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An 82-year-old Jewish recording legend on his film directing debut: ‘I could have been good at this’
Kenny Vance (born Kenneth Rosenberg), 82, was not quite ready to use my word “omen,” but he acknowledged that in some oblique way the destruction of his home in the Rockaways, compliments of superstorm Sandy, played a role in shaping his award-winning documentary, Heart & Soul: a Love Story.
The evocative and elegiac film pays homage to the groundbreaking and, in Vance’s view, unsung rock and doo-wop performers of the 50s. It interweaves archival footage with Vance interviewing some of its lead players, including Eugene Pitt (the Jive Five,) Arlene Smith (the Chantels) and Jimmy Merchant (Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers).
Vance is best known as the 1961 co-founder of the Billboard chart-topping group Jay and the Americans (whose signature songs included “Mia Cara,” “Come a Little Closer” and “This Magic Moment”) and, more recently, Kenny Vance and the Planotones, whose musical calling card is “Looking for an Echo.”
During his 60-plus year career, Vance has served as the musical director on Saturday Night Live (1980-’81), composed movie scores and appeared as an actor in Animal House, Eddie and the Cruisers and American Hot Wax as well as in a host of Woody Allen films, usually playing musicians or music producers.
Writing and directing a film seemed like the natural next adventure for Vance, particularly in the wake of the storm that devastated the home he had lived in for 40 years.
“The walls were all gone and most of the ceilings were gone, though the kitchen remained without a stove or fridge — looting,” he told me at the Upper East Side coffee shop where we met. “Still, I was able to climb up to my office above the kitchen to retrieve dozens and dozens of CDs wrapped in plastic bags that I had stored in my desk drawers. I took what was salvageable back to the FEMA hotel where I was staying in Staten Island and went through all of it.
“Making the film was meant to be. It was fated as if fueled by an omen,” Vance said, gently mocking my earlier word suggestion.
Tall, clad in black, and sporting sunglasses throughout our indoor meeting, he came across as very reserved, bordering on shy, yet also, paradoxically and by turns, talkative, free-wheeling and free-associative in his commentary.
Recalling his artistic mentors, many of whom appear in the film, he said, “They had a sensuality and spirituality that entered you. It’s not something you can easily describe. But as time went on, these great vocalists were seen as almost comic. They were the world of the TV show, Happy Days. But that was never what they were about.”
Their cultural significance cannot be overestimated either, Vance said. For the first time, Black and white teenagers were dancing in the same space.
“They created a youth culture that never existed before. They inspired the movies that were being made and the clothing that was worn and we’re still feeling their impact today,” he said.
Vance found that the artists he wanted to interview were eager to tell their stories, though some expressed disappointment and anger at the trajectory of their lives while others looked back nostalgically. Some voiced both sentiments.
It took close to ten years to get the film off the ground. The subject matter just didn’t resonate with investors or the festival circuit. But for Vance, it was a story that needed to be told and seen. The time was long overdue for these performers to be the stars of a film before it was too late. “They were always movie stars,” said Vance.
‘The writing was on the wall’
When I asked the Flatbush, Brooklyn native if singing had always been his career choice, he found the very concept of a “career choice” mildly amusing. His life evolved extemporaneously, at least that’s the way he made it sound.
While his mother sang on the radio and was at one time the girlfriend of Irving Fein, who would go on to manage both Jack Benny and George Burns, Vance did not grow up wanting to be a singer.
The seminal moment for him, and the scene that opens the film, happened in the 1950’s when he was a teenager attending a mega-show filled with screaming fans at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, which was known for its legendary shows hosted and promoted by DJ Alan Freed.
“I knew I wanted to be part of that,” Vance said.
In short order, he became a member of a local band, singing in the school hallways, on neighborhood stoops and even in the subways.
“No, we were not buskers,” he said. “We just went down into the subways for their echo. But when we made eye contact with other riders, there was just a connection and we all felt it. There was a simplicity, an essence, and everyone wanted to be part of it. That was spiritual. There was a band on every street corner. That couldn’t happen today.”
At 15, he launched his first vocal group, and ultimately, after a number of band iterations, Vance forged Jay and the Americans, which enjoyed a string of hits. The band performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, opened for The Beatles and played the closing act following The Rolling Stones at Carnegie Hall.
“They wanted to move The Rolling Stones out of the theater unobserved, thinking if we were on stage that would keep the audience engaged, but it didn’t work that way,” said Vance. “The audience understood what was happening and when we started to sing they were running out of the theater screaming to catch up with the Rolling Stones. In the end, we were performing for an empty house.”
Vance knew this was the death knell for Jay and the Americans and groups of that ilk. They continued to perform and produce hits, but they couldn’t compete with the new breed that appeared on every major TV show and generated unprecedented press coverage. In 1974, Jay and The Americans dispersed.
“The writing was on the wall,” Vance said. “The Beatles wore Nehru suits,” We wore dickies and sweaters.”
Vance managed to thrive doing, among other things, TV jingles to earn extra money.
He produced the soundtrack for Animal House, which sold sold more than one million copies, and the one for Eddie and the Cruisers, which went triple platinum when the movie became a cult hit. In the film American Hot Wax, he played the role of “Professor La Plano” who led a fictional band, the Planotones, which inspired Vance in 1992 to create the very real Kenny Vance and the Planotones. His son, Ladd, is a band member. “We do duets and when we sing he shares a unique version of me. And to share that with him is a unique gift,” Vance told me.
‘How could these rock guys be Jews?’
I asked Vance if he were starting out today, whether he would have kept the name Rosenberg. He said that Vance has been his last name for so long he couldn’t imagine another. “Vance was cool,” he said. “We were all Jews in Jay and the Americans. But everyone assumed we were Italian. Congratulations!”
He told me he rarely discusses his connection to Jewishness — when he was growing up, his family was largely secular, though he did have a Bar Mitzvah.
For him, Jewishness is about “doing the ethical thing,” he said. “I love that. I get it. But I’m not observant. ‘I feel like a hypocrite,’ I told a friend who said, ‘if you get it, you’re not a hypocrite’”
From time to time, though, he does attend Chabad services for what he sees as their essence, purity and authenticity.
“The Lubavitch consider us orphans from the true information” he said. “Orthodox, Conservative and Reform are man-made concepts. Did Moses belong to one of those three denominations? He was an authentic Jewish person. It was his essence. I love the Talmud. When I attend services, I study the commentaries of that week’s Parsha.”
Though he never experienced heavy duty antisemitism, being Jewish on occasion made him feel like an outsider, most pointedly, he said, in the deep south during the Jim Crow days.
“After one show, a bunch of us had gathered in one of our hotel rooms, including several cops, all with guns and sitting there in their undershirts. They were playing cards with some of the guys from the band. We were in a relaxed situation and one of them said, ‘Hey, what are you?’ and one of the guys said, ‘We’re the Chosen.’ I thought I was going to die when he said that, but then the cops started laughing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the fact that we would be Jews was so far off the radar, they thought it was a joke. How could these rock guys be Jews? It was absurd. I knew we had entered a different reality.”
‘I started to cry’
As we left the restaurant and walked down the street, Vance told me that he’d never imagined that he’d ever be a filmmaker, but now he thinks that his debut documentary may just be his most potent legacy.
“When they showed it on PBS, I started to cry in the middle of it,” he said. “I was so happy to see Eugene Pitt, Wally Roker and Arlene Smith starring in a movie that was on TV. They are stars on screen.”
“I could have been good at this,” he said wistfully, then added, “I’ve been told I belong in The Guinness World Records as the oldest director making a debut.”
Heart & Soul is available on DVD and on various streaming platforms including Fandango and Plex.
The post An 82-year-old Jewish recording legend on his film directing debut: ‘I could have been good at this’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Dan Bilzerian wants to ‘kill Israelis’ and thinks Judaism is ‘terrible.’ Now he’s running for Congress.
(JTA) — Dan Bilzerian, the mega-influencer who’s spread conspiracy theories about Jews and said he wants to “kill Israelis,” is running for Congress.
Bilzerian registered this week to run in the Republican primary against the Jewish far-right firebrand Rep. Randy Fine in Florida’s sixth district. Bilzerian initially gained fame for his Instagram photos alongside bikini-clad women but has since become a vocal critic of Israel and Jews — and has repeatedly called Fine a “fat Jew” in the lead-up to his campaign launch.
In a TMZ interview after Bilzerian announced his candidacy, the outlet’s Jewish founder, Harvey Levin, questioned the influencer on whether his use of the phrase “fat Jew” was antisemitic.
“[Fine] literally talks about how Muslims are lower than dogs, so, is that Islamophobic?” Bilzerian shot back. Fine drew bipartisan criticism for his comments earlier this year.
“Yes,” TMZ’s Levin and Charles Latibeaudiere responded. (Bilzerian added that Fine “tweets that, and he’s a senator,” though Fine is actually a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who was formerly a state senator.)
Bilzerian responded to a follow-up question by denying that he’s antisemitic — and questioning the term “antisemitism” altogether, saying it’s been “hijacked to only talk about Jews.”
“No, I’m not antisemitic. I think that that’s kind of a made-up term, I think the Palestinians are the real Semites,” Bilzerian said.
“Was Hitler antisemitic?” Levin asked.
Bilzerian did not say.
“Like I said, the term is focused solely on Jews, but actual Semites are the Arabs,” he answered. “And Palestinians are Semites as well. They actually have more DNA lineage to that region than any of the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews that have taken it from them.”
The comments were nothing new for Bilzerian, who has 30 million followers on Instagram and 2 million on X. He regularly tweets opinions like “Jewish supremacy is the greatest threat to the world today,” questions the accuracy of the statistic that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, and reposts clips of avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes.
But now, Bilzerian’s foray into electoral politics could serve as a test of the popularity of an emerging, anti-Israel faction within the Republican party headlined by figures like Tucker Carlson and Fuentes, who’ve espoused conspiracy theories about Jews.
Those figures’ opposition to the war in Iran have sped up their dissent from President Donald Trump. During the TMZ interview, Bilzerian said Fine should be tried for treason for putting “Israel before America,” and also criticized Trump for being “Israel first.” He has tweeted that Trump “needs to be impeached.”
(Ironically, Fine introduced a bill that would ban dual citizens from serving in Congress, and Bilzerian is a dual American-Armenian citizen.)
Bilzerian is not the only anti-Israel Republican challenger to Fine, a staunch Israel supporter who’s been backed by AIPAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“I appreciate @DanBilzerian‘s zeal to take @RepFine out of Congress. I’ve been working tirelessly for one year on the same goal,” wrote Aaron Baker, who’s been endorsed by the Anti-Zionist America PAC. “I would however also appreciate if Dan ran for FL-16 much closer to where he grew up. Make @AIPAC spend $ defending more seats. Divide and conquer.” FL-16’s current representative, Vern Buchanan, was endorsed by AIPAC in 2024.
But Bilzerian, with his 29.6 million followers on Instagram and 2.1 million on X, brings a larger national audience to the congressional primary.
“I’d never heard of this guy before, until a couple of days ago, but having watched your interview, it’s clear that he simply doesn’t like Jews. In America you’re allowed to do that,” Fine said on a TMZ appearance following Bilzerian’s. But, he continued, “I don’t think it’s going to work out to become a congressman, having that perspective.”
Bilzerian gained many of his followers when he was the “king of Instagram,” posting photos of himself surrounded by scantily clad women, sports cars and with large guns. In June 2015, Bilzerian said he would be running for president, though by December he’d gotten behind the candidacy of Trump.
Before that, he’d served four years in the U.S. Navy starting in 1999, and dropped out of the University of Florida to play professional poker. His father, Paul Bilzerian, is a businessman who, as a corporate takeover specialist, was sentenced to four years in prison for federal crimes including fraud and criminal conspiracy.
In the months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing war in Gaza, Bilzerian’s social media presence began taking its current shape of focusing predominantly on Israel and, eventually, Jews.
“Do you think the Israeli attacks on Gaza are justified or f–ked up?” Bilzerian asked his followers on Nov. 6, 2023. By 2024, the occasional surveys he took of his followers became pointedly focused on Jews.
“Who causes the majority of the worlds problems,” he asked, with users overwhelmingly voting for the multiple-choice option “16 million Jews.”
In January 2025, Bilzerian asked his followers whether Hitler was a “good person,” a “terrible person,” or if they didn’t know. A third of the 178,000 voters said Hitler was a “good person,” and another 23% said they didn’t know.
Bilzerian laid out his views on Jewish people in a 2024 interview with conservative commentator Patrick Bet-David, during which he said Jews “knew about 9/11” and “had JFK assassinated.”
Later that year, conservative media personality Piers Morgan asked Bilzerian how many Jews he believed died in the Holocaust.
“I don’t know, but I would bet my entire net worth that it was under 6 million,” Bilzerian said.
According to FEC filings, Bilzerian’s campaign treasurer is Patrick Krason. Krason was also the treasurer for the short-lived presidential campaign of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, another public figure who’s spread conspiracy theories about Jews.
Bilzerian has promoted the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, claiming that Jews control the media and are using that position to push an “anti-white agenda” and replace whites with non-white immigrants.
“It started with the jewish owned news stations telling us ‘white supremacy is the greatest threat to America,’” Bilzerian wrote last year. “Whites were replaced in movies & streaming networks. Then the Jewish exec run Blackrock forced DEI on all major corps.”
Bilzerian often cites passages from the Talmud to make claims about Jewish beliefs, such as that Jews approve of stealing and raping as long as the crimes are committed against non-Jews. Other figures like Candace Owens have similarly taken passages from the Talmud, but rabbis have criticized those figures for using quotes that are mistranslated and often taken out of context from the text, which includes centuries of rabbinic debates and is not a formal code of laws.
During a stream with the influencer Sneako, who has also spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, Bilzerian said he supports “exterminating Israel” and that he “would sign up tomorrow and go f—king put boots on the ground and go f—king kill Israelis.”
“Give me a rifle and send me the f–k over there,” he said, adding, “I truly believe that the majority of that country is evil.”
On Morgan’s show, Bilzerian said Judaism innately promotes “Jewish supremacy,” and pointed to the State of Israel as being the result of that ideology.
“Israel is a manifestation of that religion,” he said. “And I think that religion is terrible.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Dan Bilzerian wants to ‘kill Israelis’ and thinks Judaism is ‘terrible.’ Now he’s running for Congress. appeared first on The Forward.
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After AIPAC-backed primary loss, Tom Malinowski endorses rival who says Israel committed genocide
(JTA) — After Tom Malinowski narrowly lost a primary in which AIPAC spent $2.3 million against him, critics said AIPAC’s plan backfired as it had inadvertently boosted a candidate farther from its pro-Israel agenda.
Now, Malinowski has thrown his support behind that victor, the Bernie Sanders-backed progressive Analilia Mejia.
“A couple of months ago, Analilia and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination,” Malinowski said in a video posted on Thursday afternoon. “Together, we are here united as Democrats in common cause.”
The video, which featured a friendly Malinowski and Mejia seated next to each other, was released ahead of her special election next week, and emphasized the need for Democrats to “take back the House.” Neither politician mentioned Israel or AIPAC in the video, though both politicians slammed the lobbying group following their tight primary race.
After Mejia’s victory back in February, AIPAC brushed off criticism that its attack ads against Malinowski — who describes himself as “pro-Israel” but crossed the group’s red line of supporting conditions on military aid — inadvertently contributed to Mejia’s win. Mejia has been harsher in her criticism of Israel and, unlike Malinowski, refers to its war in Gaza as a “genocide.”
But Mejia, an AIPAC spokesperson said, was only nominated for a special election that would fill the seat vacated by Gov. Mikie Sherrill through the end of 2026.
“The real race for the full congressional term is in the June primary, and we’re going to take a close look at that,” said Patrick Dorton, spokesperson for AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project.
But if AIPAC had its sights set on supplanting Mejia come June, those plans may have been complicated by her newfound support from Malinowski, a popular politician in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District.
Meanwhile, on Friday morning, Mejia was endorsed by J Street, the liberal pro-Israel group that supports a growing number of candidates who back conditions on military aid to Israel. J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, blasted AIPAC in a Substack column following the February primary. He also wrote positively about Malinowski, but did not mention Mejia in the column.
“I look forward to working in partnership in our shared commitment against antisemitism, bigotry and hate,” Mejia wrote, accepting J Street’s endorsement.
On Tuesday, Mejia appeared at Temple Ner Tamid, a Reform synagogue in Bloomfield, New Jersey, for a conversation with its rabbi about issues of Jewish concern including Israel and synagogue security. (Joe Hathaway, the Republican nominee, joined the congregation for a conversation the night before.)
“I’m running for congress to give every person in NJ-11 a voice – that’s why I’m committed to listening to folks from every corner of our community,” Mejia wrote after the event.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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US Intelligence Indicates China Preparing Weapons Shipment to Iran
The Pentagon building is seen in Arlington, Virginia, U.S. October 9, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
US intelligence indicates China is preparing to deliver new air defense systems to Iran within the next few weeks, CNN reported late on Friday, citing three people familiar with recent intelligence assessments.
The network said there are indications that Beijing is working to route the shipments through third countries to mask their origin.
The US State Department, the White House, the Chinese embassy in Washington and China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Beijing is preparing to transfer shoulder-fired anti-air missile systems known as MANPADs, CNN said, citing sources it did not name.
The US and Iran are set to hold high-level negotiations on Saturday in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, seeking ways to end their six-week-old war.