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Broadway’s Jews gather in response to neo-Nazi protest
(New York Jewish Week) – Twenty-four hours after neo-Nazi agitators heckled ticket-holders outside the first preview of “Parade,” a musical about a notorious antisemitic incident, Jewish members of New York’s theater community came together to share their emotions and reactions and look to the future.
The gathering, organized by producer and actor Ari Axelrod, was held on a rainy Wednesday afternoon in a rehearsal space at Open Jar Studios in Times Square. It was just three blocks north of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, where “Parade” is currently in previews. About 50 people from all ranks of the theater industry — from Broadway producers and marquee stars to undergraduate students in college shows — joined the conversation.
Starring Jewish actor Ben Platt, “Parade” tells the story of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager accused and found guilty of murdering a girl who worked for him, despite little evidence. In 1915, Frank was kidnapped from jail and lynched by a mob, and the case led to the creation of the Anti-Defamation League and a resurgence of interest in the Ku Klux Klan.
At the show’s first preview on Feb. 21, protestors who identified with the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group headquartered in Florida, accused Frank of being a pedophile and condemned audience members for paying to support pedophiles and Jews.
“The story about Leo Frank is not a new one. They could be protesting anywhere. But there is a reason they knew that that play was happening and where it was happening,” said Axelrod, who told the New York Jewish Week that he has been thinking about holding a gathering in response to antisemitism for nearly two years. “It feels like they came into our home, not just our home as Jews, but our home as theater artists.”
Axelrod, 28, opened by leading the Shehechiyanu, a prayer of gratitude, and a round of deep breaths.
“The intention for today is not to find a solution to the rise in antisemitism or even the solution to what happened yesterday,” Axelrod told the crowd. “The intention is to be in a space and find community and gather as Jews, which is what we’ve been doing for thousands of years. To commiserate and talk and bear witness to how we’re feeling and how other people are feeling, to be seen and heard and held and valued and validated as an individual and as a member of a community.”
The room was full of Jewish and some non-Jewish people in the theater industry of all ages who wanted to express their thoughts and ideas about the protests. (Julia Gergely)
Many in the room felt fear, sadness, frustration and anger at the events. For an assistant on the production team of “Parade” — who asked to remain anonymous because he came to process his own feelings and not as a representative of the show — “it was emotional, especially because not everyone on the team is Jewish. So just being there as a Jewish person, hearing them say that to people going into the show was hard.”
However, he noted the importance of committing to see and work on the show. “Just being at the show last night was its own protest to what they were saying,” he said, adding that the team behind “Parade” is committed to ensuring a safe environment for everyone involved and that they don’t want to let the protests deter people from seeing the show, which is scheduled to run through Aug. 6.
Elliott Masie, a Broadway producer who was on the line with his wife when the threats and jeers began, said his initial reaction was surprise. “I couldn’t discern what they were about at first. They tried to pretend that they were against pedophiles, but then their rhetoric escalated and they started to go up to people in the line and say ‘You paid so much for this, to advocate for a Jew.’ The moment I heard them say the word ‘Jew,’ I realized what they were,” he told the New York Jewish Week.
“The hardest part was that it seemed like most people coming into the theater didn’t understand who they were,” Masie, 72, added.
Still, he said, the show was wonderful. “I’ve never been at a first preview that had as prolonged an ovation. In some ways, they stole the moment. We have to give the moment back and give the moment to all of us. The ultimate love and support we need to do is show the cast and the company that we’re here,” he said.
Over the last year, Jewish stories have been having a moment on Broadway and off, with “Funny Girl,” “Leopoldstadt” and “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish” all coming to the stage in 2022. Surrounding each show has been discussions of their relevance at time when watchdog groups have been reporting a rise in antisemitic incidents.
“The entire cast of our show and company was scared last night that we were going to walk out to something similar,” said David Krumhotlz, who is in the final weeks of his role as patriarch Hermann Merz in “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s play about the Holocaust. “Thank God it didn’t. We stand in solidarity not only with ‘Parade,’ but with the entire Jewish Broadway community.”
Yael Chanukov, a cast member of “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” spoke about the safety and security discussions the cast and crew had during the show’s run and the fear and anxiety she felt at times doing such a proudly Jewish show that otherwise was one of the most fulfilling experiences of her life.
The Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, where “Parade” is in previews, Feb. 22, 2023. (Julia Gergely)
For many, it was an exhalation of years of frustration and confusion over minor and major antisemitism they said they experienced in the theater industry and beyond.
While Axelrod said the goal of Wednesday’s gathering wasn’t to find solutions, by the end of the evening, he had cemented an idea for a Jewish advocacy coalition within the theater industry. He said it might offer resources and tools for how to speak up and show up to support the Jewish theater community.
Representatives from the Anti-Defamation League and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice who were at the meeting offered to help get contacts and funding if the idea were to get off the ground.
“The general tenor that I’m getting is that no one is asking the theater community to make the fight against antisemitism the top priority. Just make it a priority,” Axelrod said.
Actor and writer Mike Haber, 31, had tickets for Wednesday night’s performance of “Parade.”
“Last night, I literally couldn’t even sleep because of what happened,” he said. “This is so beautiful to see so many theater people and we’re all coping with the same emotions and feelings.”
Ninety minutes before the Wednesday evening performance began, the rain had stopped and all was calm in front of the theater. Haber took pictures and burst out singing the show’s tunes. “I love this,” he said. “I can’t wait to see it.”
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‘This is sort of their normal’: Israelis confront yet another wartime flare after Iranian fire
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — As missiles flew toward Israel on Sunday night, beleaguered Israelis once again took to Facebook from their safe rooms.
“Whoever is in charge of naming wars over here, please do not give it a fierce animal name this time,” one Israeli wrote in an English-language group. “The last military operation was called ‘Roaring Lion,’ and the Twelve Day War in June 2025, ‘Rising Lion.’”
Another replied with a suggestion: “I hope it’s something like ‘The One Day War.’”
The idea may not have been far off. U.S. President Donald Trump said early Monday that he hoped both Iran and Israel would halt their fire. By mid-morning, Iran’s military announced the strikes were on pause, saying it had sufficiently retaliated for the Israeli strikes in Beirut, a tit-for-tat exchange. By Monday evening Israel time, Netanyahu, too, said the fighting was halted, but warned that Israel would respond “with force” to any future attacks.
Despite the tenuous pause — not quite a ceasefire — Home Front Command restrictions remained in place by Monday evening, touching every layer of daily life in Israel. Schools were closed through at least Wednesday. Or Erez, head spokesperson for Clalit, Israel’s largest health care network, told JTA, “We will continue to remain operating in shelters until the Home Front Command restrictions change.”
By 10 p.m. Sunday, NICU infants and those in critical care were already being moved to bunkers beneath Beilinson hospital, home to the largest emergency room in the Middle East.
“This is the third time within a year that we have carried out such a transition,” said Dr. Erez Barenboim, director of Beilinson and Hasharon Hospitals.
Hospital staff were visibly fatigued but resilient. Soroka University Medical Center was struck by an Iranian ballistic missile during the June 2025 conflict, and as is standard during attacks, health care staff canceled non-essential visits and moved operations to shelters.
Alexi Wirpel, a student at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, was on a Birthright trip in the Galilee when the first sirens rang out. “We could hear the dome working, so we knew we were going to be relatively okay,” she said.
It was not Wirpel’s first trip to Israel, but it was her first time hearing sirens signaling incoming missiles. Others on the Birthright trip were more anxious and had to be consoled by staff, she said.
When word came of a tenuous pause, Wirpel said, she and others didn’t believe it would last long.
“All day today we’ve all kind of been just waiting for something to go off again,” she said. “It’s become a very real reality that this is something that my family has to go through instead of just hearing about it.”
Caroline Flannery manages an after-school program at a Tel Aviv middle school and has watched the cumulative toll of two and a half years of conflict reshape an entire generation of Israeli children. Added to the time lost during the pandemic, students in those grades have missed the equivalent of a year of school.
“We have kids in fifth and sixth grade that still don’t know the alphabet,” Flannery said.
Israel’s education system has been among the hardest hit since Oct. 7. Leaked results of a government aptitude test found that only 3% of Israeli ninth graders met the national benchmark for science, and just 22% met the benchmark for English, figures that prompted opposition leaders to call for a declaration of a “national educational emergency.”
The disruption extends to staff, who are just as rattled as students when a siren sounds and a week of lesson plans is suddenly worthless.
Flannery moved to Israel in 2019 and hadn’t planned to stay, but the impact she could make on Israeli children convinced her to commit to another year, and then another, until she was running the after-school program herself.
The conclusion she has come to in the wake of Oct. 7 is that many of her students, faced with constant disruption, will never fully catch up.
“It’s not just that they miss school, so now they have to work extra hard and catch up,” she said. “Their whole routine was disrupted and they come back. They’re not ready, not used to, not prepared to sit, to come into class, to sit in their seats, to learn. Their minds aren’t there.”
With Trump pressing Israel and Iran to return to the negotiating table, Flannery discussed contingency plans already on the table — such as Zoom classes, home visits — should the war return to its March tempo.
“This,” she said, “is sort of their normal.”
The post ‘This is sort of their normal’: Israelis confront yet another wartime flare after Iranian fire appeared first on The Forward.
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Celebrated German Jewish bakery closes, saying ‘the hatred reached Berlin’ after Oct. 7
(JTA) — BERLIN — A Jewish bakery owned by Polish and Israeli immigrants in this city has shut its doors, citing a combination of economic pressure and antisemitic harassment.
Babka & Krantz opened in the Friedenau district in November 2022 and added a second location in December 2024, adjacent to the memorial at the site where the Nazis devised their “final solution” for the Jews during the Holocaust.
The second location at the House of the Wannsee Conference closed on Nov. 30, according to the bakery’s Instagram account, which directed followers to a statement from the memorial that has since been deleted from its website.
“We regret the verbal abuse and the difficult situation to which the managing directors and employees of BABKA & KRANTZ Meisterkonditorei were exposed and express our full understanding for the termination of the cooperation under these circumstances,” said the March 10 statement, which was preserved by the Internet Archive.
Now, the original location has closed, too.
Café owners and married couple Shahar Elkin and Marcin Liera-Elkin said in a statement to friends and supporters that a construction site had blocked access to the bakery for more than a year, curbing foot traffic.
But they also said they had been affected when, after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, “the hatred reached Berlin as well.” The bakery was “subjected to constant verbal abuse” since that time, they said in their statement, which has circulated on social media.
Elkin and Liera-Elkin declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, saying they were turning down all media inquiries for the time being. “We and our family need to settle down and attend to a few matters,” they said.
Some would-be customers in the neighborhood said they were already missing the Babka & Krantz on Sunday.
“I was actually going there every day recently, after I found out they were closing. I found that really unfortunate,” said Rebecca, who declined to share her last name. She said she had heard about both the economic impact of the construction and about harassment that had taken place at the store, adding, “It makes me sad that things are this way. I’m trying not to cry.”
Babka & Krantz joins a growing list of beloved eateries that have cited the aftermath of Oct. 7 in announcing their closures. Also in Berlin, the hummus bar Kanaan, which was jointly owned by an Israeli and a Palestinian, closed in March after experiencing protests. An Israeli restaurant in Portugal cited harassment when it announced its closure in January, as did an Ethiopian-Israeli eatery in New York City that recently ceased operating as a traditional restaurant. In Washington, D.C., a local chain of Israeli restaurants closed down late last year following a boycott campaign.
Elkin came to Berlin in 2012 from his home city of Haifa, Israel, and in 2019 earned a master baker’s certificate, becoming the first Jewish master baker accepted into the Berlin Bakers’ Guild. Liera-Elkin was born in Posen, Poland, and grew up in Berlin.
The couple said they were proud to be producing Jewish baked goods in a city with a resurging Jewish population.
“Our families come from cities with a vibrant Jewish life and a formative culture of debate. Today, few or no Jews live in these places anymore,” they said in their statement last week. “That’s why Berlin is such a miracle.”
Germany is home to an estimated 200,000 Jews, including many from the former Soviet Union and a large contingent of Israeli expats. The bakery catered to them, offering special menus for Jewish holidays, devising baked goods that reflect diverse Jewish traditions and even bringing in a rabbi to answer visitors’ questions.
But the bakery catered not only to Jewish customers. According to the owners, non-Jewish locals learned about Jewish culture at their tables. “Our neighbors have seen that different people can eat together at one table and speak to each other,” they wrote in their goodbye note.
The business also won professional recognition, earning a Craftsmanship Award sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs last year.
The couple said the good relations they had built as unofficial ambassadors of Jewish culture – introducing Berliners of all backgrounds to Jewish culinary specialties – were endangered when the construction site went up in their neighborhood, blocking the street view of their business. They lost customers and money, they said, and their anxiety was increasingly visible on their Instagram account, where they chronicled their fruitless efforts to make their story accessible again.
Speaking to the Berliner Morgenpost in November, Liera-Elkin hinted that the two-pronged pressure — economic and harassment — might force them to close. He reported that their vehicle had been vandalized and that they had “experienced numerous verbal and even physical attacks in our private life, received hate-filled letters and calls.” The couple said they had even sent their daughter to stay elsewhere for a time.
“We are just a bakery that wants to offer great products. But now we are only confronted with problems and politics that leave us in despair,“ he told the Morgenpost. “We really don‘t know if Berlin is still the right place for us.”
The post Celebrated German Jewish bakery closes, saying ‘the hatred reached Berlin’ after Oct. 7 appeared first on The Forward.
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Dave Matthews pushes back on claims his criticism of Israel is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dave Matthews, the frontman of the American rock band Dave Matthews Band, pushed back on allegations Friday that his vocal criticism of Israel in recent years had crossed into antisemitism.
Reading his remarks from a sheet of paper on stage at the Coastal Credit Union Music Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, Matthews, whose criticism of Israel has drawn backlash from some Jewish and pro-Israel voices, pushed back on accusations of antisemitism.
“It’s no secret, at least I don’t try to make it a secret, that I disagree with the policies of Israel and the United States, and their treatment of the civilian population in Gaza and the West Bank,” Matthews said. “But that should by no means be twisted into anybody thinking that I am bigoted or antisemitic in any way at all.”
Matthews continued: “On the contrary, I have a deep respect and love for all of my life that I can remember, and an admiration for the culture and history of the Jewish people.”
The frontman of the band continued to list a host of prominent Jewish figures he admired, including Albert Einstein, George Gershwin, Hannah Arendt and Anne Frank, and described being at a friend’s son’s bar mitzvah on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel.
“I hold the Jewish people in the highest regard, and it breaks my heart that my opinions born out of deep commitment to nonviolent resolution and resistance can be twisted to serve any hateful or racist or bigoted ideas,” Matthews said.
Matthews’ remarks come after years of outspoken criticism of Israel, including in 2024 when he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Washington, D.C., against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.
“I’m ashamed that my tax dollars are going to the brutalizing of an entire people,” Matthews told Al Jazeera at the time. “It’s shameful. And I’m ashamed that our government is welcoming him here.”
At a New Jersey concert last year, Matthews also donned a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf, and held up signs reading “Stop The Genocide” and “Stop Killing Children.”
A representative for Matthews did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of what prompted his remarks Friday.
Matthews is among a growing number of prominent artists who have become outspoken critics of Israel in recent years, including Macklemore, the Irish rap group Kneecap and the British punk band Bob Vylan.
Matthews’ statement Friday was not the first time the artist has defended his rhetoric. In a December 2023 letter to his Jewish fans obtained by JNS, he also assured fans that he “strongly and unequivocally condemn the horrific events of Oct. 7.”
“I will never stop calling for an end to the violence in Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon, and for that matter, the Congo and Sudan and Ukraine, or the violence, or the horrific violence against immigrants and their neighbors in our country,” Matthews concluded during his remarks Friday.
The post Dave Matthews pushes back on claims his criticism of Israel is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.
