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For theatergoers at Broadway’s recent spate of Jewish shows, attendance is a form of witness
(JTA) — Jewish stories have had top billing on Broadway this season — and Jewish audiences have been flocking to the theater.
Audiences have lined up to see Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” the multigenerational saga of a Jewish family in Vienna, and the devastating consequences of the Holocaust upon its ranks. They have packed the house for “Parade,” a musical retelling of the infamous antisemitic show trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915. And just off Broadway, “The Wanderers” (which closed April 2) invited us into the slowly disintegrating marriage of two secular Jews born to mothers who dramatically left the Satmar sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, a show replete with intergenerational trauma and a pervasive sense of ennui.
None of these shows offers a particularly lighthearted evening at the theater. So why have they proven so popular? Critics have penned countless reviews of the three plays, analyzing the quality of the productions, the scripts, scores, performances of principal actors, set and design. But for our new book exploring what audiences learn about Judaism from Jewish cultural arts, my colleague Sharon Avni and I have been interviewing audience members after seeing “Leopoldstadt,” “Parade” and “The Wanderers.” We are interested in turning the spotlight away from the stage and onto the seats: What do audiences make of all this? What do they learn?
Take “Leopoldstadt,” for example, a drama so full of characters that when it left London for its Broadway run the production team added a family tree to the Playbill so that theatergoers could follow along. “Leopoldstadt” offers its audience a whistle-stop introduction to modern European Jewish history. In somewhat pedantic fashion, the family debates issues of the day that include Zionism, art, philosophy, intermarriage and, in a searing final scene, the memory of the Holocaust.
For some of the theatergoers that we interviewed, “Leopoldstadt” was powerful precisely because it packed so much Jewish history into its two-hour run time. It offered a basic literacy course in European Judaism, one they thought everyone needed to learn. Others, however, thought that this primer of Jewish history was really written for novice audiences — perhaps non-Jews, or assimilated Jews with half-remembered Jewish heritage, like Stoppard himself. “I don’t know who this play is for,” one interviewee told us. “But it’s not me. I know all this already.”
Brandon Uranowitz, left, who plays a Holocaust survivor, confronts Arty Froushan as a young writer discovering his Jewish roots, in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.” (Joan Marcus)
Other interviewees thought the power of “Leopoldstadt” lay not in its history lessons, but in its ability to use the past to illuminate contemporary realities. I spoke at length with a woman who had been struggling with antisemitism at work. Some of her colleagues had been sharing social media posts filled with lazy caricatures of Jews as avaricious capitalists. Upon seeing “Leopoldstadt,” she realized that these vile messages mirrored Nazi rhetoric in the 1930s, convincing her that antisemitism in contemporary America had reached just as dangerous a threshold as beheld European Jews on the eve of the Shoah.
We heard similar sentiments about the prescience of history to alert us to the specter of antisemitism today from audiences who saw “Parade.” Recalling a scene where the cast members wave Confederate flags during the titular parade celebrating Confederate Memorial Day, Jewish audiences recalled feeling especially attuned to Jewish precarity when the theater burst into applause at the end of the musical number. “Why were we clapping Confederate flags?” one of our interviewees said. “I’ve lived in the South, and as a Jew I know that when you see Confederate flags it is not a safe space for us.”
“Parade” dramatizes the popular frenzy that surrounded the trial of Leo Frank, a Yankee as well as a Jew, who was scapegoated for the murder of a young Southern girl. Jewish audience members that we interviewed told us that the play powerfully illustrated how crowds could be manipulated into demonizing minorities, comparing the situation in early 20th century Marietta to the alt-right of today, and the rise of antisemitism in contemporary America.
What we ultimately discovered, however, was that audience perceptions of the Jewish themes and characters in these productions were as varied as audiences themselves. Inevitably, they tell us more about the individual than the performance. Yet the fact that American Jews have flocked to these three shows — a secular pilgrimage of sorts — also illustrates the power and the peril of public Jewish storytelling. For audience members at “Leopoldstadt” and “Parade,” especially, attending these performances was not merely an entertaining evening at the theater. It was a form of witnessing. There was very little to be surprised by in these plays, after all. The inevitable happens: The Holocaust destroys Jewish life in Europe, Leo Frank is convicted and lynched. Jewish audiences know to expect this. They know there will be no happy ending. In the secular cultural equivalent to saying Kaddish for the dead, Jewish audiences perform their respect to Jewish memory by showing up, and by paying hundreds of dollars for the good seats.
The peril of these performances, however, is that audiences learn little about antisemitism in reality. The victims of the Nazis and the Southern Jews of Marietta would tell us that they could never have predicted what was to happen. Yet in “Parade” and “Leopoldstadt” audiences are asked to grapple with the naivete of characters who believe that everything will be all right, even as audiences themselves know that it will not. By learning Jewish history on Broadway, audiences are paradoxically able to distance themselves from it, simply by knowing too much.
In the final scene of “Leopoldstadt,” Leo, the character loosely based on Stoppard himself, is berated by a long-lost relative for his ignorance of his family’s story. “You live as if without history,” the relative tells Leo. “As if you throw no shadow behind you.” Audiences, at that moment, are invited to pat themselves on the back for coming to see the show, and for choosing to acknowledge the shadows of their own Jewish histories. The cold hard reality, however, is that a shadow can only ever be a fuzzy outline of the truth.
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Israeli Security Cabinet to Discuss Possible Lebanon Ceasefire, Senior Official Says
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, Lebanon. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Israel’s security cabinet will convene on Wednesday to discuss a possible Lebanon ceasefire, a senior Israeli official said, more than five weeks into a war with Hezbollah that spiraled out of the US-Israeli conflict with Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet will meet at 8 pm (1700 GMT), the official said.
Senior Hezbollah official Ibrahim al-Moussawi told Reuters that diplomatic efforts by Iran and other regional states could produce a ceasefire soon, saying Tehran had used its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as leverage.
Two other senior Lebanese officials said they had been briefed that efforts were underway for a ceasefire. One of them said the US had been pressuring Israel to work toward a ceasefire in Lebanon, including during rare talks between Israeli and Lebanese government envoys in Washington on Tuesday.
Israel’s offensive in Lebanon began on March 2 after the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah opened fire at Israel in support of Tehran. It has killed more than 2,000 people and forced 1.2 million from their homes, according to Lebanese authorities. Most of those killed have been Hezbollah terrorists, according to Israeli tallies.
US President Donald Trump earlier said the war with Iran could end soon, telling the world to watch out for an “amazing two days,” while US forces imposing a blockade turned back vessels leaving Iranian ports.
On Tuesday, the United States hosted the first direct talks between Israel and Lebanon in decades. Israel had ruled out discussion of a ceasefire with Lebanon during those talks.
Trump has urged Israel to scale back attacks in Lebanon, apparently to avoid undermining the ceasefire with Iran.
Iran has said Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon must be included in any agreement to end the wider war in the Middle East. Washington has pushed back, saying there is no link between the two sets of talks.
The two Lebanese officials did not have details on when any ceasefire would begin or how long it would last. They said the duration would likely be linked to how long a truce between the United States and Iran holds.
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Trump Says Iran War ‘Close to Over’; Army Chief of Mediator Pakistan Arrives in Tehran
US President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters while Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio look on, as they attend a meeting with oil industry executives, at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Jan. 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump said the war with Iran was close to over, telling the world to brace for an “amazing two days,” as the army chief of mediator Pakistan arrived in Tehran in a bid to prevent a renewed conflict.
The diplomatic push came as US and Iranian officials weighed a return to Pakistan for further talks after negotiations there ended on Sunday without a breakthrough.
Pakistan‘s military confirmed Field Marshal Asim Munir had arrived in Tehran. A senior Iranian source told Reuters that Munir, who had mediated the last round of talks, was heading to Iran “to narrow gaps” between the two sides.
“I think you’re going to be watching an amazing two days ahead,” Trump told ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, according to a post by the reporter on X, adding he did not think it would be necessary to extend a two-week ceasefire that expires next week.
“I think it’s close to over, yeah. I mean I view it as very close to over,” Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network conducted Tuesday and broadcast Wednesday. “We’ll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly.”
Officials from Pakistan, Iran, and Gulf states also said both sides could return to Islamabad in coming days.
The talks last weekend broke down without an agreement to end the war, which Trump launched alongside Israel on Feb. 28, triggering Iranian attacks on Iran‘s Gulf neighbors and reigniting a conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Trump‘s optimism lifted global stocks towards record highs. Oil prices – having fallen on Tuesday and in early Wednesday trade – were slightly up at around $95 per barrel, after the US said its blockade of Iranian ports had halted seaborne trade in and out of Iran.
TANKERS INTERCEPTED
The US military said it was turning back more vessels, including the US-sanctioned, Chinese-owned tanker Rich Starry which was seen heading back through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday.
A US destroyer stopped two oil tankers attempting to leave the Iranian port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday, a US official said.
An Iranian supertanker subject to US sanctions crossed the strait towards Iran‘s Imam Khomeini port despite the blockade, Iran‘s Fars News agency said on Wednesday. Fars did not identify the tanker or give further details of its voyage.
While Iran and the United States appear so far to have avoided a major confrontation at sea since the United States began its blockade on Monday, Tehran has said it would retaliate against military action.
Iran‘s joint military command warned it would halt trade flows in the Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea – which connects to the Suez Canal – if the US blockade continued.
Trump has also threatened to escalate if the war resumes. He told Fox Business Network: “We could take out every one of their bridges in one hour. We could take out every one of their power plants, electric power plants, in one hour. We don’t want to do that … so we’ll see what happens.”
RETURN TO ISLAMABAD
Trump told the New York Post on Tuesday that his negotiators were likely to return to Pakistan, thanks largely to the “great job” army chief Munir was doing to moderate the talks.
Speaking later at an event in Georgia, Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation at last weekend’s talks, said Trump wanted to make a “grand bargain” with Iran but there was a lot of mistrust between the two countries.
Iran‘s nuclear ambitions were a key sticking point at last weekend’s talks. The US had proposed a 20-year suspension of all nuclear activity by Iran – an apparent concession from longstanding demands for a permanent ban – while Tehran had suggested a halt of 3 to 5 years, according to people familiar with the proposals.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said the length of any moratorium on Iranian uranium enrichment was a political decision and suggested Iran might accept a compromise as a confidence-building measure.
Washington has also pressed for any enriched nuclear material to be removed from Iran, while Tehran has demanded that international sanctions against it be lifted.
One source involved in the talks said back-channel talks had made progress in narrowing gaps, bringing the two sides closer to a deal that could be put forward at a new round of talks.
Complicating peace efforts, Israel has continued to attack Lebanon as it targets Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Israel and the US say that campaign is not covered by the ceasefire, while Iran insists it is.
Israel’s security cabinet will convene late on Wednesday to discuss a possible Lebanon ceasefire, a senior Israeli official told Reuters, after Israeli and Lebanese officials held rare talks in Washington a day earlier.
FALLOUT OF THE WAR
The war has prompted Iran to effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz – a vital artery for global crude and gas shipments – to ships other than its own, sharply reducing exports from the Gulf, particularly to Asia and Europe, and leaving energy importers scrambling for alternative supplies.
The oil market also faces further tightening, as the US does not plan to renew a 30-day waiver of sanctions on Iranian oil at sea that expires this week, according to US officials.
An estimated 5,000 people, civilians and combatants, have been killed in the fighting, including about 3,000 in Iran and 2,000 in Lebanon.
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A farewell to Hampshire College, site of my Yiddish awakening
Zay gezunt Hampshire College. That’s where as an undergrad student worker, I first studied Yiddish at the OG Yiddish Book Center of Amherst, Massachusetts, down the road from the genteel Lord Jeffrey Inn, across the street from uber-sensitive poet lady Emily Dickinson’s alte heym.
In nearby Holyoke, in an old mill turned Yiddish book storage loft, away from the genius of Dickinson’s dybbuk, I earned my way shelving the Book Center’s staggering amounts of the collected works of Sholem Aleichem — most likely purchased as a subscriber premium by turn of the century Forverts readers — and only surpassed by the unspeakable numbers of Yiddish volumes of Guy De Maupassant. I hoisted those onto shelves as well while getting educated about Nico and the Velvet Underground which blared from speakers. Back in the 1980’s that was multitasking.
And dayge nisht, no worries — I got my klezmer awakening there too, via a Walkman and audio cassettes while laboring as a photo history slide librarian for my advisor and favorite professor, filmmaker Abraham Ravett, who is set to retire next month (can you retire if your workplace closes?).
Splayed out across acres of stunning apple orchards that once belonged to the Stiles family, Hampshire College had neither a Hillel chapter nor a Chabad nor any organized sports nor fraternities — but there was a coed sauna, plenty of rolfing on the snow outside said sauna, a successful student run food coop, an acclaimed ultimate frisbee team and a beloved outdoor program that led to my first heron sightings just like in the movie On Golden Pond.
It also had Len Glick, Elvis’ former induction physician who co-taught modern Jewish history, along with his younger historian colleague Aaron Berman, whose office door was anointed with a poster that offered a Marxist view of baseball. It was 1984 and I was hot off seeing Streisand’s film version of Yentl. I’d polished off most of Bashevis’ tomes back home, memorized my Bubby’s photo album of Eastern European Jewry as envisioned in Visniac’s A Vanished World, and collided into Marlene Booth’s documentary about the Yiddishists of Raananah who took up space in an audacious dream of a utopian summer community in Orange County, New York. Tayere Leyener, dear reader, that’s all it took.
I knew my final paper was going to be about women and Yiddish. Well, I recall Len saying, if you want to investigate Bashevis’ inspiration for his Yentl and research women writers and women’s lives in Yiddish, you’re going to have to learn Yiddish; there isn’t much about that available in translation. Why don’t you go over to the Yiddish Book Center, he continued, and talk to them. And just like that, I found myself on the top floor of an old elementary school in Amherst, spending evenings learning Yiddish and my days trying to grasp enough of it to complete my assignment.
I’d love to tell you that just like Yentl, I too spent hours bent over tomes, deep in study, but as previously disclosed, Hampshire had much to distract and much to offer. And besides, I had books to shelve, boxes to unpack and roads to travel, joining the center’s trips to pick up YET MORE Yiddish books. My mazel was that Hampshire hosted the Book Center’s first summer seminars. Once longtime staffer Frieda Howards and I finished inspecting attendees’ dorm rooms, making sure the beds had hospital corners, I was warmly invited to attend lectures.
Hampshire hosted artists and activists like Yippie founder Abbie Hoffman. When Hampshire alum and Yiddish Book Center founder Aron Lansky talked about him, he highlighted all the Yiddish influences in Hoffman’s Steal This Book, as well as the Yiddish-inflected tensions of the Chicago 7 trials. All this came to a head when I met Yiddish lesbian poet, child survivor and hero to Jewish feminists Irena Klepfisz. A Bundist descendant, keeper of the flame, she — vu den — called a hastily gathered group into action. If we wanted Yiddish women’s writing to be translated, we were the translating liberators we were waiting for, so to speak. It was on us.
Tayere leyner/dear reader, I could, like so many Yiddish authors, go on in depth without so much as a break for a comma or a paragraph, such was the depth of my mazel at Hampshire. Ok, a bisl more. There was the weekend trip with Lansky and local poet and Book Center staffer Gene Zeiger to the Newport Folk Festival to hear Joan Baez sing. There was the summer Yiddish genius Naomi Seidman was a fellow at the Book Center — thanks to Seidman, that was my summer of Nico, the Velvet Underground, of reading Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and much much more. That was the summer I interned for the filmmaker Marlene Booth who was making a film about that Yiddish newspaper everyone talked about, the one I recalled picking up for my bubby. I spent time in my cooperative household on campus, bent over an audio transcription machine, typing out interview after interview with Forverts readers, spellbound by their love for it and activism on its behalf as it fell on hard times.
And reader, though Hampshire will likely close for good, you and I now know that if not for Hampshire College, where now upon a nice parcel of that former apple orchard sits the Yiddish Book Center in all its well earned koved, I and many like me, would not spend our days bending over our morgue of Forverts photos, back issues and more, reaching back over time to keep remembering our past and making it available for future generations.
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