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Documentary traces Idina Menzel’s rise from bat mitzvah performer to Broadway icon
(JTA) — Before becoming one of the most iconic vocal performers of her time, appearing in Broadway shows such as “Rent” and “Wicked” and voicing Queen Elsa in “Frozen,” Idina Menzel got her start singing as a teenager on the wedding and bar and bat mitzvah circuit near where she grew up on Long Island and other parts of the New York area.
“It was everything to me, formatively,” Menzel told JTA in an interview, of her early singing experiences. “I believe… that that had a lot to do with my education in music and genres, but also as a performer. I was so young when I did it… I would lie about my age, I would be 15 or 16 years old and I’d dress all mature and go in in high heels. I would usually be the only woman in a group of six guys.”
In the new documentary “Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage,” which had its world premiere in mid-November at the DOC NYC film festival and lands on Disney+ on Friday, Menzel discusses those experiences, even returning to the main venue where she used to perform at weddings and bar mitzvahs (the Inn at Fox Hollow in Woodbury, New York). The film also shows Menzel in Pittsburgh in the immediate aftermath of the Tree of Life massacre and shows her sharing her thoughts on it as a Jewish person.
The film, directed by Anne McCabe, follows Menzel’s 2018 arena tour, along with Josh Groban, which culminated in Menzel fulfilling her lifelong dream of headlining Madison Square Garden. It combines concerts with intimate behind-the-scenes moments, as well as archival footage from Menzel’s early life and throughout her career.
“When I heard that the tour was going to culminate at Madison Square Garden, I realized that it was a dream come true — it was a place that I’d always wanted to play, growing up on Long Island, and living in New York City, at NYU and beyond that,” Menzel said. “The fact that I was going to be playing there was a big deal, and I wanted to film it, no matter what I did with the footage, I know I just wanted to document it for myself, so I could take that in and really just appreciate the moment.”
As is often the case with documentaries, the film evolved a bit from its original purpose.
The film follows Menzel during a 2018 tour. (Eric Maldin/Walkman Productions Inc.)
“In the process of filming it… it revealed itself in a different way. It became not just a tour documentary going city to city, but more about motherhood, and how we balance trying to pursue our passion and our dreams and also being there for our family,” she said. “That was a welcome surprise in the process.”
The documentary shows Menzel with her then-preteen son — from her previous marriage to Taye Diggs — and her husband, actor Aaron Lohr, while going through the process of in vitro fertilization.
The tour that the film follows arrived in Pittsburgh about two weeks after the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre, and Menzel is shown singing the “Rent” number “No Day But Today” to a crowd at Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena. (Menzel more recently wrote and performed a song called “A Tree of Life,” which was featured in the closing credits of a recent HBO documentary about the tragedy and its aftermath.)
In that part of the film, Menzel wears a shirt with a Jewish star that says “Stronger Than Hate.”
“That show was all about tolerance,” Menzel says of “Rent” in the film, while on stage in Pittsburgh. “It was about love, it was about community… I’m sitting here in this beautiful city, a Jewish girl from Long Island. I thought about how we light candles in the Jewish religion, sort of choosing light over darkness, choosing love over bigotry.”
“That particular concert is now tragically defined but what had happened in Pittsburgh, and I felt like I couldn’t ignore that, and I felt like that song was the right song for the moment, and that there was any way I could use my music to help heel then I wanted to do it,” she told JTA.
The documentary also looks back at Menzel’s entire career, from breaking through in the original production of “Rent” in the mid-1990s (the “which way to the stage” subtitle, as “Rent”-heads will know, is a reference to what was Menzel’s very first line in that musical), to an ill-fated run at a pop career, to her second big musical smash, “Wicked,” which landed on Broadway in 2003. Viewers also get the story of the “Frozen” phenomenon and its Menzel-performed torch song “Let it Go,” as well as other notable episodes — such as the time John Travolta mispronounced her name at the Oscars in 2014. (Menzel finds the whole thing hilarious.)
The COVID-19 pandemic was not the only obstacle in getting the documentary, which was mostly filmed four years ago, to the finish line. Menzel said in a post-screening Q&A at DOC NYC that because the documentary ended up on Disney+ and she is the voice of Queen Elsa, some curse words had to be taken out, as did a scene where she clutches a bottle of wine.
“I lost the funding at one point, and so I bought [the film] back,” Menzel said. “I wanted to find people that really believed in it and were going to creatively do right by it. I gambled on myself, which I try to do, and try to make a point of it. I’m just so happy that it’s come to fruition.”
The singer has spoken often about her admiration for another prominent Jewish singer and actress, Barbra Streisand. In her JTA interview, she praised the way Streisand “embraces her Judaism.” In the film, Menzel sings “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from “Funny Girl, the 1968 movie version that starred Streisand.
“I love her because she’s her. There’s no one else like her, and always aspired to be her unique true self. She didn’t change herself for anyone else. I also feel like, from a vocalist’s perspective, her talent is insurmountable. The way she sings, it feels like it’s just coming directly from her soul, it feels effortless. The way she tells the story through her singing, that I don’t think anyone else has.”
Menzel’s career is about to come full circle, with another bar/bat mitzvah-related performance: she is set to co-star in “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” a Netflix movie adapted from the young adult novel by Fiona Rosenbloom and directed by Sammi Cohen. The film will reunite Menzel with Adam Sandler, who played her husband in 2019’s “Uncut Gems” and will do so again in the new movie. (Menzel also brought up her character’s bat mitzvah in that very Jewish-themed film by the Safdie brothers.)
“We were much more dysfunctional in that movie,” Menzel said of “Uncut Gems”.
“You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” does not have a release date but is expected to arrive sometime in 2023. For now, she’s reveling in the documentary.
“It was just such a joy because I got to look back on it… I got to see myself as a little girl again,” Menzel said. “How I always believed in myself, even more so than maybe I do now. There was no one who was going to tell me that I wasn’t going to live my dream one day. I believed that I had something to offer the world, and so it was really emotional for me to see.”
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Israeli and diaspora Jews live in different realities. The Israel Day parade proved it
If Sunday’s Israel Day Parade in New York City had been held in Israel, with the same Israeli leaders in attendance, there is no way that so many people would have shown up — unless it was to protest.
The fact that tens of thousands of American Jews seemed to have no problem marching alongside far-right Israeli ministers — including Bezalel Smotrich and Amichai Eliyahu — is a clear indication of the ever-widening gap between Israelis and diaspora Jews, whose support for Israel is, for the most part, conceptual. And that gap isn’t exclusively, or even primarily, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yes, there are many Israelis who oppose the messianic, anti-Palestinian rhetoric and policies pushed by Smotrich, Eliyahu and the rest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet — although not nearly enough, if you ask me. But the broad disdain for this government has more to do with domestic issues.
Israelis are furious over the ongoing Haredi draft exception; the government’s effective abandonment of citizens on the northern border; its refusal to take any accountability for the failures surrounding the Oct. 7 attack; a collapsing education system; a narrowing of religious freedoms; soaring murder rates in Arab communities; an epidemic of violence among Israeli teenagers; and police ineptitude and brutality.
From Israel, it seems clear that diaspora Jews have been unwilling to confront just how much damage Smotrich and his fellow coalition partners have done inside Israel.
Which is perhaps why Israel Day in New York City felt so disconnected from Israeli life.
The discourse around Israel’s delegation to the parade, at least on my algorithm, seemed to involve two contrasting beliefs: Either the ministers’ presence invalidated the legitimacy of the entire event and no one should have participated, or the parade was not a show of support for the Israeli government but a celebration of culture and heritage — and therefore these politicians should not be allowed to define it.
That debate largely took place around Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision not to attend the parade. To some pro-Israel Jews, his choice read as a rebuttal of Israel’s right to exist. In response, they spoke in the sweeping language of Jewish self-determination. This is nothing new: pro-Israel diaspora Jews often find themselves defending Israel against those who call for its destruction.
And yet, when it comes to the people who are actually destroying it, many are remarkably silent.
The full list of problematic statements and behaviors from members of Israel’s political the delegation is too long to detail in full. Among the most shocking items: Eliyahu, a member of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Jewish Power party, has publicly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and suggested that dropping a nuclear bomb on the strip was a possibility. His fellow party member, Negev and Galilee Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, who also attended the parade, has led several provocations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, in violation of Israel’s own clear norms regarding the holy Muslim site.
And Smotrich — whose attendance organizers said they had not been told about in advance — has doggedly worked to enable the de facto annexation of the West Bank.
Obviously, diaspora Jews have a different relationship with Israel than those of us who live here. We exist in completely different contexts, with different needs, fears and responsibilities. I do not believe our concerns need to be exactly identical. I am not telling anyone it was wrong to go to the parade.
But the question is what happens after.
How will the thousands who poured out to celebrate Israel in Manhattan on Sunday use their voices and energy to fight not just for Israel’s right to exist, but also for it to have a better future? After mainstream Jewish institutions have taken apart their floats, what resources will they allocate to protecting Israeli democracy, supporting the communities this government has abandoned and opposing the extremists dismantling the country from within?
After the parade, I kept seeing a brief clip of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer speaking from the dais. He ended his speech with the popular refrain “Am Yisrael Chai,” which he then translated into English.
Except he stumbled a bit over the words. Instead of saying, “The people of Israel live,” it came out as “the People Israel live.”
His flub inadvertently captured a deep truth. Israel, as a peoplehood, as an idea, is alive and kicking. Despite what some online ideologues want you to believe, our ancestral homeland is not going anywhere.
Nor do we need to fight quite as hard as we seem to think for the right to self-determination, seeing as we already have it and are not in any real danger of losing it.
But the people of Israel — the ones who actually live inside the country — are suffering. We are at the mercy of the most extreme government this country has ever seen.
We want to raise our children in security: real, long-lasting, diplomatically achieved security. We want to send them to decent schools in the morning and get them back in one piece at the end of the day. We want to live in a democracy, with a free press and an independent judiciary, where our daughters can read from the Torah if they want to and our sons can marry men if they want to.
The people of Israel do not need you to stand with Israel in a show of blanket solidarity.
We would much rather you stand with us, in active opposition to our government.
The post Israeli and diaspora Jews live in different realities. The Israel Day parade proved it appeared first on The Forward.
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North Carolina Democrats reject Gaza genocide resolution following campaign by Jewish caucus
(JTA) — For weeks, Jewish Democrats in North Carolina worked to block the state’s Democratic Party from passing a resolution declaring Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.
On Saturday, they narrowly prevailed.
The measure, titled the “Genocide Accountability Resolution,” was struck down by members of the North Carolina Democratic Party’s State Executive Committee with a vote of 163-130.
For Amy DeLoach, the first vice chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party Jewish Caucus, the victory marked a sign that Jewish Democrats still have a place in the party, even as debates over Israel have roiled Democratic politics across the country.
“Most Jews vote Democratically, and we were feeling abandoned, and now we feel like we have a home again,” said DeLoach, who also sits on the party’s international subcommittee.
The defeat of the resolution comes as support for Israel has dropped dramatically among Democrats, and the U.S.-Israel alliance has increasingly emerged as a third rail within the party.
While resolutions condemning the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and calling to halt arms sales to Israel have been blocked by the Democratic National Committee over the past year, last June, the North Carolina Democratic Party passed a resolution calling for an immediate arms embargo on Israel.
Joel Wanger, the chief political officer of the Democratic Majority for Israel, welcomed the outcome of the genocide resolution in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Tuesday.
“This resolution would have divided Democrats at a time when we should be united in opposing Donald Trump, while doing nothing to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.
The resolution was introduced earlier this year by a member of the progressive, Arab and Muslim caucuses of the North Carolina Democratic Party. It advanced from the precinct level through county, district and state bodies before reaching the State Executive Committee for a final vote Saturday.
The resolution would have added language to the state party platform calling for the “prosecution” and “vetting” of individuals and entities in the United States who “may have participated in or enabled genocide.” The resolution also cited a United Nations Commission of Inquiry that concluded for the first time in September that Israel had committed a genocide in Gaza.
The resolution’s defeat Saturday followed an extensive campaign by the party’s Jewish Caucus to block its adoption.
In a May 27 letter to members of the executive committee, leaders of the Jewish Caucus urged them to reject the resolution, arguing that state parties “should not adopt contested international policy positions” and that its timing would hurt 2026 Democratic candidates and divide voters.
“Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, Christian, and secular Democrats are united on affordability, public education, healthcare, voting rights, and reproductive freedom,” the letter said. “This resolution forces them to take sides on something most did not join the party to fight about.”
The letter cited “serious factual and legal problems” with the resolution and said Jewish Democrats would support a substitute “affirming NC Democrats’ commitment to ending civilian suffering in Gaza, supporting humanitarian aid, and opposing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and political violence in all forms.”
But the Jewish Caucus was not the only group within the party invested in the outcome of the vote.
Last month, the leaders of the Muslim, Arab, interfaith and progressive caucuses of the North Carolina Democratic Party issued its own a letter calling on members of the State Executive Committee to support the resolution in order to “affirm our party’s commitment to human rights and the protection of civilian life.”
“All too frequently, the burdensome narrative of genocide denial has been heard from those persons and organizations who have 1) either acquiesced to genocide or 2) feared the worst reprisals from those who have supported it,” the letter read. “This silence compromises the faith of many voters in our party.”
The letter, which cited a recent study that found 80% of Democrats have an unfavorable view of Israel, was undersigned by the head of the state party’s Jewish Democrats, a non-Zionist Jewish subgroup within the Interfaith Caucus.
Mark Bochkis, the communications chair of the Jewish Democrats, told JTA that his group and the Jewish Caucus “fundamentally disagree about the divisiveness” of the resolution.
“We believe this is actually an issue that galvanizes the younger base of the party and other other important key voting blocks for the Democratic party,” Bochkis said. “We believe not speaking out on something like this is actually holding the party back.”
Paul McAllister, the chair of the Interfaith Caucus, told JTA that “we don’t want to see anything happen to any member of any community, Jewish or otherwise, but we do want accountability.”
While McAllister said that the language concerning “prosecution” in the resolution could have been “clarified,” he said the Jewish Caucus’ suggestion of an alternative to the resolution attracted little support because he felt it “waters down the need to hold a nation accountable for what it is doing to another people.”
“My major concern is that we have a faction within the party that wants justice for all people equally, Jews and Palestinians, and that there’s some in the party, namely members of the Jewish caucus, who do not comprehend how critical it is that we not only look after our own interest or our own group’s interest, but the interest of others, and this is the struggle,” McAllister said.
DeLoach said the scheduling of the vote last week on Shabbat had bothered members of the Jewish caucus. But she said they had “let that one go” to focus on fighting the resolution.
“We talk about that amongst ourselves, but we’re in a war right now,” she said. “We’re going to pick and choose the battles we fight.”
DeLoach said her group viewed the resolution as a political liability that could potentially force Democratic candidates in the state to either distance themselves from the party or embrace a “difficult divisive issue” on the campaign trail.
“No politician is going to want to run on a platform that includes this,” DeLoach said. “Platforms don’t win elections, and this is going to risk us losing an outrageously important election.”
DeLoach pointed to the campaigns of Roy Cooper, the state’s former governor who’s running for a Senate seat, and Anita Earls, who is running for reelection to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
“Most Democrats in North Carolina really are more concerned about their electric bill right now, and the cost of food,” DeLoach said. “As the vote shows, you know, nobody likes what’s going on in the Middle East. We don’t like what’s going on in the Middle East, but we know that’s not where our focus should be right now.”
Looking ahead, DeLoach said she hoped that the resolution’s defeat would serve as a warning against rhetoric she saw as “adding to a drumbeat of antisemitism that is so prevalent in the country.”
“There’s war crimes on both sides here, but it’s not a genocide, and y’all pounding this drum is making it more and more dangerous for Jews to live in this country,” DeLoach said. “We see the defeat of this resolution not only as a chance for us to start just electing Democrats, but as a hopeful pause, at least, if not a stop to this horrible rhetoric.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post North Carolina Democrats reject Gaza genocide resolution following campaign by Jewish caucus appeared first on The Forward.
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Tidbits: For the first time, a kosher restaurant has won a Michelin star
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
צום ערשטן מאָל געווינט אַ כּשרער רעסטאָראַן אַ „מישעלין־שטערן“
ייִט״אַ. — ווען מע האָט באַשאָטן דעם ישׂראלדיקן קוכער רז שבתי (ראַז שאַבטײַ) מיט קאָנפֿעטי האָט ער זיך ממש צעוויינט — און זײַנע מיטאַרבעטער האָבן אים וואַרעם אַרומגענומען.
מיט עטלעכע מינוט פֿריִער האָט מען געמאָלדן, אַז זײַן רעסטאָראַן אין מיאַמי, וואָס הייסט „מוטראַ“, איז געוואָרן דער ערשטער כּשרער רעסטאָראַן צו באַקומען אַ „מישעלין־שטערן“ — דעם גרעסטן כּבֿוד אין דער רעסטאָראַן־אינדוסטריע.
„דאָס איז אַ מאָמענט פֿון שׂימחה און פֿון שטאָלץ,“ האָט שאַבטײַ געזאָגט דער ייִדישער טעלעגראַפֿישער אַגענטור. „דעם שטערן באַקומט נישט בלויז ׳מוטראַ׳, נאָר דאָס גאַנצע ייִדישע פֿאָלק.“
שבתי, וואָס האָט שוין געאַרבעט אין אַ צאָל קיכן איבער ניו־יאָרק און ישׂראל, האָט געעפֿנט „מוטראַ“ אין פֿעברואַר 2025, געבנדיק דעם רעסטאָראַן אַ נאָמען נאָך זײַן ירושלים־געבוירענער באָבען, וועמעס קאָכן האָט אינספּירירט זײַן מעניו.
„איך האָב ליב צו באַצייכענען דאָס עסן אין דעם רעסטאָראַן ווי ׳ירושלימער מאכלים׳ אַנטקעגן ׳מיטל־מיזרחדיקע אָדער ישׂראלדיקע מאכלים׳ ווײַל די טעמען וואָס איך פּרוּוו ברענגען צום טיש זענען די טעמען וואָס זענען פֿאַרבונדן מיט מײַנע זכרונות און מיט מײַנע עקסקורסיעס אין מאַרק מיט דער באָבען,” האָט שבתי געזאָגט. „איך דאַרף זײַן געטרײַ די פּאָטראַוועס וואָס די באָבע האָט מיך געהאָדעוועט.“
אַ באַשרײַבונג פֿונעם רעסטאָראַן אויף דער „מישעלין“־וועבזײַט לויבט זײַנע „פּרעכטיקע בוריקעס אין ‘אַהאָ בלאַנקאָ’ (אַ קאַלטע זופּ געמאַכט פֿון מאַנדלען, קנאָבל און עסיק)“ און „שאָפֿנפֿלייש־קאָבאַב מיט גערייכערטן פּאַטלעזשאַן־קרעם און פּאָמידאָרן־בוימל“.
אַ דאַנק דער אָנערקענונג איז „מוטראַ“ געוואָרן איינער פֿון די אָנגעזעענסטע רעסטאָראַנען און באַטרעפֿט אַן אמתן ווענדפּונקט פֿאַר דער כּשרער קיך. פֿאַר שבתי, וואָס האָט אָנגעהויבן היטן כּשרות מיט מער ווי 10 יאָר צוריק, איז די פּרעמיע אַ קלאָרער באַווײַז, אַז קולינאַרע אויסגעצייכנטקייט קען בליִען אין די ראַמען פֿון דער כּשרער קיך.
„איך האָף אַז די דערגרייכונג וועט אינספּירירן אַנדערע כּשרע קוכערס,“ האָט ער געזאָגט.
צו זען דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To see the article in English, click here.
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