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A Jewish expert on monuments on what Philly’s famous Rocky Balboa statue can teach us about memory
(JTA) — Paul Farber was shocked when he first watched “Rocky” and saw a Star of David on the grave of Rocky Balboa’s coach, Mickey Goldmill.
As a Jew and as the founder of the Philadelphia-based Monument Lab, which has explored collective memory through art installations across the country for over a decade, Farber was well positioned to think about the deeper meaning of that brief shot.
“Anytime I see a Jewish funeral in a film, there’s some kind of call to attention. And I always want to know what that means, especially for a Hollywood production, especially when it may not be branded as a Jewish story,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“We’re not there in a prolonged series of mourning, but in a split second, seeing a Jewish site of a memory is really fascinating,” he added.
That outlook lies behind Farber’s work as the host of the new NPR podcast “The Statue,” a deep dive into Philadelphia’s famed statue of Rocky Balboa, the fictional prizefighter at the center of “Rocky.” The series delves into what sports and society can convey about memory, and in his research, Farber discovered a few Jewish nuggets found in the film series — including the fact that Rocky’s love interest was originally supposed to be Jewish.
“They made an actual gravestone [for her character] and it’s in Philadelphia’s most famous cemetery, Laurel Hill. And you can go there and see this gravestone where a movie character is ‘buried,’” he said. “People leave offerings on the gravestone, including small pebbles as if it’s a Jewish site of memory.”
In an interview with JTA, Farber shared his inspiration for the series, how his Jewish upbringing informed his life’s work and the role statues — such as that of Jewish baseball legend Sandy Koufax — do, and should, play.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: To start off, I’d love to hear about how you first got interested in studying monuments.
Paul Farber: I’m really interested in the ways that, in cities, we innovate toward the future, and also come to terms with our past, and it happens often in the same exact places. That could be a statue, a street, a corner store. And so that’s a big part for me.
What really inspired this project is a conversation I had with my mother, quite a few years ago. My mother is a lifelong Philadelphian. Her parents were Jewish immigrants in South Philadelphia. And when I told her I was teaching a class at the University of Pennsylvania about Philly neighborhoods, she asked me if I was covering Rocky. When I said, “Oh, it’s not on the syllabus” — and I may have said it in a way that felt dismissive — she gave me this look that I think a lot of us know: “How could you.” So for her birthday, we watched “Rocky” and we went to see “Creed.” My grandfather went to South Philly High and was in the boxing club. He shared stories in our family about what it meant to have sport and culture and belonging go together in South Philly. I started to see that across generations, from long before “Rocky” to this moment now, almost 50 years after the release of the film, many people’s family stories could be channeled through this statue, including my own, and that was enough of a prompt to go dive in.
“Rocky” is obviously not a Jewish story, but there are some nuggets. There’s the funeral scene, and you mentioned something about Adrian almost being Jewish. I’m curious what you think about the little Jewish pieces you can pull out of this famous story, and what those mean to you as a Philly sports fan.
It blew me away that Rocky’s coach, Mick, passes away and the character Rocky goes to his funeral, and you see a Star of David. Anytime I see a Jewish funeral in a film, there’s some kind of call to attention. And I always want to know what that means, especially for a Hollywood production, especially when it may not be branded as a Jewish story. And it just opened up a whole set of questions for me that blurred between art and life, between the film series and the city of Philadelphia.
In episode two, we showcase this monumental art book that Sylvester Stallone [who played Rocky] created. There was this passage in it that just blew me away, about the first draft of “Rocky,” where he says, “As for Adrian, she was Jewish in the first draft.” And he got feedback and cut that character. We never hear about Mickey’s Judaism. We never hear about Rocky’s bond across culture. But the fact that the first scene in the “Rocky” series is in a place called Resurrection Gym — that is obvious Christian iconography — and to put Jewish characters in is really fascinating to me.
There is another famous grave that is involved in the series. The character Adrian eventually passes away, and like the statue, which was made as a bronze sculpture, for the “Rocky” film series they made an actual gravestone and it’s in Philadelphia’s most famous cemetery, Laurel Hill. And you can go there and see this gravestone where a movie character is “buried.” People leave offerings on the gravestone, including small pebbles as if it’s a Jewish site of memory.
People talk about representation on screen, and I’m not sure a Jewish funeral necessarily does that, but I would imagine for some people, seeing Rocky Balboa say the “Mourner’s Kaddish“ was maybe their first interaction with Judaism in some way. What do you make of that?
Every shot is deliberate. And it’s actually that kind of attitude and outlook that created the Rocky statue, because Sylvester Stallone was the director of that film, and they could have made a styrofoam version or a temporary one, but they spent over a year making a bronze version so that when the camera faced it, it would make contact. I think very similarly, this is part of the artistry of Stallone that plays out in our podcast series. We’re not with him when he sits shiva. We’re not there in a prolonged series of mourning, but in a split second, seeing a Jewish site of a memory is really fascinating. And to see the coach Mickey, to have his Wikipedia page say he’s Jewish, all that we have is mourning.
I think about how for immigrant Jewish communities, there are gaps in our narratives. Throughout the series, and one of the reasons I wanted to share my perspective as a queer Jewish person who grew up loving sports in Philly, I’ve been informed by my own family’s history, and what we’re able to recall and what gaps there are. And I see that being echoed for so many people in the Rocky story.
It’s clearly a very personal story for you. Why did you think it was important to start the podcast with your own identity, and to include your Jewish mother?
I think it’s important that when we talk about sites of memory, we understand that there are shared and collective ways that we bring the past forward, and there are others that are incredibly personal. My hope was to find, in this case, to spotlight, a significant site of memory in the city, but ask questions about it. And I think it was important to note what position I would take, because I don’t believe there’s one story to the Rocky statue. To tell a biography of a statue, you actually have to tell it of the people who make meaning from it. So in the series, we do a lot of work where we want to know other people’s stories and backgrounds, whether they are refugees from Afghanistan, or community organizers in Kensington [a neighborhood of Philadelphia]. My hope was by positioning this from my perspective, almost as a memoir in a way, that it opened up space for others to have their experiences be valued and made meaning of.
The official artwork for Farber’s podcast. (Courtesy)
Both with the podcast and in your work with the Monument Lab, how do you feel that your Jewish identity informs what you do? Do you see overlap between your Jewish values and the values you work on in your organization?
I absolutely think so. I grew up in a Jewish community in Philadelphia, and tikkun olam was a constant refrain. The work of tikkun olam meant a worldview that necessitated building coalitions and understanding across divides, to not diminish or under-emphasize them, but to appreciate how we work in solidarity, whether that’s around racial justice, gender justice, in various struggles. I am a co-founder and director of an organization that focuses on memory, and that I really get from the stories of growing up in a Jewish household, in a Jewish community, where memory lived in different ways. We were always aware of the stories of trauma and loss, as well as reconciliation and transformation, and how you work with the gaps that you have, and you listen, and you learn and you carry the story with you. Because that is the way to bond generations. Jewish memory really grounds what I do, and I seek to use it as a tool to learn more and to feed connection across divides.
Rocky takes on this almost mythical, godlike status, and his statue in Philadelphia is a bit of a pilgrimage site. Do you see any tension there as a Jew, given the prohibition against idol worship?
I think about the importance of memory, against forces of violence and erasure. I also understand that, in a world that is full of pain and difficulty and loss, we seek places to release that. And so I understand the pull to monuments. What I would like to see, and what we try to do through this series, “The Statue,” and also with the work of Monument Lab, is to look on and off the pedestal, and really think about how history lives with us. As we say in the series and other places, history doesn’t live inside of statues, it lives with people who steward them, who create other kinds of sites of memory, who are vigilant in their modes of commemoration. What I try to do in this work is understand the ambivalence around monuments, the pull to try to remember and be enduring through time, and just that constant reminder that whenever you try to freeze the past, or freeze an image of power, you cut out the potential to find connection and empowerment, and thus forms of survival.
In sports, there are so many ways to honor people, especially different ways that, like a statue, take on the idea of permanence. When Bill Russell died, the NBA retired his number 6 across the league. On Jackie Robinson Day, every April 15, the whole MLB honors Jackie Robinson by wearing his uniform number. But statues just have a different level of oomph. Sandy Koufax has a new statue in Los Angeles that was unveiled last year; Hank Greenberg has one. What do you think it should take for an athlete to reach that status?
The pinnacle in sports is to have a statue dedicated to you outside of the stadium. And I do believe the cultures of social media have amplified that, because we grew up with the story of Sandy Koufax not pitching in the World Series during the High Holy Days, and that wasn’t because we learned it from a statue or a plaque. We learned it because it was carried forward and put into different forms of remembering and recalling its importance. I went to several Maccabi Games in the U.S. — I used to be a sprinter. And the culture of memory and sport, they were one in the same.
In professional sports, the pinnacle is the statue, but I think you brought up other really important ways of remembering that operate in non-statue forms that feel like they are living memorials. The idea of retiring someone’s number, and keeping their number up, is a way to acknowledge, in this really public of all public spaces, an intimacy and a care, and especially when an athlete passes away, how that transcends the lines of city geography. Jackie Robinson Day is something that did not occur immediately after Jackie Robinson was the first Black player to play in the major leagues, but was a product of a later moment when people around Major League Baseball sought to activate his memory. So yes, a statue outside of a stadium is like a particular kind of professional accolade. But the other forms are really meaningful.
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‘Have a problem, call the PM,’ says Netanyahu as he gives out his number in campaign video
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday posted what he described as his personal phone number and invited Israelis to contact him with their questions and problems.
It was an election-season stunt that drew such a flood of responses that the number’s WhatsApp account was blocked within minutes and those calling received a busy signal.
It also drew suspicions that it was a ploy to collect voter data.
In a video posted to social media, Netanyahu is seen with longtime adviser Topaz Luk, who asks the prime minister whether he can publish his phone number. Netanyahu initially reacts with disbelief, saying, “Topaz, have you gone crazy?” before agreeing.
“I want to hear from you. Your suggestions, your questions, your problems. I want to hear, so leave me a message,” Netanyahu said. He added that he could not promise to answer everyone but would respond to as many people as possible.
Hundreds of messages and calls arrived within minutes and the WhatsApp account associated with the number was blocked. Luk later posted on X that the account had been disabled because of the volume of calls and said Netanyahu’s team was working to restore it, directing people to Telegram in the meantime.
Kan political correspondent Michael Shemesh questioned whether the number belonged to Netanyahu at all and suggested on X that the exercise was “probably designed to harvest the phone numbers of potential voters.”
Other users pointed to another clue that the handset seen in the video was unlikely to be Netanyahu’s personal phone. One of the WhatsApp groups visible in Luk’s video was a synagogue updates group whose latest message appeared to back political rival Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister who now heads the Beyachad party.
“Something tells me that Bibi isn’t signed up to the ‘Menachem’s House Main Shul Updates’ group,” one X user wrote, “especially not when the latest message there is ‘yalla, it’s time for Bennett.’”
The Likud spokesperson had not responded to a request for comment on the accusations by the time of publication.
It was not the first time Netanyahu handed out what he presented as his personal number during an election campaign. In August 2022, little more than two months before the vote that returned him to power, the then-opposition leader published another number and invited Israelis to video call him.
“Why should only some people have my phone number? Everyone should have it,” Netanyahu said at the time, joking that the move was a “dramatic, world-changing decision.” He told supporters who sent proof they had joined his Telegram channel that they would have a better chance of receiving a video call from him.
The response was similarly intense. Likud said Netanyahu received 9,420 calls within the first 30 minutes, while follow-up videos showed calls and messages flooding the phone.
Netanyahu’s rivals mocked the stunt. Then-Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman released a parody video saying Netanyahu “has not picked up the phone in 12 years,” while Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid dismissed it as a “fictional phone operated by Netanyahu’s aides.”
The episode comes as Netanyahu faces a difficult reelection campaign, with roughly 20% of voters remaining undecided, many of whom are disillusioned Likud voters, according to pollsters and researchers cited by Reuters.
A Channel 13 poll released earlier this month put Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party at 23 seats, ahead of Likud with 21, and Netanyahu’s current coalition projected to win just 49 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Eisenkot also led Netanyahu 47% to 34% when respondents were asked who was better suited to serve as prime minister.
The phone-number appeal is the latest in a series of efforts to put Netanyahu directly in front of voters, including a blitz of highly publicized appearances. Last week, the prime minister visited a restaurant in Hadera, a Likud stronghold, where owner Simo Shtivi said his arrival was “like hoisting the World Cup,” as diners lined up for photos and a chance to speak with him.
Netanyahu also made a surprise appearance with his wife Sara at a concert by Israeli pop star Eden Ben Zaken. A few days earlier, he filmed a campaign video at Jerusalem’s Malha Mall meeting shoppers, including children. The Central Elections Committee later ordered the video removed because election law bars the use of children in campaign propaganda.
Likud also rolled out billboards showing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani alongside the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Hezbollah under the slogan, “They want Netanyahu to lose. Don’t let them win.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post ‘Have a problem, call the PM,’ says Netanyahu as he gives out his number in campaign video appeared first on The Forward.
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Providence voters to put Israel boycott movement to major test at the ballot box
(JTA) — As pro-Palestinian progressives find some success at the 2026 ballot box, the long-gestating Israel divestment campaign is looking to capitalize in Rhode Island.
Voters in Providence, the state capital, will vote on a referendum this November saying the city should refrain from investing in “foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide.”
The language of the actual ballot petition does not mention Israel, nor any other country, by name. But the signature campaign was led by Providence for Palestine, a local activist coalition, and both its proponents and opponents have framed the measure as a referendum on Israel and the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
With the referendum’s ballot placement secured, Providence has become the largest American municipality ever to place divestment before the voting public.
“We’re in this moment when the general public at large, and particularly Democratic voters, very much understand what’s going on in Gaza and Palestine as genocide, as apartheid, and want their leaders to take action on it,” Zack Kliger, a lead organizer of the ballot initiative and member of the Rhode Island chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Kliger described the current divestment campaign as having “definitely been led disproportionately by Jewish organizers.”
To determine which countries are “conducting” any of its list of human rights abuses, the referendum would rely on “resolutions” from various bodies, including the United Nations Security Council, International Court of Justice and “any” U.S. court ruling or U.N. body. Some, though not all, of those bodies have reached conclusions that would implicate Israel in the ballot language’s divestment campaign.
Both Israel and the Trump administration have strongly rejected all genocide accusations leveled against the country. “Apartheid” can be considered an independent crime under international law, while “ethnic cleansing” has no formal legal definition.
Divestment from Israel has seen some success on the municipal level since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and Israel’s military response in Gaza, which has sunk the country’s popularity across the American electorate. Last year a non-binding divestment resolution in Somerville, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb with less than half of Providence’s population, became the first such initiative to win at the ballot box. Over objections from Jewish groups, the city this summer began exploring the question of how to enact the measure into law.
Critics of divestment measures argue that they force local governments to put undue focus on international issues; could prompt division and backlash against local Jewish communities, and jeopardize public pension programs. The Providence campaign’s decision to avoid mentioning Israel in the ballot language sets it apart from similar initiatives, while also neutralizing claims, made against other resolutions, that such measures unfairly single out Israel.
Yet local Jewish groups say the risk to the community remains.
“All this will do [is] stoke more division in our community, and potentially make Jewish people here feel more unsafe,” Stephanie Hague, chief strategy officer of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, told JTA.
Hague noted that the ballot language, as written, prompts questions about the authority of the international bodies making judgments about what constitutes genocide, ethnic cleansing and other terms in in the initiative. She said that the Alliance would campaign against the ballot measure and, if it passes, explore legal options for putting up roadblocks to it.
A 2024 proposal to the city council urged Providence, whose approximately 15,000 Jews make up around 7% of the population, not to invest in Israel bonds. The measure failed to make it out of committee. Likewise, the board of Brown University, the Ivy League school located in Providence, voted on a divestment resolution as part of the demands of the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment movement in 2024. It failed.
Activists are more confident this time, citing the success in Somerville — where, unlike in Providence, Israel was mentioned by name as the target of the winning ballot measure. Also unlike Somerville, whose measure was non-binding, Providence’s initiative would mandate city action.
Supporters also note that Providence joined a 2006 divestment initiative against Sudan to protest ethnic cleansing in Darfur, a divestment campaign that was spearheaded by American Jewish groups.
“We’re really proud of the legacy of the American Jewish community and standing up on social issues,” Kliger, who grew up in the Conservative movement, attended a Jewish day school in Brooklyn and has family in Israel, told JTA.
Unlike in Pittsburgh, where a similar 2024 initiative was undone before the election following legal challenges to the signatures, the Providence activists were able to collect and verify more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The initiative’s supporters said they had identified around $2.5 million in city funds that would be affected by a divestment order. They cited American companies frequently targeted by pro-Palestinian activists, such as construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar and weapons firm Axon Enterprise.
The city council of Portland, Maine, also passed a divestment proposal in 2024, though that city’s mayor, after initially endorsing the plan, later said he regretted having done so because of the divisiveness it spurred.
Some progressive Jewish professionals in Providence say the initiative is in keeping with their values.
“I know there are others out there who think that this is a situation where one would need to choose between their Jewish principles and other principles. I don’t perceive it that way,” Lex Rofeberg, senior Jewish educator with the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound, told JTA about his support for the ballot campaign.
Rofeberg, a Providence resident, said it would be wrong for non-Jews to conclude that “it is a Jewish value to support human rights violations.”
“For those who see a ballot initiative that does not name Israel at all, but simply says we should not invest our dollars in atrocities — for people who see that as somehow threatening to Judaism, why would they think that?” he asked.
Hague, the Jewish Alliance staffer opposing the initiative, sees just such a threat to Jewish interests. She acknowledged that it can be hard to communicate to non-Jews, who would understandably oppose genocide and apartheid, the ways in which her group sees the BDS movement as “a calling card for antisemitism.”
She outlined what she saw as her group’s mission: “We have to do so much education in a short period of time, and helping people understand the Jewish community’s relationship to Israel, and then understanding this initiative’s relationship to the BDS movement and how those things are connected, and the real fear and isolation many Jewish Americans are already feeling, particularly after Oct. 7.”
The political environment, though, may be unfriendly to such efforts. Following broader national trends, the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, set for Sept. 9, is also pivoting to a large degree around Israel.
Incumbent Mayor Brett Smiley, who converted to Judaism and held a bar mitzvah while in office, is a vocal Israel supporter who opposes the ballot initiative. His progressive challenger, state Rep. David Morales, has backed the ballot initiative.
So too have some local elected officials with Jewish heritage. “For any community that we are identified with, and for the sake of our soul and our humanity, we have to be able to say, ‘This is not OK,’” Rachel Miller, city council president, told JTA.
Miller, who has a Jewish father and Catholic mother, said she considers herself “culturally” Jewish and objected to the idea that there is a single Jewish voice on the issue. She believes, she said, in “disconnecting the actions of a state against a group of people from my personal Jewish heritage, from my personal Jewish identity.”
Even if passed, it’s possible the ballot initiative could run afoul of a statewide ban on working with government contractors who openly boycott Israel — a so-called “anti-BDS law,” one of many such measures enacted in a range of states.
Those laws themselves have been debated for years. This fall a ballot initiative in Oak Park, Illinois, a liberal Chicago suburb, will ask voters to register a formal objection to that state’s anti-boycott law. The initiative, which is opposed by local Jewish groups, survived a legal challenge on Monday.
Hague acknowledged current Jewish divisions on Israel, and the difficult political climate for pro-Israel Jewish groups. Facing down a ballot initiative like this, she said, takes work.
“I think we know public opinion is not supportive of Israel right now. I think it’s not an issue that people understand implicitly when they just read a ballot question,” she said. “So yes, of course, there’s reason for concern, and I think no matter what happens at the ballot, I still think it’s an important moment.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Providence voters to put Israel boycott movement to major test at the ballot box appeared first on The Forward.
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Dutch broadcaster pulls out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation
(JTA) — The Dutch public broadcaster Avrotros has pulled out of the next Eurovision Song Contest, saying that Israel’s participation undermined the event’s neutrality.
Avrotros announced on Monday that it was withdrawing from the world’s largest music event next year because it “can no longer be considered neutral, with a participating country still involved in a large-scale military conflict.”
Eurovision included 35 countries in 2026, all of them in Europe except for Israel and Australia. Avrotros said the contest’s independence was compromised by divisions surrounding “the severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza and the ongoing restrictions on press freedom.”
Avrotros’ withdrawal does not necessarily mean that the Netherlands won’t be part of the 2027 competition in Burgas, Bulgaria. Public-service broadcasters serve as the technical sponsors of competing artists, and Avrotros said it returned responsibility for Dutch participation in Eurovision to the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep, or NPO, the coordinating body for public broadcasters in the Netherlands. NPO could hand it off to a different broadcaster.
The Netherlands was absent from Eurovision in 2026, when Avrotros pulled out for the first time over Israel’s participation and NPO ruled out identifying another broadcaster.
Eurovision has become a focal point in European backlash against Israel’s actions in Gaza. The Netherlands was joined last year by boycotts from Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia, a bloc representing Israel’s strongest critics in Europe. The competition was viewed by 131 million people, down 35 million from the previous year.
The 2026 event in Vienna also saw thousands of protesters, while over 1,000 artists signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Eurovision. Boycotters have accused the European Broadcasting Union, which owns the contest, of a double standard for allowing Israel to remain while banning Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Swiss singer Nemo, who won in 2024, returned their trophy last year in protest against Israel’s inclusion.
Earlier this month, Eurovision organizers announced new rules that bar countries involved in armed conflict from hosting the competition. But the changes did not sufficiently prove that Eurovision would remain “independent and neutral,” according to Avrotros.
“It is undeniable that international conflicts are increasingly affecting the Contest, undermining its neutral character,” Avrotros Director-General Taco Zimmerman said in a statement. “The Eurovision Song Contest has therefore become a platform for division.”
Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, said in a statement that organizers “regret” Avrotros’ decision but will continue to coordinate with NPO about opportunities for another broadcaster to take its place.
“We very much hope that audiences and artists in the Netherlands can continue to be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest,” said Green.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Dutch broadcaster pulls out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation appeared first on The Forward.
