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A new organization aims to combat antisemitism and spread Jewish joy in New York’s theater industry
Shortly after Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, Seth Rudetsky, a well-known New York City theater fixture and a host on Sirius XM’s On Broadway station, received an email from an American living in Israel who expressed confusion at the relative silence of the theater community concerning the plight of the hostages.
At first, Rudetsky — who is not particularly religious but is culturally connected to his Ashkenazi heritage — didn’t want to enter the fray. He had not been vocal on Israel in the past and had done little fundraising for Jewish causes generally.
But the more Rudetsky noticed the dearth of support for Israelis online, the more he realized that someone should do something. And so, along with his husband, James Wesley, and with support from others, Rudetsky began gathering talent to sing on a music video, based on “Bring Him Home” from “Les Miserables,” asking for the release of the hostages.
The effort was successful — the video Rudetsky music directed and helped produce, “Bring Them Home: A Broadway Prayer,” released Nov. 10, 2023, featured an all-star cast, including Tovah Feldshuh, Linda Lavin, Debra Messing and Billy Porter. It has received almost 500,000 views on its designated YouTube page.
Rudetsky was surprised at some of the pushback the video received. “I got some crazy posts,” he said, referring to social media posts that targeted him personally and labelled him as a “rabid Zionist.”
The hate Rudetsky experienced made him realize the need for the Jewish theater community to band together to combat what he saw as misinformation about Israel and Jews. And so he formed the Jewish Broadway Alliance. The organization’s aim, according to its mission statement, is “to support and empower Jewish artists through community, education, advocacy and celebration of our unique culture, heritage and peoplehood.”
On Sunday, JBA hosted a virtual Hanukkah gathering, celebrating the holiday but also recognizing the Bondi Beach attack. Among those appearing were actress Julie Benko, comedian Judy Gold and Tony-nominee Lorna Courtney, who called in from her vacation to participate.
“Seth is really great at gathering people and it just lifts you up,” said Courtney, who has a Jewish father and was not raised Jewish, and formally converted to Judaism earlier this year. “It brings light, it brings joy. You create your community. You have more friends because of it, more people that you can connect with.”
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, many Jews — and Jewish artists, specifically — have felt sidelined by their communities. Jewish authors have been dumped by their literary agents, Jewish comedians have had shows cancelled and visual artists have shared stories about being abandoned by fans and friends. Members of New York’s theater community also felt abandoned, despite the sentiment, as a 2023 New York Times headline put it, that “Jewish people built the American theater as we know it.”
For example, Damien Bassman, a drummer currently working in the Death Becomes Her orchestra, said there are generally observed sensitivities backstage when it comes to wearing attire that might offend. That hasn’t stopped another team member from wearing a “Free Gaza” shirt — even after Bassman tried to explain why he considered the slogan troubling.
“I think it is surprising [that] for a community that constantly talks about empathy and this idea of multiple things being true and nuance, there’s a remarkable lack of it when it comes to this particular issue,” said Israeli-born Broadway veteran Etai Benson, known for featured roles in The Band’s Visit and Company.
Benson said has lost friends over his support of Israel, but he emphasized that his in-person encounters have been better than the “troubling” material he has seen posted online.
The Jewish Broadway Alliance soft-launched by helping organize “Shabbat on Broadway,” a starry Shabbat service at the St. James Theatre on Jan. 27, 2024. From there, the organization expanded to recording YouTube segments about antisemitism and collecting anonymous feedback about anti-Jewish bias in the theater industry.
In March 2025, JBA launched a weekly virtual Shabbat, “designed to spread Jewish joy,” according to Rudetsky. The event has drawn the likes of Trading Spaces host Paige Davis, Tony Award-nominee Julia Lester and four-time Tony-winning director Jerry Zaks.
The organization is on the verge of being granted 501(c)(3) status. Rudetsky and the other volunteer leaders — who include actress Laura Patinkin and philanthropist Lee Perlman — hope that, with the help of a still-to-be-hired executive director, they can develop an educational program they can extend to different Broadway shows, with the goal of including antisemitism in DEI trainings.
Alexandra Socha, a recent Glinda in Wicked and Benson’s wife, converted to Judaism a few months before Oct 7. She said she now stands as a “proud Jew” who believes the Jewish theater community needs to make clear “we are not going to give up a part of our identity to be accepted by our fellow industry workers.”
“The best thing we can do is develop some training to help Broadway companies understand what antisemitism — and not just hatred of Jews but dismissal or distrust of Jews — looks like,” she said, adding that prior to her conversion, she was less cognizant of the impact of words and actions that now sting.
Tony-winner Ari’el Stachel — whose recent off-Broadway show, Other, unpacked his upbringing with an Ashkenazi mother and Yemeni Israeli father — hopes JBA can help showcase a wide range of Jewish voices, particularly those of Jews of color, which he believes is essential to help counter misplaced assumptions about Israel.
“It means a lot to me that Seth involved me and that he spoke about my Yemeni Jewish heritage,” Stachel said, referring to a recent JBA field trip to Other and a discussion with Rudetsky at an after-show talkback. “These are sort of basic facts that I’ve lived with my whole life that really complicate the white settler narrative. Seth is doing a lot of work on that. I think right now standing united in our full diversity is really important.”
Julie Benko, left, and Cantor Azi Schwartz star in a video that the Jewish Broadway Alliance helped make, “Hanukkah on Broadway,” filmed in Times Square on Dec. 13, 2024. (YouTube screenshot)
No one thinks one organization is going to solve antisemitism, even in a relatively small industry. But Rudetsky hopes JBA can help Jews in New York’s theater scene feel comfortable speaking out, something he feels is essential in these times.
Feldshuh, a four-time Tony nominee who’s currently in the Netflix hit Nobody Wants This, agrees. “I want to be clear that I’m a practical woman: If you want to kill me, I object,” she said. “It’s really quite simple. If you want to kill me, I object and I will speak out about that.”
Feldshuh, who has attended JBA events, relayed how misguided she finds her colleagues who support Palestinians without rejecting the noxious politics of Hamas. She said they are “supporting [a] value system which spells, if it ever took hold, it literally spells the death of Western civilization.”
As an example, Feldshuh referenced how women’s rights would be curtailed in the sort of Islamist fundamentalist society envisioned by Hamas. She believes several actors have fallen for “half-truths” from the “phenomenal Hamas/Hezbollah media machine” that have led to their public statements against Israel.
But she noted she and others still had their voices. People can speak up, she said, and Jews can persevere by celebrating their rich traditions through organizations such as JBA.
“[Community] is crucial,” she said. “And Seth Rudetsky is a lightning rod … He helps people get together for these age-old traditions of keeping the Sabbath.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Amid antisemitic attacks, Trump has forced an impossible choice on American synagogues
The Thursday attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, did not occur in a vacuum.
In the past few months, shots were fired at three congregations in Toronto; an explosion rocked a synagogue in Belgium; and an arsonist caused massive damage to Beth Israel Congregation in Mississippi. Antisemitic incidents in the United States have reached historic highs. The threat is real, it is escalating, and American Jews know it.
Which is why the federal government’s decision to use this moment in history to force Jewish communities to choose between their own safety and that of immigrants is so unforgivable.
That choice is being created as part of the government’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which under President Donald Trump has instituted troubling new changes.
The program was established in 2004 to help houses of worship pay for cameras, barriers, armed guards and alarm systems, then expanded after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in 2018. It has perhaps never mattered more than it does right now. It provides, quite literally, life-saving money. The demand for grants vastly outpaces the supply, with thousands of organizations competing for a fraction of the security funds they need.
Now, those funds come with new strings attached.
Beginning in 2025, the Department of Homeland Security attached sweeping ideological conditions to new security grants. Recipients of new awards must cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, and must also agree not to “operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology.” They additionally must not run any aid program which “benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration.”
When asked to clarify what those conditions mean in practice — whether a synagogue that declares itself a sanctuary for refugees would be disqualified, or whether a congregation offering programming for Jews of color or LGBTQ+ Jews would run afoul of the anti-DEI clause — the federal government’s answer has been months of contradictory guidance and confusion.
The terrifying potential consequences of that muddle were thrown into sharp relief by Thursday’s attack.
A man armed with a rifle rammed his truck through the doors of Temple Israel, driving down a hallway before being killed by the synagogue’s security staff. Thankfully, no congregants were hurt, and the children in the preschool run by the synagogue all made it home safely.
Many congregations do not have the independent resources to support security protocols as effective as Temple Israel’s proved to be. Instead, they rely on the government to help bridge the gap.
But under Trump’s second administration, security funding — the money that pays for the tools that may one day save lives — is now a lever to use to force political compliance.
This is of particular significance for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S. and that to which Temple Israel belongs. The movement’s commitment to welcoming the stranger, hachnasat orchim — stemming from the commandment to love the stranger, repeated no fewer than 36 times in the Torah — is core to its identity. It is no coincidence that many Reform congregations have declared themselves sanctuaries for refugees.
And it’s of particular significance because antisemitic violence is often linked to anti-immigrant sentiment. The deadliest act of antisemitic violence in U.S. history, the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, was motivated by hatred toward immigrants, and toward Jewish programs that aid them.
The Trump administration’s demand that liberal American Jews choose between a foundational Jewish value and basic safety from violence is heartbreaking. One anonymous rabbi described the dilemma with devastating clarity to JTA: “Money is being given to us on condition that we violate a specific mitzvah. I don’t see how we can possibly accept that money.”
Rabbi Jill Maderer in Philadelphia put it even more bluntly, saying “Jewish safety requires inclusive democracy and inclusive democracy requires Jewish safety. We do not comply so we will not apply.”
These are communities under armed threat — as Thursday clearly reminded us — forced to choose between their physical safety and their moral integrity. That is a choice that no American religious community should ever have to make. The government’s obligation to protect its citizens, especially its most targeted minorities, must not come with an ideological price tag.
What makes this especially galling is the timing. A government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, born out of a political standoff over immigration enforcement, is currently halting the review of security grant applications. Synagogues that applied for funding months ago are waiting for approvals that may not come.
They are waiting, in many cases, to find out whether the security upgrades that might have made the difference under circumstances like those that unfolded in Michigan will be funded or not.
There is a word for demanding that a persecuted minority community abandon its values in exchange for protection: extortion. The Trump administration would no doubt dispute that framing. After all, the administration claims to care deeply about Jewish safety. Thursday’s attack makes clear that it is not enough for the administration to make that claim; it must prove its commitment through action.
It must remove the political conditions from the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. It must let houses of worship be what they are: sanctuaries, not instruments of federal policy.
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‘For As Long As Necessary’: Katz Says Campaign Against Iran Entering Decisive Stage
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias make statements to the press, at the Ministry of Defense in Athens Greece, Jan. 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
i24 News – Israel Katz said Saturday that the confrontation with Iran had entered a “decisive phase,” as US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets continued and regional tensions escalated.
Speaking after a security assessment at Israel’s defense headquarters alongside Eyal Zamir, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, and senior military and intelligence officials, the Israeli defense minister said the campaign against the Islamic Republic would continue “for as long as necessary.”
“The global and regional struggle against Iran, led by American President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is intensifying and entering its decisive phase,” Katz said.
Katz also praised US strikes on Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil hub, describing them as a “severe blow” to the Iranian regime. He said the attacks were an appropriate response to Iranian threats against the strategic Strait of Hormuz and to what he called Tehran’s attempts to pressure the international community.
At the same time, Katz said the Israeli Air Force was continuing a “powerful wave of attacks” against targets in Tehran and other parts of Iran.
He accused the Iranian leadership of using “regional and global terrorism” and strategic blackmail in an effort to deter Israel and the United States from pursuing their military campaign, warning that such actions would be met with a “strong and uncompromising response.”
Katz added that the outcome of the conflict would ultimately depend on the Iranian population. “Only the Iranian people can put an end to this situation through a determined struggle, until the overthrow of the terrorist regime and the salvation of Iran,” he said.
According to the minister, the confrontation now pits the Iranian regime’s determination to survive against growing military pressure from Israel and its allies.
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Trump Rejects Efforts to Launch Iran Ceasefire Talks, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump speaks on the day he honors reigning Major League Soccer (MLS) champion Inter Miami CF players and team officials with an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
President Donald Trump’s administration has rebuffed efforts by Middle Eastern allies to start diplomatic negotiations aimed at ending the Iran war that started two weeks ago with a massive US-Israeli air assault, according to three sources familiar with the efforts.
Iran, for its part, has rejected the possibility of any ceasefire until US and Israeli strikes end, two senior Iranian sources told Reuters, adding that several countries had been trying to mediate an end to the conflict.
The lack of interest from Washington and Tehran suggests both sides are digging in for an extended conflict, even as the widening war inflicts civilian casualties and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz sends oil prices soaring.
US strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export hub, on Friday night underscored Trump’s determination to press ahead with his military assault. Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz shut and threatened to step up attacks on neighboring countries.
The war has killed more than 2,000 people, mostly in Iran, and created the biggest-ever oil supply disruption as maritime traffic has halted in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported.
ATTEMPTS TO OPEN LINES OF COMMUNICATION
Oman, which mediated talks before the war, has tried multiple times to open a line of communication, but the White House has made clear it is not interested, according to two sources, who like others in this story were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about diplomatic matters.
A senior White House official confirmed Trump has rebuffed those efforts to start talks and is focused on pressing ahead with the war to further weaken Tehran’s military capabilities.
“He’s not interested in that right now, and we’re going to continue with the mission unabated. Maybe there’s a day, but not right now,” the official said.
During the first week of the war, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that Iran’s leadership and military were so battered by US-Israeli strikes that they wanted to talk, but that it was “Too Late!” He has a history of shifting foreign policy stances without warning, making it hard to rule out that he might test the waters for restarting diplomacy.
“President Trump said new potential leadership in Iran has indicated they want to talk and eventually will talk. For now, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated,” a second senior White House official said when asked to comment on this story.
The Iranian sources said Tehran has rejected efforts by several countries to negotiate a ceasefire until the US and Israel end their airstrikes and meet Iran’s demands, which include a permanent end to US and Israeli attacks and compensation as part of a ceasefire.
Egypt, which was involved in mediation before the war, has also tried to reopen communications, according to three security and diplomatic sources. While the efforts do not appear to have made progress, they have secured some military restraint from neighboring countries hit by Iran, according to one of the sources.
Egypt’s foreign ministry, the government of Oman and the Iranian government did not respond to requests for comment.
POSITIONS HARDEN ON ALL SIDES
The war’s impact on global oil markets has significantly increased the cost for the United States.
Some US officials and advisers to Trump urge a quick end to the war, warning that surging gasoline prices could exact a high political price from the president’s Republican Party, with US midterm elections looming.
Others are pressing Trump to maintain the offensive against the Islamic Republic to destroy its missile program and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to Reuters reporting.
Trump’s rejection of diplomatic efforts could indicate that, for now, the administration has no plans for a quick end to the war.
Indeed, both the United States and Iran appear even less willing to engage than during the opening days of the war, when senior US officials reached out to Oman to discuss de-escalating, according to several sources.
One source said Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had also sought to use Oman as a conduit for ceasefire discussions that would have involved U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
But those discussions have not materialized.
Instead, Iran’s position has hardened, said a third senior Iranian source.
“Whatever was communicated previously through the diplomatic channels is irrelevant now,” said the source.
“The Guards strongly believe that if they lose control over the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will lose the war,” the source added, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite paramilitary force that controls large parts of the economy.
“Therefore, the Guards will not accept any ceasefire, ceasefire talks, or diplomatic efforts, and Iran’s political leaders will not engage in such talks despite attempts by several countries.”