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Tovah Feldshuh, Debra Messing and more Jewish stars perform at first-ever ‘Shabbat on Broadway’ show
(New York Jewish Week) — Nine a.m. on a Saturday morning might be one of the few times during the week that Times Square isn’t brimming with tourists, theater-goers and commuters. But when you bring in a few dozen Jewish Broadway stars and ask them to perform a Shabbat service inside a Broadway theater, the crowds will come.
This past Saturday, the St. James Theater, which most days is home to the Monty Pythn musical “Spamalot,” hosted “Shabbat on Broadway,” described by producer Henry Tisch as a “a non-denominational Shabbat service with a real Broadway twist.”
Led by two cantors, and featuring songs and prayers sung by Julie Benko, Adam Pascal, Tovah Feldshuh, Shoshana Bean and others, the service drew a near-capacity crowd to the 1,700-seat theater.
“We had this feeling that, in this very dark time in the world and in the Jewish world, we wanted to put together something that really had light to it and would be this beacon and a place to celebrate and to gather together in community,” said Tisch, who produced the Shabbat on Broadway service alongside Amanda Lipitz, who also directed.
The service felt “inevitable,” Tisch said. “Of course, there should be a Shabbat on Broadway. Certainly, there have been other gatherings of Jews in the theater world, but as far as we know, this is the first Shabbat service in a Broadway theater.”
Tisch and Lipitz began putting together the show just five weeks ago, and the tickets for the service — which were free and open to the public — ran out in just a day, they said.
The Shabbat they chose, Jan. 27, happened to be the perfect day for such an occasion. The Torah portion read on the day, Parshah Beshalach, includes the Song of the Sea, which the Israelites sang as they crossed the Red Sea from Egypt, and is known as “Shabbat Shirah” or “Shabbat of Song.” Jan. 27 also happens to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Underneath a giant, golden Star of David that hung over the stage — a set piece normally used in the “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway” scene in “Spamalot” — celebrants interspersed traditional Shabbat prayers and straight musical numbers. Some prayers were sung to the tune of Broadway songs; the service opened with a pre-recorded video of a dozen New York City cantors singing “Hinei Matov” to the tune of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin,’” from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma.” It closed with a group of children singing “Adon Olam” to the tune of “You’ll Be Back,” from “Hamilton.”
Both prayers were arranged by Cantor Azi Schwartz from Park Avenue Synagogue, who is known for setting Shabbat prayers to modern tunes.
However, most of the prayers were sung with traditional melodies. Feldshuh, who most recently played Rosie Brice in “Funny Girl,” sang “Mi Sheberach.”
“I’ve spent over 50 years with you,” Feldshuh said on stage, addressing the crowd. “This is my life,” she added, calling the event an “extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Among other performances, Shoshana Bean, who most recently starred in “Mr. Saturday Night,” sang “Etz Chaim;” Talia Suskauer, who played Elphaba in “Wicked,” sang the Shema; Jackie Hoffman, recently seen in the anthology series “Feud,” read the Amidah, the core prayer of every Jewish worship service and Debra Messing read a “Prayer for Our Country.”
The 90-minute service was led by cantors Jenna Pearsall from Central Synagogue and Mo Glazman from Temple Emanu-El, two of the city’s most prominent Reform synagogues. It also included a sermon by Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR Synagogue in Los Angeles, from her new book “The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World,” which was read by actress Camryn Manheim.
“Broadway, growing up, for me was spiritual. It was a huge part of my life. So to mesh my career with a Broadway stage was a full circle moment for me. It was incredible,” Pearsall told the New York Jewish Week after the show. “It’s hard to get clergy involved on a Saturday, but I would love to do something like this again. There seems to be a huge demand for it.”
Indeed, a plethora of other prominent New York City clergy, including Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove from Park Avenue Synagogue, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl from Central Synagogue and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum from Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, had their own Shabbat services to lead, but appeared in pre-recorded video segments throughout the service.
“The theater is a holy place,” Kleinbaum said in her recording.
That idea — that the Broadway stage is a temple, and one influenced largely by Jews — was a throughline in the service both implicitly and explicitly.
“There are such current ties and historic ties between the theater community and the Jewish community. The history of the American musical theater is so tied to the contributions of so many Jews, so it felt really important to acknowledge that,” Tisch said. “Also given just how Jewish the theater community is today, it felt important to really provide this space and the sanctuary and celebration.”
“What a convergence of temples,” said Broadway singer Adam Kantor (“Rent,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The Band’s Visit”), before he sang a mashup of “Oseh Shalom” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which he said he arranged in the days following Oct. 7.
“For a lot of people in this room, a Broadway theater might also have given maybe an escape from certain religious institutions where they were supposed to experience a certain spiritual catharsis but might have instead experienced a certain feeling that they weren’t invited into that space,” he added. “Today you are all invited.”
Audience members were pleasantly surprised by how the show balanced the Broadway values of humor and showmanship with the Shabbat values of community and rest.
“It was incredible how they were able to balance it. I was wondering going in, ‘Is it going to be Broadway tunes? Is it going to be a service? What is that gonna look like?’” said Nadine, who declined to share her last name. “I felt like I got a little bit of both, which was incredible.”
Another attendee, Donna, said she often attends synagogue and also loves Broadway shows. “The convergence of all this as part of what it means to be Jewish in this city was really very beautiful,” she said.
Julie Benko, who is currently starring in Barry Manilow’s “Harmony” on Broadway, performed “Tomorrow” from Annie.
“This event today was so special,” she told the New York Jewish Week. “I feel like I’ve never been in a space like this where I just felt like our whole community came together in this way, where I felt totally safe and connected, celebrating our community and just being together in a way that wasn’t related to ‘showbiz’ — and yet it still celebrated everything that we love in showbiz.”
“It was my favorite Shabbat service I’ve been to,” she added.
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The post Tovah Feldshuh, Debra Messing and more Jewish stars perform at first-ever ‘Shabbat on Broadway’ show appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Criticizes Arab-Islamic Summit Statement, Flags Objections After Doha Meeting
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, attends the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Hassan Bargash Al Menhali / UAE Presidential Court/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has criticized the final statement of the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Doha on Monday as insufficient, in the wake of last week’s Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.
In a statement released shortly after the summit, Iran reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” while arguing that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot adequately address the Palestinian issue.
According to the Iranian delegation, “the only real and lasting solution is the establishment of a single democratic state across all of Palestine, through a referendum involving all Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories.”
On Monday, Qatar held a summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the aftermath of last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas, with leaders gathering to express support and discuss regional responses.
The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha marked a significant escalation of Israeli military operations, reflecting Jerusalem’s broader efforts to dismantle the terrorist group amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Expressing solidarity with Qatar, summit leaders condemned Israel’s strike, labeling it “cowardly, illegal, and a threat to collective regional security.”
In the final statement, the heads of state declared that “an assault on a state acting as a neutral mediator in the Gaza crisis is not only a hostile act against Qatar but also a direct blow to international peace-building efforts.”
Alongside the United States and other regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
During the summit, Arab and Muslim leaders called for a review of diplomatic and economic relations with Israel while firmly opposing any attempts to displace Palestinians.
In the final statement, the heads of state also emphasized resisting Israel’s efforts to “impose new realities on the ground,” urged enforcement of International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli leaders over war crime allegations adamantly denied by Jerusalem, and coordinated actions to suspend Israel’s UN membership.
Although Iran participated in the summit and endorsed the declaration, its delegation issued a separate statement shortly afterward clarifying that doing so “must in no way be interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as recognition of the Israeli regime,” reaffirming its rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Iranian leaders regularly declare their intention to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state.
The statement also stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to employ “all necessary means to achieve their inalienable right to self-determination,” emphasizing that backing this cause is “a shared duty of the international community.”
As the heads of Arab and Islamic states convened for a summit on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”
During a diplomatic visit to Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed strong support for Israel’s position, even as Washington previously voiced concerns over the strike in Qatar, a US ally.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.
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“Your Name Was Included”: UC Berkeley Cooperating With Trump Administration, Admits to Disclosing Names
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is cooperating with the Trump administration’s inquiry into campus antisemitism, providing materials containing the names of some 160 people identified in disciplinary reports and other official documents.
As first reported by The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s official campus newspaper, the university’s Office of Legal Affairs notified every person affected by the mass disclosure, writing to them on Sept. 4.
“Last spring, the [US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR]] initiated investigations regarding allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination at UC Berkeley. As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” chief campus counsel David Robinson wrote. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemic Office of General Counsel, your name was included in report as part of the documents provided by OGC [Office of General Counsel] to OCR for its investigations on Aug. 18, 2025.”
He added, “These documents contained information about reports or responses related to antisemitic incidents.”
Anti-Israel activists told the Californian that the university is helping the Trump administration hunt witches.
“I think the message was sent to anybody has who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” one said, claiming that he has been falsely accused. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, infamous for its ties to jihadist terror organizations, also criticized the move, charging that the administration had promised to conceal their identities and thereby obstruct the government’s inquiry.
“Chancellor Rich Lyons should not have given assurances that he wouldn’t be giving our information to the federal government,” the group said. “Beyond that, he should never have bowed down so easily. I would think that a university that prides itself on being this liberal haven would at least stand up to a fascist like Donald Trump.”
UC Berkeley came under scrutiny in 2024 after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
Other incidents, including the university’s employment of a lecturer who tweeted antisemitic images — one of which accused Israel of organ harvesting, a blood libel — the rewarding of academic benefits for participating in anti-Zionist activity, and the banning of Zionist speakers from Berkeley Law, have raised concerns about anti-Jewish hated on campus. In 2017, The Algemeiner ranked UC Berkeley as number five on “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.”
In August, an Israeli professor sued the university, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim its own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint is seeking justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance. After nearly two years, the situation remains unresolved.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel Issues Travel Warning Ahead of Jewish Holidays Amid Rising Attacks, Discrimination Targeting Israelis Abroad
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has issued a travel warning ahead of the upcoming Jewish high holidays and the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, alerting citizens of heightened terrorist threats against Israelis and Jewish communities abroad.
On Sunday, the National Security Council (NSC) urged travelers to stay alert, cautioning that the two-year anniversary of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel could trigger attacks by Iran-backed or Hamas-linked terrorist groups targeting Jews and Israelis abroad.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” the NSC said in a statement.
“Oct. 7 may again serve as a significant date for terrorist organizations,” the statement read.
Israeli officials warned that the threat mainly stems from Iran and its terrorist proxies, which have increasingly targeted Jews and Israelis beyond Israel’s borders.
In recent months, the NSC reported that dozens of plots have been thwarted, even as violent incidents — including physical attacks, antisemitic threats, and online incitement — have continued to rise.
“With the war ongoing and the terror threat growing, we are witnessing an escalation in antisemitic violence and provocations by anti-Israel elements,” the NSC said in its statement.
“This trend may inspire extremists to carry out attacks against Israelis or Jews abroad,” it continued.
According to the NSC, Iran remains the leading source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews worldwide, acting both directly and through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza, Israeli officials have previously warned of Iranian sleeper cells — covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.
In light of this reality, the NSC also warned that social media posts revealing ties to Israeli security services could put individuals at risk of being targeted.
“We advise against posting any content that suggests involvement in the security services or operational activities, including real-time location updates,” the statement read.
This latest updated warning comes amid a growing hostile environment and a shocking surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes targeting Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Across Europe, Israelis are facing a disturbing surge of targeted attacks and hostility, as a wave of antisemitic incidents — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions — spreads amid rising tensions following recent conflicts in the Middle East.
On Saturday, a 29-year-old Israeli and his sister were attacked by three Palestinian men while on vacation in Athens, Greece.
According to local media reports, the two siblings were walking through the city’s center when three unknown individuals carrying Palestinian flags approached them, shouting antisemitic slurs.
The attackers assaulted the Israeli man, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran, scratching him, throwing him to the ground, and striking him with their flagpoles, while his sister attempted to intervene and protect him.
October 7 is a global war against Jews & Israelis.
Pro-Palestinian radicals just attacked an Israeli man in Syntagma Square, Athens. via @N12News https://t.co/IZR2IdNrUI pic.twitter.com/9S2o4IjtO6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) September 14, 2025
Greek authorities arrested all five individuals involved in the incident. According to the Israeli man’s father, his son was placed in a cell with 10 Arabs, where he was reportedly beaten again and feared for his life.
In a separate antisemitic incident earlier this year, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.
After leaving a nightclub, the teens were followed to their hotel, where they were violently assaulted, leaving several with minor injuries.
In another example of rising anti-Israel sentiment and hostility toward Jewish communities, one of Britain’s most prestigious military academies, the Royal College of Defense Studies, announced Sunday that it will bar Israeli students from enrolling next year, citing concerns over the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, two IDF soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival were arrested and interrogated by local authorities following a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), an anti-Israel legal group that pursues legal action against IDF personnel, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.
According to HRF, the soldiers were seen waving the flags of the IDF’s Givati Brigade, which they claimed has been “involved in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and in carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population.”
In France, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.