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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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More Americans now sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis, new poll finds
(JTA) — Another major poll has founded that sympathy has surged among Americans for Palestinians and now exceeds support for Israelis.
Gallup, one of the country’s most respected polling outfits, found that 41% of Americans say they sympathize more with the Palestinians, compare to 36% who sympathize more with the Israelis. A year ago, a Gallup poll showed a 13-point advantage for the Israelis.
The poll comes nearly six months after a national poll found for the first time that Americans’ sympathies had flipped. In a New York Times and Siena University poll released in September, 35% of registered American voters said they sympathized more with Palestinians compared to 34% with Israel. Prior to the war in Gaza, 47% of respondents said they sympathized more with the Israelis.
Both pollsters have asked about voters’ sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. They each said the sympathy gap in their latest polls was not statistically significant but that the trajectory of sentiments was.
Between 2001 and 2018, the Gallup poll found that Americans were more sympathetic to the Israelis by an average margin of 43 points. The gap began narrowing the following year but did not flip until now.
In both polls, the stark recent shift was driven by sharp shifts in sentiments among Democrats. The Gallup poll found that voters under 55 prefer the Palestinians by a wide margin, while older voters remain more sympathetic to the Israelis. The New York Times poll found that older, college-educated Democrats had seen their sentiments shift most harshly.
The polls add to the data points showing a sharp drop in sympathy for Israelis since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, for which the United States brokered a ceasefire in October. The Gallup poll is the first to demonstrate post-ceasefire sentiments among Americans.
The post More Americans now sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis, new poll finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Is goy a slur, an antisemitic dogwhistle or a word for non-Jews?
Suddenly the term goy is trending. X is full of memes about “goy pride” and goyim “waking up.” People are debating whether goy is an antisemitic term, or, well, an anti-goyish term. Google Trends shows searches for the term have nearly quadrupled in the last four months.
Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with this bit of Jewish vocabulary?
Well, it’s not so sudden. Antisemites have been obsessed with it for decades. Memes on 4chan and other dark corners of the internet have long passed around quotes from the Talmud discussing goyim as though each use of the term was proof of a nefarious plot against non-Jews. They made up new terms, like “goyslop,” anything unhealthy supposedly created by Jews to weaken the world. White supremacists claim the term as one of pride, creating antisemitic groups like the Goyim Defense League.
Goyim broke into the mainstream discourse thanks to two events. One is the Epstein files, in which Jeffrey Epstein uses the term goy with a pejorative tone. The Epstein files have already birthed a network of conspiracy theories about Jewish cabals and government control, and goy was taken as just another example of Jewish scheming. Candace Owens talked about Epstein’s use of the term at length, incorrectly saying that it means “cattle.”
The other is a viral antisemitic YouTube video about a so-called “Jewish invasion” in New Jersey. The video’s creator, Tyler Oliveira, addressed his video to goyim and claims the label himself, aiming to inform the goyim about the supposedly nefarious threat of Jew moving into a town.
But is goy really such a problematic term? Literally, it just means “nation” — in the Torah, it is used in places to refer to the nation of Israel. In practice, it simply means “non-Jew,” or foreign nation which isn’t inherently insulting; Jews are far from the only group to have a term for outsider — think gringo in Spanish or farang in Thai.
This can, of course, be exclusionary. There is certainly the sense that outsiders cannot understand or participate in certain activities of an in-group — an idea that is not limited to Jews. And sometimes that is used to discriminate or insult.
Goy is used much more commonly among Jews to simply describe something that’s not Jewish. Think of the famous Lenny Bruce bit about pumpernickel being Jewish and white bread being goyish — is it a slur to observe that white bread is not part of Jewish culture? Thanks to a history of poverty and shtetl life, Jewish food is often more humble and less processed. That’s just history. It’s not an insult to white bread, or, for that matter, to pumpernickel.
The use of goy by non-Jews is similarly complicated. Someone can casually describe themself as a goy, simply because they are not Jewish or have little contact with Jewish culture. But the term is also used by neo-Nazi types as a dog whistle that signals familiarity with the world of antisemitic conspiracy theories. The phrase “the goyim are waking up,” which has suddenly entered the mainstream, echoes a much older antisemitic meme — “The goyim know,” which is used to imply there is something sinister to know or wake up to, namely the supposed Jewish control of society. (“Noticing” is another antisemitic meme, referring to the same phenomenon.)
This makes the debate about the term kind of silly. Tone and context is everything, just like with any term. “Jew” can be an insult, too, but it obviously is simply a descriptor as well; I call myself a Jew, because I am religiously and ethnically Jewish. If someone spat “Jew” at me on the street, however, I’d be insulted.
But the supposedly neutral valence of the word goy can make the antisemitism that often accompanies it hard to call out. If Jews use it neutrally, why shouldn’t anyone? Or so goes the defense online.
This is how Tyler Oliveira, the creator behind the “Jewish invasion” YouTube video, spins his use of the term. “Jews are trying to say I’m ‘anti-Semitic’ for using the word ‘goyim’ to describe non-Jews,” he wrote on X. “They can call you ‘goyim’ and it’s fine, but if you call yourself a ‘goy’ you hate Jews…? You can’t make this up.”
But watching Oliveira’s actual use of the term, the antisemitism is clear. He creates false binaries like dismissing antisemitism for the supposedly greater problem of “anti-goyism,” as though Jews, a minority, have outsize power to harm outsiders. He harps on the idea that Jews call themselves God’s chosen people as though it is akin to white supremacy, calling Jews “semite supremacists.”
It’s silly to pretend Oliveira’s use of goy isn’t obviously a loaded one; goy may not inherently be an insult, but when it’s deployed with a conspiratorial wink to antisemites, it’s antisemitic.
That’s really the simple rule for when goy is a slur, or when it’s antisemitic: If the person using it is a bigot, it’s bigoted. Otherwise, it’s just a word.
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A conservative Jewish professor who rejected Hitler comparisons now invokes one — for Tucker Carlson
(JTA) — In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Jeffrey Lax, a descendent of Holocaust survivors who has lobbied against antisemitism at the college where he teaches, criticized liberals who compared Donald Trump to Hitler.
Now Lax, a law professor who defines himself as center-right and appears frequently on Newsmax and Fox News, is rethinking the idea of modern-day Hitler comparisons. In fact, he’s ringing that bell on a key Trump ally: Tucker Carlson.
“I never, ever, thought this day would come, but for the first time in my life, I am going to compare a human being to Adolph Hitler,” Lax tweeted on Friday. “Understand that I am the grandchild of 4 Holocaust survivors. I’ve spent a lifetime urging people NOT to compare anyone to Hitler. But… Tucker Carlson’s views, rhetoric, and influence remind me of Adolph Hitler.”
Lax was responding to Vice President JD Vance’s favorable comments about the interview Carlson, a far-right pundit, did last week with Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. The interview ignited new allegations of antisemitism, but Vance did not suggest any concern. That, Lax says, is a big problem.
“This situation is as dead serious as a heart attack and with @JDVance now expressly and abhorrently legitimizing Carlson’s views, we are in a national Antisemitism State of Emergency,” Lax continued.
It was a dramatic outlay of angst about antisemitism on the right for a figure who has campaigned against left-wing anti-Israel activism at the City University of New York, where he teaches. But Lax said in an interview that he could not remain silent.
“For me to get to this point, it had to be something that was so deeply disturbing on many levels,” he said. Carlson’s call for genetics testing for Jews, he said, crossed that line. “If anything I’ve ever heard is Hitler-esque, when you talk about Jews having to prove that they’re Jews with DNA — if DNA testing was available in the days of Hitler, do you not think that Hitler would have used it?”
Lax emphasized that he was speaking specifically of “early Hitler, the early years, before he took power, before he actually, physically caused anybody to be killed. I’m talking about the rhetoric. He could’ve been stopped at that point. People didn’t take Hitler seriously.”
While Lax has criticized Carlson before, he has in the past refrained from extending those critiques to Vance — despite a mounting record of the vice president minimizing antisemitism on the right. “I’ve had suspicions about Vance for a long time,” Lax said. “I wanted to be sure.”
Vance’s defense of Carlson’s interview provided the certainty he needed.
“Is he out of his mind?” Lax said. “By saying something like that, you are saying that what Tucker is saying is legitimate and needs to be discussed, including that Jews should have genetic testing done to be sure that they’re Jewish and have right to the land.” He described such a belief as “brain rot.”
Lax joins a growing line of other Jewish conservatives who have expressed alarm about Vance and his closeness to the White House. They include far-right activist Laura Loomer; conservative columnist and Newsweek editor Josh Hammer; Israeli conservative luminary Yoram Hazony; Orthodox right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro; Rep. Randy Fine; pro-Israel activist groups StandWithUs and StopAntisemitism; and publications with a conservative-friendly pro-Israel bent including Tablet, The Free Press and Commentary.
Their alarm comes as Carlson builds a formidable political network of his own ahead of the midterms, made up of figures with growing sway over young voters. He has given friendly interviews to several outsider GOP candidates, including Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, lover of antisemitic memes; Texas congressional candidate and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Ryan Zink; U.S. Senate candidate Paul Dans, who is challenging pro-Israel Sen. Lindsay Graham; and Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn, who used his Carlson interview to disparage non-Christian elected officials.
Influential figures identified with the left are also increasingly coming to Carlson’s side on Israel and Jews. “Hey bitch, the goyim are waking the fuck up. Deal with it,” Ana Kasparian, a co-host on the progressive online network The Young Turks, tweeted as part of an extended defense of Carlson this week.
Amid a backlash, the next day Kasparian doubled down: “I do not regret this comment. I don’t apologize,” she tweeted. “Israel is evil, genocidal and has destroyed our country. They’re about to drag us into another war and all we hear from Israelis and their braindead supporters is ‘ANTISEMITE’ if you disagree with Israel’s agenda.” (Kasparian’s Young Turks colleague, Cenk Uyghur, is a regular Carlson guest.)
While antipathy toward Carlson has been all but fully cemented for Jews on both sides of the aisle, not every Jewish conservative has turned on Vance.
Matt Brooks, director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, harshly criticized Carlson and his defenders last fall after the pundit interviewed white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and the group’s most recent conference was marked by repeated denunciations of Carlson. Yet RJC has refrained from publicly pointing the finger at Vance, and its posts about him to date are uniformly complimentary — as on Thursday, when the group retweeted a speech from the vice president’s X account about Democrats and affordability.
A request for comment to the RJC was not returned.
“That is outrageous that the RJC would not criticize Vance,” Lax said. “That is self-destructive. That is insane.”
Also treading carefully on Vance are many establishment Jewish groups. Neither the Anti-Defamation League nor its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has publicly criticized the vice president since February 2025, when the ADL’s X account docked him for meeting with the head of Germany’s far-right AfD party. The American Jewish Committee, similarly, has critiqued Carlson’s rhetoric in the past but remained muted on Vance as he’s increasingly clarified that he believes the pundit is a valuable part of the Republican coalition. Comments to representatives for the two organizations were not returned.
Because Lax runs a registered nonprofit, the Zionist group S.A.F.E. Campus, he said he was hesitant to comment too specifically on electoral politics. But he said he believes Jews on the right are “coming around” to the problem of antisemitism on their side. And he’s deeply concerned about Vance running for president in 2028 without having distanced himself from Carlson.
“I could never support a candidate who says we need to have a conversation about genetically testing Jews,” Lax said. “What Vance said, I think people’s eyes popped out of their heads.”
And, despite his earlier defenses of Trump, he said the president must more forcefully condemn Carlson and Vance’s rhetoric now. “He can’t have his vice president say that it is an important conversation that we talk about genetically testing Jews to see if they come from Abraham,” Lax said. Vance himself once compared Trump to Hitler, prior to being chosen as his running mate.
Lax is also reflecting more on his 2024 piece decrying Trump-Hitler comparisons. If the president doesn’t issue a more forceful condemnation of his party’s antisemitic wing in the next month, the professor said, ”I may very well change my mind.”
By Friday afternoon, he had drawn a possible line in the sand, tweeting a call for Trump to demand Vance’s immediate resignation.
“Enough. This is a National Antisemitic State of Emergency. Only Trump can end it. And he must do so now,” Lax wrote. “It starts by booting JD and cutting Tucker out from all conservative and Republican orgs.”
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