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As landmark Saul Bellow documentary premieres, a look back at his life through the JTA archive
(JTA) — Given his place in the international literary canon, it’s hard to believe that there has never been a widely-released documentary made about the Jewish Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow.
That’s about to change, as PBS debuts “American Masters: The Adventures of Saul Bellow” on Monday night.
The documentary, which was filmed by Israeli director Asaf Galay between 2016 and 2019 and features what is being touted as the last interview Philip Roth gave before his death in 2018, digs deep into Bellow’s personal life and inspirations. Many know about his successful novels and memorable (usually Jewish) characters, but as the film shows, Bellow had a turbulent personal life that involved five marriages. Several of his closest friends and family members felt betrayed or offended by how Bellow wrote unflattering characters closely based on them. His moderate conservative political leanings put him at odds with the ethos of the 1960s, and some saw his framing of occasional Black characters as racist.
But the film also devotes time to explaining — through interviews with scholars, other novelists and members of the Bellow clan — how Bellow’s deep-rooted sense of “otherness” as the son of Jewish immigrants influenced his work, and how he, in turn, influenced many Jewish American writers who followed him. Roth, for instance, says on camera that Bellow inspired him to create fuller Jewish characters in his own work.
To mark the milestone film, we looked back through all of the Saul Bellow content in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s archive. What emerged was a portrait of a leading Jewish intellectual of his time who was deeply invested in the Soviet Jewry movement and Israel, and who was beloved by the American Jewish community — despite his complicated relationship to his Jewishness and his bristling at being called a “Jewish writer.”
The Soviet Jewry movement
Bellow was born in 1915 in Canada to parents with Lithuanian ancestry who first immigrated from St. Petersburg, Russia. In the 1920s, when Bellow was 9, the family moved to Chicago. By the 1950s, the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union — who were forbidden from openly practicing their religion and from emigrating — had become a rallying cry for American Jews. As a 1958 JTA report shows, Bellow was passionate about the issue; in January of that year, he signed a letter to The New York Times about “the purge of Yiddish writers, the refusal of the current Soviet regime to permit a renaissance of Jewish culture and the existence of a quota system on Jews in education, professional and civil service fields.” Other signatories included fellow Jewish writers Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin and Lionel Trilling.
Saul Bellow, Anita Goshkin (his first wife) and their son Gregory Bellow, circa 1940. Bellow’s turbulent personal life involved five marriages. (Courtesy of the Bellow family)
He signed another letter to the Times on the topic in 1965, and in 1969 he circulated an appeal for cultural freedom for Jews to the Soviet Writers Union, getting other prominent writers such as Noam Chomsky and Nat Hentoff to sign. By 1970, the issue had become widely publicized, and Bellow stayed involved, signing onto a petition with several other thought leaders that asked: “Has the government of the Soviet Union no concern for human rights or for the decent opinion of mankind?”
Israel
Like many American Jews, Bellow had complicated feelings on Israel. “If you want everyone to love you, don’t discuss Israeli politics,” he once wrote.
In the 1970s, JTA reports show that he followed Israeli diplomacy closely and was a strong supporter of the Jewish state in the face of international criticism. In 1974, at a PEN press conference, he called for a boycott of UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural heritage arm that has historically been very critical of Israeli policy.
In 1984, Bellow met with then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who was in the United States on an official state visit.
But Bellow wasn’t a blanket supporter of Israel — in 1979, he signed a letter protesting West Bank settlement expansion that was read at a rally of 30,000 people in Tel Aviv. In 1987, while in Haifa for a conference on his work, Bellow criticized the Israeli government for the way it handled the Jonathan Pollard spy case, bringing up an issue that still reverberates in Israel-Diaspora conversation — and in U.S. politics.
“I think the American Jews are very sensitive to the question of dual allegiance, and it is probably wrong of Israel to press this question because it is one which is very often used by antisemites,” Bellow said.
Nobel Prize
After garnering multiple National Book Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, Bellow won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. JTA’s report on the award noted that Bellow’s most recent book at the time, published right around the time of the Nobel announcements, was a memoir about his 1975 stay in Jerusalem, titled “To Jerusalem and Back.” The report added: “Two of his books, ‘Herzog,’ published in 1964 and ‘Mr. Sammler’s Planet,’ which won him the National Book Award in 1971, have been translated into Hebrew and were enthusiastically received by Israeli critics and public.”
(Bellow wasn’t the only Jew to win a Nobel that year: Milton Friedman won the economics prize, Baruch Blumberg shared the medicine prize and Burton Richter shared the physics prize.)
Bellow, center, with his fifth wife Janis Freedman-Bellow and longtime friend Allan Bloom, who is the subject of Bellow’s last novel, “Ravelstein.” (Courtesy of the Bellow family)
A “Jewish writer”?
The Anti-Defamation League also gave Bellow an award in 1976. According to a JTA report, Seymour Graubard, honorary national chairman of the ADL at the time, said that Bellow “has correctly rejected all efforts to pigeonhole him as a ‘Jewish writer.’ Rather, he has simply found in the Jewish experience those common strains of humanity that are part of all of us — and therein lies his greatness as an American writer.”
Debate over whether or not Bellow should be labeled a “Jewish writer,” and what that meant, dogged him for much of his career. After his death in 2005, at 89, a New York Jewish Week obituary focused on Bellow as “a literary giant who did not want to be bound by the tag of Jewish writer.”
“Mr. Bellow bridled at being considered a Jewish writer, though his early novels, most notably 1944’s ‘The Victim,’ dealt with anti-Semitism and featured characters who spoke Yiddish and Russian,” Steve Lipman wrote.
Bellow’s biographer James Atlas added in the obituary: “He always said he was a writer first, an American second and Jewish third. But all three were elements of his genius. His greatest contribution was that he was able to write fiction that had tremendous philosophical depth.”
In a JTA essay at the time of Bellow’s death, academic and fiction writer John J. Clayton argued: “No good writer wants to be pigeonholed or limited in scope. But he is deeply a Jewish writer — not just a Jew by birth.
“Jewish culture, Jewish sensibility, a Jewish sense of holiness in the everyday, permeate his work.”
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Antisemitic flyers turn up in Ontario neighborhood where a man charged at a synagogue two weeks ago
(JTA) — Police in the Ontario town where a gunman charged the Sons of Jacob synagogue on Yom Kippur are investigating antisemitic flyers distributed around the synagogue’s neighborhood..
In an Oct. 1 press release, Belleville, Ontario, police encouraged those with tips or video evidence to contact police.
“We recognize that incidents such as this can cause concern within our community,” the police said. “Hate has no place in Belleville, and the Belleville Police Service remains in contact with community leaders and are taking proactive steps to support the safety and well-being of residents.”
Police have not identified the distributor of the flyers, and no arrests have been made.
The Canadian Jewish News published photos of the flyers, which included antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as “every single aspect of the Covid agenda is Jewish” and “every single aspect of abortion is Jewish.”
Coming so soon after the attack, the flyers rattled Sons of Jacob congregant Sari Watson, 40. “It’s so incredibly concerning to see this sort of antisemitic rhetoric surface, less than two weeks after the shooting,” said Watson, who skipped attending services the night of the shooting because she was wary of the increase in antisemitic violence in Canada. “This is a sign that this sort of hatred has infiltrated the public consciousness here.”
Belleville police chief Murray Rodd has confirmed the Sept. 20 attack was deliberate.
“This was an exclusive threat to our Jewish community,” he said soon after the attack. “There is no indication there was a threat to any other population or segment of our community, and it was a hate-motivated crime.”
According to police and Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the shooter, identified as 29-year-old Sean Ward of nearby Quinte West, Ontario, opened fire on Const. Jeff Smith, who was stationed outside the synagogue as security. Smith, who was seriously wounded, returned fire, and another officer who arrived at the scene also fired at Ward. Ward later died of his injuries. Smith remains hospitalized.
A GoFundMe site dedicated to Smith’s recovery has raised nearly $1 million on behalf of the Canadian Jewish community.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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From ‘false flag’ to ‘Bibiwood’: flydubai attack spawns conspiracy theories
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – A young girl steps out of the bathroom on a flight and glimpses a bloody scene unfolding in the cockpit: the co-pilot is attacking the pilot with an axe. She screams for help.
A handful of unarmed passengers, still tanned from their vacations in Thailand, rushes by her, successfully grabbing the control wheel as the plane plunges 17,000 feet. They also manage to save the life of the bloodied pilot.
It sounds like the climactic scene from a high-stakes action movie, yet by now most people know that this is what happened last week on a Tel Aviv-bound flydubai jet.
Or did it happen? It is so fantastical that maybe it is just a fabricated story or an event staged by Israel’s Mossad? That is what millions of people on social media seem to be suggesting in online posts.
Even after nonstop media interviews with the hero pilot or with the ordinary passengers who took control of the plane, conspiracy theories about the attempted hijacking are swirling. Some mockingly insist the event never happened. Others say it was a false flag operation. And many of the comments invoke deep-rooted antisemitic tropes.
Some accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of staging the incident for political survival or to divert attention from the war in Gaza. Others say it was an attempt by Israel to play the victim or garner global sympathy.
“Brought to you by Bibiwood Productions,” wrote one person commenting on a CNN report posted on Facebook.
“Just stop already,” wrote another person beneath CBS’s clip of interviews with the men who fought the rogue co-pilot posted to Instagram. “It’s seriously embarrassing at this point. We didn’t believe it when the news broke; we didn’t believe it the first time you aired this interview. Reposting clips will not convince anyone with half a brain.”
“Bulls–t,” wrote another person.
Monitoring online responses as the attempted hijacking was unfolding last Wednesday, the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center found that the first conspiracy theories were posted just 67 minutes after the plane sent its first distress signal.
Within five hours, the ARC documented 1,000 hostile posts, and after 12 hours, 2,963 posts. The posts generated at least 30,000 likes and more than 3 million views.
“The fact is that internet companies have promoted a much more open free-speech policy these days, especially on Instagram and X,” said Sacha Roytman, CAM’s Chief Executive Officer, adding that it’s not just the posts that are problematic but also the comments they generate.
“They [the social media platforms] don’t control information anymore; they don’t want to control it,” he said.
Roytman added that another factor is that agitators – likely from Russia or Qatar – have learned how to build an effective bot network to spread misinformation. When the first post appeared after only 67 minutes, he said, “we knew it was not a human posting because no one cares to go online and start posting [that fast].”
“They were activated extremely fast and set up the stage to create an environment that’s toxic enough for other users to be inspired to find the stories they need to build their own claims,” Roytman said.
Amit Cohen, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and an expert in cyberattacks and digital fraud, said that during such events, “there is often a gap between what the public wants to know and the amount of verified information available at that moment.
“That is exactly the kind of environment in which rumors and conspiracy theories can develop very quickly,” she said. “In this case, claims appeared online within a short period of time suggesting that the event did not happen as reported, that the videos were fake, or that the incident was staged or a false flag.
“Posts like these are not necessarily the original source of the conspiracy theory,” she said, “but they can function as ignition points.”
Cohen said it was important to distinguish between those who “deliberately create disinformation and those who spread it.”
“Someone may share misleading content simply because it fits what they already believe, because it provokes a strong emotional reaction, or even because it seems interesting or ‘worth looking into,’” she said. “They do not need to know where the message originated, and they certainly do not need to be part of any coordinated campaign.”
Gal Yavetz, a senior lecturer of Artificial Intelligence at Bar-Ilan University, said the flydubai story was so incredible, it left many people “looking for answers.”
“Inevitably, some people will accept more natural explanations, and others, who are more extreme, will go and blame the Jews for it,” Yavetz said, pointing out that similar conspiracy theories arose over the summer when thousands of Moroccan nationals flooded Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in July.
“Every time there is something that we can’t really understand, that we can’t really explain, we blame the usual suspects — the Jews, the Jews who control the world, the Jews who are the natural scapegoat,” he said, adding that since the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly Hamas raids in Israel, conspiracy theories have become commonplace and all it takes is for a handful of people to start questioning the veracity of the events.
Posts by Egyptian-born, LA-based political satirist Bassem Youssef, known for his controversial comments about Israel and Jews, are a good example. In a series of videos, he mocks the flydubai event and raises suspicions about what really happened.
In one clip posted on X and viewed 130,000 times, Youssef, whose career was supercharged in 2012 when he was boosted by Jewish comedian Jon Stewart, even terms it a “Hollywood production,” drawing on what critics say are familiar antisemitic conspiracy tropes about Jewish control of Hollywood and, by extension, the world.
“I wish it was chatbots, but the truth of the matter is that social media is a breeding ground for this kind of discourse,” said Yavetz, who specializes in social media, political communication and the spread of misinformation and disinformation online.
“They are definitely helping to spread and to reshare most of this misinformation and disinformation, but we know from previous studies that it is really just a negligible number compared to just regular people who are going to the more extreme sides and just taking their own outrageous opinions to social media just because it is now so easy to do so,” he said.
“You don’t really need to do much; you just need to make sure that you can stand behind your claims, and all of a sudden an outrageous post will have 1,000 likes, then 10,000 likes, and these comments are just circulating again and again, going from Facebook to WhatsApp to Messenger and back to Twitter with screenshots and back to Instagram… It’s a flood that you can’t really stop by taking out an umbrella,” Yavetz said.
INSS’s Cohen, who is also a national security expert with the Dvorah Forum, a group that promotes women’s voices in foreign policy, said that “conspiracy theories are not new, but the digital environment has changed their speed, scale, and the ability to obscure where a message originally came from.”
She explained that “in the past, there were more intermediaries between the person producing information and a large audience. Today, a single account can post a claim and reach very large audiences within a very short time.”
And, Cohen added, AI has made the problem worse.
“Mainly because it has dramatically reduced the time, cost, and skill required to create convincing content,” she said.
It has also made it harder for people to believe what appears on their screens.
“The problem is no longer only that AI can create fake content that looks real. It also makes it easier to dismiss real content by claiming that it is fake,” said Cohen. “Once the public knows that convincing images, audio, and video can be artificially generated, the existence of visual evidence no longer necessarily ends the debate.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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The new U.S. passport design is fueling a Star of David conspiracy theory. Here’s what’s really there.
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a new U.S. passport design last week, online sleuths zeroed in on a curious detail: “Is that the star of david???” one TikTok user commented on a video of Rubio showing off the document’s revamped look.
“Why do we rock the Star of David on American passports?” asked an X user in a post that garnered 1.6 million views.
The symbol was not, in fact, the Star of David, but rather 13 stars arranged in a hexagram, representing the original 13 colonies. The design is part of the official Great Seal of the United States, approved by the Continental Congress in 1782 as the official symbol for the newly sovereign country.
The hexagram shape wasn’t a new addition to the passport, either. The Great Seal has long been a fixture of the U.S. passport cover; the new design just enlarges it. The seal — including the cluster of 13 stars in a hexagram — appears on all sorts of government materials, including military uniforms, official presidential documents, and the dollar bill.
The shape’s resemblance to the Magen David, however, has long fueled conspiracy theories about secret Jewish or Israeli influence over the U.S. government. To some online commentators, the redesigned passport was fresh confirmation of that belief.
“It’s a colony of israel (sic) so it makes sense to pay homage to their owners,” a TikToker commented about the new design.
The seal’s history
Shortly after they adopted the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers had another important matter to attend to: appointing a committee to design a seal for the United States.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams made up the all-star team. Franklin suggested an image of Moses parting the Red Sea. Jefferson wanted “the children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.” Adams preferred an image of Hercules, the Greek hero known for his strength.
Evidently, none of them had a great eye for graphic design. Congress tabled their proposals.
Two more committees took up the project. In 1782, Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson integrated the various committees’ ideas into a new design, which featured a bald eagle, a shield, an olive branch and arrows, and a constellation of 13 stars. Congress approved the seal that year.
Thomson described the design as featuring “thirteen stars forming a constellation”; he did not specify a hexagram or six-pointed star. Original sketches, in fact, show the stars in a seemingly random arrangement.
Robert Scot, the chief engraver of the United States Mint, is credited with arranging the 13 stars into the six-pointed geometric star.
According to legend, George Washington ordered the 13 stars arranged as a Star of David as a tribute to Haym Salomon, a Jewish financier who aided the Revolutionary cause. But there’s no historical evidence of that, nor that Washington or Salomon had any role at all in designing the seal.
One plausible theory is that Scot may have simply been emulating the arrangement of stars on the American flag at the time, rearranging the 13 stars to fit symmetrically inside a circular field.
Even so, the myth of the Star of David intentionally appearing on the seal has reached as far as former presidential candidate Ben Carson, who in 2015 suggested that “Salomon gave all his funds to save the U.S. Army and, some say, no one knows for sure, that’s the reason there’s a Star of David on the back of the one dollar bill.”
Historians were quick to correct the record.
“If you squint, you can say there’s some resemblance but that certainly was not the intention of the designers, that we’re aware,” Wayne Homren of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, which studies currency, told ABC News.
The theory behind the theory
Kent Harber, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University who studies conspiracy theories, said the passport claim fits within the emerging zeitgeist, in which “conspiracy beliefs about Jews and Israel are getting an increasing amount of currency.”
In this case, gaps in the historical record surrounding the hexagram’s design may have helped the theory take hold.
“We can’t take ‘no reason’ for an answer,” Harber said. “We have to have an explanation, and we will fill in that blank with other explanations, even bogus, sometimes sort of seemingly silly ones.”
Harber’s research has found a strong relationship between conspiracy theories, antisemitic attitudes, and hostility toward Israel.
Conspiracy theories are like “epistemological junk food,” he said. “They satisfy this craving by giving you exactly what you want, even though it’s not particularly good for you or for society.”
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