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A Holocaust survivor and her family saw ‘Leopoldstadt.’ The Broadway play told their story.
(New York Jewish Week) — On a Wednesday evening last month, three generations of a Jewish family made their way to their seats at the Longacre Theater to see “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic Broadway play about the tragedies that befall an extended Jewish family in the first half of the 20th century in Vienna.
The date of the family gathering was a significant one: Nov. 9, the 84th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms known as Kristallnacht. And in the audience was Fini Konstat, 96, who lived in the once thriving Jewish neighborhood after which the play is named, and witnessed the horrors it portrays first-hand. Alongside her were her daughter and her son-in-law, Renee and James Akers, and her oldest great-grandchild, Lexi Levin, 23.
When Konstat was a child, she lived in a “nice apartment” in Leopoldstadt. But exactly 84 years to the day of their theater date, “I was running with my father, seeing all the Jewish stores with all their windows broken,” she told Levin in a short video her great-granddaughter filmed before the curtain rose.
“It’s such a blessing for me to be here with you,” Levin said to her great-grandmother in response. “Ninety-six years old, survived a pandemic, at a Broadway show in New York City.”
Left: Fini as a child on the balcony of her apartment in Leopoldstadt. Right: Fini with her three children in front of the very same building, pictured in 2015. (Courtesy)
Since the beginning of its Broadway run in mid-September, “Leopoldstadt,” with its depiction of a prosperous Viennese family on the brink of destruction, has moved audiences to tears and inspired deep reflections on the Holocaust. Based on the celebrated playwright’s own family history — of which he was barely aware while growing up in England — it has provided a stark counterpoint to news about rising antisemitism and the celebrities who have been purveying it.
But for Konstat, the play was much more personal. “When I heard the word ‘Leopoldstadt,’ this alone gave me lots of thrills and memories,” Konstat, who is known in her family as Mimi, told the New York Jewish Week in accented English. She recalled how Levin, who recently moved to the city, invited her to fly to New York to see one of Broadway’s hottest tickets.
“Leopoldstadt,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “The second district. That’s where we lived.”
At the end of Stoppard’s five-act play, audiences learn that most of the Jewish characters had perished under the Nazis — of the four generations in the show, just three cousins survive to carry on the family’s legacy.
For Konstat too, she and her parents were among the very few in their extended family to survive the Holocaust. “Almost all of them went to Auschwitz or other camps,” Konstat said. “My mother was a twin and only the twins remained alive. [My mother’s] five other siblings and my grandmother perished.”
L-R: Renee Akers, James Akers, Lexi Levin and Fini Konstat at the Longacre Theater to see Tom Stoppard’s ‘Leopoldstadt on Broadway,’ Nov. 9, 2022. (Courtesy)
In a Zoom conversation held over Thanksgiving weekend, Konstat, surrounded by two of her daughters, two of her granddaughters and three of her great-granddaughters, shared what the play meant to her — and how her family has restored what she lost.
In the months after Kristallnacht in 1938, Konstat and her parents hid in a neighbor’s apartment; Konstat recalls hiding under the duvet when German soldiers showed up. Eventually the family fled to Turkey, and then to India, before settling down in Mexico City. There, the teenage Fini met her husband David, also a survivor who escaped Poland. The two of them began to write the rest of their story — starting with the birth of the first of their three children in 1948.
Unlike many Holocaust survivors, Fini and David Konstat were open about their experiences during the war, instilling a sense of pride and duty to remember in their children — something that eventually extended to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“They were proud to speak about how they survived this,” said the Konstats’ middle child, Renee Konstat Akers. “Their life was an odyssey. They had the courage to do things that you would never think were possible. We grew up grateful knowing how our family survived in that incredible way.”
Each child moved to different places as they grew up and got married. Manuel, the oldest, stayed in Mexico. Renee married an American and moved to the Midwest, and Denise, the youngest, to Houston. Each became deeply involved in their Jewish communities, sending their children (Konstat’s grandchildren) to Jewish day schools, celebrating Jewish holidays and participating in synagogue life.
“The word ‘miracle’ really does not feel like an understatement in this scenario,” said Sherry Levin, one of Konstat’s grandchildren. “When we think about what it took for my grandmother and grandfather to survive and how they were able to intersect in Mexico, and such an amazing multi-generational family has come to fruition, it feels miraculous.”
Pictured here on their 40th anniversary, Fini and her husband David met in Mexico City after both had fled Europe. They were married 54 years before David died in 2001. (Courtesy)
Reviews of the show have ranged from rhapsodic to resistant, with some critics suggesting the play is simplistic and obvious in its story-telling or that it is less a well-crafted play than a well-meaning lesson on the Holocaust.
But just as the Merz family clashes and argues about everything from antisemitism to intermarriage to socialism in “Leopoldstadt,” each generation of the Konstat family that saw “Leopoldstadt” that night came away with something different — a reaction influenced by their age, their Jewish identity, their nationality and their relationship with their family.
For Konstat, the arc of “Leopoldstadt” was so familiar that it hardly stirred her. “It was just very happy watching it and enjoying it and enjoying my children with me, “ she told the New York Jewish Week. “I didn’t think about anybody else.”
Akers, too, felt an intense familiarity with the story, and, perhaps toughened by her own family history, didn’t experience an intense emotional reaction. Her own parents’ lives gave Akers a sense of purpose in her life — for example, in the 1990s, she was passionate about helping resettle Jews fleeing the former Soviet Union. With her own children, she instilled in them a strong sense of Jewish purpose in their work, their education and their family.
“I was a sandwich in between seeing my mother and my granddaughter,” she said of her “Leopoldstadt” experience. “I was emotional thinking of my mom who went through it, but I was more emotional about seeing my granddaughter be so moved. It really hit her at her core.”
Indeed, it was the youngest member of the family present that night who was most shaken by the play.
“It really felt like a gift to my family and to me, specifically, to be able to see what Mimi’s life looked like before the war,” Lexi Levin said, surmising that, as a fourth-generation survivor, she is among the first in her family to be able to start processing the loss on a grander scale.
“For the first time in my life, I really felt the magnitude of her loss,” she added. “I’ve known her story and I’ve been inspired by her story to be involved with my own Jewish causes, but I have never been able to access and truly empathize with her grief and what it meant that she lost the entire family she had before this one that she created.”
Turning to her great-grandmother, as if trying to make her understand the exact precision of the show, Levin explained, “It’s a play about generations and the family was large and then it was small.”
“You made it large again,” she said, referring to the generations of family that had assembled — in the Broadway theater and again over Thanksgiving weekend. “Look at this room.”
Pictured on her 90th birthday in 2017, Fini Konstat now has three children, ten grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren. (Courtesy)
There was a coda for the family after the curtain went down. The day after the show, the family wanted to see the 1907 “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” one of Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings, which currently hangs at the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side. A version of the portrait’s true story — how a painting of a socialite from a prominent Viennese Jewish family was looted by the Nazis and the family’s efforts to get it back — features in the plot of “Leopoldstadt.”
The gallery, however, was closed on the only day the family could visit. After a call to the management at the gallery, which showcases the German and Austrian art collections of Jewish philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, the gallery’s director arranged a private tour.
“It felt like we were in a puzzle and everything was finally coming together,” said Akers. “It was an emotional, emotional time.”
When the week was over and the emotions were spent, Konstat and the Akers returned home with a reignited passion for their family story. But there was yet another twist: In addition to the whirlwind trip Levin planned for her grandparents and for Mimi, she had been undergoing the laborious process of applying for Austrian citizenship. Six members in Konstat’s large family have undertaken the process over the last two years.
“Part of the motivation was knowing Mimi’s story, and knowing that she survived because her mother had citizenship in Turkey,” Levin said. “That story was just inspirational to me, knowing that dual citizenship was what saved our family.” She convinced her brother and mother to apply for Austrian citizenship as well.
The day after her grandmother and great-grandmother left New York, Levin called them with news from her small apartment in Manhattan: An Austrian passport had arrived in the mail. The curtain was rising on another act.
Konstat was surprised at how interested her family was in getting Austrian citizenship. “I feel very good,” she said. “I’m very happy.”
“Does it make you emotional?” Levin asked her during the Zoom call with the New York Jewish Week.
“It does — of course it does. I used to love Austria,” she said. “I was sad to leave. I was disappointed. We never thought of coming back. I was happy to be able to escape. Thank God we made it out of hell.”
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CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties
(JTA) — GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Greenwich Public Schools in Connecticut said it would proceed with a planned fall trip for sixth graders at a Jewish camp in Massachusetts as planned this week, despite pressure from a Muslim advocacy organization over the camp’s Israeli symbols and Israel-related programming.
CAIR Connecticut, the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, objected to the trip, saying that programming at Eisner Camp in Great Barrington “incorporates connections to Israel,” the chapter’s board chair Farhan Memon wrote in a letter to Greenwich Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones dated Oct. 13.
The four-day Greenwich Schools field trip was organized by the Outdoor Classroom project, which works with seven locations in New England, including Eisner. Four of the camps are affiliated with Christian organizations, and two have no religious affiliation. With its clients, Outdoor Classroom coordinates nature-related learning programs for kids.
Memon wrote that some parents in Greenwich had viewed a video and photos of previous school events at Eisner and “identified Israeli flags and yellow ribbons prominently displayed in spaces used during school visits.”
“At the very least, spaces used by Greenwich students on any school trip should be free of national and political displays,” Memon wrote.
Eisner director Paul Isserles said in a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “We welcome Outdoor Classroom to use our camp facilities. Throughout the year many outside organizations rent our facilities for various programs. URJ Eisner Camp is proud to have an Israeli flag displayed for our camp programs.”
When it comes to visiting groups, “Frankly, we are not regularly asked to do anything to remove those symbols or to cover them,” said Union for Reform Judaism president Rabbi Rick Jacobs in a telephone interview with JTA. “Because to be honest, we wouldn’t.”
Answering Memon’s letter on Oct. 14, Jones wrote in an email that her school district “acknowledges that individuals and families have vastly different views regarding global events” and that it intends to “provide an inclusive and safe educational environment for all Greenwich Public School students, including when they are on field trips under our care.”
She added that she had “made it clear to a few families that we will not take a political or religious stand.” JTA has seen both the CAIR letter and the email response.
CAIR Connecticut did not respond to JTA’s query.
CAIR’s national website says the organization promotes interfaith dialogue and “condemns all acts of violence against civilians by any individual, group or state.”
The Reform movement founded the 600-acre camp in 1958 as the Joseph Eisner Camp Institute for Living Judaism. It is located in the Berkshire Hills south of the town center of Great Barrington.
It is one of more than a dozen of the movement’s overnight camps in the North America. Many of those camps are rented throughout the year by groups that have nothing to do with Judaism, URJ’s Rabbi Jacobs said. “If a group rents the camp, they come up with their own agenda,” he said.
He added, “There are flags and other symbols of Judaism and of Israel in our camps, and we’re proud of that.”
Some parents had raised concerns about the venue as early as March. CAIR urged the district to stop using the camp in the Oct. 14 letter.
Removing decorations from the camp would not be enough, he said, noting that parents were upset after seeing promotional material about Eisner bringing Jewish campers to visit Israeli army bases under the Gadna, an Israeli military youth program.
A July 2019 post on Eisner Camp’s website says a group of participants in its Israel trip chose Gadna, stayed at an army base, practiced drills and learned to shoot at a target.
“URJ Eisner Camp participants who go to Israel have not participated in Gadna since 2023,” camp director Isserles said in a statement provided to JTA. “Our Israel programming at camp and in Israel is focused on Jewish identity, community, education, and connection to Israel.”
What CAIR is saying is that “A Jewish institution can be an unfit place for public-school children because it is visibly Jewish and identifies openly with Israel,” wrote blogger and Eisner alumnus Rabbi Jeff Salkin in his “Unfiltered” Substack on Oct. 19.
“A Jewish institution should not have to hide its Jewish identity to count as a fit place for other people’s children. You would not ask a church camp to remove a cross, or a Muslim camp to take down a crescent. A standard that demands such hiding makes Jewish identity itself the problem,” Salkin wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties appeared first on The Forward.
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Who are the first time voters who could sway Israel’s election?
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — On Oct. 27, Yael Chernyvsky, 18, from Ramat Hasharon in central Israel, plans to cast her ballot for the first time.
“I’m voting so we can change the future of this country,” the teen told Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this month. She was entering a Tel Aviv auditorium where some of Israel’s top politicians were about to address more than 1,000 first-time voters, including many in pre-military programs.
Chernyvsky, who is studying in an army preparation program in the Negev, blames the current right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the country’s problems.
So she said she will vote for one of the opposition parties in the “change bloc,” which seeks to oust Netanyahu, who has been in office since 2009 except for a brief period in 2021-2022.
Chernyvsky had not decided which party she will vote for, but she said it will “probably” be either the Democrats led by Yair Golan or Yashar led by Gadi Eisenkot.
“We’ve basically had the same government for 20 years, and I genuinely think it’s corrupt. Why has this war been going on for three years? Why did it take two years to return the hostages? Why does the government give so much money to Haredi Jews who don’t work and don’t serve in the army?”
Chernyvsky is one of the estimated 640,000 Israelis aged 18 to 22 eligible to vote in Tuesday’s election, according to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI). Comprising nearly 10% of the electorate, their votes could determine as many as 12 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
“Israel is a young country with a high birth rate,” said Tammy Hoffman, head of the education policy program at the IDI, which co-sponsored the young voter event with the Yigal Allon Center. “If their turnout is high, as our research suggests, first-time voters will make a difference.”
In May, Hoffman and her colleagues surveyed potential young first-time Jewish and Arab voters about their attitudes and political engagement. Across Israel’s population groups, 80% to 95% said they would “definitely” or be likely to vote. Secular Jewish youth expressed the highest level of certainty regarding participation, while 87% of Arabs said they intend to vote.
It’s a higher percentage than in the U.S., where the youth turnout in the 2024 presidential election was only 47%, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
More than four-fifths of respondents to the IDI survey described the opportunity to vote as either “fairly meaningful” or “very meaningful,” with particularly strong responses among traditional and religious Jewish youth.
A separate poll of 18-year-old to 22-year-old potential first-time voters for the Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth news outlets also revealed high motivation: 67% of respondents said they were certain they would vote, while another 19% thought they would.
In both polls, national security and the cost of living were top priorities for both Jews and Arabs. Hoffman wasn’t surprised.
“For the past several years, they’ve lived in an unstable environment during their adolescence. They were in junior high during COVID, they witnessed the judicial reform protests, and of course Oct. 7. They are worried about their future.”
While the Hamas attack affected every Israeli, the fact that so many first-time voters are either serving in the Israel Defense Forces or will do so in the near future could influence how they vote.
Jewish Israeli voters of all ages have moved rightward politically over the past couple of decades, Hoffman noted.
“But military service doesn’t necessarily lead you to a nationalist stance,” Hoffman emphasized. “It can do the opposite: It can bring up questions about the war and its goals.”
Arab Israelis, meanwhile, haven’t shifted rightward, but they are more eager to vote in this election than previous elections, reflecting their growing engagement in Israeli society, Hoffman said.
In a Sept. 23 N12 poll, 74% of young people described their political views as right-wing or center-right, while 23% identified as left-wing or center-left. If the election were held at the time the poll was taken, 16% of respondents would vote for Eisenkot’s Yashar party and 14% would vote for Netanyahu’s Likud party.
Despite the assumption that the majority of Jewish youth will vote for right-wing and far-right parties, Hoffman said, mock elections at high schools around the country show a different picture.
She said the majority of students voted for Eisenkot’s Yashar party and Beyachad, led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid from the opposition Change bloc, and “some for Netanyahu’s [right-wing] Likud, but not a lot for [Itamar] Ben-Gvir,” who heads a far-right party.
Omer Gross from Jerusalem, who graduated from high school in June and is now in an army-prep program in the Golan, plans to vote for the Religious Zionist party led by far-right politicians Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Moshe Feiglin.
“I don’t really agree with what Smotrich has been doing in Gaza,” he said, referring to Smotrich’s objective to reestablish the uprooted Jewish settlements in Gaza and incentivize Palestinian emigration from the strip, “but I support what he does in the territories” – the West Bank. “We need a strong, secure Israel.”
Tomer Shiloh from Herziliyah, who attends the same Golan Heights program as his friend Omer, has different plans.
“I’m voting for the ‘Change’ bloc, for Gadi Eisenkot or Naftali Bennett,” the 18-year-old said.
If it were up to Shiloh, the next government would require Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, young men to serve in the IDF, as he will do next year. He wants the next government to lower Israel’s high cost of living.
“I want the people who run this country to have good values and to do what’s best for the country and not for themselves,” the teen said.
Sgt. M is a 22-year-old office worker doing his first stint of reserve duty following the conclusion of his mandatory army service. He says ensuring that all Israelis serve the country either in the IDF or through National Service is at the top of his election priority list. But he will be voting for the left-of-center Democrats party mostly for economic reasons.
“Did you know that most university students have to work while they study to pay for tuition, books, food and housing?” the reservist, who requested anonymity due to IDF regulations, said as he traveled home by train from his army base. “I wanted to start studying right after finishing the army, but between the cost and reserve duty, that’s impossible,” he said.
Speaking from his home in the northern Israeli city of Shef-Amra, Khalel Alaa Sabeh, 18, said he plans to vote for an Arab party that will prioritize addressing resource gaps in the Arab community.
“I want to see more money allocated to the Arab community,” he said, noting that historically, Arab municipalities have received less government funding than Jewish municipalities. “But most of all, I want our families to be safe. There’s a lot of crime in the Arab sector and the Netanyahu government isn’t doing enough to stop it.”
Sabeh, who plans to start university next year, said he is urging his friends to show up to vote on Oct. 27.
“I want to see change in this country, and if Netanyahu wins we’ll have four more bad years.” Yet whatever the outcome on Election Day, he said, “I won’t leave the country. This is my land, this is my home.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Who are the first time voters who could sway Israel’s election? appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s global image is deteriorating. Why isn’t it a bigger issue in the election?
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Over the past few months, Israeli media has been full of reports of Israeli holidaymakers in Europe, Asia and the Americas being harassed or physically attacked after being identified as Israeli.
In July, a group of Israeli tourists visiting Montenegro were reportedly confronted by a man and a woman, apparently locals, who asked, “Taking a break from genocide?” and told them to stay in Israel. In Greece, an Israeli woman said a restaurant refused to serve her after she told an employee she was from Israel.
In Thailand, a mother and daughter were allegedly beaten after they told a man they were from Israel, according to the mother’s account.. And in the U.S., an Israeli couple checking into a hotel in California were asked if they were “baby killers.”
These reports come as Israel’s image around the world has fallen to historic lows. A Pew poll conducted between February and May this year found that across 36 countries, a median of 67% of adults held an unfavorable view of Israel.
On the diplomatic front, hostility is also growing. Israel’s ongoing military action in Gaza has been termed “disproportionate” by a growing number of world leaders, and unchecked violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank – as well as Israeli government policy there – has prompted some countries, including some considered allies, to pull back or even impose sanctions.
Despite this hostility the issue of Israel’s diplomacy, its image worldwide and who is to blame for its deterioration is barely factoring into the fast-approaching election on Oct. 27.
Yaakov Katz, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that there have been complaints about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government not being effective at explaining Israel’s policies or actions to international audiences. Nevertheless, most Israelis see this as a problem beyond their control, he added.
“There is the argument that Netanyahu makes, which is that no matter what we do, the whole world’s against us, and no matter what we say, it’s antisemitism,” said Katz, co-author of “While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East.” “People accept that argument, and to a large extent, they don’t push back on it. Why? Because part of it is true, right?”
Katz pointed out that many Israelis believe the sharp rise in antisemitism worldwide would keep happening regardless of what Israel does.
“In other words, Israelis believe that even if the number killed in Gaza was not 70,000 but 10,000, you still would have genocide claims; it makes no difference,” he said, adding that the average Israeli does not fully understand that declining support, particularly in the U.S., could eventually have “existential consequences for the country.”
“Most people here don’t think that far ahead,” Katz said. Instead, they take comfort in news such as President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu, he added.
Ofir Dayan, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said, however, that Israelis are painfully aware of what is happening abroad and are concerned about it. But she said there are other, more pressing issues in a country that has been grappling with more than three years of war.
“When people talk about the elections and what the Netanyahu government did right or wrong, they definitely look at this issue, and it is something they care about,” Dayan said.
However, she continued, most are unlikely to vote for a party or a candidate based on their position on this issue because it is just not a priority.
“Israeli voters are very much one-issue voters, and the issue in this election is security,” Dayan said. “We’re not remote enough from Oct. 7 for people to completely shift their vote and vote based on this idea.”
In addition to security and the questions surrounding the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attack, Peter Lerner, the former Israel Defense Forces spokesman for the international press, told JTA that the “issue of Israel’s international standing is secondary to two things: Netanyahu or not Netanyahu, and the left vs. the right.”
“Obviously, each one of those comes with its own package of Oct. 7-related issues and the question of who is most suited to deal with the threats that are around us,” he said, adding, “you just don’t see very many talking about it and when they do talk about it, it is secondary to everything else.”
Of the dozen or so parties expected to win seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, only a few have referred to Israel’s negative global image or suggested ways to improve public diplomacy.
The B’Yachad Party, headed by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, is one of those discussing it as part of a plan to repair ties between Israel and world Jewry. Under this plan, the party hopes to elevate the importance of Diaspora Jewry, allowing a non-voting observer in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to focus on such issues.
Amcha Yisrael, a new right-wing party led by former IDF Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter, has two candidates on its list who are prominent public diplomacy activists – Yoseph Haddad and Fleur Hassan-Nahoum. Haddad has said multiple times that he would like to be Israel’s next minister for public diplomacy.
Journalist Eylon Levy, a former spokesman for the Israeli government, told JTA’s “Waiting for 61” podcast that public diplomacy, or hasbara as Israelis refer to it, “is not a goal in itself” for most of the candidates.
He said the discussion was more about “who can manage relations with the world so that we can achieve our national interests.”
Within that framework, Levy pointed out, there is a range of opinions. On the far right, the approach of the Otzma Yehudit Party, led by Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, is to make Israel look tough and “screw the woolly-hearted soft liberals if they don’t like it.”
On the left, “the position may be equally detached from reality,” Levy said.
“There is a belief on the left that if Israel starts behaving like a normal country and doesn’t have ministers who say aggressive nonsense, then Israel’s relations will snap back to normal,” he said. “I think there may be a denial there of how much public opinion has shifted against Israel and how much the expectations of policymakers have shifted as well.”
While Levy said he did not believe there would be a massive change in perceptions if a new government were elected on Oct. 27, he did believe it would be given a grace period, at least by Israel’s less-than-friendly allies.
“The question is whether an alternative government would suddenly magically boost Israel’s international standing; I don’t think it will,” he said. “But I do think a more moderate government will buy Israel some goodwill, definitely among those who say, in theory, we support Israel.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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