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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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In ‘Coexistence, My Ass!’ the anxiety of an Israeli influencer
There are plenty of funny lines in Coexistence, My Ass! but make no mistake, this is not a comedy. As director Amber Fares follows Israeli comedian and peace activist Noam Shuster Eliassi from her excited 2019 arrival at Harvard on a stand-up and peace-building fellowship (who knew such a thing existed?!) through escalating political and pandemic problems to her anguish at the war in Gaza, the documentary is nothing less than a tragedy.
Shuster Eliassi leapt to fame in early 2019 with “Dubai Dubai,”a song of “peace and love” in the wake of the Abraham Accords which celebrated Arabs (“especially when they are 4000 miles away”). It was satire, in Arabic, on Israeli television (Shuster Eliassi also speaks Farsi). She was poking fun at Israel’s peace with UAE’s millionaires while both sides ignored “those who suffered the Nakba.” She properly went viral across the region, though, when she jokingly proposed marriage to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on an Arabic-language program of the Israeli news channel i24. Arabic news outlets and social media were not sure what to make of it but Israeli and western news outlets knew that the furor and fluster were newsworthy.
Shuster Eliassi notes in Coexistence that her movement to comedy vindicated her decision to move away from more serious peace-building. ”20 years of peace activism, I influence 20 people. One joke about dictators, 20 million people saw it!” If she wanted to achieve her dream of peace in the Middle East, maybe she was right to use the power of social media to amplify her gift of making people laugh.
Filmed over five of the bleakest years for believers in democracy and equality in Israel, Coexistence also follows Shuster Eliassi from hope to despair. After COVID, Fares made a short documentary about Shuster Eliassi for the New Yorker – “How One Woman Is Using Comedy To Speak Up About Palestinian Rights.” From that moment of hope though, Benjamin Netanyahu’s anti-democratic push, Oct. 7, and the Israel Gaza War render the 2021 film obsolete.
The title Coexistence, My Ass! changes its significance through the movie. Initially, Shuster Eliassi scoffs at “coexistence” as a risible minimum aim, one so boring it puts her to sleep. By the end of the movie in 2024, when extremists on both sides have succeeded in destroying trust in humanity and any hope for peace, even that low bar seems unattainable. The phrase – also the name of Shuster Eliassi’s standup show — is Coexistence, My Ass! because “coexistence” no longer even seems possible.
As a child of Romanian and Iranian parents in Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salam (Oasis of Peace), Shuster Eliassi grew up in a particular limelight. Set up as a cooperative village where Israeli Jews, Muslims and Christians could live together, the small settlement of about 60 families was a regular stop for American peacebuilding luminaries. The documentary features archival footage of Jane Fonda speaking there in 2002 as well as a young Shuster Eliassi handing flowers to Hillary Clinton in 1998.
When the first IDF soldier from Neve Shalom gets killed, news crews come to the village and end up interviewing Shuster Eliassi, then a grade school student who had known him and looked up to him. Even as a young woman, Shuster Eliassi is able to voice her pain without becoming embroiled in the conflict. Indeed, one of the film’s most compelling arguments for something more than coexistence is her best friend from home Ranin, an Arab. When Shuster Eliassi breaks her leg in an accident, Ranin pushes her wheelchair up a hill. They joke about Arabs and Jews (“How is it that the Arabs always end up serving the Jews?” Ranin asks.) They speak in Hebrew and Arabic, and argue about which language should come first in the name of their home, Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom. They are a visible embodiment of how easy it is to have an Arab-Jewish family, of how coexistence could be the least possible problem.
We see Shuster Eliassi perform in 2018 at East Jerusalem’s 1001 Laughs Palestine Comedy Festival. There she assures the uncertain audience that her set is short, with a joke about the Occupation: “I’m only staying for 7 minutes, not 70 years.” She adds that she stole the joke from the Palestinian-American emcee Amer Zahr. “But it’s mine now, God promised it to me!” she says. The crowd seems to love it.
Five years later, though, the atmosphere is much more tense. While the troubles had been escalating throughout 2023, Oct. 7 was a rupture, and Shuster Eliassi finds herself stuck between her communities. We see her called to condemn the people who committed the atrocities on Oct. 7 and also to condemn the government that is about to retaliate. She is aghast that there seems to be no time for her to mourn the human lives that were lost.
Fares, best known for Speed Sisters, her documentary about the first all-female car-racing team of Palestinian drivers in the West Bank, captures the ratcheted-up post-COVID tempo. When Arabs and Jews are stuck, COVID-infected, in “Corona Hotel,” they live happily together, it’s only with the chance of an Arab-Israeli peace that excludes the (Iranians and) Palestinians that Hamas starts serious sabotage. Its rocket attacks, intercepted by the Iron Dome, change the feeling in Israel.
Instead of a country moving slowly towards coexistence and peace, Israeli news shows “Arabs being attacked live on TV.” An aggressive, shirtless, tattooed young Jewish skinhead is shown saying, “We came out to fight the Arabs. To show them they can’t just shoot rockets at us… If need be, we’ll kill them. If need be, we’ll murder them.” The sequence cuts to Jewish Israelis lynching an Arab.
Furthermore, as pro-Democracy, anti-Netanyahu protests continue, the Occupation remains off the agenda. An older man, maybe from her parents’ generation, labels Shuster Eliassi an “enemy” of Israel for calling to end the occupation at a protest against the Israeli government.
Vivian Silver, one of the people killed in the Gaza envelope on Oct. 7, was a lifetime peace activist. She was a friend of my friends and a friend of Shuster Eliassi. At her funeral we see her son talking to Shuster Eliassi. “She didn’t work for peace so that when they come, they’ll spare her,” he says of his mother “She worked so there’d be no reason for them to come.” It’s a position that is no longer tenable.
Ultimately, Coexistence, My Ass! isn’t about solutions, because it’s not naïve enough to pretend that there are any. It isn’t about both sides, although heaven knows there is plenty of blame to go around. It’s about staring with Shuster Eliassi down the line of peace and seeing massive objects fall across it. It’s not cathartic. It’s honest. And sometimes, honesty is the most radical thing a film can offer.
The post In ‘Coexistence, My Ass!’ the anxiety of an Israeli influencer appeared first on The Forward.
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She survived the Tree of Life massacre seven years ago today — and still shows up to pray
Audrey Glickman showed up for morning minyan today — as she has nearly every morning since Oct. 27, 2018, when she survived the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
Glickman, now 68, was leading services that fateful Shabbat morning in a small chapel inside Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life when she heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. She grabbed congregant Joe Charny, then 90, and raced up the stairs and into a small room. Together, huddled and scared, they hid under their prayer shawls.
Seven years later, she still prays in Squirrel Hill. But what she thought would be a wake-up call ended up being a warning: She’s watching the rise of antisemitism, the political rhetoric that helped fuel the shooting, and the divisions that persist. “The hatred is increasing,” she told me Sunday by phone. “And it’s taking different shapes.”
Below is our conversation, edited for length and clarity ahead of tonight’s memorial gathering at the Jewish Community Center in Pittsburgh.
Does this anniversary feel different to you?
Everything feels different this year. There’s more talk about how the shooter was influenced — the idea that Jews were “bringing in immigrants.” It’s a reminder that words matter. Hatred starts small and travels fast.
The shooter is now on death row. Does that bring you a sense of closure?
Death isn’t a penalty. It ends punishment. Being on death row — cut off from society — that’s the punishment. And that’s fine with me.
What do you most want people to remember seven years later?
That the victims weren’t just those in the building. The whole city was wounded. The first responders who were working that day felt it. We have to give people space to understand their own grief — to inhabit their victimhood and come to terms with it.
Antisemitism has increased since the 2018 attack, especially after Oct. 7 2023.
Antisemitism from the right is a physical threat. Antisemitism from the left is an existential threat. They’re different. We can sometimes work with the left — at least talk — but it’s hard to work with the right when they’re against us.
What worries you most about antisemitism right now?
The hatred is increasing, and it’s taking new shapes. And we’re not battling it efficiently. People are discontented, and they need someone to blame — and leaders exploit that. They push people toward hate because it keeps them divided.
What do you want people to know about Jews?
Jewish people are just people. We don’t spend our whole lives “being Jews” and doing mysterious things that make people want to hate us. We serve in the army, we run libraries, we teach children. My father cleaned rugs. We’re ordinary people who want to live and work alongside everyone else. And as long as we can all work together for a better world, we’re going to be a lot better off.
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Trump sets deadline for Hamas to release hostages’ bodies as Egyptian team enters Gaza to help
(JTA) — An Egyptian team has entered Gaza to join in the search for the remains of 13 hostages whose bodies have still not been released following the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
The ceasefire’s first phase required the release of all hostages, living and dead. Hamas freed all 20 living hostages as required but has released the remains of only 15 of 28 hostages who were killed on Oct. 7, 2023, or subsequently in captivity.
On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump, who brokered the ceasefire and is applying pressure to maintain it, issued a stern warning to Hamas about freeing the remaining hostages.
“Hamas is going to have to start returning the bodies of the deceased hostages, including two Americans, quickly, or the other Countries involved in this GREAT PEACE will take action,” Trump posted on Truth Social. He did not offer details about which countries would step in or what actions they might take.
The Israelis reportedly believe that Hamas is aware of the locations of the majority of the hostages’ bodies but is slow-walking their release to delay a shift to the deal’s second phase, which would require it to disarm and cede control of Gaza.
Trump acknowledged both concerns in his post, in which he implied a deadline of Monday afternoon for swift action on Hamas’ part.
“Some of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can return now and, for some reason, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their disarming, but when I said, ‘Both sides would be treated fairly,’ that only applies if they comply with their obligations,” he wrote. “Let’s see what they do over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, meanwhile, said on Monday that Israel and the United States should pause efforts to advance the peace plan until the hostages are returned.
“Hamas knows exactly where every one of the deceased hostages is held,” the group said in a statement, adding, “The families urge the Government of Israel, the United States administration, and the mediators not to advance to the next phase of the agreement until Hamas fulfills all of its obligations and returns every hostage to Israel.”
Israel has endorsed the entry of Egyptian forces to locate the hostages but has not accepted an offer from Turkey, which took Hamas’ side in the war, to help.
The 13 remaining hostages include two, Omer Neutra and Itay Chen, who were dual American citizens. They also include Thai and Tanzanian agricultural workers; several older men murdered on Oct. 7; a hostage killed in a failed rescue attempt; and a soldier, Hadar Goldin, whose body has been held by Hamas since 2014.
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