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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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Reed College agrees to sweeping reforms as part of Title VI antisemitism settlement
(JTA) — Reed College has agreed to a host of far-reaching institutional changes, including asserting that targeting Jewish Zionists will be considered discriminatory, in order to settle multiple federal antisemitism investigations, parties to the complaint announced Wednesday.
The settlement was announced by the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which jointly filed the complaint, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at any institution receiving federal funds. It comes as campuses across the country, facing threats of losing federal funding under the Trump administration, have demonstrated willingness to negotiate new antisemitism protections.
As part of the agreement, the private Portland, Oregon, liberal arts school says it will insert language into its discrimination policy asserting that “for many Jewish people, Zionism is integral to their religious, ancestral and/or ethnic Jewish identity,” and that “targeting Jews on the basis of their Zionist identity” will be considered discriminatory.
The school will also contract a third-party consultant to monitor and report on its effectiveness in adhering to antisemitism protections, role that is unusual in similar Title VI agreements. The agreement says Reed will “consider” the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of antisemitism, which includes some criticisms of Israel, and implement antisemitism training for faculty and staff.
“We take concerns about antisemitism, and all forms of unlawful discrimination, seriously, and we will continue to support the well-being, safety, and success of every member of our community,” a Reed College spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement acknowledging the agreement. Reed declined to comment further.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and Brandeis Center officials praised the agreement in a release as a potential model for other colleges.
“We believe it should serve as a model for other schools,” Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Brandeis Center, told JTA about the agreement. The required language in Reed’s discrimination guidelines, she said, is “very clear about what constitutes anti-Zionist conduct in violation of civil rights and in violation of the policy.”
“This outcome demonstrates how the Title VI process can work to effectively protect Jewish students,” Greenblatt said in his own statement.
Around 100 students at Reed College are Jewish, or about 7% of the total student body, according to estimates from Hillel International. A request for comment to the director of PDX Hillel, which serves Jewish students at Reed and others in the region, was not immediately returned.
The resolution stems from two anonymous Title VI antisemitism complaints from Jewish former Reed students, both filed in 2024 under the Biden administration. One of those cases related to a student whose dorm-room mezuzah was vandalized, and who herself was later pelted with rocks, during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in spring 2024. The student later left the school out of concern for her safety.
Both of the described acts would have already been considered violations of school policy for reasons unrelated to the student’s Jewish or Zionist identity. Brandeis’s Katz-Prober argued both should have also been considered in the context of her targeting by anti-Zionist activists.
“It might be difficult for someone to, at first glance, understand whether it was simply an assault or an assault motivated by bias,” she said. The case, she said, demonstrated how in some cases, “‘Zionist’ is merely a codeword for Jew.”
Katz-Prober also touted the agreement’s mandate that the school bring on a third-party compliance consultant, separate from its Title VI coordinator. While she insisted that such a role would be “independent” and free of bias, she noted that both the ADL and the Brandeis Center would have a role in their selection.
“Both sides get a say,” she said.
The post Reed College agrees to sweeping reforms as part of Title VI antisemitism settlement appeared first on The Forward.
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Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs cruises to GOP nomination for governor amid allegations of antisemitism
(JTA) — Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, who has drawn criticism for ties to white nationalist figures, will officially be the Republican nominee for Arizona governor, after winning the primary on Tuesday night.
Biggs, who is backed by President Donald Trump, has drawn criticism for encouraging Stew Peters, an internet personality, and appearing on his show. Peters has labeled Judaism a “death cult” and has called for a “final solution” that involves the deportation of American Jews, and multiple watchdogs identify him as promoting antisemitism.
“Keep preaching,” Biggs told Peters at the end of his June 2023 appearance on the show, during which they discussed government corruption and Biggs agreed with Peters that the FBI should be abolished.
Biggs, 67, who won handily with 73.4% of votes according to multiple media outlets, will challenge Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in what is expected to be a competitive race in November. Biggs has represented Arizona’s 5th Congressional District, which is outside of Phoenix, since 2017.
His opponent in the GOP primary, Rep. David Schweikert, had put out a campaign mailer in March tying Biggs to white supremacy and antisemitism. The mailer featured mentions of Biggs’ interview with Peters as well as Biggs’ endorsement of Texas GOP candidate Brandon Herrera, who owned a copy of “Mein Kampf.”
Biggs’ campaign did not respond to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s request for comment, but in a local TV interview last month he called the accusations politically motivated and said, “This notion that I am antisemitic is absolutely one of the most ludicrous, insane arguments ever.”
In 2024, Biggs opposed the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act, which passed in the House of Representatives. Biggs wrote that he opposes antisemitism and that the “pro-Hamas, pro-genocide, anti-Israel events happening across the nation are sickening.” He rejected the legislation, he said, because it was “so poorly drafted that it violates the Constitution and could have serious ramifications for the Christian community.” Right wing Republicans objected especially to the bill citing a definition of antisemitism that included as an example the claim that the Jews killed Jesus.
That same year, Biggs attended a rally co-sponsored by the Proud Boys, an extremist militia style group. In 2019, he spoke at a “Patriotism over Socialism” rally in Arizona, which watchdogs warned would draw extremist groups.
Media Matters, a group that mostly monitors right-wing groups, in 2023 wrote that “the links between Biggs and far-right extremists have been well-documented,” citing among other things his ties to another far-right group, the Oath Keepers.
The Republican Jewish Coalition did not respond to a question over whether it would support Biggs’ run for governor.
At a campaign event on Tuesday, Hobbs skewered Biggs for his denial of Trump’s 2020 election loss, and for not acknowledging Hobbs’ narrow 2022 gubernatorial victory over Republican Kari Lake.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Denied arrest power, Mamdani encourages New Yorkers to protest Netanyahu
After conceding that he cannot arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal, Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday doubled down on assailing the Israeli leader and encouraged New Yorkers to protest his expected visit to the United Nations in September.
“I think one of the bedrocks of our city is protest,” Mamdani said at a press conference in City Hall Wednesday morning. “If anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect. I leave it to New Yorkers themselves to make that decision.”
The mayor also faced renewed questions about why it took months to acknowledge that the pledge he made last year to arrest Netanyahu could not legally be carried out, and about his choice to post a formal mayoral address on his official social media accounts to announce the city’s legal conclusion that it has no authority to execute the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
“What brings me to my conclusions about Israel and Palestine is a belief in the universality of humanity,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani pointed to a roundtable with faith leaders on Staten Island on Tuesday where he met a young Gaza refugee who had lost an arm, and he recounted stories from Palestinian New Yorkers who shared that their families have been affected by the war.
“I view that as a very serious issue,” Mamdani said. “I think that it is incredibly important that we ensure that we have done all of our due diligence when conducting a review.”
The ICC, based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif. Hamas confirmed in January 2025 that Deif was killed during an airstrike.
The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC months after it issued the warrants.
In his video posted Tuesday night, Mamdani accused Netanyahu of orchestrating a “horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” in the Gaza Strip. He cited reported Palestinian death tolls, wounded children, the destruction of hospitals and clinics and the killing of aid workers and journalists. He did not mention the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, which sparked the war. He instead called on the federal government to join the ICC and execute the warrant.
Jewish organizations sharply condemned the mayor’s Tuesday remarks, accusing him of presenting a one-sided narrative of the war.
“Shame on you,” the UJA-Federation of New York said in a statement. “Your video is rife with distortions and disinformation. At a time of rising antisemitism, repeatedly singling out and vilifying the world’s only Jewish state for perceived political benefit is repugnant and puts Jews at greater risk.”
The Orthodox Union said the video “endangers Jewish New Yorkers” and “is a betrayal of his oath of office and his own commitment to protect all New Yorkers.”
Mamdani rejected the criticism.
“We cannot pick and choose which crimes against humanity we oppose,” he said. “We must be in opposition to all of them.” Asked whether he considers the Hamas massacre a genocide, he stopped short of using that term, instead calling the Oct. 7 attacks “a horrific war crime” that should be opposed “with every single fiber of our being.”
Mamdani used the moment to bring his long-held pro-Palestinian advocacy into City Hall, framing Netanyahu’s expected visit as both a moral and political issue. While acknowledging the city lacks legal authority to arrest the Israeli leader, Mamdani shifted the conversation toward the role of the federal government.
In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump reassured Netanyahu that he “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”
Mamdani also encouraged New Yorkers to take it to the streets to protest Netanyahu during his visit. “That welcome ends with me,” he said. “I will not be welcoming Benjamin Netanyahu or any other war criminals when they come to this city.”
Mamdani’s remarks could resonate well beyond New York as rejection of Israel is increasingly part of national Democratic Party politics. By arguing that Washington should join the International Criminal Court and enforce its warrants, Mamdani is helping define the expectations that progressive activists may place on the 2028 presidential candidates as the party continues to debate its approach to Israel and Gaza.
Despite the backlash, Mamdani insisted his position would not affect how he governs for Jewish New Yorkers.
“I know that there are Jewish New Yorkers who agree with my analysis; there are those who disagree with my analysis,” Mamdani told the Forward. “ And my responsibility to them is to ensure that they are cherished, they are celebrated, and they are safe in their city.”
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