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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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Guinness World Records’ Exclusion of Israel Is ‘Deceptive,’ a Form of False Advertising, Advocacy Group Says
Guinness World Records Day 2025 at Elbtor Mobile in Hamburg, Germany. Photo: Marcus Brandt via Reuters Connect
Guinness World Records is guilty of false advertising for refusing to log the accomplishments of Israelis in its publications, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has complained to the US Federal Trade Commission in a letter demanding that the agency use its authority to stop the allegedly mendacious practice.
GWR annually publishes a Guinness World Records book, commemorating a range of human achievements, from feats of scientific discovery to musical endeavors which yielded massive record sales. However, as previously reported by The Algemeiner, GWR suspended its processing of applications reporting new records achieved in Israel and the Palestinian territories in November 2023, shortly after the war in Gaza started following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“We are aware of just how sensitive this is at the moment,” GWR, published by the Jim Pattison Group, said in a statement issued earlier this month after the policy excluded an Israel charity’s being recognized for holding the single largest gathering of kidney donors in one place. “We truly do believe in record breaking for everyone, everywhere but unfortunately in the current climate we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, with the exception of those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.”
GWR’s explanation does not change the fact that it is excluding the world’s lone Jewish state from the world community over a war it did not start, the Brandeis Center said in Tuesday’s letter, arguing that, as such, Guinness World Records cannot literally claim to represent all of the world.
“They don’t have a right to deceive their readership and customer base by claiming that it is publishing ‘world records,’” Brandeis Center chairman and founder Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “We have seen again and again that Israelis are capable of besting the competition and achieving international success. Any so-called ‘world record’ excluding such talented challengers must at a minimum carry an asterisk to disclose that it is not truly a record for the entire world.”
At the least, Marcus charged, GWR should issue refunds to customers, adding, “To the extent that GWR has been deceptively selling mislabeled products to the public, it should provide their money back.”
Notably, GWR accepts hundreds of applications annually from China, a country whose government has reportedly imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, in concentration camps. According to leaked documents from inside China, detainees in these camps have been subjected to rape, torture, forced labor, brainwashing, and forced sterilization. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department under both the Trump and Biden administrations have assessed China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs.
Israel, by contrast, counts some 2 million Arab Muslims as full citizens in what is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.
Chinese residents perform square dance during an attempt to set a new Guinness World Record in Chongqing, China, Nov. 7, 2016. Photo: Oriental Image via Reuters Connect
GWR has also been accused of sending mixed signals about its organization’s purported political neutrality. Its website states that it is “determined to protect the integrity of our records by remaining politically neutral.” However, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, GWR “ceased” operations in Russia and Belarus, describing the decision as a “meaningful expression of our support and solidarity.”
It continued, “This means all current business, as well as all open conversations around future business relating to publishing, record consultancy and television productions. We are also exploring how we can prevent advertising across our digital platforms from these regions. We join calls for an end to fighting in Ukraine, and in any country or region where violence and fear preside over diplomacy or peace.”
At the same time, GWR welcomes many other countries in which “violence and fear preside over diplomacy or peace,” the Brandeis Center’s letter noted.
“GWR published the 2014 world record for longest talk show broadcast by a Damascus studio aligned with Bashar al-Assad,” the Brandeis Center said, quoting its letter to the FTC. “That record came not long after the Syrian dictator’s sarin gas attack on the nearby Ghouta suburb of Damascus. More recently, GWR featured an Iranian jump rope record achieved in February 2023 while the Islamic Republic was actively rounding up tens of thousands of participants in the Women, Life, Freedom protests.”
Days after GWR’s policy of excluding Israel received headlines this month, the nonprofit organization StandWithUs sent a letter to members of the Florida State Board of Administration calling on the state of Florida to investigate GWR over its ban on applications from Israel and to ensure that public funds do not support companies engaged in such a “discriminatory policy” against the Jewish state.
StandWithUs Saidoff Law, which carries out legal action for the pro-Israel group, requested that the board investigate GWR and its affiliate Guinness World Records North America regarding the “boycott policy” to see if they should be included on Florida’s official list of “Scrutinized Companies or Other Entities that Boycott Israel” in accordance with Florida law. Guinness World Records North America is registered in Florida as a foreign profit corporation.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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NFL Player Vows to Do Touchdown Dance Invoking Antisemitic Trope
Puka Nacua during a livestream appearance. Photo: Screenshot
Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua promised during a livestream appearance on Wednesday to do a dance following his next touchdown that includes an antisemitic trope.
The 24-year-old professional football player appeared in a livestream with online streamers Adin Ross and N3on. Aside from calling out NFL referees, Nacua learned a dance that Ross taught him. The moves included Ross spinning the football on the ground, flexing, and then leaning in while rubbing your hands together. Nacua performed the touchdown dance, following Ross’s request, and then the Rams player promised to perform it during a game.
Critics online have argued the moves in the dance promote antisemitic stereotypes about the Jewish community, noting the livestream took place mere days after 15 people were murdered in the deadly antisemitic attack against Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah in Sydney, Australia. Dozens of people were also wounded.
Puka Nacua will be doing Adin Ross’s ICONIC JEWISH DANCE for his next touchdown celebration
pic.twitter.com/W2dQL4kSMB
— AdinUpdate (@AdinUpdate) December 17, 2025
Nacua and the NFL have not publicly commented on the offensive touchdown dance. The Rams are playing on Thursday night against the Seattle Seahawks. If Nacua scores a touchdown, viewers will be waiting to see if he performs the antisemitic dance Ross taught him. The Provo, Utah, native, has been described as one of the best receivers in the league.
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Maccabi Tel Aviv Fined by UEFA, Banned From Selling Tickets to Fans for ‘Racist’ Chanting
Soccer Football – UEFA Europa League – Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv – Villa Park, Birmingham, Britain – Nov. 6, 2025, Aston Villa’s Ian Maatsen scores their first goal. Photo: Action Images via Reuters
The Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv has been fined €20,000 ($23,479) by the UEFA and banned from selling tickets to fans for one away match because of “racist and/or discriminatory behavior,” European soccer’s governing body announced on Wednesday.
UEFA said its Control, Ethics, and Disciplinary Body (CEDB) made the decision in relation to behavior displayed by Maccabi fans at a Europa League game against the German club Stuttgart on Dec. 11. Stuttgart won that match 4-1. The CEDB also imposed a ban on Maccabi selling tickets to fans for its next UEFA competition away game, suspended for a probationary period of two years.
Stuttgart police told the German publication Bild last week it was investigating Maccabi fans who allegedly chanted defamatory, anti-Arab slogans at a fan meeting point ahead of the match at the Neckarstadion stadium in Germany. Six Maccabi fans were also detained temporarily and banned from attending the game after repeatedly starting pyrotechnics, according to The Athletic.
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from an earlier Europa League match against Aston Villa in the UK on Nov. 6 because of safety concerns. The controversial decision led to intense backlash in and out of the country, and was even criticized by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Maccabi lost that match 2-0.
In November 2024, dozens of Maccabi supporters were violently attacked in the streets of Amsterdam in the Netherlands following the Israeli team’s Europa League game against the Dutch club Ajax. The premeditated and coordinated violence included Maccabi fans being chased with knives and sticks in the streets, run over by cars, physically beaten, and forced by their attackers to say, “Free Palestine.” Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” who went “Jew hunting.” Dutch police made more than 60 arrests related to the incident, and last year, five men were sentenced to up to six months in prison for participating in the violence.