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26 conceivably believable pop culture predictions for 2026
Picture me alone in some remote garret, clutching a copy of the American Jewish Year Book like it’s the Grimmerie in Wicked. Pages flutter, the wind howls, and I once more set out to divine what is in store for the year ahead.
But how did I do last year? Taylor Swift is still with Travis Kelce — she didn’t leave him for Manischewitz cover model Jeff Retzlaff. Instead, Manischewitz parted ways with Retzlaff, and he with Brigham Young University.
Elmo did not have a title fight with Larry David, but he did have an antisemitic tirade on X, in an apparent hack.
Billy Joel did not release a single called “Noshin’ Out.” For what it’s worth, though, he did tell the world, “No matter what, I will always be a Jew” in his HBO documentary.
My record is mixed, but I persist. If not now, when? If not me, who? Hence, my 26 quite conceivable (I think) predictions for what’s heading our way in pop culture in 2026.
1. Following Britney Spears’ viral Chabad beard appreciation post, in which she enthused over a group of young Lubavitch men playing chess, the “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)” artist will tie the knot with husband number four, Mendel Bialybaum of Crown Heights.
2. 82-year-old actor and outspoken progressive Wallace Shawn will announce a politically-minded follow up to his 1981 film about a supper meeting with theater luminary André Gregory. Inspired by a similar summit at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, My Dinner with Fuentes is due to hit theaters in time for the midterms.
3. Diamond District jeweler Nachum Bernstein will be hailed as a real-life Howard Ratner — Adam Sandler’s character in the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, known for his blinged-out Furby — when he unveils a diamond-studded Labubu, “the world’s most expensive.” The creation will be outfitted with pigeon-blood rubies that form the shape of a chai on its chest and a sterling silver backpack clip. It’s not for sale.
4. Alan Dershowitz will found a “spite store” in Martha’s Vineyard after being refused service last summer at a local pierogi stand. “Dersh’s Delights” boasts a legal theme: tarts are called torts, and a signature latte is the Almond Amicus Brief. It will shutter after three weekends, citing lack of interest — just one more reason to be spiteful.
5. The consolidation of HBO into Netflix will herald a number of unlikely franchise crossovers. Most controversial: Season 3 of Nobody Wants This, in which Rabbi Noah will relocate to Baltimore and welcome the family of now-reformed drug kingpin Avon Barksdale as congregants. “The Wire’s been crossed,” the Variety headline blasts.
6. Leslie Odom Jr.’s horror adaptation of a Rolling Stone article about Sammy Davis Jr.’s dalliance with the Church of Satan is reported to feature a scene where Davis — who was Jewish — and Anton LaVey, the Jewish-born founder of that church, play dreidel for one another’s souls.
7. Following Sydney Sweeney’s “good jeans” ad, which some argued was a eugenic dog whistle, American Eagle will launch a new spot, “Good Genes,” with Eugene Levy, Gene Simmons and Gene Shallot sharing a pair of oversized dungarees. Sales soar.
8. After his swearing-in as New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani will become a Shabbos goy for his Upper East Side neighbors, promising them fast, free melakhot.
9. President Donald Trump’s new White House ballroom will feature a steam room — and Six13 will feature a parody song, “Ballroom Shvitz,” in their Hanukkah a cappella compilation.
10. Richard Kind will be revealed to excel at bocce, and be voted Manischewitz’s second matzo box cover athlete after Retzlaff. “It’s an honor I never dreamed of, and one I’m not certain I want,” Kind will say. His cover photo is dynamic, showing the character actor mid-bowl, releasing a matzo ball in the direction of a cluster of pallini.
11. Nachum Bernstein will awaken one night from a dreamless sleep to find the Labubu of his own creation perched on his chest, emerald pupils gleaming, the Hebrew word אֱמֶת (truth) now bedazzling its brow in fire opals.
12. The Swift-Kelce wedding will be the least Jewish social event of the season, despite the presence of Jack Antonoff.
13. The sequel to K-Pop Demon Hunters (KPDH: Certified Gold) will include a Neil Diamond cameo, in which the Basher — who attended NYU on a fencing scholarship — shish kebabs a string of baddies to the tune of Crunchy Granola Suite.
14. Timothée Chalamet will be cast as Olympian Mark Spitz in a forthcoming biopic directed by Barry Levinson. Sources close to the actor say he was looking for a role that let him keep his Marty Supreme mustache.
15. Billy Joel: Live at the Kotel will usher in an era of peace in a divided Jerusalem.
16. Following a well-received Sabrina Carpenter-led special. Seth Rogen will succeed in reviving The Muppet Show and get creative with its guest hosts. One standout edition will see Noam Chomsky appearing to give Dr. Teeth a crash course in Generative Grammar. (The lesson is interrupted by Animal thrashing on the drums, and Gonzo’s loose chickens stealing focus.)
17. Monty Pickle, the anthropomorphic Jewish gherkin with a mission to shed light on Jewish joy, will be seen wrapping tefillin on Rick and Morty’s Pickle Rick outside of 770 Eastern Parkway.
18. Preparing to play Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network sequel, Jeremy Strong will spend a continuous month living in the Metaverse, stopping only to guzzle Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce. “He’s wired in,” a gleeful Aaron Sorkin will tell The Hollywood Reporter.
19. After reimagining CBS News with new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison will set his sights on reshaping CBS’ primetime sitcom lineup, greenlighting Chef in the IDF about a lone soldier with culinary ambitions. When ratings falter, Chuck Lorre will return to expand the Big Bang Theory universe with the show Old Wolowitz.
20. A Goyim Defense League march in Jacksonville, Florida will be disrupted by a near invisible force, which tosses the antisemites sky-high and dangles them over the same highway overpass where they hung a sign reading “6 Million Weren’t Enough.” Video captured on the scene, when slowed down and enhanced, appears to show the neo-Nazis heaved upward by a figure standing a few inches tall — with one full inch being bunny ears — glittering with gems, and wearing a distinctive sharp-toothed grin.
21. Antisemitism watchdog groups will be up in arms on learning that the Cyclops in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has a gigantic mezuzah at the entrance to his cave. Nolan explains that the Judaica was left there by the cave’s real-life owners (the Finkles) and vows to digitally remove it for its online release.
22. Nathan Fielder will finally figure out the elusive science of cold fusion on Season 3 of The Rehearsal.
23. After Nachum Bernstein’s family grows increasingly suspicious of his regular business trips, which always seem to coincide with a planned antisemitic rally in major cities, each of which is thwarted by an ostensibly supernatural force, he vows to stay put for the foreseeable future. In his home workshop, he can be heard tapping. When the family stirs awake the next morning, they discover the glittering Labubu on display next to the Shabbat candle sticks. The inscription on the toy’s brow now reads מֵת — “dead.”
24. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will do Hot Ones. He taps out when host Sean Evans asks a surprisingly sophisticated question about settler violence in the West Bank.
25. Elmo’s X account will be hacked yet again — this time by advocates of hasbara, rather than antisemitism. “Elmo loves cherry tomatoes — did you know they were invented in Israel?” reads one of the posts.
26. After successfully launching its food truck in 2025, Manischewitz will buy several decommissioned Good Year blimps for the project’s next installment. The program will be terminated after injuries stemming from paradropped jarred gefilte fish.
The post 26 conceivably believable pop culture predictions for 2026 appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani touts ‘Babies not Bombs’ messaging after flexing political muscle in the New York primaries
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated the victories of the progressive candidates he endorsed in New York’s Democratic primaries describing their success as a “shift in the balance of power.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the morning after the primaries, Mamdani touted the triumphs as a shift in the balance of power between “working people” and “special interests.”
Mamdani-endorsed candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez won Democratic nominations for Congress. During the press conference, the mayor repeatedly highlighted their calls to restrict U.S. military aid to Israel and redirect federal funding to domestic priorities.
Following Mamdani’s election night sweep in New York, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!”
The victories offered an early demonstration of Mamdani’s political influence beyond City Hall, as several Democratic Socialist candidates he backed, including Chevalier, defeated established Democratic incumbents in their districts.
“The working person is struggling in our city to afford basic needs,” Mamdani said, adding that Avila Chevalier’s oft-repeated slogan of investing in “Babies not Bombs,” is “the kind of conscience, the kind of clarity, the kind of conviction that has been missing in our politics for far too long.”
Mamdani responded to the president’s post on Wednesday, telling a reporter who asked whether his goal is to make America a “socialist” country that his “goal is to make America a place that every American can afford.”
When asked about federal policies that could be affected by Mamdani’s endorsed candidates, the mayor cited Valdez’s support for “foreign policy that understands human rights for all” and Lander’s commitment to co-sponsoring the Block the Bombs Act, which prohibits the sale of certain U.S.-made offensive weapons to Israel.
Mamdani also dismissed a question about whether he was concerned about how the victories would play out in November as Democrats try to win back the House.
“Every time the fight for working people takes a step forward, you will hear Republicans say that this is actually going to jeopardize the existence of that very fight,” he said.
When asked whether the election of Chevalier, who has faced scrutiny for past social media posts attacking Democrats and her appearance at an Oct. 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, could “complicate campaigns for Democrats as a whole,” Mamdani replied “No.”
“[Chevalier] often speaks about a politics of life. She speaks about ‘Babies not bombs,’” Mamdani continued. “What could be a better example of what the people of the district want to see versus what the people of the district have been forced to experience, which is tens of billions of dollars being spent at a national level to bomb children overseas, while children in our own districts are struggling.”
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Jewish anti-Zionist David Orkin defeats incumbent in NY Assembly primary
(New York Jewish Week) — David Orkin, a Jewish anti-Zionist attorney and democratic socialist, defeated incumbent New York State Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Orkin won State Assembly District 38, which includes parts of Queens.
Orkin, an immigrant workers’ rights attorney and union organizer, received 58.8% of the vote, while Rajkumar, who has represented the district since 2021 and is the first South Asian woman ever elected to office in the state, received 40.9%. The district covers a swath of Queens, including parts of Ridgewood, Glendale, Ozone Park, Woodhaven and Richmond Hill.
“Pro-Palestine candidates are sweeping in NYC tonight,” Jewish Voice for Peace Action wrote in a post on Instagram celebrating Orkin’s win Tuesday. “Palestine was on the ballot — and won. David will be a champion for Palestinian freedom in Albany.”
The post from JVP Action echoed a message Orkin had highlighted throughout his campaign.
“It’s so incredibly meaningful to me to be running this race as an anti-Zionist Jew, to be one of the few anti-Zionist Jewish voices that is in an elected seat in the state government,” Orkin said in an Instagram reel posted by Jewish Voice for Peace Action earlier this month.
He added that, if elected, he would be able to go in front of the state legislature and assert that “criticizing Israel for genocide, demanding an end to the occupation, demanding an end to funding war abroad is not antisemitic.”
Orkin’s victory came amid a strong night for democratic socialist candidates across New York City, including left-wing congressional candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, who also defeated establishment-backed opponents in their primaries.
While Orkin was not endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose winning endorsements of Lander, Chevalier and Valdez signaled a pro-Palestinian lurch for the party in the city with the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Nonetheless, his victory elevated a self-described anti-Zionist to the ranks of New York’s elected officials at a time when debates over Israel have become increasingly prominent within Democratic politics.
While Israel-related issues were not listed on Orkin’s platform, which centered on affordability and immigration, he repeatedly expressed his support for a “free Palestine” and attacked Rajkumar’s record of support for the Jewish state during his campaign.
“In the past several years my opponent AM Rajkumar has walked in the Israel day parade but has said NOTHING against the war in Gaza, occupation of Palestine, or Islamophobic attacks faced by the people of New York,” Orkin wrote in a May post on X.
Rajkumar, who was a close political ally of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in her campaign platform vowed to combat antisemitism.
After establishing a Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in Tucson, Arizona, in 2014, Orkin remained involved in pro-Palestinian activism as a member of the anti-Zionist activist group.
“I’ve been involved in the Jewish Palestine Solidarity Movement for 12, 13 years,” Orkin told Democratic Left last month. “I’ve dedicated part [of my] life to making sure that Jewish people are creating religious spaces outside of Zionism, and to making more space for Palestinian organizing to have an impact.”
On the campaign trail, Orkin received a host of endorsements from prominent progressive groups and lawmakers, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, JVP Action and NYC Democratic Socialists for America.
Rajkumar was endorsed by ActJew, the new nonprofit focused on combatting antisemitism, as well as the Queens Jewish Alliance and Assemblymembers Sam Berger, Kalman Yeger and Chuck Lavine.
Orkin received over $290,000 in campaign contributions for the election cycle, including over $156,000 from the office of the state comptroller, while Rajkumar received over $270,000, including $9,000 from health care executive Daniel Lowy.
“I have dedicated my life fighting for immigrants and workers, I am proud to have earned their support in this election, and I look forward to spending the rest of my life winning the beautiful and joyous lives we deserve,” Orkin said in a statement, according to QNS.
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Half of Americans think the U.S. is ‘too supportive’ of Israel
(JTA) — A new survey found that 48% of American voters think the United States is “too supportive” of Israel, the highest since the pollster started asking the question in 2017.
The survey published Wednesday by Quinnipiac University also found that 60% of respondents reported that military intervention in Iran was “not worth it” as opposed to 34% of voters who said it was “worth it.”
The number of respondents who think the U.S. support of Israel is about right is 38%, while just 7% think the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel, the poll found.
Broken down by party, 66% of Democrats think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, while 9% think it is not supportive enough and 18% think U.S. support for Israel is about right.
Among Republicans, 20% think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, 69% think American support for Israel is “about right,” and 6% think the U.S. is not supportive enough.
Among independent voters, 55% think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, 34% think U.S. support for Israel is about right, and 7% think the U.S. is not supportive enough.
The poll data were released one day after three Democrats critical of Israel swept their House primary races in New York City, and in races around the country even some reliably pro-Israel Democratic candidates distanced themselves from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.
A survey last year by Gallup found dwindling support for Israel among Democrats, as well as waning support among Republicans.
Still the party divide was also in sharp evidence in the latest poll. In responses to the question about whether the Iran war was “worth it”, Democrats disfavored military action in Iran at 93% and independents at 66%, while 75% of Republicans surveyed thought it was “worth it.”
Given a list of 10 issues and asked which, if any, they considered priorities in their decision-making process in the election for the U.S. House of Representatives, 41% of voters cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, above AI data centers (38%) and Donald Trump (38%). The high cost of living (70%) and health care (59%) topped the list.
The Quinnipiac poll was conducted from June 18 to 22, and includes responses from 1,165 self-identified registered voters.
The margin of error is 3.4 percentage points.
Among those surveyed, 48% said they had an unfavorable view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Twenty percent said they had a favorable opinion, and 30% “haven’t heard enough” about him.
“Netanyahu gets poor marks from American voters as their appetite for supporting Israel wanes, with the share of voters who think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel hitting a new high,” Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy wrote in the report.
Voters were also asked about their views on the June 17 memorandum of understanding with Iran, which begins a 60-day negotiation period that does not outline an end to Iran’s nuclear program.
“After months of diplomatic fits and starts, global economic repercussions and a broad loss of life in the region, a majority of voters make their feelings clear: the Iran war was a bad idea,” Malloy wrote.
Voters who are either not confident or “not so confident” that the deal will succeed numbered 59%, and 61% think it is either likely or very likely that Iran will develop nuclear weapons.
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