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A history of Mel Brooks as a ‘disobedient Jew’
(JTA) — Jeremy Dauber subtitles his new biography of Mel Brooks “Disobedient Jew.” It’s a phrase that captures two indivisible aspects of the 96-year-old director, actor, producer and songwriter.
The “Jew” is obvious. Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, Brooks channeled the Yiddish accents and Jewish sensibilities of his old neighborhoods into characters like the 2000 Year Old Man — a comedy routine he worked up with his friend, the writer and director Carl Reiner. He worked Jewish obsessions into films like 1967’s “The Producers,” which features two scheming Jewish characters who stage a sympathetic Broadway musical about Hitler in order to bilk their investors.
Brooks’ signature move is to inject Jews into every aspect of human history and culture, which can be seen in the forthcoming Hulu series “History of the World, Part II.” A sequel to his 1981 film, “History of the World, Part I,” it parodies historical episodes in a style he honed as a writer on 1950s television programs such as “Your Show of Shows,” whose writers’ rooms were stocked with a galaxy of striving Jewish comedy writers just like him.
The “Disobedient” part describes Brooks’ relationship to a movie industry that he conquered starting in the early 1970s. In a series of parodies of classic movie genres — the Western in “Blazing Saddles,” the horror movie in “Young Frankenstein,” Alfred Hitchcock in “High Anxiety — he would gently, sometimes crudely and always lovingly bite the hand that was feeding him quite nicely: In 1976, he was fifth on the list of top 10 box office attractions, just behind Clint Eastwood.
Dauber describes the parody Brooks mastered as “nothing less than the essential statement of American Jewish tension between them and us, culturally speaking; between affection for the mainstream and alienation from it.”
Dauber is professor of Jewish literature and American studies at Columbia University, whose previous books include “Jewish Comedy” and “American Comics: A History.” “Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew” is part of the Jewish Lives series of brief interpretative biographies from Yale University Press.
Dauber and I spoke about why America fell for a self-described “spectacular Jew” from Brooklyn, Brooks’ lifelong engagement with the Holocaust, and why “Young Frankenstein” may be Brooks’ most Jewish movie.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “History of the World, Part II” comes out March 6. “History of the World, Part I” may not be in the top tier of Brooks films, but it seems to touch on so many aspects of his career that you trace in your book: the parody of classic movie forms, the musical comedy, injecting Jews into every aspect of human civilization, and the anything-for-a-laugh sensibility.
Jeremy Dauber: I agree. There’s the one thing that really brings it home, and it’s probably the most famous or infamous scene from the film. That’s the Spanish Inquisition scene. You have Brooks sort of probing the limits of bad taste. He had done that most famously in “The Producers” with its Nazi kickline, but here he takes the same idea — that one of the ways that you attack antisemitism is through ridicule — and turns the persecution of the Jews into a big musical number. It’s his love of music and dance. But the thing that’s almost the most interesting about this is that he takes on the role of the Torquemada character.
As his henchman sing and dance and the Jews face torture, the Brooklyn-born Jew plays the Catholic friar who tormented the Jews.
That’s right. And what’s the crime that he accuses the Jews of? “Don‘t be boring! Don‘t be dull!” That’s the worst thing that you can be. It’s his way of saying, “If I have a religion, you know, it is show business.”
His fascination with showbiz seems inseparable from his Jewishness, as if being a showbiz Jew is a denomination in its own right.
One of my favorite lines of his is when he marries [actress] Anne Bancroft, who of course is not Jewish. And he says, “She doesn’t have to convert: She’s a star.” If you’re a star, if you’re a celebrity, you’re kind of in your own firmament faith-wise, and so it’s okay. Showbiz is this faith. But it is very Jewish, because show business is a way to acceptance. It’s a way that America can love him as a Jew, as Mel Brooks, as a kid from the outer boroughs who can grow up to marry Anne Bancroft.
Jeremy Dauber is the author of “Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew” (Yale University Press)
You write early on that “Mel Brooks, more than any other single figure, symbolizes the Jewish perspective on and contribution to American mass entertainment.” On one foot, can you expand on that?
Jews understand that there’s a path to success and that being embraced by a culture means learning about it, immersing yourself in it, being so deeply involved in it that you understand it and master it. But simultaneously, you’re doing that as a kind of outsider. You’re always not quite in it, even though you’re of it in some deep way. In some ways, it’s the apotheosis of what Brooks does, which is being a parodist. In order to be the kind of parodist that Mel Brooks is, you have to be acutely attuned to every aspect of the cultural medium that you’re parodying. You have to know it inside and outside and backwards and forwards. And Brooks certainly does, but at the same time you have to be able to sort of step outside of it and say, you know, “Well, I’m watching a Western, but come on, what’s going on with these guys? Like why doesn’t anyone ever, you know, pass gas after eating so many beans?”
You have this great phrase, that to be an American Jew is to be part of the “loyal opposition.”
That’s right. Brooks at his best is always kind of poking and prodding at convention, but loyally. He’s not like the countercultural figures of his day. He’s a studio guy. He’s really within the system, but is poking at the system as well.
You wrote in that vein about his 1963 short film, “The Critic,” which won him an Oscar. Brooks plays an old Jewish man making fun of an art film.
On the one hand, he’s doing it in the voice of one of his older Jewish relatives, the Jewish generation with an Eastern European accent, to make fun of these kinds of intellectuals. He’s trying to channel the everyman’s response to high art. “What is this I’m watching? I don’t understand this at all.” On the other hand, Brooks is much more intellectual than he’s often given credit for.
For me the paradox of Brooks’ career is conveyed in a phrase that appears a couple of times in the book: “too Jewish.” The irony is that the more he leaned into his Jewishness, the more successful he got, starting with the “2000 Year Old Man” character, in which he channels Yiddish dialect in a series of wildly successful comedy albums with his friend Carl Reiner. How do you explain America’s embrace of these extremely ethnic tropes?
Brooks’ great motion pictures of the late 1960s and 1970s sort of track with America’s embrace of Jewishness. You have “The Graduate,” which came out at around the same time as “The Producers,” and which showed that someone like Dustin Hoffman can be a leading man. It doesn’t have to be a Robert Redford. You have Allan Sherman and all these popular Jewish comedians. You have “Fiddler on the Roof” becoming one of Broadway’s biggest hits. That gives Brooks license to kind of jump in with both feet. In the 1950s, writing on “The Show of Shows” for Sid Caesar, the Jewishness was there but in a very kind of hidden way. Whereas, it’s very hard to watch the 2000 Year Old Man and say, well, that’s not a Jewish product.
What he also avoided — and here I will contrast him with the novelist Philip Roth — were accusations that he was “bad for the Jews.” Philip Roth was told that his negative portrayals of Jewish characters was embarrassing the Jews in front of the gentiles, but for some reason, I don’t remember anyone complaining even though the Max Bialystock character in “The Producers” can be fairly described as a conniving Jew. What made Brooks’ ethnic comedy more palatable to other Jews?
“The Producers” had a lot of pushback, but for a lot of other reasons.
I guess people had enough to deal with when he staged a musical comedy about Hitler.
Exactly. But the other part is that his biggest films are not as explicitly Jewish as something like Roth’s novel “Portnoy’s Complaint.” I actually think “Young Frankenstein” is one of the most Jewish movies that Mel Brooks ever made, but you’re not going to watch “Young Frankenstein” and say, wow, there are Jews all over the place here.
What about “Young Frankenstein,” a parody of classic horror movies, seems quintessentially Jewish?
The script, which is a lot of Gene Wilder and not just Mel Brooks, is really about someone saying, “You know, I don’t have this heritage — I’m trying to fit in with everybody else. My name is Dr. FRAHNK-en-shteen.” And then people say, “No, this is your heritage. You are Dr. Frankenstein.” [Wilder’s character realizes] “it is my heritage, and I’m embracing it. And I’m Frankenstein. And you may find that monstrous but that’s your business.” It’s about assimilation and embracing who you are.
And of course, Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein is unmistakably Jewish, even when he plays a cowboy in “Blazing Saddles.”
Right. Again, by the mid-’70s, you know, you have Gene Wilder and Elliot Gould and Dustin Hoffman, all Jews, in leading roles. “Young Frankenstein” ends up being a movie about coming home and embracing identity, which is playing itself out a lot in American Jewish culture in the 1970s.
I guess I have to go back and watch it for the 14th time with a different point of view.
That’s the fun part of my job.
You talk about what’s happening at the same time as Brooks’ huge success, which is, although he’s a little younger, the emergence of Woody Allen. You describe Brooks and Woody Allen as the voice of American Jewish comedy, but in very different ways. What are the major differences?
Gene Wilder, who worked with both of them, says that working with Allen is like lighting these tiny little candles, and with Brooks, you’re making big atom bombs. The critical knock against Brooks was that he was much more interested in the joke than the story. And I think with the exception maybe of “Young Frankenstein” there’s a lot of truth to that. The jokes are phenomenal, so that’s fine. Allen pretty quickly moved towards a much more narrative kind of film, and so began to be seen as this incredibly intellectual figure. In real life, Allen always claimed that he wasn’t nearly as intellectual as everyone thought, while Brooks had many more kinds of intellectual ambitions than the movie career that he had. There is a counterfactual world in which “The 12 Chairs,” his 1970 movie based on a novel by two Russian Jewish novelists and which nobody talks about, makes a ton of money.
Instead, it bombs, and he makes “Blazing Saddles,” which works out very well for everybody.
Although he does create Brooksfilms, and produces more narrative, serious-minded films like “The Elephant Man” and “84 Charing Cross Road.”
Right, and decides that if he puts his name on these as a director, they’re going to be rejected out of hand. There is a shelf of scholarship on Woody Allen, but if you look at who had influence on America in terms of box office and popularity, it’s Brooks winning in a walk.
You also mention Brooks and Steven Spielberg in the same sentence. Why do they belong together?
Partly because they had huge popular success in the mid-’70s. Brooks is a generation older, but they are hitting their cinematic success at the same time. And they are both movie fans.
Which comes out in their work — Brooks in his film parodies and Spielberg in the films that echo the films he loved as kid.
Until maybe his remake of “West Side Story,” Spielberg is not really a theater guy in the way that Brooks is, when success meant to make it on Broadway. When Brooks was winning all those Tonys in 2001 for the Broadway musical version of “The Producers,” it may have been almost more meaningful for his 5-year-old, or 7- or 8-year-old self than making his incredibly popular pictures.
You also write about Brooks being a small “c” conservative, a bit of a square. Which I think will surprise people who think about the fart jokes and the peepee jokes and all that stuff. And by square, I mean, kind of old showbizzy, even a little prudish sometimes.
I think that’s right. There’s a great moment that I quote at the end of the book where they are trying out the musical version of “The Producers,” and they want to put the word “f–k” in and Brooks is like, “I don’t know if we can do that on Broadway,” and Nathan Lane is like, “Have we met? You’re Mel Brooks!” He’s a 1950s guy.
Another place where this kind of conservatism comes in is when you compare him to other comedians of the 1950s and ’60s — the so-called “sick comics” like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl who were pushing the envelope in terms of subject matter and politics. He wasn’t part of that. He was part of Hollywood. He was trying to make it in network television.
There is an interview in that era when he complained that people who are writing for television are not “dangerous.” Meanwhile, he himself was writing for television. But I think it’s fair to say that “The Producers” was really something different. You didn’t have to be Jewish to be offended by “The Producers.” But as we were saying before, he is more of the loyal opposition, rather than sort of truly out there. He’s not making “Easy Rider.”
An exhibit space at the Museum of Broadway evokes the scenery from the Mel Brooks musical “The Producers.” (NYJW)
“The Producers” is part of Brooks’ lifelong gambit of mocking the Nazis, I think starting when he would sing anti-Hitler songs as a GI in Europe at the tail end of World War II. Later he would remake Jack Benny’s World War II-era anti-Nazi comedy, “To Be or Not to Be.” And then there is the quick “Hitler on Ice” gag in “History of the World, Part I.” Brooks always maintains that mocking Nazis is the ultimate revenge on them, while you note that Woody Allen in “Manhattan” makes almost the opposite argument: that the way to fight white supremacists is with bricks and baseball bats. Did you come down on one side or the other?
To add just a twinge of complication is the fact that Brooks actually fought Nazis, and also had a brother who was shot down in combat. So for me to sit in moral judgment on anybody who fought in World War II is not a place that I want to be. What’s interesting is that Brooks makes a lot of these statements over the course of a career in which Nazism is done, in the past, defeated. Tragically, the events of the last number of years made white supremacy and neo-Nazism a live question again. When “The Producers” was staged as a musical in the early 21st century, people could say, “Okay, Nazism’s time has passed.” It’s not clear to me that we would restage “The Producers” now as a musical on Broadway, when just last week you had actual neo-Nazis handing out their literature outside a Broadway show. It would certainly be a lot more laden than it was in 2001.
Time also caught up with Brooks in his depiction of LGBT characters. Gay characters are the punchlines in “The Producers” and “Blazing Saddles” in ways that have not aged well. But you also note how both movies are about two men who love each other, to the exclusion of women.
There’s an emotive component to him about these male relationships. Bialystok and Bloom [the protagonists in “The Producers”] is a kind of love story. One of the interesting things is that as it became comparatively more comfortable for gay men to live their truth in society and in Hollywood, there was an evolution. In that remake of “To Be or Not to Be,” there is a much more sympathetic gay character who’s not stereotypical.
What other aspects of Brooks’ Jewishness have we not touched upon? For instance, he’s not particularly interested in Judaism as a religion, and ritual and theology rarely come up in his films, even to be mocked.
It’s not something that he’s particularly interested in. To him, being Jewish is a voice and a language. From the beginning of his career the voice is there. What he’s saying in these accents is that this is Jewish history working through me. It is, admittedly, a very narrow slice of Jewish history.
The first- and second-generation children of Jewish immigrants growing up in Brooklyn neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly Jewish.
It was a Jewishness that was aspirational. It was intellectual. It was a musical Jewishness. It was not in the way we use this phrase now, but it was a cultural Jewishness. It was not a synagogue Jewishness or a theological Jewishness. But of course he is Jewish, deeply Jewish. He couldn’t be anything else. And so he didn’t, and thank God for that.
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Isaac Accords, Wave of IRGC Terror Designations Signal Deepening Israel–Latin America Ties
Argentina’s President Javier Milei receives Presidential Medal of Honor from Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem, April 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
As Israel deepens its diplomatic outreach across Latin America, a quiet but notable convergence is taking shape, with regional governments tightening security cooperation and increasingly aligning efforts to counter Iranian-linked terrorism and illicit networks operating across the hemisphere.
During a state visit to Israel on Sunday, Argentine President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally signed the Isaac Accords, a new framework aimed at deepening ties between Israel and Latin American governments while jointly addressing antisemitism and terrorism.
According to Toby Dershowitz, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC–based think tank, this initiative builds on rising regional momentum for closer cooperation with the Jewish state and sets in place a framework for intelligence-sharing and coordinated law enforcement efforts aimed at countering Iranian proxy networks operating across the hemisphere.
Latin America has long been regarded as a hub for Iran-backed Hezbollah’s illicit drug trafficking and other criminal activities, which have been used to finance its broader terrorist operations worldwide.
“While just formally signed in recent days, there is already momentum behind some of the Isaac Accords’ goals,” Dershowitz told The Algemeiner. “Several countries have taken steps – including terrorism designations – to counter the Islamic Republic’s threat.”
“The Western Hemisphere has been plagued by Iran-backed terrorism for decades and countries are increasingly leveraging support from allies in the region to address the threat,” she continued.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic, US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries — this new initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
During the signing ceremony, Milei described the launch of the accords as “a historic moment for our nations,” saying they are intended to advance peace through efforts to strengthen long-term regional stability, security, and economic prosperity.
The Isaac Accords “will not only strengthen the relationship between Argentina and Israel, united by shared values, but also mark a step toward a freer and more prosperous hemisphere,” the Argentine leader said.
According to a joint statement between the two leaders, the new initiative will focus on technology, security, and economic development, with an emphasis on deepening cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
It will also seek to encourage partner countries to relocate their embassies to Jerusalem, formally designate Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding voting patterns on Israel at the United Nations.
Dershowitz explained that the push to formally designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxy groups as terrorist organizations — an approach already adopted by several Latin American countries — is central to strengthening states’ ability to investigate and prosecute terrorism networks.
She also noted that such designations facilitate cooperation with global financial intelligence units, expanding the legal tools available to track and disrupt illicit financing.
“Iran has a concerning footprint in Latin America. Some countries in the region face major Hezbollah-linked drug trafficking challenges and, as a result, exposure to illicit financial flows,” Dershowitz said. “It is no doubt part of the calculus that led to these designations.”
Since the start of the war in Gaza, and even more so amid the broader confrontation with Iran, Latin American countries have increasingly sought to align their domestic legislation with international sanctions frameworks targeting Hezbollah, Hamas, and the IRGC — all of which are designated by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Paraguay are among some of the countries that have designated Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC as terrorist organizations.
More recently, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago have also followed suit, proscribing all three Iranian and Iran-backed entities.
Once a formal designation is in place, authorities can immediately freeze a wide range of assets belonging to designated entities without the need for a prior criminal conviction.
The designation also makes it a criminal offense to provide such entities with material support — such as funding, transportation, housing, or false documentation — while giving authorities additional tools to track and map a group’s logistical and financial networks.
Last month, Argentina also designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, after previously designating the Palestinian group Hamas in 2024 and the Lebanese group Hezbollah in 2019.
After Iran accused Buenos Aires of “siding with the aggressors” and violating international law with its latest designation, the Argentine government declared Iranian chargé d’affaires Mohsen Tehrani “persona non grata” and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.
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Steeped in history, Pensacola Jews celebrate the 150th anniversary of Florida’s oldest synagogue
(JTA) — PENSACOLA, Florida — Mention the Jewish exodus to Florida, and people immediately think Miami Beach, Boca Raton or Aventura.
But it was here in Pensacola — along the Gulf Coast’s fabled “Redneck Riviera” — that German-speaking Jewish pioneers first put down roots in the Sunshine State. In 1876, when Pensacola’s Temple Beth El was founded, Florida had 200,000 inhabitants, just 2,000 of them Jews.
Today, Florida is home to 24.3 million people and a Jewish population exceeded only by New York and California. Most of the state’s 762,000 Jews reside in three South Florida counties — eclipsing much older congregations in Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Pensacola that thrived long before the advent of air-conditioning and interstate highways.
Pensacola is home to only about 1,800 Jewish adults, according to the American Jewish Population Project — a number that has remained constant for a century. Yet locals in this laid-back resort in Florida’s Panhandle, more than 600 miles northwest from the bustling Jewish communities of South Florida, say it is ripe for a Jewish renaissance.
“I’d like to make the case that this is also Florida, even though we’re only 10 miles from Alabama,” said Rabbi Joel Fleekop, 47, spiritual leader of Beth El since 2012. “The cost of living here is very low, we have no traffic or congestion, and there are plenty of good jobs.”
Pensacola also has three synagogues: a Chabad, an Orthodox-style congregation and Beth El, which this month is marking the 150th anniversary of its founding with a weekend of prayers, local art, Israeli music and dancing.
Beth El’s celebration began on Friday with a Shabbat service led jointly by Fleekop and Cantor Richard Cohen, former director of the Hebrew Union College’s School of Sacred Music and a and Pensacola native.
In a sermon, Fleekop told the story of the children’s book “Bone Button Borscht,” in which a wandering man helps the people of an impoverished town to create soup from their own meager ingredients that somehow taste far better together than separately.
“For 150 years, this temple — our temple, Temple Beth El — has thrived because similar to the people making soup in the story, its members have contributed and done what they could to nourish and enhance and better our community,” he said. “Our founding families like the man who set up the pot provided the vision that this little corner of the world could have a thriving Jewish community. Others provided the resources to build the sacred spaces our congregation has called home and to keep on the lights and, this being Florida, the air conditioning also on.”
Summarizing the wide range of contributions that members have made over the decades, Fleekop also noted changes that Temple Beth El experienced over the last 150 years: the number of stars on the American flag grew, the the Israeli flag was created, the amount of Hebrew in the service increased; and congregants are wearing “fewer neckties and fewer fancy hats” but more kippahs and tallits than they once did.
“Inevitably each generation had its own taste and so added their own ingredients, the spiritual equivalent of maybe some okra, or zaatar, or even some sriracha,” he said to laughs. “At 150 years, our congregation is no doubt very different from what was imagined at its inception. … The soup that is our temple has gone from a Bavarian borscht to a Gulf seafood gumbo to a gluten-free, Asian fusion matzoh ball soup. But in many ways, in the most essential ways, we are still the same congregation.”
The following evening, a gala dinner featured dancing and a live band. And on Sunday morning, congregants toured Pensacola’s Jewish cemetery, where the oldest tombstone dates from 1874 and many inscriptions are in Hebrew and German as well as English.
Among those buried in the cemetery is Florida’s first Jewish mayor, Adolph Greenhut, who served from 1913 to 1916 — two decades after his stint as Beth El’s president. Beth El also takes great pride in having been home to the nation’s first de facto female rabbi, Paula Ackerman, in the 1960s.
“There were really very few Jews in South Florida until the 1940s. People can’t believe there was a thriving Jewish community here at the turn of the century,” said Bill Zimmern, 74, a native Pensacolan like his mother and grandmother whose wife, Beverly, was once mayor of suburban Gulf Breeze.
That community was born after the Civil War, when Jews settled in Milton — a northwest Florida lumber hub — bringing their skills from heavily wooded areas of Bavaria and southern Germany. They began relocating to Pensacola in the 1870s as the city developed.
Zimmern added that nearby Naval Air Station Pensacola, home to the Blue Angels, has long welcomed Jews to the area, and that many Jewish men and women in uniform who were once stationed there eventually settled in Pensacola and joined the congregation.
Beth El’s first home was a wooden structure on Chase Street in downtown Pensacola, but it burned down in 1901 and all records of the shul’s first 25 years of existence disappeared in that fire. It was later rebuilt near what is today the on-ramp for Interstate 110, but closed in 1931 when its members inaugurated the current synagogue on nearby Palafox Street, and the previous structure became a roller-skating rink.
Soon after Beth El’s founding, Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe — mainly traders and merchants — settled in the area, and they were not especially happy with its Reform services. So in 1899, they parted ways and established B’nai Israel as an Orthodox synagogue.
In 1923, congregants bought a house and converted it into a house of worship; by 1953, they had finally raised enough money to construct the building it currently occupies, according to Yehoshua Mizrachi, B’nai Israel’s rabbi.
At the time, it also chose to affiliate with the Conservative movement, then the largest denomination in the United States. It remained part of the movement until about a decade ago, separating after the Conservative movement opted to ordain gay rabbis and sanction same-sex marriages.
“I am the 19th rabbi to hold this pulpit, and all but three or four of them were Orthodox,” said Mizrachi, 62. Originally from Lakewood, New Jersey, he said B’nai Israel’s membership consists of 60 to 70 families, compared to 185 families at Beth El.
“This congregation is independent, so they dropped their affiliation 10 years ago. When they hired me, I told them not to expect me to do anything to compromise my personal integrity as a Jew,” Mizrachi said.
Even so, the rabbi added, “we are not an Orthodox congregation. We have mixed seating and women are called to the Torah. In all other aspects, this shul operates according to the standards of halacha,” or Jewish law.
Rabbi Mendel Danow runs the Pensacola Chabad Jewish Center along with his Israeli-born wife, Nechama, from a 120-year-old house less than a mile from B’nai Israel. Between 500 and 600 people are on his mailing list, he said.
“A lot of Jews here are unaffiliated. They don’t have that natural connection,” said Danow, 30. The best way of drawing them in is by inviting them to Friday night services and Shabbat dinner; anywhere from 20 to 80 people usually show up, he said. “It’s laid back. Davening [prayer] is shorter, dinner is longer. It’s been a very important part of our community.”
Danow is clear-eyed about the challenges of living an observant Jewish life in Pensacola.
“There’s no kosher restaurant within a 400-mile radius. The closest is in Jacksonville or Atlanta,” he said. “Obviously we’re not the first destination for an Orthodox Jew looking to move to Florida.”
But he’s trying to make things easier. His Chabad recently opened Pensa-Kosher — a mini-market for the handful of locals who strictly observe Jewish dietary laws. He and his wife, who have six children together, run a Hebrew school with close to 20 students, as well as a preschool with 10 children. And they are trying to support the few Jewish students at the nearest university.
“When we moved here, one of the first things we noticed was a lack of Jewish life on campus, so we started a Chabad student club at the University of West Florida,” Danow said.
With Pensacola enjoying a relatively low cost of living and ranking high when it comes to job growth, beach quality and even the density of Waffle House restaurants, the city is growing — and Chabad is bursting out of its current home. Early next year, it will relocate to a larger complex two blocks down the street. Among other things, the new facility will include a synagogue, Hebrew school and Pensacola’s first full-service mikvah.
Danow said any antisemitism in the city is dwarfed by support for Israel and Jews.
“Three years ago, a gang of four teenagers threw a brick through our window, and ‘Heil Hitler’ was spray-painted on the brick,” he recalled. “But after Oct. 7, people began dropping off flowers and giving donations. There was such a sense of sharing in our pain. People would stop me on the street to say, ‘We’re praying for Israel.’”
Mizrachi shared similar experiences. “There’s a church on every street corner. People are very pro-Israel here,” he said. “Strangers stop me in the supermarket and tell me they love Israel. It happens all the time.”
The front lawn of Zimmern’s best friend, Charles Kahn, 74, a retired federal judge, boasts two signs: “Go Gators” — a reference to his alma mater, the University of Florida — and “We Stand With Israel.”
“Right after Oct. 7, I got that sign,” Kahn said while sipping coffee as he sat on his porch overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. “My neighbor on one side is a retired Navy captain. He asked for one also, and my other neighbor on the other side asked for one too — and then the people across the street, then two houses down. We ended up with five of them just on this street.”
Kahn is a past president of Beth El, as is his wife Janet. Their Reform synagogue is by far the largest Jewish house of worship in the city.
“We’re a full-function, mainstream Reform synagogue. We follow Reform rules, and our house of worship is a place where people who disagree on politics can still be friends,” said Fleekop, a Philadelphia native who grew up in Reno, Nevada, and moved to Pensacola 13 years ago. His wife, Andrea, runs the temple’s School for Jewish Living, which has 55 children enrolled.
“We welcome the LGBTQ community. Some gay and lesbian Jews who were rejected elsewhere have found themselves here at Beth El,” he said. “We also have a lot of Jews by choice.”
One of them is Nichole Friedland, 51, a Pensacola-born nurse who was raised Catholic but converted to Judaism 16 years ago — on Easter Sunday no less — under Fleekop’s guidance. She’s now the vice-president of Beth El and treasurer of the Pensacola Jewish Federation.
“Most of our congregants are either interfaith or have converted to Judaism,” said Friedland, who with her husband is raising a blended family of eight kids. “I wanted my children to have a good foundational religion, and Judaism made the most sense to me. It was, and is, the correct choice.”
The federation, based inside Beth El, is entirely volunteer-run and rarely publicizes events or occasions — a sharp contrast to the vibe in the Jewish metropolises of South Florida.
But Mizrachi sees potential for Pensacola in some of the same forces that are luring Jews to Boca and Aventure — including unhappiness among New Yorkers with the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
“After Mamdani’s win, a lot of people are thinking of moving to Florida,” Mizrachi said. “But instead of going to Dade or Broward, they should consider Pensacola. There is Jewish life here.”
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Michigan Democrats Nominate Lawyer Who Praised Hezbollah for Top University Post
A sign at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Photo: Ken Lund.
The Michigan Democratic Party nominated attorney attorney Amir Makled over incumbent Jewish Regent Jordan Acker on Sunday, drawing fresh scrutiny towards Makled’s defense of international terrorist organizations and anti-Israel posture.
Makled, a Dearborn-based civil rights attorney who has been outspoken in support of divestment from Israel, won the party’s nomination for one of two regent seats up for election this year, defeating Acker, who had become a frequent target of pro-Palestinian activists over his opposition to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) efforts on campus.
The contest has drawn national attention because of the unusually broad authority held by University of Michigan regents, who are elected statewide and oversee the university’s finances, investments, executive leadership and major institutional policy decisions. The eight-member board plays a central role in decisions ranging from presidential oversight to responses to campus protest movements and demands for divestment.
For months, anti-Israel student activists and progressive organizers had pressed for changes to the board, arguing the university should divest from companies tied to Israel amid the war in Gaza. Acker, one of the board’s most vocal opponents of divestment, became a particular focus of that pressure campaign. In December 2024, pro-Hamas activists targeted Acker’s home with violent demonstrations, breaking his windows and spray-painting his car “Divest Free Palestine.” The vandals also spray-painted an inverted red triangle on Acker’s car, a symbol used to indicate support for the Hamas terrorist group.
Makled, who represented a student arrested during the university’s 2024 anti-Israel encampment protests, had argued publicly that the university should reconsider its investment policies regarding Israel. His nomination, however, also drew scrutiny after resurfaced and later-deleted social media posts in which he appeared to praise Hezbollah and shared antisemitic content. The Michigan chapter of the Service Employees International Union reportedly withdrew its endorsement following the controversy.
An investigation by The Detroit News revealed that Makled was found to have deleted social media posts praising leaders of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. One of the posts referred to slain Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah as a “martyr.” He also reposted antisemitic messages from far-right commentator Candace Owens which referred to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder and blackmail.”
Supporters of Acker have argued the outcome reflects a broader deterioration in support for Israel and tolerance of antisemitism within Democratic politics, particularly among younger and more progressive voters. Some also noted that Paul Brown, Acker’s non-Jewish running mate who had similarly opposed divestment efforts, was renominated while Acker was not, making the result especially symbolic for many Jewish Democrats.
The race underscores how university governance battles have become a new front in national political fights over Israel. While university divestment decisions are often constrained by legal and fiduciary obligations, regents can shape investment policy, institutional messaging and the university’s overall posture toward such campaigns.
With eight regents serving staggered terms and only two seats on the ballot this cycle, a single election does not determine the university’s investment policy outright. But activists on both sides increasingly view these races as critical long-term contests over whether public universities will resist or embrace institutional divestment from Israel.
As the general election approaches, the regent race is likely to remain a closely watched test of how far the Democratic Party’s internal debate over Israel is reshaping not only national politics, but the leadership of major American universities. Recent polls indicate that Democratic constituents have rapidly shifted away from supporting Israel