “The character of Isaac, as well as others in the play, is meant to be an entry point into a world where the scalpel crafting the ‘truth’ is rarely placed in the hands of those who are adversely affected by it. As a black male and father of a black male in the U.S., I’m certainly cognizant of that world.”
Joseph feels that he and other artists share the instinct Babel had to leave his comfort zone. He wanted to be a writer, but growing up in suburban Cleveland gave him little inspiration. After college, he joined the Peace Corps and spent three years in West Africa.
“That was a real life-changing event for me that opened my world and opened my mind,” Joseph said. “Not nearly as traumatic as traveling with the cavalry through Poland in 1920, but the same impulse to break out of your norms.”
Yet Joseph believes Babel’s desires went beyond pushing boundaries and into a deep, pathological need to associate with danger.
“The thing I find really interesting about Babel, both through his writing and through his personal life, is this inexorable draw towards danger and filth,” Joseph said, adding that Babel would hang out in taverns with Soviet soldiers, members of the secret police and executioners like Yezhov. “He was already treading on such thin ice. So he had a recklessness, you could call it a death wish if you want.”
Meredith was also stunned by the writer’s intense flirtations with danger.
“Why get that close to the flame? That to me is one of the things that really appealed to me about this guy,” Meredith said. “I tend to play it safe, as safe as an actor can play it, but I see this guy who had these kinds of desires, he had this quest to make this amazing art as far as his stories and I just I’m just so attracted to that.”
Joseph said he saw some parallels between Babel’s story and the exodus of some of his artistic peers in Russia, who have fled to Europe. In his time, Babel was seen as subversive by nature, existing as a Jewish man in early Soviet Russia. His relished writing about prostitutes and mobsters, transforming underworld characters into urban legends. His 1935 political play “Maria” was canceled during rehearsals and by 1939, Soviet police arrested him and confiscated his writing. Throughout the 1940s, his works disappeared from circulation. Though some believed Babel had spent time throughout that decade in a prison camp, the government had executed him in 1940.
“In the 1930s and ‘40s, I think if you are a Jewish creative writer, you’re automatically subversive,” Joseph said. He noted one pivotal scene where Nikolai Yezhov labels Babel as such because his writing portrays Russia as gloomy rather than inspiring.
“If you’re telling the truth, you are subversive,” Joseph added. “So I think that pretty much any creative writer worth his or her weight would be considered subversive at that moment.”
“Describe the Night” runs until April 9 at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
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In Congress, a measure to tighten U.S.-Israel military ties sparks backlash on both sides of the aisle
Next year’s National Defense Authorization Act has made its way to the House floor, and has some Democrats and conservatives alike rallying against a provision that critics in Congress say would embroil the U.S. in unprecedented levels of military integration with Israel.
The measure, Section 224 of the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, was advanced by Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash., as part of the committee’s annual defense bill. If enacted, it would establish a framework for expanded U.S.-Israel defense cooperation. An official designated by the Pentagon would be responsible for coordinating collaboration with Israel on technologies ranging from missile defense and drones to artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and biotechnology. The provision also encourages joint research projects, shared manufacturing arrangements, military training exercises, and closer cooperation between American and Israeli defense companies.
While the proposal has generated controversy in its own right, it is also fueling a broader conversation about what the U.S.-Israel defense relationship should look like after 2028, when the current 10-year memorandum of understanding governing American military assistance to Israel expires.
The United States has provided military assistance to Israel since 1960, but since 1998, the bulk of that aid has been directed by a series of such memoranda negotiated between the two countries. Congress must still approve the funds annually, but lawmakers have historically funded the agreements as negotiated.
But in recent months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that he does not wish to renew the 2016 MOU to its full extent, stating that he hopes to “taper off” U.S. aid over the next decade and wishes to focus instead on a more collaborative defense relationship.
His comments come as public support for Israel has declined in the United States and military aid has come under increasing political scrutiny, with many Democrats and some Republicans calling to reduce or cut off assistance. An April Pew Research Center survey found that 60% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% a year earlier. Negative views have risen among both Democrats and Republicans, particularly among younger generations. Today, 57% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats ages 18 to 49 have an unfavorable view according to the Pew survey.
Rachel Brandenburg, managing director and senior policy analyst at the Israel Policy Forum, said Israeli leaders are likely aware that future aid packages could face greater scrutiny from both Democrats and an increasingly isolationist wing of the Republican Party, a factor that helps explain the Israeli interest in reducing its reliance on U.S. aid. At the same time, she said, Israel’s increasingly sophisticated defense industry and strong economy have made it less reliant on American financing than in the past.
Against that backdrop, supporters of Section 224 argue that deeper cooperation could help lay the groundwork for a future relationship based on mutual benefits.
“The United States has more to gain by harnessing Israel’s defense tech ecosystem, their innovative capabilities,” Brandenburg said. “Their economy is strong, so there’s quite a bit that they could be buying with their own dollars.”
Michael O’Hanlon, the Chair in Defense and Strategy and director of research in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, told the Forward he believes the concerns that Section 224 would integrate the U.S.-Israel defense relationship to unprecedented levels are overblown. “My overall sense is that this would move the US-Israel relationship in the direction of AUKUS,” he said, referring to an existing trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
“In theory, it shouldn’t really be needed because collaboration is already close,” he explained. “In practice, this kind of provision might help cut through bureaucratic red tape and speed up collaborations. But on balance, I don’t expect huge change because the partnership is already very tight.”
Critics, however, see the proposal very differently.
Its opponents worry that if the U.S. and Israel move away from a military-aid relationship and toward a more collaborative partnership, large parts of the U.S.-Israel defense relationship will be harder to scrutinize or limit. Instead of debating aid packages, lawmakers could find themselves dealing with defense projects that are already built into Pentagon programs and contracts.
“It’s taking one program that’s become unpopular and turning it into another program that those who would disapprove of an intensified U.S.-Israeli defense relationship won’t really know about,” said Steven Simon, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute.
If combined with Israel’s stated desire to reduce its reliance on aid and other efforts to deepen defense cooperation, Simon says Section 224 could produce a relationship that is “much more integrated, immutable, and immune to political pressures than has ever existed.”
Similar concerns have been raised by lawmakers on the left.
Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Monday that he intends to “strongly oppose” the provision, arguing that “Netanyahu is lobbying for Section 224 in the national defense bill, a provision that quietly expands U.S.-Israel military cooperation and weapons development with almost zero oversight.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, also opposes the provision and introduced an amendment to strike Section 224 during committee markup, stating, “The American people are tired of the arrogance and insolence of Prime Minister Netanyahu telling America what we should do.”
On the right, political figures and commentators have framed the measure as a threat to American sovereignty.
Former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tied the provision to the recent reports of Israeli espionage against the U.S., stating on X, “The Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on the U.S. to the highest level and AIPAC is openly cheering Republicans for section 224 in the NDAA that merges our military with Israel’s military.” Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie — who this week held a hearing premised on the conspiracy theory that Israel intentionally killed U.S. soldiers on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War — pledged to offer a floor amendment to strike the section.
The debate has also been picked up by far-right commentators, including podcaster Alex Jones, who stated: “This is beyond treason. This is absolutely a foreign government merging with us. Israel is now the main threat to the existence of this country.”
Brandenburg pushed back on concerns that the proposal would weaken oversight. Rather than moving cooperation further from public view, the legislation calls for additional reporting to Congress and public disclosure of some forms of existing coordination between the two countries, Brandenburg noted.
“That’s new,” she said, “in the sense of adding the accountability and transparency to these elements of the relationship in ways that didn’t exist previously.”
She also asserts many critics have overstated the significance of Section 224, noting that many of the forms of cooperation described in the legislation — including collaboration on missile defense, cyber security and counter-drone technology — are already taking place.
“Those who want to counter the idea that Israel and the United States should be working together have exaggerated what this legislation is actually saying,” she said. “They are accusing it of things like integrating the U.S. and Israeli militaries, or subjugating the U.S. military to the Israeli military. None of that is actually called for in here.”
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Israel names a street after renowned Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever
The Israeli city of Netanya has renamed one of its streets Rechov Avrom Sutzkever (Abraham Sutzkever Street), after the renowned Yiddish poet and Vilna partisan.
The event on June 10 marked an important cultural moment, recognizing the legacy of a poet who devoted his life to Yiddish language and Jewish culture. During his lifetime, Sutzkever was celebrated not only for his poetry, but also for editing the storied Yiddish literary magazine Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain) for 46 years. His work remains a fixture in the field of Yiddish literature today.
Sutzkever was born in 1913 in the shtetl of Smorgon, in what is now Belarus. During World War I, his family moved to Siberia, where his father, Hertz Sutzkever, died. In 1921, his mother Rayne moved the family to Vilnius, where Sutzkever attended cheder.
Sutzkever survived the Vilna Ghetto. He was a leader of the “Paper Brigade” that rescued Jewish cultural treasures from the Nazis and later became the only Jewish witness called by the Soviets to testify at the Nuremberg Trials.
His poetry chronicled his childhood in Siberia, his life in the Vilna ghetto and his escape to join the Jewish partisans. In 1947 he settled in Palestine, later Israel.
In Israel, he continued to create, publish and preserve Yiddish culture for decades. Yet, despite his immense influence around the world, he remained less known in Israel because he chose to write and fight for the Yiddish language rather than switch to Hebrew.
This is the first time a street in Israel has been named after him. Even Tel Aviv never did so, despite the fact that Sutzkever lived there for many years and the city was once a hotbed of Yiddish cultural activity, due to the influx of Yiddish-speaking immigrants who settled there after the Holocaust.
The street-naming ceremony was attended by the Mayor of Netanya, Avi Slama; representatives of the Lithuanian Embassy; public figures, artists, and members of the family, including Sutzkever’s granddaughter, Hadas Kalderon.
In the past decade, Kalderon has been instrumental in keeping Abraham Sutzkever’s memory alive, most notably through two documentary films: Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?) in 2021, and Black Honey: The Life and Poetry of Avraham Sutzkever in 2018.
Kalderon told me that she was very moved by Netanya’s decision to name the street after her grandfather, in a garden overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. “It was not only a tribute to Sutzkever himself, but also a powerful moment of recognition for Yiddish language and culture within the State of Israel,” she said.
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At the dawn of the World Cup, the story of the Jews who helped bring soccer to America
When the North American FIFA World Cup starts in Mexico City on June 11, the story will largely be told through the familiar lenses of Lionel Messi, the geography of the 48 participants and three hosts, and — because 75% of the games will be played there — the continuing rise of soccer in the United States. But there is another, less familiar story woven through the tournament: the long, strange and often overlooked history of Jews in North American soccer.
Mostly that’s been in the United States where players and owners have included a larger proportion of Jews than in Canada and Mexico. By my count, no Jewish players have represented Mexico, and only two Jewish men have represented Canada at senior international level and one of them, Tomer Chencinski, only did so once, in a friendly game where Canada lost 2-0 to Belarus in Doha. (Daniel Haber played 5 international games in his career).
For whatever reason, whether more closely linked to Europe, denied entry to other sports, or just arbiters of excellent taste, Jewish Americans have been at the forefront of soccer in the United States for over a century. The first American to play for a major European team was Eddy Hamel for Ajax Amsterdam in 1922. Hamel was a New York-born winger who became a star for Ajax in Amsterdam during the 1920s. An injury forced his retirement in the 1930s and, after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, he was deported and murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. His story remains one of the most tragic intersections of Jewish history and world football.
Jews also comprised the largest soccer crowd in America when 46,000 New Yorkers watched Hakoach Vienna play New York All Stars in 1926. That record stood for over 50 years but it also encouraged a number of members of the Hakoach team to emigrate to the US and start a New York team that was a crucial part of the American Soccer League of the era.
Later, in the 1970s, the National American Soccer League — the glitzy NASL — became a success thanks to the glamorous New York Cosmos. As head of Warner Communications, their CEO Steve Ross, born Rechnitz, was the person who brought Pele over and made the league the star-studded affair it became. After Herman Sarkowsky co-founded the Seattle Sounders, the continent was almost ready for football.
When the NASL faded and folded, soccer dwindled as a major sport in the United States. Alan Rothenberg saw an opportunity to revive the sport by hosting the 1994 World Cup and founding the MLS as a reset. As president of the U.S. Soccer Federation and the chief executive of the World Cup USA 1994 organizing committee, he made both of those happen and laid the foundations for the current shape of U.S. soccer.
The success of the MLS was not a foregone conclusion, though; indeed, it barely survived to the millennium. It was founded in 1993 but only started playing in 1996 — losing an estimated $350 million between its founding and 2004. The league initially turned to Don Garber, a former NFL executive, in August 1999 but even he couldn’t turn it around. By late 2001, it looked like the league would fold like its predecessors but it was able to secure new financing from owners Lamar Hunt, Philip Anschutz, and the Kraft family to take on more teams. Over the past 20 years, it has become robust, enjoying the general boom of all things soccer, riding the coattails of the English Premier League.
Without Robert Kraft and Anschutz, Major League Soccer might not exist today. During the league’s precarious early years, the two billionaire owners absorbed enormous losses to keep the fledgling competition alive. Kraft, the owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, was also a central figure in bringing the 2026 World Cup to North America. As chairman of the United Bid Committee, he played a crucial role in securing the tournament for the United States, Canada and Mexico.
If Kraft represents one side of the Jewish soccer story, Chuck Blazer represents another.
The larger-than-life American soccer executive helped expose corruption inside FIFA, serving as a key witness in the investigations that ultimately toppled some of the most powerful figures in world football. Yet Blazer was a product of the very system he later helped unravel. His spectacular rise and fall remains one of the strangest chapters in soccer history, a tale of luxury apartments, exotic pets and global corruption.
Unlike baseball, basketball or boxing, soccer never became known as a major arena of Jewish achievement in the United States. Perhaps that has been due to the historic lack of status for soccer in the country. Despite the excellence of Yael Averbuch West for the USWNT and a number of Jewish players for the USMNT including Jonathan Bornstein, Benny Feilhaber, Dan Calichman, DeAndre Yedlin, Kyle Beckerman and the maverick Yari Alnutt there have been no soccer equivalents of Sandy Koufax or Hank Greenberg.
The stalwart defender Jeff “Goose” Agoos came closest with 134 international appearances and six more for the U.S. soccer Olympic team. But playing with a mediocre USMNT, he enjoyed few legendary moments. In fact, arguably no professional moments outshone the bizarre story of his 1989 NCAA championship ring in his junior year, the season that he played in the Maccabiah. On Dec. 3 of that year, his Virginia Cavalier team (playing for future USMNT coach Bruce Arena) met the top ranked, undefeated Santa Clara team in a freezing cold stadium in Piscataway, N.J. The teams were still tied 1-1 after FOUR overtimes and, with no penalties on the books, they shared the spoils. It was the third time that two teams shared the championship and has never happened again.
This year’s USMNT squad does include the only Jewish player at this summer’s tournament — reserve goalkeeper Matt Turner. If, as coach Mauricio Pochettino plans, Turner exclusively warms the bench, he will take his place alongside many of America’s notable Jewish soccer figures who have furthered the game, even if not on the field.
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