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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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More Americans now sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis, new poll finds
(JTA) — Another major poll has founded that sympathy has surged among Americans for Palestinians and now exceeds support for Israelis.
Gallup, one of the country’s most respected polling outfits, found that 41% of Americans say they sympathize more with the Palestinians, compare to 36% who sympathize more with the Israelis. A year ago, a Gallup poll showed a 13-point advantage for the Israelis.
The poll comes nearly six months after a national poll found for the first time that Americans’ sympathies had flipped. In a New York Times and Siena University poll released in September, 35% of registered American voters said they sympathized more with Palestinians compared to 34% with Israel. Prior to the war in Gaza, 47% of respondents said they sympathized more with the Israelis.
Both pollsters have asked about voters’ sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. They each said the sympathy gap in their latest polls was not statistically significant but that the trajectory of sentiments was.
Between 2001 and 2018, the Gallup poll found that Americans were more sympathetic to the Israelis by an average margin of 43 points. The gap began narrowing the following year but did not flip until now.
In both polls, the stark recent shift was driven by sharp shifts in sentiments among Democrats. The Gallup poll found that voters under 55 prefer the Palestinians by a wide margin, while older voters remain more sympathetic to the Israelis. The New York Times poll found that older, college-educated Democrats had seen their sentiments shift most harshly.
The polls add to the data points showing a sharp drop in sympathy for Israelis since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, for which the United States brokered a ceasefire in October. The Gallup poll is the first to demonstrate post-ceasefire sentiments among Americans.
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Is goy a slur, an antisemitic dogwhistle or a word for non-Jews?
Suddenly the term goy is trending. X is full of memes about “goy pride” and goyim “waking up.” People are debating whether goy is an antisemitic term, or, well, an anti-goyish term. Google Trends shows searches for the term have nearly quadrupled in the last four months.
Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with this bit of Jewish vocabulary?
Well, it’s not so sudden. Antisemites have been obsessed with it for decades. Memes on 4chan and other dark corners of the internet have long passed around quotes from the Talmud discussing goyim as though each use of the term was proof of a nefarious plot against non-Jews. They made up new terms, like “goyslop,” anything unhealthy supposedly created by Jews to weaken the world. White supremacists claim the term as one of pride, creating antisemitic groups like the Goyim Defense League.
Goyim broke into the mainstream discourse thanks to two events. One is the Epstein files, in which Jeffrey Epstein uses the term goy with a pejorative tone. The Epstein files have already birthed a network of conspiracy theories about Jewish cabals and government control, and goy was taken as just another example of Jewish scheming. Candace Owens talked about Epstein’s use of the term at length, incorrectly saying that it means “cattle.”
The other is a viral antisemitic YouTube video about a so-called “Jewish invasion” in New Jersey. The video’s creator, Tyler Oliveira, addressed his video to goyim and claims the label himself, aiming to inform the goyim about the supposedly nefarious threat of Jew moving into a town.
But is goy really such a problematic term? Literally, it just means “nation” — in the Torah, it is used in places to refer to the nation of Israel. In practice, it simply means “non-Jew,” or foreign nation which isn’t inherently insulting; Jews are far from the only group to have a term for outsider — think gringo in Spanish or farang in Thai.
This can, of course, be exclusionary. There is certainly the sense that outsiders cannot understand or participate in certain activities of an in-group — an idea that is not limited to Jews. And sometimes that is used to discriminate or insult.
Goy is used much more commonly among Jews to simply describe something that’s not Jewish. Think of the famous Lenny Bruce bit about pumpernickel being Jewish and white bread being goyish — is it a slur to observe that white bread is not part of Jewish culture? Thanks to a history of poverty and shtetl life, Jewish food is often more humble and less processed. That’s just history. It’s not an insult to white bread, or, for that matter, to pumpernickel.
The use of goy by non-Jews is similarly complicated. Someone can casually describe themself as a goy, simply because they are not Jewish or have little contact with Jewish culture. But the term is also used by neo-Nazi types as a dog whistle that signals familiarity with the world of antisemitic conspiracy theories. The phrase “the goyim are waking up,” which has suddenly entered the mainstream, echoes a much older antisemitic meme — “The goyim know,” which is used to imply there is something sinister to know or wake up to, namely the supposed Jewish control of society. (“Noticing” is another antisemitic meme, referring to the same phenomenon.)
This makes the debate about the term kind of silly. Tone and context is everything, just like with any term. “Jew” can be an insult, too, but it obviously is simply a descriptor as well; I call myself a Jew, because I am religiously and ethnically Jewish. If someone spat “Jew” at me on the street, however, I’d be insulted.
But the supposedly neutral valence of the word goy can make the antisemitism that often accompanies it hard to call out. If Jews use it neutrally, why shouldn’t anyone? Or so goes the defense online.
This is how Tyler Oliveira, the creator behind the “Jewish invasion” YouTube video, spins his use of the term. “Jews are trying to say I’m ‘anti-Semitic’ for using the word ‘goyim’ to describe non-Jews,” he wrote on X. “They can call you ‘goyim’ and it’s fine, but if you call yourself a ‘goy’ you hate Jews…? You can’t make this up.”
But watching Oliveira’s actual use of the term, the antisemitism is clear. He creates false binaries like dismissing antisemitism for the supposedly greater problem of “anti-goyism,” as though Jews, a minority, have outsize power to harm outsiders. He harps on the idea that Jews call themselves God’s chosen people as though it is akin to white supremacy, calling Jews “semite supremacists.”
It’s silly to pretend Oliveira’s use of goy isn’t obviously a loaded one; goy may not inherently be an insult, but when it’s deployed with a conspiratorial wink to antisemites, it’s antisemitic.
That’s really the simple rule for when goy is a slur, or when it’s antisemitic: If the person using it is a bigot, it’s bigoted. Otherwise, it’s just a word.
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A conservative Jewish professor who rejected Hitler comparisons now invokes one — for Tucker Carlson
(JTA) — In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Jeffrey Lax, a descendent of Holocaust survivors who has lobbied against antisemitism at the college where he teaches, criticized liberals who compared Donald Trump to Hitler.
Now Lax, a law professor who defines himself as center-right and appears frequently on Newsmax and Fox News, is rethinking the idea of modern-day Hitler comparisons. In fact, he’s ringing that bell on a key Trump ally: Tucker Carlson.
“I never, ever, thought this day would come, but for the first time in my life, I am going to compare a human being to Adolph Hitler,” Lax tweeted on Friday. “Understand that I am the grandchild of 4 Holocaust survivors. I’ve spent a lifetime urging people NOT to compare anyone to Hitler. But… Tucker Carlson’s views, rhetoric, and influence remind me of Adolph Hitler.”
Lax was responding to Vice President JD Vance’s favorable comments about the interview Carlson, a far-right pundit, did last week with Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. The interview ignited new allegations of antisemitism, but Vance did not suggest any concern. That, Lax says, is a big problem.
“This situation is as dead serious as a heart attack and with @JDVance now expressly and abhorrently legitimizing Carlson’s views, we are in a national Antisemitism State of Emergency,” Lax continued.
It was a dramatic outlay of angst about antisemitism on the right for a figure who has campaigned against left-wing anti-Israel activism at the City University of New York, where he teaches. But Lax said in an interview that he could not remain silent.
“For me to get to this point, it had to be something that was so deeply disturbing on many levels,” he said. Carlson’s call for genetics testing for Jews, he said, crossed that line. “If anything I’ve ever heard is Hitler-esque, when you talk about Jews having to prove that they’re Jews with DNA — if DNA testing was available in the days of Hitler, do you not think that Hitler would have used it?”
Lax emphasized that he was speaking specifically of “early Hitler, the early years, before he took power, before he actually, physically caused anybody to be killed. I’m talking about the rhetoric. He could’ve been stopped at that point. People didn’t take Hitler seriously.”
While Lax has criticized Carlson before, he has in the past refrained from extending those critiques to Vance — despite a mounting record of the vice president minimizing antisemitism on the right. “I’ve had suspicions about Vance for a long time,” Lax said. “I wanted to be sure.”
Vance’s defense of Carlson’s interview provided the certainty he needed.
“Is he out of his mind?” Lax said. “By saying something like that, you are saying that what Tucker is saying is legitimate and needs to be discussed, including that Jews should have genetic testing done to be sure that they’re Jewish and have right to the land.” He described such a belief as “brain rot.”
Lax joins a growing line of other Jewish conservatives who have expressed alarm about Vance and his closeness to the White House. They include far-right activist Laura Loomer; conservative columnist and Newsweek editor Josh Hammer; Israeli conservative luminary Yoram Hazony; Orthodox right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro; Rep. Randy Fine; pro-Israel activist groups StandWithUs and StopAntisemitism; and publications with a conservative-friendly pro-Israel bent including Tablet, The Free Press and Commentary.
Their alarm comes as Carlson builds a formidable political network of his own ahead of the midterms, made up of figures with growing sway over young voters. He has given friendly interviews to several outsider GOP candidates, including Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, lover of antisemitic memes; Texas congressional candidate and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Ryan Zink; U.S. Senate candidate Paul Dans, who is challenging pro-Israel Sen. Lindsay Graham; and Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn, who used his Carlson interview to disparage non-Christian elected officials.
Influential figures identified with the left are also increasingly coming to Carlson’s side on Israel and Jews. “Hey bitch, the goyim are waking the fuck up. Deal with it,” Ana Kasparian, a co-host on the progressive online network The Young Turks, tweeted as part of an extended defense of Carlson this week.
Amid a backlash, the next day Kasparian doubled down: “I do not regret this comment. I don’t apologize,” she tweeted. “Israel is evil, genocidal and has destroyed our country. They’re about to drag us into another war and all we hear from Israelis and their braindead supporters is ‘ANTISEMITE’ if you disagree with Israel’s agenda.” (Kasparian’s Young Turks colleague, Cenk Uyghur, is a regular Carlson guest.)
While antipathy toward Carlson has been all but fully cemented for Jews on both sides of the aisle, not every Jewish conservative has turned on Vance.
Matt Brooks, director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, harshly criticized Carlson and his defenders last fall after the pundit interviewed white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and the group’s most recent conference was marked by repeated denunciations of Carlson. Yet RJC has refrained from publicly pointing the finger at Vance, and its posts about him to date are uniformly complimentary — as on Thursday, when the group retweeted a speech from the vice president’s X account about Democrats and affordability.
A request for comment to the RJC was not returned.
“That is outrageous that the RJC would not criticize Vance,” Lax said. “That is self-destructive. That is insane.”
Also treading carefully on Vance are many establishment Jewish groups. Neither the Anti-Defamation League nor its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has publicly criticized the vice president since February 2025, when the ADL’s X account docked him for meeting with the head of Germany’s far-right AfD party. The American Jewish Committee, similarly, has critiqued Carlson’s rhetoric in the past but remained muted on Vance as he’s increasingly clarified that he believes the pundit is a valuable part of the Republican coalition. Comments to representatives for the two organizations were not returned.
Because Lax runs a registered nonprofit, the Zionist group S.A.F.E. Campus, he said he was hesitant to comment too specifically on electoral politics. But he said he believes Jews on the right are “coming around” to the problem of antisemitism on their side. And he’s deeply concerned about Vance running for president in 2028 without having distanced himself from Carlson.
“I could never support a candidate who says we need to have a conversation about genetically testing Jews,” Lax said. “What Vance said, I think people’s eyes popped out of their heads.”
And, despite his earlier defenses of Trump, he said the president must more forcefully condemn Carlson and Vance’s rhetoric now. “He can’t have his vice president say that it is an important conversation that we talk about genetically testing Jews to see if they come from Abraham,” Lax said. Vance himself once compared Trump to Hitler, prior to being chosen as his running mate.
Lax is also reflecting more on his 2024 piece decrying Trump-Hitler comparisons. If the president doesn’t issue a more forceful condemnation of his party’s antisemitic wing in the next month, the professor said, ”I may very well change my mind.”
By Friday afternoon, he had drawn a possible line in the sand, tweeting a call for Trump to demand Vance’s immediate resignation.
“Enough. This is a National Antisemitic State of Emergency. Only Trump can end it. And he must do so now,” Lax wrote. “It starts by booting JD and cutting Tucker out from all conservative and Republican orgs.”
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