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Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers leaker whom ‘everyone assumed’ was Jewish, dies at 92
(JTA) — Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst whose leak of the classified “Pentagon Papers” exposed American deceit about the Vietnam War, led to a landmark Supreme Court on press freedoms and inspired a White House backlash that cascaded into the Watergate scandal, died Friday at age 92.
Ellsberg had announced in March that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Although raised by parents of Ashkenazi descent and attacked as a Jewish traitor by President Richard Nixon, Ellsberg was raised and practiced as a Christian Scientist.
“I think everyone assumed he was Jewish, and Nixon certainly did,” said filmmaker Rick Goldsmith, in an interview with J. The Jewish News of Northern California, about his 2010 documentary, “The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.”
Ellsberg, who was born in Chicago in 1931 to Jewish parents with a passion for Christian Science, “shifted from avowed hawk to antiwar activist in part due to the influence of his girlfriend (and later, wife) Patricia, the daughter of Jewish toy magnate Louis Marx,” according to the California Jewish newspaper.
The Harvard-educated ex-Marine was one of three dozen Rand Corporation analysts who helped prepare a report expressing official government doubts about a war that would claim the lives of some 58,000 American and countless Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. Hoping to hasten the end of the war, he eventually leaked thousands of pages to The New York Times, which began publishing excerpts in 1971.
The Nixon White House challenged their publication on national security grounds, leading to a Supreme Court decision that June that favored the Times and the Washington Post and allowed their publication of the documents to continue.
An enraged Nixon set up a secretive unit, known as the Plumbers, to ruin Ellsberg’s reputation and plug other leaks. “I don’t care how you do it,” Nixon told his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, according to a White House recording made in June 1971. “You can’t let the Jew steal that stuff and get away with it. You understand? People don’t trust these Eastern establishment people. [Ellsberg is] Harvard. He’s a Jew. You know, and he’s an arrogant intellectual.” Ellsberg was also one of several people that Nixon was alleged to have called “Jew boy” on explosive recordings that captured headlines in 1974.
The Plumbers’ burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office was followed by a series of break-ins at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in Washington. The revelations about the burglaries and the White House’s role in trying to cover them up led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974.
Facing theft, conspiracy and espionage charges, Ellsberg fully expected to go to jail. But a U.S. district judge declared a mistrial in 1973, citing governmental misconduct.
Stanley Sheinbaum, the liberal Jewish activist who died in 2016, raised nearly $1 million for the successful defense of Ellsberg.
In 2008, Ellsberg told a journalist that his parents considered the family Jewish, “but not in religion.”
“I was a Jew and I am a Jew,” he said. “By [Nixon’s] definition, I’m 100 percent a Jew, as I would be under Hitler’s.”
Ellsberg’s leak was one of the factors that turned public opinion against the war in Vietnam, and he remained an advocate for whistleblowers throughout his life. Earlier this week, in an interview with Politico that turned out to be his last, Ellsberg urged other whistleblowers to remain vigilant despite his and their skepticism that their efforts would effect change.
“[W]hen everything is at stake, can it be worth even a small chance of having a small effect?” said Ellsberg. “And the answer is: Of course. Of course, it can be worth that. You can even say it’s obligatory.”
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With a Kennedy Center honor under Trump, David Mamet enters his final, tragic act
There was a time when David Mamet being honored at the Kennedy Center wouldn’t have raised eyebrows.
His contributions to American theater and film transcend an affinity for four letter words (let’s call them “the F— Variations”). His tough-talking, desperate men gave splenetic voice to the indignities of a capitalist system in Glengarry Glen Ross, evolving sexual mores in Sexual Perversity in Chicago and, in a movie like The Verdict, the justice system.
Cut to 2026 and Mamet’s scripts are but an afterthought to his grievance. When he makes headlines now, it’s for his reactionary conservative streak and his role as a partisan in the culture war. Together with a run of flops, numbering a Harvey Weinstein #MeToo comedy and a Broadway show not even Al Pacino could save, his esteem has cratered among the liberal circles that once embraced him, and to which he once belonged but now prefers to eviscerate.
He has made the transition from dramatist to pundit, first at HuffPost, lately at The Free Press. Reading too much into Oleanna, perhaps, he has called teachers pedophiles on Fox News, written screeds on cancel culture and, a prerequisite for the Kennedys at this moment, praised President Donald Trump.
In the honor, there is a strain of tragedy. Mamet has strayed so far from where he started — what he called his “brain-dead liberal” era — that he makes perfect sense for this appointment, under a regime that tried to slap its leader’s name onto a tribute to a slain president meant as a bipartisan shrine to art. (Due to the Center’s closure amid turmoil and legal battles, the ceremonies will take place at the Capital One Arena, which is only too perfectly bleak.)
A younger Mamet would have looked askance at such a figure as our current Commander-in-Chief, a character who is on the make with all sorts of half-baked schemes. The Iran War may be his latest play on a Buffalo nickel.
It’s enough to make one wonder if we’ve been misreading Mamet all along. Are the men breaking-and entering to steal the Glengarry leads meant to be admired? Are the Hollywood sleazes in Speed-the-Plow aspirational? Is Al Capone the real hero of The Untouchables?
Perhaps the evening, which tends to include career retrospectives, will elucidate. But if the Kennedy Honors could once be said to be for closers, it may now be only for a particular kind of sellout.
The post With a Kennedy Center honor under Trump, David Mamet enters his final, tragic act appeared first on The Forward.
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Why is Britney Spears studying Hebrew?
It’s Britney, Yitz!
Continuing a curious social media trend that has previously seen appreciation for the beards of chess-playing Chabadniks and the Zohar hidden among baby clothes, Britney Spears took to Instagram Sunday to post a Hebrew Book of Psalms and the Lekutei Amaraim, or Tanya, a Hasidic book of sayings.
The caption reads: “I’m extremely bored !!! Learning Hebrew reading right to left !!! Beautiful language !!!” (A previous caption, posted Sunday, was more cryptic, concluding “God speed little man !!! I love u !!!,” perhaps indicating the presence of a havruta or someone in her life who keeps his mitzvot.)
What exactly is happening here? Is Spears, like Marilyn before her and Sydney Sweeney now, about to dip her toe into the mikveh?
The best clue we have isn’t from Spears’ page, but from Israeli model Natalie Dadon, who tagged the “Hit Me Baby One More Time” singer in a selfie with the Tanya. “Finally, it’s possible to tell,” Dadon posted, in a gallery with Hebrew language news coverage of the posts. Dadon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dadon’s social media presence involves Tanya study, which itself is a cornerstone to Lubavitch philosophy (so perhaps is connected to the Chabad chess players whose beards Spears so admired) and adjacent to Kabbalah.
Spears is no stranger to Jewish subjects. Around the time she locked lips with Madonna at the 2003 VMAs, she started, like so many others, to look into Kabbalah, as this handy timeline from Hey Alma notes. She has a Hebrew tattoo of letters that signify healing in kabbalistic texts and was apparently once attached to star in a Holocaust-time-travel-romance film called The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton, which now that I’ve heard of it I will never shut up about.
She has credited Kabbalah with helping her through a difficult time in her life and has been spotted wearing a star of David.
But we should approach Spears’ dalliance with Judaism, now sandwiched on her Insta page between a call-out of her sister Jamie Lynn and a NSFW video of her dancing with a rose Emoji as a fig leaf, with some healthy skepticism.
Her Instagram bio currently reads “Pray Every Day” with a prayer hands emoji next to a Bible emoji with a cross. She’d still appear to be Christian — or, at the very least, waiting for the new iOS update with the Tanya emoji.
The post Why is Britney Spears studying Hebrew? appeared first on The Forward.
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Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate
(JTA) — Democratic Michigan U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens was given an extended ovation at a fundraising gala for a Detroit-area Jewish day school Sunday, hours after her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers for Senate.
Stevens, a longtime pro-Israel stalwart, was celebrated at the Yeshiva Beth Yehudah annual dinner as many members of her party across the country spoke out against her decision to break with Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
Video of Stevens’ minute-long standing ovation was shared on social media by representatives of Agudath Israel of America, a major Orthodox advocacy group. Strongly pro-Israel Jews have largely lauded her move to Rogers, which she said came about in part because of her objections to El-Sayed’s past relationship with anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker.
Also on Sunday evening, Stevens struggled to explain the timing of her decision in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. One consistency in her response was her belief that she was helping Democrats beat back antisemitism within their own party.
“I’m trying to help the Democratic Party. I felt the same way about Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo,” Stevens said, referencing the Maine Senate candidate who ultimately stepped down from the nomination. Asked if she believed El-Sayed is antisemitic, she responded, “I think some of the actions have certainly been antisemitic, Anderson, but I’m just sick of who he stands with.”
She named Piker and “the uncle,” referring to Piker’s uncle Cenk Uygur, whose PAC produced an ad supporting El-Sayed that blamed Israel for the price of groceries. After Stevens publicly pressured El-Sayed to condemn the ad’s contents, the candidate appeared to do so on Saturday night, which Stevens celebrated in a statement — hours before endorsing Rogers.
To Cooper, Stevens suggested that many other Democrats felt the way she did.
“I’ve been hearing from a ton of Dems, Anderson, who have said, ‘Thank you. This is how we felt.’ They haven’t liked this campaign. It’s painful,” she said. A growing number of Michigan Jewish Democrats have pledged to vote for Rogers, though more than 1,000 have also signed a letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah is spread across multiple suburban Detroit campuses and is the largest Jewish day school in the state. Its annual fundraising dinner, “An Evening of Unity,” is known for drawing big national names in politics and the media, usually from both major parties.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was the evening’s keynote speaker, and the gala program also featured personal letters from President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
But it was Stevens, a regular supporter of the school, who turned the most heads. She was also presented with what the emcee called “a specially designed, illuminated book of the five scrolls of our prophets, which remind you all of our heartfelt esteem and appreciation for who you are.”
The yeshiva’s leadership also extended warm wishes to Stevens’ Jewish fiancé, Democratic megadonor Jason Turkish, whom the yeshiva’s emcee described as “our dear friend.” Turkish’s own endorsement of Rogers came days before the congresswoman’s.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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