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A bespectacled, Jewish hypochondriac with literary pretensions and a creepy fascination with his stepson’s girlfriend — Guess who?
What’s with Baum?
By Woody Allen
Post Hill Press, 192 pages, $29
The last Woody Allen film I saw was Blue Jasmine, which won three Academy Awards including Best Actress for Cate Blanchett and Best Screenplay for Allen. The film was released in 2013, six months before Allen’s then 28-year-old daughter, Dylan Farrow, came forward with allegations in an open letter in The New York Times, that Allen had sexually assaulted her when she was a child. This was her first time speaking publicly about a claim that her mother, Mia Farrow, had been making since 1992, after she discovered Allen had been in a sexual relationship with her daughter, Soon Yi. It was in 1992, when Allen’s 21st film, Husbands and Wives, was released in theaters that we, the public, were given a choice: Choose art and go see the film or choose morality and stop watching Woody Allen.
I, still in college, chose art. So did the public; that film sold more tickets than any of his previous films. I’m not going to beat myself up about it now, as I had been groomed by the corrosive 90s culture to pay little attention to the way women were treated by men. A few cultural gems to put you back in the moment: American Pie; Monica Lewinsky; O.J. Simpson; Girls Gone Wild; Britney Spears; Anita Hill.
I congratulated myself at the time, happy I had chosen art, because Husbands and Wives is a masterpiece of storytelling — so what if Farrow is spectacularly humiliated, as she, innocently playing Judy, the wife of the writer, Gabe Roth (played by Allen), has no idea what in reality he has done? Juliette Lewis, or Rain, is a dark-eyed, hair-twisting ingénue in Gabe’s writing class at Columbia. We learn about his feelings for her, and his wife, when he speaks to the audience in a faux-doc style that allows the central characters to share feelings and perspectives on their lives.
By 2014, when Dylan Farrow pled with the public to believe her, eight years after Allen married his wife’s daughter, whom he had helped to raise, I was long done with all that. I chose morality and I chose to believe the victim. I was done with Allen and I was done being groomed by him from the now ubiquitous presence of Mariel Hemingway, or Tracy, as Allen’s 17-year-old onscreen girlfriend in Manhattan, to Rain, with whom Gabe takes great pains to show that the more than three decades between them is normal, as she had many relationships with the “middle aged set.” But in 2014 my decision was an easy choice, right? Woody Allen hasn’t made a movie that I cared to see since that time. (The latest is 2023’s Coup de Chance, a French language film because, bien sur, the French still love him.)
Enter Woody Allen’s debut novel, What’s with Baum?, which one has to read the same way one might now watch a semi-autobiographical Allen feature film: with skepticism, curiosity about the artist’s intent, and a constant longing for subtext. It’s significant to note that this novel by one of America’s most famous directors was not acquired by a mainstream trade publisher but by Post Hill Press. Allen’s 2020 memoir, A Propos of Nothing, was also published out of the mainstream. After workers at Hachette walked out in protest of its impending publication and when Ronan Farrow, Allen’s estranged biological son and bestselling author and journalist, left the publisher in response, the small press, Skyhorse, published it. This acquisition placed Allen alongside such literary luminaries as Melania Trump, RFK Jr., and Blake Bailey, whose biography of Philip Roth was cancelled by W.W. Norton following sexual assault allegations against its author.
Here’s the novel: Asher Baum is a writer in his 50s and he looks familiar: He’s a hypochondriac with a “Semitic” nose; his “Foster Grant black-rimmed glasses [give] him a scholarly air.” “If he were a movie actor,” Allen writes, “he would have played shrinks, teachers, scientists or writers.” He lives in the country with his wife, Connie, even though he hates the country (where to walk after dinner?) and loves Barney Greengrass, which does not exist in the country.
The novel opens with the conceit that Baum has begun to talk to himself, perhaps due to early onset dementia, a device reminiscent of the documentary style that allowed Allen to showcase his inner anxieties and break down the division between public and private in his characters. Technically, it’s also convenient to concretize feelings with words in a screenplay, as everything the viewer needs to know must be said out loud or shown visually. One of the only things that a novel as a genre has got over film is the characters’ interiority, and Allen has made the distinct choice not to use this. So why a novel? I asked myself this often while reading this pleasant debut that, had I not known who the author was, I would have found terribly derivative of Woody Allen. Which is to say, it’s been done before and so much better.
The novel putts along with Asher Baum talking to himself and we learn he has never met his potential as a writer. His wife, his third, whose son Thane has just published a novel to tremendous (if completely unrealistic) acclaim, has cooled to him. Asher believes this might be because of his failure to find success, though it also might be because of the way Baum lusts after other women, with a side of longing for his true love, his first wife, the blonde shiksa, Taylor, who returns to him in the form of Thane’s girlfriend, Sam. Whatever the case, Connie loves Thane and cares for him more than she loves and cares for Baum and while that has always been annoying to Baum, it is now unsustainable, particularly when Thane has gotten all these accolades that should be Baum’s. When Sam takes a ride with Asher into the city, the plot unravels episodically with added moments of predation, racism and misogyny, meant to be skewered or celebrated, one cannot tell. In other words, it’s creepy as hell. But it’s Woody Allen, so we’re used to it. We even, dare I say, long for it.
The thing is, this guy Baum, who references Buster Keaton, Liz Taylor and Montgomery Clift, declares his love for Cole Porter and Gershwin, writes on Olivetti typewriters and hovers over phonographs is supposed to be in his 50s. And these are all the well-known obsessions of Woody Allen, who is 89. Allen might see himself as forever in his 50s, (hey, I am forever 13) but Baum is not. And so, the novel begins to lose its authority.
When the plot thickens (ever so slightly, with lumps) the novelistic devices get messier. There’s a slippery perspective that starts close on Baum then pans out, and there’s an amateurish repetition of exposition in dialogue, another screenwriting tic. The perspective on one occasion defies logic, shifting momentarily to Connie describing her own feelings, which Baum has never tried to understand. And then there are purportedly huge moments — such as when Baum runs into that spectacular ex, Taylor, while he’s with Sam, her doppelganger — which barely leaves a mark on his consciousness or the prose.
What’s with Baum? We don’t know him because Allen has placed him at such a distance. But he wants to be known! And appreciated. He wants to feel up the “Asian” (Japanese or Chinese, her ethnicity flips at random) journalist. But with novels, the reader needs a reason to turn the page, to know what you’re reading to discover, and Baum as he exists in the woods with Connie, fearing ticks, and all his other Allenesque preoccupations isn’t reason enough. Aside from his two ex-wives and his handsome rich brother, we are also told Baum wrote a play in his youth, “A domestic drama…conflicts, psychological vulnerabilities, foibles and failures abounded alongside the lustful desires and adulterous confidences all up there on the stage for everyone to see.” Sound familiar? And yet this is the most novelistic Allen gets — we as readers are forced to do the analysis; we don’t get anything more. And here’s the other thing we don’t get: laughs. There is nothing funny about a warmed-over Woody Allen schtick, not on the page anyway.
So why a novel? Why did Woody Allen write this in this form? The notions are cinematic. Just after the climax (suffice it to say that Allen’s love of Chekhov is in evidence as the Act I gun does of course go off), Allen writes, “In a film this would be a fade-out…Go to black and then fade up weeks later.” What’s with Baum? ends like this. We never get back to what it would be if this were a novel, which, hello? it is.
The ending, which brings the reader out of the story, reminded me again of Husbands and Wives. Mia Farrow’s Judy is meek and mousy and yet through her passive aggression manages to get everything she wants. Fine. Sidney Pollack’s Jack drags his hot aerobics instructor girlfriend, also named Sam, out of a party by her hair and we are on his side. Fine. And Gabe Roth has succeeded in normalizing a relationship with Rain. Fine. For her birthday, at a party at her parents’ well-appointed Upper East Side apartment, Gabe has brought her a delicate jewelry box that, when it’s opened and the ballerina spins, plays Kurt Weill’s “It Never Was You.” (Judy Garland sang this in her final film. If you want to hear her sing it, go ahead — it will undo you.)
The song’s title foretells the film’s finale: A thunderstorm, an open window, a kiss. And then, the hook! Gabe tells Rain they can’t be in a relationship, what with her, a student, and so young! Rain is of course disappointed, but she understands. It never was you, you see. And we believe Gabe, we do, because we have always believed Woody Allen, even if we can see it now so clearly for what it is. But then, in the denouement, breaking that fourth wall, Allen tells the camera that he’s working on a new novel, which he explains is less confessional, more political. And then, astonishingly, Allen turns to the camera, looks the viewer in the eye and says, “Can I go? Is this over?”
And, with that, it was.
When I went to purchase What’s With Baum?, the bookseller wouldn’t look at me. “I’m reviewing this,” I said, by way of explanation, and she breathed out, relieved. It’s a political act to read this novel. It is not the 90s. I am no longer a college girl sitting around a seminar table hoping to one day be a writer, my professor also trying to kiss me (no stormy night, no music box, but I still have a pile of signed books, all his). Is it fair to bring up the movies? I think so — those films were brilliant and complicated and funny and they captured a time, long-gone now. A novel can also do all of those things. This one, Woody Allen’s debut, relies on what we’ve already read and seen and witnessed. But you won’t learn anything you don’t already know.
The post A bespectacled, Jewish hypochondriac with literary pretensions and a creepy fascination with his stepson’s girlfriend — Guess who? appeared first on The Forward.
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VIDEO: Actor Allen L. Rickman reviews ‘Marty Supreme’ in Yiddish (English subtitles)
Actor Allen L. Rickman, known best for his appearance in the dybbuk scene opening of the film A Serious Man, gives you his take on Josh Safdie’s hit movie Marty Supreme about an ambitious table tennis player who’ll do anything to win the championship, in this Yiddish video with English subtitles.
The post VIDEO: Actor Allen L. Rickman reviews ‘Marty Supreme’ in Yiddish (English subtitles) appeared first on The Forward.
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Jan Schakowsky retracts endorsement in a congressional race over candidate’s AIPAC funding
(JTA) — Rep. Jan Schakowsky withdrew her endorsement of a congressional candidate in a neighboring Illinois district on Thursday, citing the AIPAC pro-Israel lobby as a reason.
Schakowsky endorsed Donna Miller, the Cook County commissioner, in the 2nd Congressional District last month. Now, she said, she cannot let her endorsement stand.
“Illinois deserves leaders who put voters first, not AIPAC or out-of-state Trump donors,” said Schakowsky, who herself was an AIPAC stalwart early in her tenure. “I cannot support any candidate running for Congress who is funded by these outside interests.”
Schakowsky’s comments reflected the increasing toxicity of AIPAC’s brand in Democratic politics — and an acknowledgment that the pro-Israel group is in fact playing a role in the district ahead of next month’s primary election.
Like two other candidates in different Illinois races, Miller has received contributions from a number of AIPAC-affiliated donors. She has also gotten boosts from ads paid for by brand-new local groups that have been accused of being AIPAC shell organizations.
But AIPAC has not endorsed her, and it has not put its name, or that of its affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, on any of the ads.
The dustup comes as AIPAC prepares to hold a major convening behind closed doors.
Back in early 2020, nearly 20,000 people attended AIPAC’s policy conference in Washington, D.C. When the group resumed in-person gatherings post-pandemic in 2023, it stuck with much smaller, closed-door affairs.
This week, after several years in which the lobby grew increasingly radioactive, fueled by backlash against the war in Gaza, the only public sign of its conference came from acknowledgement in Israeli media that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had canceled his plans to attend in person.
An AIPAC source confirmed late Thursday that a conference was taking place Sunday to Tuesday and said it would feature U.S. politicians from both parties as well as Israeli officials, including Netanyahu and opposition leader Yair Lapid, by video. The gathering would focus on “the evolving threats facing Israel; the negotiations with Iran; solidarity with the Iranian people seeking freedom from a brutal regime; continued U.S. security assistance; and expanding joint defense cooperation,” according to the source, who said the conference was meant “to further accelerate the community’s political efforts this election cycle.”
Even before that cycle got underway, AIPAC was looming large. Having targeted progressive politicians like “Squad” members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in 2024, AIPAC drew the ire of many on the left. And its public image has become increasingly scrutinized as it has supported unconditional military aid to Israel throughout its war in Gaza.
This month’s primary in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District was a coming-out party for AIPAC’s current strategy. There, it spent more than $2 million to attack a progressive Democrat, Tom Malinowski, who had joined dozens of his colleagues in saying he would support conditions on military aid to Israel under certain circumstances. An anti-Israel progressive prevailed.
Now, the group has shifted its energies to Illinois, one of the next states to hold primaries, scheduled for March 17.
The United Democracy Project has so far spent more than $750,000 in support of Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin in the 7th Congressional District, according to its federal filings.
Conyears-Ervin, a former state representative, is up against a crowded field that includes state Rep. La Shawn Ford, who said he turned down support from UDP because he would not support unconditional military aid to Israel; Jason Friedman, a longtime Jewish federation leader and real estate developer; and Kina Collins, who protested for a ceasefire in Gaza in November 2023 with anti-Zionist groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow.
In three other races, the group has been accused of covertly backing candidates. Former Rep. Melissa Bean, state Sen. Laura Fine and Miller have not been formally endorsed by AIPAC, but have all received contributions from a number of donors who have also given to AIPAC. Fine raised $1.2 million last quarter — $1 million of which came from donors who’ve given to AIPAC-affiliated groups, according to the Washington Post, mostly from outside Illinois. Bean and Miller have reported more than $400,000 and $875,000 in donations from AIPAC donors, respectively.
They’ve also gotten boosts from ads paid for by Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now, a pair of new organizations that have been accused of being AIPAC shell organizations. Like the Malinowski attack ads and others from the UDP playbook, the ads did not mention Israel.
The Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, another pro-Israel advocacy group, jumped in on Thursday, endorsing both Bean and Miller.
Fine’s opponents include Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive 26-year-old Palestinian-American who has called for an end to U.S. weapons sales to Israel and accuses Israel of committing genocide; and Daniel Biss, the Jewish mayor of Evanston who is the grandson of Holocaust survivors and supports the Block the Bombs Act that would limit some weapons from being sold to Israel.
One of Bean’s opponents in the 8th district, Junaid Ahmed, spoke against AIPAC at a joint press conference with Biss, plus candidates from the two other races where AIPAC is thought to have been spending. Ahmed’s platform includes ending all military aid to Israel and a right of return for Palestinians.
First elected in 1998, Schakowsky, who is Jewish, was once an AIPAC acolyte herself. Back in 2010, facing a challenger from the right who made Israel an issue in their campaign, she boasted of having a 100% record of voting with AIPAC; the lobby, meanwhile, said that it did not endorse candidates but noted that Schakowsky “has an excellent record on issues important to the pro-Israel community.” Over time, though, she emerged as a senior leader among the pro-Israel progressives, becoming a headliner at conferences of the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street and protesting against Israeli government actions. She announced last year that she would not run again.
Responding to Schakowsky’s endorsement reversal, Miller did not mention AIPAC. Noting that she and Schakowsky had been friends for decades, she said her campaign would continue to focus on affordability issues.
Schakowsky added that she would continue to endorse Biss, who’s been outspoken against AIPAC amid reports of its involvement in Illinois’ congressional races, to replace her.
Biss responded enthusiastically on Thursday. “Proud to be endorsed by @RepSchakowsky,” he tweeted, “and proud to NOT be endorsed by AIPAC and MAGA donors.”
The post Jan Schakowsky retracts endorsement in a congressional race over candidate’s AIPAC funding appeared first on The Forward.
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Door-to-Door Anti-Israel Boycott Campaigns in Britain Raise Alarm Bells Over Hostile Environment Toward Jews
Protesters from “Palestine Action” demonstrate on the roof of Guardtech Group in Brandon, Suffolk, Britain, July 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Chris Radburn
Across Britain, local Jewish communities are raising alarms bells over pro-Palestinian boycott activists going door-to-door to track residents who refuse to shun Israeli products, fueling an increasingly hostile and intimidating environment for Jews and Israelis.
Earlier this week, South Yorkshire Police, which serves Sheffield and surrounding areas in northern England, opened an investigation following a violent clash in the Woodseats neighborhood, in the southern part of the city, between the anti-Israel activists demanding residents boycott Israeli goods and opponents who called them “Jew hunters.”
Known as Sheffield Apartheid Free Zone (SAFZ), this anti-Israel group has been active for months across neighborhoods in Sheffield and other parts of the United Kingdom.
As part of a broader effort to undermine the Jewish state internationally, the group distributes materials urging boycotts of Israeli products, claiming that “Israel thrives on international support.”
“When we choose not to buy Israeli goods, it hurts them in the most central place – their economy. Boycotts have worked before. They were a powerful factor in ending apartheid in South Africa and together we can replicate that success,” says one of the group’s propaganda materials.
Sparking outrage among local Jewish communities and political leaders, the group reportedly tracks residents’ responses, noting whether they are “no answer, not interested, or supportive.”
Earlier this week, a violent confrontation erupted in the Woodseats neighborhood in northern England after pro-Israel activists who had learned of the group’s activities on social media arrived on the scene.
Jean Hatchet, a local activist, confronted the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, following them through the streets while shouting “Jew hunters are coming” and waving a sign reading “No tolerance for Jew hatred.”
According to Hatchet’s testimony, one group member snatched the sign from her hands and struck her on the head, prompting her to file a police complaint alleging assault motivated by religion.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Hatchet claimed the group actively maintains a “blacklist” of anyone who supports Israel.
“They’re taking addresses of people who don’t agree with their point of view,” the pro-Israel activist said. “We have data protection regulations in this country and they’re committing acts that cross the boundaries of what’s permitted.”
Similar door-to-door boycott campaigns have been reported in Bristol and Hackney in England, Cardiff in Wales, and Belfast and Glasgow in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Last Saturday, pro-Palestinian activists were filmed going door-to-door in Brighton, a coastal city in southern England, asking residents to sign pledges to boycott Israeli products.
Vicky Bogel, founder of the pro-Israel group “Jewish and Proud” in Brighton, denounced the incident after witnessing eight teams of volunteers moving systematically from house to house with clipboards and lists of addresses.
“They found out who has ‘Zionist tendencies’ and who doesn’t and where they live,” Bogel told the Jewish Chronicle. “This is cunning and dangerous activity; we’re talking about an intimidation campaign at another level.”
Peter Kyle, the British trade secretary and a member of Parliament representing Brighton, strongly condemned these latest incidents, calling for police investigations into the groups for potential hate crimes and incitement.
However, Sussex Police, which covers the Brighton area, said that “there is currently no evidence of criminal activity,” while acknowledging that the reports are under review.
The Israeli embassy in London also condemned the incidents, calling them a “disgrace” and warning that such campaigns fuel intimidation and hostility toward Jewish communities across the country.
“Compiling lists of homes and businesses to enforce a boycott of Israeli products is not principled protest, it is intimidation,” the statement read.
“Targeting people and shops because of their Israeli identity echoes some of the darkest chapters of European history,” it continued. “Decent people should call this out, clearly and without hesitation.”
What happened in Brighton and Sheffield was a disgrace. Compiling lists of homes and businesses to enforce a boycott of Israeli products is not principled protest, it is intimidation.
Targeting people and shops because of their Israeli identity echoes some of the darkest… pic.twitter.com/BO7IhidcuW
— Israel in the UK
(@IsraelinUK) February 18, 2026
Earlier this month, the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, revealed in an annual report that it recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2025, the second-highest total ever in a single calendar year and an increase of 4 percent from the 3,556 in 2024.
Last year averaged 308 antisemitic incidents each month — an exact doubling of the 154 monthly average in the year before the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
Antisemitic incidents had fallen from the record high of 4,298 in 2023, which analysts say was fueled by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack — the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.