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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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UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – The United Kingdom threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” the British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a special statement he posted on X on Thursday.
Targeted sanctions, Miliband wrote, would be part of a series of measures his government would take. His office also summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Thursday to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Tuesday, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.
“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
He said that the U.K. government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”
The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the U.K., Sa’ar wrote.
Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.
Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the U.S., with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the United Nations General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.
The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Tuesday and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27. Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.
But the move reverberated globally, with the U.K. signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in which they warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.
They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.
Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes appeared first on The Forward.
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Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first
(JTA) — An Argentine federal judge was removed from office Tuesday for a series of antisemitic posts on his social media accounts that constituted misconduct incompatible with his role, an impeachment panel ruled.
Alfredo Eugenio López, who headed Federal Court No. 4 in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, was removed by Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment, a special panel composed of judges, lawmakers and lawyers.
It is the first time in Argentina’s history that a judge has been removed over antisemitic remarks.
In López’s social media posts, the judge referred to the Jewish people as “a brood of vipers,” Israel as a “fictitious state” and Argentinian Jews as “foreigners.” He has also used such terms as “Zionist” and “gay” as insults.
According to the panel, the judge committed acts of “discrimination and the denial of equal rights against the Argentine Jewish community. For the purposes of these proceedings, it is particularly significant that, by acting in this manner, he shattered public confidence in his continued fitness to administer justice impartially.”The case reached the panel through Argentina’s Council of the Magistracy, based in Buenos Aires, the constitutional body responsible for the selection and discipline of federal judges.
The first complaint against López was filed in February 2025 by the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, which is the umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community. One month later, the Argentine Forum Against Antisemitism also filed a complaint. In July 2025, attorney Yamil Santoro from Apolo Foundation added another one.
In his defense, López argued that his messages were “ subjective and decontextualized interpretations of exchanges on social media, which in no way affect the administration of justice or his impartiality” as a judge. He added that his remarks were unrelated to any pending case and that he had never been recused or removed from any judicial case.
Neither Lopez nor his attorney were immediately available for further comment.
“He was removed because he simply would not stop engaging in hate speech,” jury member Alberto Maques said during a live interview Tuesday on the A24 news channel. “It is absolutely disgraceful for a federal judge to engage in this kind of conduct.”
Maques said there were 15 social media posts that he acknowledged, but more than 50 posts in which he said “outrageous things that are not worth repeating because they truly constituted hate speech.”
“This is not merely an issue of hate speech against the Jewish community. This is someone who lacks common sense,” he added, interviewed by A24 news channel.
Prosecutors in the impeachment proceedings argued that the messages were not isolated political comments but reflected a pattern of hostility toward Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
“No position of authority can shield hatred. This is not a matter of punishing an opinion. It is about sanctioning repeated conduct involving antisemitism, hostility and dehumanization, conduct incompatible with the impartiality, dignity and public trust required of the judiciary,” DAIA said Tuesday in a statement.
“This case sets a precedent: for the first time in more than a century, DAIA initiated proceedings of this nature against a judge. No office is above democracy.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first appeared first on The Forward.
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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