(JTA) — Jews around the world were already reeling after nearly two years of war and death in Gaza and the grim confirmation that many hostages hadn’t survived the Oct. 7 attacks or two years of captivity. Then came news of the shootings in Sydney, Australia, where 15 people were gunned down at a celebration of Hanukkah.

Despite its grief, the Jewish world also took time to celebrate the lives lived by a constellation of figures who made lasting contributions to film, architecture, politics and Jewish scholarship and letters.

In chronological order, here are obituaries of 18 notable Jews who died in 2025.

Marion Wiesel

Marion Wiesel (born Mary Renate Erster), a Holocaust survivor and humanitarian, married the writer and human rights activist Elie Wiesel in 1969, and was the translator of many of his award winning and influential books on the Holocaust, including the final edition of “Night.” Following Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel Prize win, the couple founded the Beit Tzipora Centers in Israel, an educational program for Ethiopian-Israeli youth, which Marion Wiesel went on to lead for a number of years. “In the alignment of stars that helped make Wiesel the international icon he became, his marriage to Marion was among the most significant,” wrote Joseph Berger in his 2023 biography “Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence.” She died on Feb. 2 at 94.

Jacqueline van Maarsen

In 1942, Anne Frank immortalized her friendship with Jacqueline van Maarsen, writing that she “is now my best friend.” While the pair were forced apart during the war, never to be reunited, van Maarsen went on to write multiple books about Frank, including 2008’s “My Name is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank.” In 1986, van Maarsen also began lecturing on the Holocaust and antisemitism at schools. “In her books and during school visits, Jacqueline spoke not only about her friendship with Anne but also about the dangers of anti-Semitism and racism, and where they can lead,” the Anne Frank House said of van Maarsen. She died on Feb. 13 at age 96.

Leonard Lauder

Leonard Lauder built his Jewish family’s business, The Estée Lauder Companies, into a cosmetics empire, serving as its president from 1972 to 1995 and as CEO from 1982 through 1999. But beyond his entrepreneurial prowess, Lauder also was a major patron of the arts, at one point donating a collection of paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York valued at more than $1 billion. “The number of lives he touched and positively impacted across all his endeavors is immeasurable,” his younger brother, Ronald, said. “His passion and generosity have inspired us all, and there are no words to express how much he will be missed.” He died on June 14 at 92.

David Schaecter

After losing 105 relatives during the Holocaust, David Schaecter went on to spend his life pushing for restitution, Holocaust education and vigilance against antisemitism. In 1989, Schaecter founded the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach and in 2000 created the Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA, which often took a more aggressive stance than other Jewish organizations in pursuing restitution of goods looted during the Holocaust. “I am here to remind everyone that there are still thousands of survivors alive today who are in desperate need, and who cannot be forgotten,” Schaecter told the Senate Special Committee on Aging on April 30. He died on Sept. 4 at 96.

Ruth Posner

After Ruth Posner escaped the Warsaw Ghetto along with her aunt as a child, she went on to flee to the United Kingdom at 16 where she began an illustrious career as an actress and dancer. She was a founding member of the London Contemporary Dance Company and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and also starred in films including “Leon the Pig Farmer” and “Love Hurts.” In 2022, she was awarded a British Empire Medal for her commitment to Holocaust education. She died on Sept. 21 at 96.

Aron Bell

Aron Bell was only 11 or 12 when he and his older brothers formed the famed Bielski partisans, a group that saved more than 1,200 Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust. The brothers’ tale of defiance also inspired several adaptations of their story, including the books “The Bielski Brothers” by Peter Duffy and “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” by Nechama Tec, which was later made into the 2008 film “Defiance” with actor George MacKay portraying Bell. “If you were in the company of those three brothers, you felt like you had a whole army behind you, you were fearless,” said Bell in his 1996 testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation. He died on Sept. 22 at 98 at his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Katherine Janus Kahn

Katherine Janus Kahn’s vibrant watercolor illustrations in Jewish children’s books helped shape the imaginations of generations of Jewish children. Beginning with her paper-cut illustrations for “The Family Haggadah,” which became a bestseller when it was published in 1987, Janus Kahn later went on to illustrate more than 50 books for Kar-Ben, a publishing house for Jewish children’s books. Among her work for Kar-Ben was the “Sammy Spider” franchise, which includes more than two dozen books about Jewish holidays, prayers and practices. ““We are profoundly grateful for her legacy, and for the countless stories and memories she leaves behind,” said Kar-Ben. She died on Oct. 6 at age 83.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union since 2020, was widely respected across denominations and was considered an exemplar of Modern Orthodoxy’s historical blend of religious and secular expertise. In 2023, he testified about antisemitism on college campuses at a hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which prompted several investigations. “Rabbi Hauer was a true talmid chacham, a master teacher and communicator, the voice of Torah to the Orthodox community and the voice of Orthodoxy to the world,” the Orthodox Union said after his death. He died on Oct. 14 at 60.

Susan Stamberg

When Susan Stamberg first got behind the microphone at the newly minted National Public Radio in 1972, some board members feared she was “too New York” for Midwest audiences. But Stamberg nevertheless became one of the station’s “founding mothers,” helping to craft its intimate, often humorous and consistently eclectic voice. Stamberg was the co-anchor of “All Things Considered” for 14 years, before pivoting to cultural stories. “I think all of that is very Jewish, the telling of stories, but also the seeking of opinions and also being open to the range of opinions that are out there,” Stamberg told the Jewish Women’s Archive in 2011. She died on Oct. 16 at 87.

Tova Ben-Dov

Tova Ben-Dov devoted six decades of her life to the Women’s International Zionist Organization, serving as the president of World WIZO from 2012 to 2016. She also served as the vice president of the World Jewish Congress, a member of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency for Israel and a member of the International Council of Women according to JNS.“For 60 years, Tova devoted her heart and soul to WIZO—a lifetime of love, leadership and giving to women, children and families in Israel,” said World WIZO chairperson Anita Friedman. She died on Oct. 17 at 88 in Tel Aviv.

Arthur Waskow

Rabbi Arthur Waskow first became one of the most notable progressive rabbinic voices in 1969 when he created the “Freedom Seder,” a version of the Passover Haggadah that blended contemporary liberation struggles with the ancient passover story. Throughout his career, Waskow authored more than two dozen books that offered a Jewish perspective on civil rights, economic injustice, nuclear arms control and climate change. He was arrested more than two dozen times at protests. He died on Oct. 20 at 92.

Mark Mellman

At the height of his illustrious career as a pollster and political consultant, Mark Mellman was the go-to pollster for Democrats as well as a wide variety of firms and interests, including the NBA’s Washington Wizards, United Airlines and both Pepsi and Coca-Cola. In 2019, he founded the Democratic Majority for Israel, a group he said was formed to “strengthen the pro-Israel tradition of the Democratic Party, fight for Democratic values and work within the progressive movement to advance policies that ensure a strong U.S.-Israel relationship.” He died on Nov. 21 at 70.

Carrie Soloway

Carrie Soloway, a Jewish psychiatrist in Chicago, came out as a transgender woman at 70-years-old, a milestone that formed the basis for her children’s hit Amazon TV series “Transparent.” After the show’s 2014 premiere, Soloway visited the White House under then-President Barack Obama and became friends with trans elected officials, while “Transparent” blazed a path for modern LGBTQ Jews exploring their identity. “She loved the show and us and the character, but sometimes she wasn’t in the mood to be everyone’s favorite trailblazer,” her son, Joey, said after her death. She died on Nov. 21 at the age of 88.

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard was in his 80s and had already won four Tony Awards during his prolific career as a playwright and screenwriter when he finished “Leopoldstadt,” which portrayed a Jewish family dealing with rising antisemitism in Vienna, and a young writer, much like him, who only earned of his Jewish forebears as an adult. His final work won the Tony for best play after it opened on Broadway in 2022. Stoppard’s other era-defining plays include “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” (1968), “Travesties” (1974), “The Real Thing” (1986) and “The Coast of Utopia” (2007). “I just live my life and let the Jewishness take care of itself,” Stoppard told the New York Times Magazine in 2022. He died Nov. 29 at 88.

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry, born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, was one of the most influential talents in the history of modernist architecture. Among his most acclaimed works, which feature his signature sculptural style, are the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, DZ Bank Building in Berlin and oversized fish sculptures he said were inspired by the carp his grandmother would turn into gefilte fish. In 1989, Gehry won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, considered one of the top awards in the field of architecture, and in 1999 won the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. While Gehry identified as an atheist throughout his adult life, he told the Jewish Journal that “there’s a curiosity built into the [Jewish] culture” that influenced his career. He died on Dec. 5 at 96.

Rabbi Eliezer Diamond

Rabbi Eliezer Diamond taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary for over three decades, where he also published several texts on the Talmud and left an indelible mark on generations of rabbis and Jewish scholars. In 2003, he published “Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture.” “Wherever I am, God is there too. I hope that I will return home soon,” wrote Diamond in his last post on Facebook, where he detailed his long struggle with cancer. He died on Dec. 11 at 73.

Rob Reiner

Rob Reiner, a beloved Jewish film director, actor and liberal activist, left his mark on modern American comedy and drama with his generation-defining classics from the 1980s and 1990s, including “When Harry Met Sally…,” “The Princess Bride,” “Stand By Me,” “A Few Good Men” and “This Is Spinal Tap.” The son of legendary Jewish comedian Carl Reiner, he also starred in the ’70s sitcom “All in the Family” and became a prominent Democratic Party activist later in life. Reiner, 78, and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were found dead in their California home on Dec. 14. The couple’s son, Nick, has been charged in connection to their killing. Days after his death, Reiner gave a pre-recorded address at a virtual Holocaust survivor event where he told attendees, “If ever we needed to be resilient, it’s now.”

Norman Podhoretz

Norman Podhoretz was 30 when he was appointed to run the American Jewish Committee’s thought journal Commentary. Over his career, he charted a path from Jewish liberal to pro-Israel neoconservative, serving as the godfather to a movement that long dominated late- and post-Cold War conservative politics. He made waves in 2016 for endorsing Donald Trump in his first run for president. “He was a man of great wit and a man of deep wisdom and he lived an astonishing and uniquely American life,” his son, John Podhoretz, wrote in a remembrance for the magazine announcing his father’s death. “And he bound himself fast to his people, his heritage, and his history.” He died on Dec. 16 at 95.

As the year concludes, the New York Jewish Week also remembers 13 Jewish New Yorkers who died in 2025. Among them are people who left an indelible mark on New York City, including rabbis, musicians, writers, activists and a supercentenarian.

Peter Yarrow 

As one-third of the American folk band Peter, Paul and Mary, the Jewish musician and progressive activist Peter Yarrow was one of the writers of the group’s hit song “Puff the Magic Dragon” and their Hanukkah hit “Light One Candle,” which Yarrow said he wrote to express his opposition to Israel’s 1982 war in Lebanon. The band performed “Light One Candle” in Jerusalem in 1983 to a positive response.

Yarrow died on Jan. 7 at 86.

Rose Girone

A rare supercentenarian, Rose Girone was thought to be the world’s oldest living Holocaust survivor, turning 113 years old in January. As a young mother during the Holocaust, Girone was able to rescue her husband from the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the small family of three sought refuge in Shanghai, where they survived the war and Girone built a business selling her handmade clothing. In New York, she taught knitting and also ran a knitting shop in Forest Hills. She later divorced and remarried. Even after she closed her shop, she continued knitting until the end of her life.

Girone died on Feb. 24.

Michelle Trachtenberg

Michelle Trachtenberg was a child and teen star known for her roles in “Harriet the Spy,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “17 Again,” “Ice Princess,” and “Gossip Girl.” Born in New York City and raised in Brooklyn, Trachtenberg was the daughter of Jewish immigrants: Her mother was from the former Soviet Union, and her father was from Germany. In 2022 and 2023, she reprised her “Gossip Girl” role in the series reboot.

Trachtenberg died Feb. 26 at age 39 from complications related to diabetes.

Max Frankel 

The former executive editor of The New York Times fled the Nazis as a child, starting at the paper at  just 19 years old as a Columbia University campus correspondent. In his 40-plus-year career at The Times, he wrote the memo that convinced the paper’s lawyers that it should cover the Pentagon Papers — the leaked documents that revealed how the government deceived the public about the scope of the U.S. war in Vietnam. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his coverage of President Richard Nixon’s visit to China. In 2001, after his retirement, Frankel published an article in The New York Times acknowledging that before and after World War II, the publication had a policy of “reluctance to highlight the systematic slaughter of Jews.”

Frankel died on March 23 at age 94.

Ted Comet 

A Jewish communal leader and longtime Upper West Sider, Comet founded New York’s Celebrate Israel Parade (originally the Salute to Israel Parade). In the 1960s, he helped organize some of the first large demonstrations in support of Soviet Jewry. He was also a founder of the annual Israel Folk Dance Festival. Following his wife Shoshana’s death in 2012, he conducted tours of the tapestries she made telling the story of the trauma she endured as a teenager fleeing Belgium during World War II and in the years beyond. 

Comet died at age 100 on March 19. 

Helena Weinstock Weinrauch

Helena Weinstock Weinrauch survived a 500-mile death march to Bergen-Belsen and eventually found her way to New York. After her husband of 56 years, Joe Weinrauch, died in 2006, she discovered, at 88, the solace and  joy of ballroom dancing. Her story of survival and resilience was the subject of a 2015 documentary, “Fascination: Helena’s Story.” 

Weinrauch died at her home on the Upper West Side on May 25, one week shy of her 101st birthday.

Tom Lehrer

The New York-born mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer enrolled at Harvard University at just 15 years old. Though his post-college music career was relatively brief, he gained a cult following for musical parodies like “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” and “The Vatican Rag.” Lehrer described his family’s relationship to Judaism as “more to do with the delicatessen than the synagogue.” But his iconic song “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica” became what he called “a sort of answer to ‘White Christmas.’”

Lehrer died Jul. 25 at the age of 97.

Wesley LePatner

One of the highest-ranking women at Blackstone and a mother of two young children, Wesley LePatner was an alumna of Yale University, a board member for UJA-Federation of New York and an active member of various Jewish communities in New York and Massachusetts. On July 29, a gunman opened fire at her office building, 345 Park Ave., killing three people including LePatner. “She was the most loving wife, mother, daughter, sister and relative, who enriched our lives in every way imaginable,” her family said in a statement.

LePatner died Jul. 29 at the age of 43.

Julia Hyman

Julia Hyman was also a victim of the shooting at 345 Park Ave. A Manhattan native, Cornell graduate and an associate at Rudin Management, Julia Hyman was a fan of the United States women’s soccer team and Jewish singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, her friends and family recalled at a memorial service in July.

Hyman died July 29 at the age of 27.

Saul Zabar

The son of the immigrant Jewish founders of the iconic Upper West Side grocery store and delicatessen Zabar’s, Saul Zabar served as the president and principal owner of the “food emporium” for more than seven decades. Zabar was known for his hands-on approach, often working behind the fish counter — the gem of his family’s market. Zabar’s is known for serving traditional Ashkenazi foods like bagels, babka, deli meats, fish salads, pickles and rugelach. On an average week, Zabar’s sells 2,000 pounds of smoked fish and 8,000 pounds of coffee each week to about 40,000 customers, according to The New York Times.

Zabar died Oct. 7 at 97.

Rabbi Alvin Kass

The longest-serving NYPD chaplain, Rabbi Alvin Kass served New York’s police for 60 years. His career included managing the NYPD’s 9/11 response, and in the days following the terror attack, hosting Rosh Hashanah services at LaGuardia Airport for first responders. He attended the funerals of every NYPD officer who was killed on 9/11, including two who were Jewish. Kass was the third Jewish chaplain to work for the NYPD. In 1981, he attempted to disarm a Jewish hostage-taker by bribing him with a pastrami sandwich from Carnegie Deli. 

Mayer Moskowitz

The early life of Rabbi Mayer Moskowitz, longtime educator at the Upper East Side’s Ramaz School and Camp Massad in the Poconos, was forever altered by the Holocaust.

Born in Czernowitz in what was then Romania and today Ukraine, Moskowitz watched the Gestapo shoot and kill his father, a 30-year-old Hasidic rabbi, in their synagogue. In the following years, he would be deported to a ghetto, separated from his mother and sister, escape the ghetto, make a life for himself in Israel, and learn his mother and sister had both survived the war, leaving his new life in Israel behind to join his mother in New York City, where he became a prominent teacher of thousands of students, including Israeli president Isaac Herzog. Moskowitz recounted his life story in his autobiography, “A Memoir of Sanctity.”

Moskowitz died Nov. 11 at 98 years old.

Helen Nash

Starting with “Kosher Cuisine” in 1984, philanthropist Helen Nash wrote cookbooks that proved that kosher cooking “could be as varied, elegant and exciting as one wished to make it,” as she put it. A refugee from Poland, she married Jack Nash, a pioneer in hedge funds, and together they supported numerous Jewish organizations in New York City, including UJA-Federation of New York, Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Israel Museum, Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Yeshiva University.

Nash died on Dec. 8 at the age of 89.

The post 18 notable Jews who died in 2025 appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — In his brief time in the House, freshman Jewish Congressman Randy Fine has built a reputation for combative outbursts — particularly about Muslims.

But the Florida Republican ignited a new round of controversy earlier this month with a series of disparaging remarks about Palestinians and what he called “mainstream Muslims” that his critics —on the left and right — say are not just provocative but amount to “genocidal.”

“I don’t know how you make peace with those who seek your destruction. I think you destroy them first,” Fine said during a Dec. 10 hearing with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, after remarking, “There has to be a reformation, really, of Islam.” 

He doubled down on similar rhetoric aimed at “mainstream Muslims” and “mainstream Islam” in the week that followed, and has intensified his stance following the Hanukkah terror attack in Australia by avowed ISIS supporters. 

“It’s time for a Muslim travel ban, radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants, and citizenship revocations wherever possible,” he declared in a statement posted to social media. “Mainstream Muslims have declared war on us. The least we can do is kick them the hell out of America.”

Fine’s remarks — which have also included putting blame on Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar “and her fellow Somalis” for a public assistance fraud scheme carried out largely by Somali defendants — go far beyond what other Jewish pro-Israel elected officials have said publicly. They have been widely condemned, including by other Jews.

“As a part of the Jewish community, I know that I must speak out,” Noam Shelef, of the progressive group New Jewish Narrative, said in a statement. “Rep Fine, who wears a kippah, will be seen as a face of the American Jewish community. His hate is not who we are.”

Yet at a moment when the global Jewish community is reeling from the aftermath of the Australia attack, Fine’s support among the conservative pro-Israel Jews he seeks to cultivate has not been dented in any obvious way. 

The Republican Jewish Coalition remains in Fine’s corner, and pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC has endorsed him heading into a contested primary for his reelection. Since his initial comments about Muslims, he has spoken at a conference hosted by the Jerusalem Post, attended Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Hanukkah party and spoke at a Hanukkah gathering for Young Jewish Conservatives. Some of his fans tell JTA they think his comments about Muslims are on the mark.

“It certainly isn’t the words that I myself would use to describe the situation,” Matt Brodsky, a Jewish GOP strategist who worked with Trump’s first-term Middle East diplomatic team and has worked on political campaigns for Muslim Republicans, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

But, Brodsky said, “He could very well be making a point that the Muslims who would stand with Jews or stand with Israel tend to be the exception, not the rule. And I don’t know that I would argue differently.” Brodsky added that, in the grief of the Australia attacks, he doesn’t want “to be splitting hairs over what a Jew says.”

The Trump administration also seems to agree with Fine’s assessment on restricting Muslims from entering the country. On Dec. 16, the federal government added the Palestinian Authority, as well as new Muslim-majority countries including Syria, to its travel ban.

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, of Alabama, also recently called for a Muslim ban, leading to condemnation from Chuck Schumer, the Jewish Democratic Senate minority leader. (On Dec. 14, Vickie Paladino, a Republican member of the New York City Council, made similar remarks claiming that expelling Muslims would aid the fight against antisemitism, and expounded on her views in the Queens Jewish Link.)

Reached for comment, Fine pointed to his social media statements but also seemed to soften his stance. 

“Not all Muslims are or support terrorism,” Fine wrote to JTA. He added that he was “grateful” for “Muslims like” Ahmed el-Ahmed — the bystander in Australia who was shot while disarming one of the gunmen, and has been praised by Jewish groups for his heroism.

Such people, Fine added, “just want to live in peace [and] prosperity with the rest of us.”

Fine, who was elected in an April special election in a deep-red district with few Jews that he himself still had not moved into months after his victory, has made his Jewish identity an unmissable component of his politics. He wears a kippah on the House floor, is an unwavering Israel supporter and has called out members of his own party who he believes have crossed the line into antisemitism. On social media, where he’s adopted the “Hebrew Hammer” moniker, he shows off new MAGA-themed yarmulkes he added to his collection.  

Part and parcel with that persona are Fine’s views on Muslims and Palestinians, which some even in his party consider extreme. As the right in general is wrestling with a larger problem of antisemitic influence and the erosion of a once-assured consensus in support for Israel, Fine’s bellicose rhetoric has made enemies on his side of the aisle — even as he, like many other conservatives, has claimed to be following in the footsteps of Charlie Kirk, the slain founder of Turning Point USA.

In July, amid reports that Israel was withholding humanitarian aid to Gaza, Fine simultaneously called such reports “a lie” and also declared, “Release the hostages. Until then, starve away.” The American Jewish Committee and other groups decried his remarks. An undaunted Fine repeated the phrase “starve away,” along with variations like “#KeepOnStarving,” several times in the waning months of the Israel-Gaza war — even as backlash to his remarks grew on the right. 

“A Jewish U.S. representative calling for the continued starvation of innocent people and children is disgraceful,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican and recent Trump critic who will be leaving the House in January, tweeted after Fine’s July remarks about Gaza. 

Lauren Witzke, a QAnon activist and former Republican Senate candidate in Delaware who attended Turning Point USA’s recent AmericaFest gathering, has repeatedly slung personal insults at Fine. She has promised to “personally fundraise for the candidate who primaries this genocidal freak who gets off watching little toddlers and infants being blown to pieces.” (Aaron Baker, a challenger who also ran against Fine in April, took Witzke up on the offer even as he has made his own support for Israel part of his campaign platform.) 

Tucker Carlson, himself a lead driver of antisemitic conspiracy theories on the right and an emergent critic of Israel, has also lambasted Fine over the congressman’s calls, in May, for Gaza to be nuked. During his address at AmericaFest, the recent gathering hosted by right-wing group Turning Point USA at which antisemitism was a hot topic, Carlson more generally criticized Republicans who he said were “attacking millions of Americans because they’re Muslims. It’s disgusting. And I’m a Christian.”

At the time of his “starve away” remarks, Fine had not yet been endorsed by AIPAC for reelection. One of his non-Jewish primary opponents, Palm Coast City Council member Charles Gambaro, harshly criticized Fine’s Gaza remarks and declared that Gambaro, too, would seek AIPAC’s endorsement. 

Since then, AIPAC has endorsed Fine. 

“The pro-Israel community supports Rep. Fine because of his work to strengthen America’s partnership with Israel,” an AIPAC spokesperson told JTA earlier this month.

Another Jewish institution continuing to back Fine: the Republican Jewish Coalition. 

Following his “destroy them first” remarks, the Jewish Democratic Council of America said Fine “is blatantly engaging in hate speech.” The RJC’s X account, in turn, blasted its Democratic counterpart for condemning Fine.

“You are total clowns,” the RJC declared in a tweet directed at the JDCA.

The RJC continued: “Maybe start with holding Hakeem Jeffries accountable for campaigning with and endorsing antisemite Mayor-elect of NYC, Zohran Mamdani.”

The larger digital ecosystem of hard-line supporters of Israel has also regularly championed Fine. “Congressman Randy Fine is speaking truth to power — and it matters,” Betar USA, a pro-Israel group that has also demanded “blood in Gaza” and whose members have protested outside mosques, tweeted Dec. 17, a day after Fine tweeted, “We either wake up or Mainstream Muslims will conquer the West for good.”

“At a time when too many politicians stay silent or hide behind cowardly talking points, Randy Fine stands unapologetically for America, for Israel, and for moral clarity,” the Betar post continued. “He says what others are afraid to say — and he doesn’t back down.”

Gabe Groisman, a Jewish podcaster and former mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida, has also approvingly featured Fine on his podcast.

Not all Jewish conservatives agree with Fine’s bluster. 

“On the one hand, I’m glad there is somebody who’s giving voice to a more robust pro-Jewish, pro-Israel point of view,” one Jewish nonprofit professional who ran for office as a Republican told JTA after Fine’s “starve away” remarks this summer. “On the other hand, I wish it was someone other than Randy Fine.”

Without questioning Fine’s pro-Israel bonafides, the former candidate — who asked to remain anonymous, citing ongoing involvement in Jewish organizations — believed the politician was failing to meet the moment. 

“Those of us who are publicly, overtly Zionist, and especially those who seek public office based on their Zionism, I think have an obligation to be thoughtful about how they present themselves,” the Republican said, comparing Fine’s outbursts unfavorably to those of far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. “They say things which are then used against Israel in the international press.”

For Brodsky, though, Fine is a necessary truth-teller at a time when vocal Israel critics such as Omar get what he believes is a free pass for their own extreme remarks.

“I personally don’t like getting into games where we deal with shoving a microphone in exclusively Republican faces in order to justify anything a Republican said, but we don’t do that for Ilhan Omar,” he said. Brodsky had worked on the 2024 campaign of a Muslim Republican challenger to Omar until he was fired over tweets in which he stated that Israel should “carpet bomb” an area of Lebanon where Irish peacekeepers were stationed.

Fine is still embracing his role as a heel of sorts. When Omar called for his expulsion earlier this month over his “destroy them first” comments, he had a simple retort: “Go for it.”

The post Rep. Randy Fine’s incendiary comments on Muslims alarm many Jews — without denting his standing on the pro-Israel right appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Sid Caesar once dominated American television so completely that it was hard to imagine Saturday nights without him. In the early 1950s, his live sketch-comedy program “Your Show of Shows” drew tens of millions of viewers. That show and its other iterations —  “The Admiral Broadway Revue,” “Caesar’s Hour” and “Sid Caesar Invites You” — launched the careers of Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen, and helped invent television comedy as we know it.

Caesar and an ensemble cast that included Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca performed movie and musical parodies, domestic skits featuring warring suburbanites and bits highlighting Caesar’s knack for “speaking” foreign languages in convincing gibberish. A parody of the hit show “This Is Your Life” has often been called the funniest sketch in the history of the form. Caesar and Reiner’s “Professor” routine — featuring Caesar as a German-accented know-it-all who knows very little — is the often uncredited precursor to Brooks and Reiner’s more enduring “2000-Year-Old Man.”  

And yet, as David Margolick recounts in his new biography, “When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy,” Caesar’s fame proved surprisingly fleeting. Caesar died in 2014 at 91. But well before then, his name had faded, even as his influence endured.

In a recent public conversation held as part of New York Jewish Week’s “Folio” series, Margolick — a longtime journalist and author — reflected on Caesar’s rise, his Jewish sensibility, the brutal pressures of early television, and why the man who changed comedy so profoundly all but vanished from popular memory.

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

For people who may not even know the name Sid Caesar, why is he worthy of a biography?

That’s the problem Mel Brooks raised when I interviewed him, and it actually became the epigraph of my book. He said to me, “People are going to say, ‘Gee, this is really good and really interesting. Just one question, David: Who’s Sid Caesar?’”

For people who lived in the 1950s, American television comedy really started with him. There were vaudeville leftovers and radio shows early on, but Sid Caesar was the first true television comic — someone whose skills were suited to television itself. There was an intimacy to his comedy that wouldn’t have worked in a big theater but worked on a small screen.

And the influence is enormous. Mel Brooks wrote for him. Larry Gelbart [creator of the TV series “M*A*S*H”] wrote for him. Neil Simon wrote for him. Woody Allen wrote for him. Carl Reiner worked with him and went on to create “The Dick Van Dyke Show” [based on his experience on the Caesar shows]. The tendrils of Sid Caesar’s comedy reach into sitcoms, “Saturday Night Live,” Broadway and film.

One challenge of the book was to explain how momentous he was — and the other was to explain how someone so influential could fall into such obscurity. 

Caesar is often associated with the Catskills, the upstate New York Jewish vacationland that was a proving ground for any number of Jewish comedians. How did his early life shape his comedy?

The Poconos [in Pennsylvania] were actually just as important as the Catskills in Sid’s case. The producer who really shaped his programs, Max Liebman, came out of Camp Tamiment in the Poconos, not the Catskills. That mattered.

Sid wasn’t a stand-up comic. He started as a musician. People noticed he was funny while horsing around during musical routines. His comedy was more sophisticated than wiseguy stand-up — it was sketch comedy, with music, dance and character work. 

And then there’s Yonkers [Caesar’s hometown just north of New York City]. His family ran a restaurant where the workers sat by ethnicity — Germans at one table, Slavs at another. Sid bused tables and absorbed the sound of all those languages. He said he could listen to a language for 15 minutes and imitate its musicality.

He didn’t really speak them. He’d sprinkle in a few words — ‘like chocolate chips in cookie batter,’ he said — but it sounded convincing. Ironically, the languages he avoided were Yiddish and Hebrew, the ones closest to home.

What was happening in television when Caesar arrived in 1949?

Television was empty. It was the electronic corollary of the American frontier. They had hours to fill and no idea how to do it. That’s why people remember watching wrestling. Comedy was going to be central, but nobody knew what kind. Caesar’s early shows weren’t pure comedy — they were variety shows with comedy at the center. Television comedy was still gestating.

And like Hollywood earlier, television became an opening for Jews. The people running the country didn’t quite know what to do with it, and there was a void desperate for talent.

The shows weren’t overtly Jewish — yet they clearly resonated with Jewish audiences. Why?

They were very careful not to be explicit. The word “Jew” was never mentioned. Max Liebman bragged there was no Yiddish on “Your Show of Shows.” They wanted to lie low. But Jewish viewers recognized something. The irreverence. The skepticism toward authority. Rooting for underdogs. Making fun of pomposity and power.

As Sid Caesar said to me, “The Jews knew. The Jews knew what we were doing.” They were winking — communicating without saying it outright. 

Food seems to be a recurring theme. I love a later skit when a famous bullfighter is on his deathbed and he and his entourage are putting in their deli orders.

Food is a leitmotif in Caesar’s comedy. There are sketches about wanting food, not getting food, getting less than the other guy, struggling with unfamiliar food. I wrote that his humor was Jewish “in its obsession, born of privation, with food in all its forms.” And they treated food with respect. No food fights. The food was always real. 

I asked [food writer] Mimi Sheraton what distinguishes Jews and Italians around food. She said the Italians care about food every bit as much as Jews do — only without the panic. That captured it perfectly. 

“Your Show of Shows” ended in June 1954, after five seasons and at the height of its success. Why?

Sid wanted control. He was making $25,000 a week in 1953 — roughly $300,000 a week today — but he was working under Max Liebman. He wanted to emphasize comedy, resented losing time to singers and dancers, and wanted to be the sole star. He was also competitive with [his co-star] Imogene Coca.

The pressure was enormous. Ninety minutes live every week, no margin for error. That stress began to eat him alive. 

The legendary writers’ room, especially the one for “Caesar’s Hour,” where all seven writers were Jews, is often romanticized, in films like “My Favorite Year” and Neil Simon’s play “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.” What was it really like?

It was not a picnic. It was a room of incredible tension. These writers were fighting for their lives. They were working in the shadow of the garment district. Entertainment was an escape from a life pushing a cart on Seventh Avenue. They were desperate to survive. 

Frank Rich once tried to write a book about them — his version of “The Boys of Summer” [Roger Kahn’s book about the great Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the 1950s]. He abandoned it and told me, “Instead of the boys of summer, I found the angry Jews of winter.”

What led to Caesar’s fall from the center of television and American popular culture?

As television spread into the hinterlands, the audience changed. Sid didn’t play well in Peoria. People thought he was elitist, talking down to them. Lawrence Welk [host of a variety show featuring anodyne pop music] crushed him. Caesar did devastating parodies of Welk — brilliant but futile. Television tastes were shifting. 

At the same time, the pressure destroyed him. Drinking, pills, exhaustion. You can see it on screen — the faltering diction, the loss of confidence.

Your book shows a star who was often aloof, difficult to work with, and often addled by booze and drugs. What was Caesar like when you met him?

I interviewed him in 2008. He was very frail, confined to home, but mentally sharper than he’d been in years. One thing he told me stuck with me. He talked about success — that moment when he realized he could have anything he wanted: “Even sturgeon at Barney Greengrass, even if it was $5 a pound.”

That was success to him: never having to hold back. It came back, once again, to food.

What does comedy today owe Sid Caesar?

Larry Gelbart once said, “You want to know what’s missing from comedy today? Jews.” There are still Jewish comedy writers, of course. But in Caesar’s day, it was seven Jews working together, “working our brains out,” as Gelbart put it.

There was an unabashed Jewish essence to that comedy — a shared sensibility — that doesn’t quite exist anymore. Comedy is more variegated now. Something essential was diluted.

And yet, it all started with Sid Caesar.

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