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As ‘Parade’ opens on Broadway, star Ben Platt takes a trip to Leo Frank’s Brooklyn
(New York Jewish Week) — The singer and actor Ben Platt spends most of his time these days on West 45th Street in Manhattan, where he performs eight times a week as Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched by a Georgia mob in 1915.
But he took a detour on a recent afternoon to Brooklyn, for visits to Frank’s childhood home and the Prospect Heights building where his body was briefly taken before his burial in Queens.
“It looks the same,” Platt said, according to the New Yorker writer who accompanied him on the sojourn and wrote up their walk in a pithy “Talk of the Town” vignette. “The door is the same, these railings are the same.”
The Broadway revival of the musical “Parade,” now in previews, follows a seven-performance run at City Center in November 2022 that garnered rave reviews; its official opening is Thursday.
The show, its first revival since it opened on Broadway in 1998, made headlines last month when a group of neo-Nazis protested outside the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on the first night of previews, roiling the Broadway community.
“Platt hadn’t expected Nazis, but he had expected some hate,” writes the New Yorker’s Zach Helfand. “He’d prepared for the show’s heaviness by painting his dressing room pink. ‘I figured it should be a brighter space,’ he said. ‘I also just love ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and Glinda.’”
Helfand notes that Platt is wearing a “North Face jacket and baggy jeans, with a Star of David necklace,” as they head first to Clinton Hill, where Frank lived at 368 Lafayette Ave. as a student attending the Pratt Institute (the art and design school briefly had a high school at the end of the 19th century).
Then, Platt walked to Frank’s parents’ home at 152 Underhill Ave. in Prospect Heights, where the family sat shiva and where Frank’s body was briefly brought from Georgia before he was buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens.
Along the way, Platt reflects on playing Frank, his own Jewish identity and, somewhat inexplicably, his hydration habits and bladder capacity. He notes that he is both trying to drink more water and also mindful that his role requires him to sit on stage throughout intermission, without the bathroom break that audience members can take.
“Parade” is Platt’s first Broadway role since he won the 2017 Tony Award for best lead actor in a musical, as the star of “Dear Evan Hansen.” Portraying Frank, Helfand writes, “is less taxing physically but more fraught personally.”
“The trauma involved in this one has a lot more to do with me,” said Platt, who is 29, the same age Frank was when he was accused of murder in 1913.
Frank had left Brooklyn for Atlanta as an adult — an unusual move at the time, but one that resonated with Platt. “My mom’s side ended up in Kansas,” Platt said. “They were one of very few Jewish families. There was a synagogue that’s now been renamed for my grandma.”
A manager of an Atlanta pencil factory, Frank was accused of murdering a girl whose body was found there in 1913. Despite little evidence, Frank was found guilty of killing Mary Phagan, who had worked at the factory, and was sentenced to death. In 1915, when Frank’s sentence was commuted to life in prison, he was kidnapped by an armed mob and lynched.
The case spurred both the creation of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish civil rights group whose activities include monitoring neo-Nazi activity, and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist hate group. The consensus view is that Frank was innocent, but contemporary neo-Nazis reject that view and he has not been officially exonerated under the law.
Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond start in “Parade” at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. On Feb. 21, neo-Nazi protestors heckled ticket-holders outside the theater during the first preview of the show. (Julia Gergely)
After the neo-Nazi protest outside the theater last month, Platt spoke out on social media. “It was definitely very ugly and scary, but [also] a wonderful reminder of why we’re telling this particular story, and how special and powerful art and particularly theater can be,” he said in an Instagram video.
Platt’s foray into Jewish geography extends beyond Leo Frank to the present. He notes during his walk that the uncle of his fiance, Noah Galvin, is part of the Pratt family behind the Pratt Institute. He also reveals that the sister of his friend and collaborator, Jeff Levin, who released his studio albums on Atlantic Records, lives at Frank’s family’s Prospect Heights address. He’d learned that after a castmate visited the site and left a note.
“She had no idea,” Platt told the New Yorker about Levin’s sister. “I figured — based on Jewish geography, and, just, New York — maybe I’d find some connection to the person there. But it was like an hour later.”
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The post As ‘Parade’ opens on Broadway, star Ben Platt takes a trip to Leo Frank’s Brooklyn appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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No Hate Crime Charges Yet Filed After 3 Suspects Arrested in Brutal California Assaults of Israeli-Americans
Screenshot from video circulated on social media showing three unknown attackers punch two Israeli-Americans in San Jose, California on March 8, 2026.
California prosecutors have charged three men with felonies and misdemeanors after an attack on two Israeli-Americans overhead speaking Hebrew outside a San Jose restaurant.
The district attorney of Santa Clara County released a statement on Monday, announcing that “Bruneil Henry Chamaki, 32, of Morgan Hill, along with Roma Akoyans, 20, and Ramon Akoyans, 18, of San Jose, self-surrendered today to the San Jose Police Department.”
Video which widely circulated online last week showed three alleged assailants punching Lior Zeevi, 47, and Daniel Levy, 48, leaving the men with injuries which required hospitalization. District Attorney Jeff Rosen said “we won’t tolerate pummeling a victim on the ground in front of a restaurant or anywhere, and we will hold the perpetrators fully accountable.”
Prosecutors have not yet filed hate crime charges against Chamaki—who works as a lawyer—and the Akoyans brothers noting in the release that “these charges do not reflect allegations of a hate crime at this time. However, this remains an active investigation. The DA’s Office is working closely with SJPD to review all new information. We encourage anyone with knowledge about this crime to contact the San Jose Police Department.”
According to the police report, before the assault outside Augustine restaurant on Santana Row began, one of the attackers yelled “f— Jews.” As the three men ran away toward the Valley Fair mall after the beating, a witness heard one of them say “don’t f— with Iran,” according to the police report. The witness told police that he thought the suspects were Persian because he was Persian too.
The arresting officers named the offenses in the police report as “simple assault” and “violate civil rights by force/threat of force.”
Chamaki worked as a lawyer for Murphy Austin Adams Schoenfeld LLP until January. The firm confirmed the separation and released a statement to Fox KTVU saying “the conduct described in the reports is deeply troubling. Murphy Austin condemns antisemitism, violence, and acts of hatred in any form.” The police report lists the Akoyans as living in San Jose and Roma as a student at West Valley College. The Santa Clara county court scheduled an arraignment for the three suspects on May 12.
The invocation of Iran during the assaults against Levy and Zeevi places the crime as another example of violence targeting Jewish individuals and institutions in response to the US-Israeli attacks against the leadership of the Islamic regime in Iran which resulted in the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28.
On Saturday, two individuals detonated a bomb outside a Jewish school in Amsterdam, causing minor damage. An Islamist terror group claimed responsibility, as well as for recent strikes on synagogues in Rotterdam and Liege. On Monday, the Netherlands announced the arrest of four unnamed teenagers—aged 19, 18 and 17—suspected of involvement with the Rotterdam attacks. Dutch prosecutors said the crime sought to instill “serious fear in a population group, in this case the Jewish community.”
On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces revealed that the brother of Ayman Mohamad Ghazali—the man who committed a terrorist attack on Thursday against the Temple Israel synagogue in Michign—served as a Hezbollah commander who died the previous week in an Israeli airstrike.
Ghazali had rammed his pickup truck through the building’s doors and drove through a hallway, the vehicle loaded with fireworks, before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a shootout with police, failing in his mission to murder Jews.
On March 1, Ndiaga Diagne, 53, allegedly fired rounds from an AR-15 rifle at people outside Buford’s bar in Austin, Texas, resulting in three deaths and 16 injuries. Investigators say that he wore a sweatshirt that proclaimed him as “Property of Allah” and that a t-shirt underneath featured an Iranian flag design. In addition, when searching Diagne’s home, they found an Iranian flag and photos of Iranian leaders.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has labeled the mass shooting as a “potential act of terrorism” with Acting Special Agent in Charge Alex Doran warning that it was too early to name the motive in spite of the available evidence.
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Joe Kent, Trump official with white supremacist ties, resigns over Iran war and blames Israel
Joe Kent, director of the federal National Counterterrorism Center, resigned Tuesday in a letter to President Donald Trump that claimed Israeli officials had used lies to convince Trump to start the current United States-Israel war against Iran.
Some administration officials, notably Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had previously asserted that Israel compelled the U.S. to strike Iran; Rubio later tempered those claims. But Kent, a controversial figure who has repeatedly engaged with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, made more sweeping — and unproven — assertions in his letter, which Kent posted to social media, declaring the president of a victim of an Israeli “misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”
He further claimed Israel had used similar lies “to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war” which he called “manufactured by Israel” without pointing to any evidence. Israeli officials expressed support for striking Sadaam Hussein at the time, but then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also reportedly warned President George W. Bush not to occupy the country.
Kent’s departure may be a sign that the isolationist wing of the conservative movement — associated with antisemitic influencers like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes — may be losing influence with the White House. Despite repeated fulminations against the war by isolationists inside and outside of the administration, Trump has shown little sign of recalibrating his approach to the Iran war and recently proposed a possible military incursion in Cuba.
The White House issued a scathing response to Kent’s claim in his resignation letter, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stating, “the absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable.”
It remains to be seen if Kent’s resignation will trigger a wave of departures from within the administration. Congressional Republicans have largely stayed aligned with the president. And Trump himself has moved between suggesting the conflict could end “very soon” and insisting that the United States has not yet achieved “ultimate victory.”
Tulsi Gabbard, who was Kent’s boss in her role as director of national intelligence, once sold campaign merchandise with the slogan “No War With Iran” but has reportedly remained largely silent during the current war while being sidelined within the administration.
Vice President JD Vance, closely aligned with the party’s isolationist wing, reportedly expressed private objections about the Iran war but appears to have been overruled and has yet to publicly voice that view in public.
Meanwhile, Rubio, a longtime foreign policy hawk, has emerged a key advisor to Trump, who has privately surveyed insider opinion about Rubio emerging as heir in 2028.
Kent’s nomination to lead a top counterterrorism agency was contentious from the start. A retired Green Beret and former CIA officer, Kent had twice run unsuccessfully for a House seat in Washington state. In his first bid, Kent was interviewed by a neo-Nazi YouTuber and also met with Fuentes, who has denied the Holocaust. Kent later disavowed Fuentes.
Amy Spitalnick, chief of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, cautioned liberal opponents of the Iran war not to welcome Kent as an ally. “He’s an extremist with deep ties ot Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers who never should have been in this role in the first place,” Spitalnick said in a statement. “Of course, Kent’s own post announcing his resignation is riddled with antisemitic tropes under the guise of blaming Israel.”
Trump, who nominated Kent to his post in the administration and previously supported him, sought to cut bait in comments to reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday afternoon.
“I always thought he was weak on security — very weak on security,” Trump said. “It’s a good thing that he’s out.
The post Joe Kent, Trump official with white supremacist ties, resigns over Iran war and blames Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Dueling letters from Jewish groups dispute prevalence of antisemitism at UCLA
More than 100 Jewish faculty and staff at the University of California, Los Angeles published a letter Monday disputing the Trump administration’s claim in a federal lawsuit against the university that the school has fostered a hostile climate for its Jewish employees.
Following an investigation launched just weeks after Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. Department of Justice filed the case last month, arguing that “UCLA failed to live up to its systemwide commitment to diversity and equal opportunity when it stood by as Jewish employees were subjected to harassment.”
But signatories to the letter dispute this characterization and say that the lawsuit mischaracterizes pro-Palestinian speech and activism as expressions of antisemitism that would justify a federal civil rights case.
“A ‘hostile work environment’ under Title VII is one where we are being harassed so severely or pervasively as to alter our conditions of employment,” the letter states. “It would be legally unprecedented for a court to rule that any category of faculty and staff faces such a hostile work environment primarily on the basis of student speech.”
The lawsuit and letter come on the heels of reporting by ProPublica, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Los Angeles Times that described deep apprehension among career lawyers within the Department of Justice over the Trump administration’s investigations into the University of California system and its legal claims against UCLA.
Several government lawyers told the publications that the White House directed them to find evidence that UCLA and other campuses in the statewide system had allowed antisemitic discrimination to take place, rather than conducting open-ended investigations to determine whether any legal violations had occurred.
Not all Jewish faculty at UCLA have opposed the lawsuit, and the members of UCLA’s antisemitism task force — which had been critical of the school’s handling of antisemitism claims in its 2024 report — did not sign the open letter.
UCLA was the site of some of the most dramatic scenes and allegations during the Gaza solidarity encampment movement in the spring of 2024. Pro-Israel groups claimed that pro-Palestinian protesters had banned Jewish students from central areas on campus, pointing to bans on “Zionists” entering areas around the encampment. Some members of the local Jewish community subsequently attacked the encampment with pepper spray, fireworks and sticks in one of the most violent incidents of its kind.
The Jewish Faculty Resilience Group at UCLA told the Los Angeles Times that they were not opposed to claims made by the Trump administration: “The DOJ lawsuit reflects the experiences reported by Jewish faculty who described serious harassment, exclusion, and retaliation based on their Jewish identities,” the group said.
The lawsuit focuses on similar allegations as previous federal claims against the school, including that it allowed Jewish faculty and staff to be barred from certain areas of campus by student protesters.
The open letter was signed by 132 Jewish faculty and staff at the university. It is not clear how many faculty are represented by the resilience group, or how many total Jewish employees work at UCLA.
The post Dueling letters from Jewish groups dispute prevalence of antisemitism at UCLA appeared first on The Forward.