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How a Jewish schoolteacher from New Jersey made it to Hollywood and Broadway at the same time
Robert Kaplow, a retired high school English teacher, has been publishing a monthly newsletter in Metuchen, a small New Jersey town a few miles southwest of Menlo Park, where Thomas Edison set up his laboratory. Kaplow can’t match Edison’s thousand plus patents but the 71-year-old writer has had an impressive creative output. Over the years, he’s churned out a play, a screenplay, nine novels and hours of radio comedy that gained a cult following on NPR.
One of his novels, Me and Orson Welles, was turned into a motion picture. His screenplay, Blue Moon, began life as a monologue and tackles the tragic end of lyricist Lorenz Hart’s life. Kaplow worked on Blue Moon over the course of 14 years.
The film, directed by Richard Linklater, presents the unraveling of Hart’s musical theater career and serves up a glimpse of his sad personal life. Hart was gay but he wasn’t completely comfortable with his sexual identity. Based on actual correspondence that Kaplow bought at an estate sale, the screenplay presents the lyricist as a man infatuated with a college woman half his age. The movie opens with two quotes about Hart in an epigraph. The first describes the lyricist as “alert and alive and fun to be with.” The second refers to him as “the saddest man I ever knew.”
‘An extraordinary teacher’
Kaplow taught English and film at Summit High School in New Jersey for 34 years.
“He was an extraordinary teacher,” said Sally Ball, who was a high school student of Kaplow’s in the mid-1980’s and is now a published poet and an English professor at Arizona State University. “He lived the life of a writer. He really made a literary life seem like a living thing to me.”
Kaplow scored autographed pictures for his high school students of the actor Zac Efron, who starred in Me and Orson Welles. The 2004 novel was turned into a feature film by Linklater. Set in the 1930’s, it told the story of a New Jersey high school student who manages to snag a role in Welles’ groundbreaking production of Julius Caesar.
While he was teaching, Kaplow also made a mark in public radio with his alter ego, a comedic character named Moe Moskowitz. The wisecracking, loud-mouthed Moskowitz was the polar opposite of his soft-spoken creator. Billed as “America’s favorite entrepreneur,” Moskowitz brightened the airwaves on Morning Edition with wacky ideas and get-rich-quick schemes.
A gorilla comedian
Kaplow’s first foray into comedy and drama took place when he was ten. Encouraged by his father Jerome, he donned a full-face gorilla mask and casually looked out the window of the family sedan on the drive to the beach. The sight of the little gorilla in the backseat caused the occupants of other cars to do a double-take, which was often followed by an explosion of laughter.
That comedic impulse showed no sign of abating during his adolescence. On the first page of his prayer book, a Reform siddur, Kaplow provided a divine inscription: “Bob – Best of luck in the future (as if I didn’t know!) – God.”
In high school Kaplow and his friends, inspired by the trippy, multi-track comedy of Firesign Theater, wrote, performed and recorded what he called “little satirical theater pieces.”
When Kaplow attended Rutgers University, he spent most of his time in a band called The Punsters, which produced a weekly radio program of the same name. It featured a half-hour of original comedy, some of which Kaplow would eventually recycle for NPR.
‘The only prayer I know’
At family gatherings, Kaplow’s father, a car salesman, was always the life of the party. At the local White Castle where the counter women were Haitian, Jerome Kaplow would pretend he was a native French speaker when he ordered. And he performed cameos on his son’s radio comedy segments on NPR. When Jerome went to the hospital for an echocardiogram and a technician asked what he did for a living, the elder Kaplow replied: “I’m retired, but I used to be in show business.”
“My father had an ironic, absurdist sense of humor,” Kaplow told me. “I picked up so much from him.”
Jerome lived to 94, deriving much of his sustenance from Milky Way candy bars and gefilte fish, according to his son. Even when he could barely walk, Jerome insisted on going to shul on the High Holy Holidays.
“My father didn’t attend services because he was deeply religious,” Kaplow explained. “He attended because his father was deeply religious — and he felt the need to honor his father’s convictions.”
Religious observance seems to have declined with each generation of the Kaplow family but Robert Kaplow told me he does regularly go to the cemetery to place stones on the graves of his grandparents, mother, father and sister.
“Sometimes I mutter Shema Yisrael,” he told me. “It’s the only prayer I know.”
‘Kaplow’s gift’
When Kaplow was with The Punsters, they recorded a song titled “I Dreamt I Dreamt of Gefilte Fish,” in which Kaplow mimicked Bob Dylan singing about eating nothing but gefilte fish. In the 70-second ditty “Batman’s Going to a Bat-Mitzvah,” the caped crusader, we learn, is going to chow down on “rugelach and arugula.” A Moskowitz Home Companion,” Kaplow’s parody of A Prairie Home Companion, was sponsored by the fictional “Moskowitz’s Frozen Knishes.”
Kaplow says he was fired from NPR three times — first because Moe Moskowitz was deemed to be a Jewish stereotype, second, according to veteran Morning Edition producer Barry Gordemer, because “some people in the building didn’t think Moe was funny,” and lastly because Kaplow used the network’s logo without permission on a self-produced CD of his Morning Edition comedy segments. You can still find that CD (Cancel My Subscription: The Worst of NPR) on YouTube.
Jay Kernis, Morning Edition’s founding producer, was in Washington, D.C. when Kaplow was being interviewed about the song he sent in, “Steven Spielberg, Give Me Some of Your Money.” Out of the blue, Kaplan started talking in his Moe Moskowitz voice. Kernis called the control room in New York when the interview had concluded and asked Kaplow if he wanted to contribute original comedy to Morning Edition on a regular basis.
Kernis noted that back in the days when NPR aired original comedy and commentary on its newsmagazines, contributors tended to last a couple of years. Then, he said, either NPR producers or the audience grew tired of them. Kaplow lasted 17 years.
“Robert was inventive and he was funny,” Kernis told me. “He was a great performer and a great sound producer.”
“Moe Moskowitz always made me laugh, but also sometimes put a catch into my throat,” Weekend Edition host Scott Simon wrote in a text. “Robert has a gift — an art, really — for putting character into what might otherwise seem a caricature.”
‘An old-fashioned human being’
Kaplow and Richard Linklater kept in touch after Me and Orson Welles had its theatrical run in 2008. When Kaplow mentioned that he had written a monologue about Rodgers and Hart, Linklater asked to read it and, afterwards, shared it with the actor Ethan Hawke, who he tapped to play Lorenz Hart.
Kaplow completed the first draft of the Blue Moon screenplay in the Summer of 2011. In the ensuing years Linklater and Hawke worked with Kaplow on revising it, right up to and during the shoot last summer in Ireland where Kaplow joined them on set.
“We were a good band together,” Hawke told me.
The film takes place on one night in 1943 at Sardi’s, the theater district restaurant, as Hart’s songwriting partner Richard Rodgers basks in the opening night raves of Oklahoma!, Rodgers’ first collaboration with his new writing partner Oscar Hammerstein II.
Hart was struggling with alcoholism and depression during the time the film depicts. He died eight months after the Oklahoma! opening at the age of 48.
“It is hard for us to look at people in pain,” Hawke told me. “People in pain often behave badly, so they’re unlikable. But we have all been that person. We’ve all struggled with the green-headed monster of jealousy. We’ve all been worried that our best days are behind us.”
Linklater said one of the triumphs of Kaplow’s screenplay is that it managed to convey empathy for Lorenz Hart.
“I’m proud that 82 years later we’re honoring him and his contribution to our world,” Linklater said of the lyricist. “There’s no one else like him.”
Hawke described Robert Kaplow as “an old-fashioned human being,” which isn’t surprising given Kaplow’s love of the American songbook, especially its golden age. When he was in his 20’s, Kaplow was so enamored of the Tin Pan Alley era that he wanted to write music for theater.
“When you look at the songwriters of the 1930s and 40s, with the exception of Cole Porter, they’re almost all Jewish,” Kaplow told me. “Rodgers and Hart, Kern, Arlen, Julie Styne and Sammy Cahn. I don’t have an explanation for why, but I feel a little bit like I’m part of that. Whatever that cultural DNA is, I have a little of that.”
The post How a Jewish schoolteacher from New Jersey made it to Hollywood and Broadway at the same time appeared first on The Forward.
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U2’s New EP References Holocaust, Hitler, Women’s Rights Protests in Iran, Deceased Palestinian Activist
The Irish rock band U2. Photo: BANG Showbiz
The Irish rock band U2 released an EP on Wednesday titled “Days of Ash” that addresses a wide range of topics, including the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising in Iran, the Holocaust, the killing of a Palestinian activist, ICE raids in the United States, and the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Days of Ash,” which was released on Ash Wednesday and is now available on all streaming platforms, is the first time U2 is releasing a collection of new music since 2017. The EP features five new tracks – “American Obituary,” “The Tears Of Things,” “Song Of The Future,” “One Life At A Time,” and “Yours Eternally” (ft. Ed Sheeran & Taras Topolia) – and the recitation of the poem “Wildpeace,” written by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. The poem is read on the EP by Nigerian artist Adeola Fayehun. It begins with the following lines: “Not the peace of a ceasefire / not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb / but rather as in the heart when the excitement is over / and you can talk only about a great weariness.”
In a new interview with the U2 fanzine “Propaganda,” which is being relaunched as a one-off digital zine to accompany the new EP, lead singer Bono talked about the music referencing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, concerns about antisemitism, his condemnation of the Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and his criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for how he is managing the Israel-Hamas war.
The title for “The Tears of Things” is a reference to the 2025 book by Richard Rohr titled The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage. The book is about the Jewish prophets and imagines a conversation between Italian sculptor and artist Michelangelo and his marble statue of the Bible’s King David.
“If you put a man into a cage and rattle it long enough/A man becomes the kind of rage that cannot be locked up … The tears of things/Let the desert be unfrozen,” Bono sings in the track. He also sings about “six million voices silenced in just four years,” which is a reference to the six million people killed in the Holocaust. Bono told “Propaganda” the same song includes a reference to a true story about Mussolini and Hitler meeting. Hitler’s name in the song is replaced by the word “shadow,” Bono explained.
“Mussolini came to see me/A shadow by his side,” Bono sings. “Church bells ring, a vanishing/Then the vanishing denied/Six million voices silenced in just four years/The silent song of Christendom/So loud everybody hears.”
The track concludes with the lyrics: “River, sea and mountain/Desert, dust and snow/Everybody is my people/Let my people go.”
Bono told “Propaganda” it is “the moral force of Judaism that helped shape Western civilization.”
“Some of my favorite bits … some of the greatest hits of Western civilization … were gifted to us by brilliant Jewish minds … mathematicians, scientists … writers … not to mention singwriters,” added the singer-songwriter, who said he comes from a “Judeo-Christian tradition.”
“There has never been a moment when we have needed the moral force of Judaism more than right now,” he explained. “And yet, it has rarely in modern times been under such a siege. From where I stand, as a person with a limited view, Judaism, one of the great and noble religions, is being slandered by far-right fundamentalists from within its own community … I could argue the same about Christianity or Islam.”
Antisemitism “has been a scourge for millennia,” and “was rising long before Oct. 7 and the resulting war in Gaza,” Bono said. “As with Islamophobia, antisemitism must be countered every time we witness it. The rape, murder, and abduction of Israelis on Oct. 7 was evil, but self-defense is no defense for the sweeping brutality of Netanyahu’s response,” he continued.
The musician also talked about how the Israel-Hamas war has resulted in “deep knock-on effects for the Jewish diaspora and their safety … As if all Jews are to blame for the actions of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir.” He was referring to Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
When asked later on in the interview about criticism he has faced, especially in Ireland, for not speaking out enough against the conflict in Gaza, Bono said, “I’ve written on Israel and Gaza, but in terms of actions I’ve been focused on the things I know more about.”
Bono also told “Propaganda” that the song “One Life at a Time” on the new EP is inspired by Palestinian activist and filmmaker Awdah Hathaleen, whose was killed last year by an extremist Israeli settler in the West Bank. Hathaleen was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” which focuses on Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank village of Masafer Yatta and criticizes Israel’s military actions. The lyrics of “One Life at a Time” do not reference Hathaleen by name, but the band’s lyric video for the track features a picture of Hathaleen’s face, as well as image of Israel’s West Bank security barrier and the Dome of the Rock.
“Song of the Future” honors the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement and uprising in Iran as well as the protesters killed, including 16-year-old Iranian Sarina Esmailzadeh, who was beaten to death by Iranian security forces. Esmailzadeh is the “star of our song,” Bono told “Propaganda.”
“This new EP is a response to current events, inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom,” U2 said. “Four of the five tracks are about individuals – a mother, a father, a teenage girl whose lives were brutally cut short – and a soldier who’d rather be singing but is ready to die for the freedom of his country.”
The first track of the EP, “American Obituary,” is dedicated to Renee Good, a mother of three and protester who was fatally shot on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during a protest.
The track “Yours Eternally” is about the war in Ukraine.
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Jewish Peoplehood Shouldn’t Be Up for Debate
Thousands of participants and spectators are gathering along Fifth Avenue to express support for Israel during the 59th Annual Israel Day Parade in NYC, on June 2, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
The world’s largest association of psychologists is currently debating whether Jews are allowed to describe themselves as a people.
As crazy as that sounds, this is not a joke. It is a controversy unfolding right now among members of the American Psychological Association (APA), as a group of Jewish psychologists has sought recognition similar to that enjoyed by other ethnic minority groups within the association. The APA’s governing council is set to vote on this question imminently. What should have been an uncontroversial measure has instead become an argument over identity itself — one that reveals a deeper problem in how discrimination is understood today.
We are two Jewish women who have direct, personal experiences with antisemitism, and whose families historically have been discriminated against simply because they were Jewish. Our families’ and our own experiences, as Jews who faced persecution and as advocates for other vulnerable communities, make it especially painful to see our Jewish identities and need for representation and protection questioned in this way.
The opponents from ethnic caucuses within the APA that already have formal representation argued that Jews are a “majority white” population and therefore do not need such recognition. They asserted that Jewish identity is only religious, not ethnic; that antisemitism is not a distinct concern; and that acknowledging Jewish peoplehood would somehow undermine efforts to confront white supremacy.
At a time when antisemitism has reached historic levels in the US and globally, these claims are not only deeply concerning but also evidence of a larger pattern of discrimination in professional and academic organizations and labor unions.
Like any ethnic or religious minority, Jews should not have to justify their existence to others. No one should be told that their identity is somehow invalid because it does not fit neatly into racial categories or prevailing political narratives. Yet that is precisely what is happening here.
Jewish identity has always been multifaceted, encompassing ancestry, culture, history, and, for some, religion. Jews today include families from the Middle East and North Africa, Ethiopia, Europe, and the Americas, observant and secular alike. But the specifics matter less than the principle: In every other context, communities are trusted to define their own lived experience and identity. Here, that authority is being claimed by those outside the community, ironically, inside a profession dedicated to compassionate and nuanced understanding of identity and trauma.
To understand why this moment is so troubling, one must understand something distinctive about antisemitism: It adapts to the assumptions of the era.
At times throughout our history Jews were persecuted as a religious group, forced to convert, be expelled, or be killed. At others, we were targeted as a race, culminating in Nazi racist ideology used to justify the extermination of 6 million Jews. One of our aunts (Eveline Shekhman’s), Rocha Vilenski, was forcibly transported from the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania to Stutthof and then Auschwitz. Her transport papers listed “Jude” as her race, a clear marker that she was not considered “white.”
In other periods Jews have been accused of being foreigners, disloyal to their countries of origin. And sometimes, even simultaneously, Jews are painted as the ultimate insiders, wielding outsized power to manipulate society in pursuit of some untoward end. The accusations are rarely consistent, but they do paint a pattern: Jews are blamed for whatever is most feared or condemned in society at that particular moment.
Today, in some spaces, the prevailing narrative is that Jews are overly powerful, privileged, and white. From there flows a natural conclusion: that Jews cannot meaningfully experience discrimination and therefore require no specific protections.
The logic is familiar even if the language is new.
A prejudice that changes form to match prevailing moral categories is harder to recognize. But that does not make it any less real — only adaptable. Indeed, antisemitism’s shapeshifting nature is part of what makes it so pernicious and difficult to combat.
Psychologists help shape how institutions recognize bias, how patients’ experiences are interpreted, and how discrimination is measured across society. When a field responsible for understanding prejudice treats a community’s lived experience as a definitional debate, protection becomes conditional on whether the group fits an approved framework. Such a dynamic is anathema to the discipline of psychology.
At a moment when confidence in expert institutions is fragile, credibility depends on applying principles morally, and consistently. Members of the APA Council have an opportunity to reaffirm a simple principle: Communities deserve the same respect for self-definition that psychology teaches in every other context.
Sara Colb is Director of Advocacy at the Anti-Defamation League. Eveline Shekhman is Chief Executive Officer of AJMA, The American Jewish Medical Association.
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New Location of London Bakery Founded by Israeli Vandalized With Anti-Israel, ‘Free Gaza’ Graffiti
April 4, 2025, London, England, United Kingdom: Exterior view of a Gail’s bakery in Covent Garden. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A newly opened London branch of a popular bakery founded by an Israeli baker was vandalized on Wednesday night with anti-Israel graffiti as the chain was accused of funding “Israeli tech.”
Photos and videos shared on social media show that the new Gail’s Bakery location, which opened this week near the tube station in the Archway neighborhood, had splattered red paint on its walls and graffiti that read “Free Gaza,” along with another message that said “Boycott Gail’s Funds Israeli Tech.”
More thuggery from so-called activists.
Pro-Palestine thugs have vandalised the newest Gail’s branch in Archway.
Targeting businesses with Jewish roots belongs in the dustbin of history.@MetPoliceUK must ensure the perpetrators face consequences.pic.twitter.com/vZ8Au7cgHv
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) February 19, 2026
Police were called to the scene on Wednesday night, but the vandals had fled before officers arrived, according to a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police.
“Our bakeries are places for the community, and no one – whether that’s our bakery teams or our customers – should feel targeted or unsafe,” a spokesperson for Gail’s told The Algemeiner following the vandalism. “We are a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK. Our focus right now is on working with the authorities and making sure our people feel safe and supported.”
An anti-Israel demonstration also took place at the same Gail’s location this week, according to multiple reports. Videos online show protesters standing outside Gail’s holding signs including a massive banner that said, “Boycott Israel for Genocide and War Crimes in Gaza.” Another sign held by a protester read “No to Gail’s” and accused the American investment firm Bain Capital, which acquired a majority stake in Gail’s parent company Bread Holdings in 2021, of having “links to Israeli war-tech.”
First the vandals, then the harassment. Another scene today at Gail’s in Archway, London, the city that we all know is a “shining beacon of hope” where “everyone is loved and wanted”. pic.twitter.com/zd25zMucqR
— habibi (@habibi_uk) February 19, 2026
Bain Capital was among the more than 200 venture capital funds that signed an open letter in support of Israel following the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The company has investments in Israel, including in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and software companies. In October 2025, CTech reported that Bain Capital had invested more than $150 million into Israeli companies over the past year.
Gail’s was founded by Israeli baker Gail Mejia in the 1990s and serves freshly handmade bread, pastries, and cakes. Its first store opened in 2005 in London’s Hampstead High Street with the help of Israeli entrepreneur Ran Avidan, and today, there are hundreds of locations in and around London. Gail’s was voted the best bakery chain in Britain last year. Meija and Avidan no longer have any involvement in the company.
The European Jewish Congress condemned the “deeply concerning” anti-Israel graffiti found on Gail’s Bakery. “Targeting a local business because of perceived Jewish or Israeli associations reflects a troubling normalization of hostility that must be firmly rejected,” the EJC wrote in a post on X. “Such acts have no place in our societies and must be unequivocally condemned.”
In a statement given to The Algemeiner, the Campaign Against Antisemitism called on London’s Metropolitan Police to ensure those responsible for the vandalism are punished for their actions.
Last summer, hundreds of people signed a petition criticizing the opening of a Gail’s in east London and several of them said they opposed the new location because of the bakery’s “Zionist” ties, according to The Jewish Chronicle. In a statement released to The Guardian at the time, the company reiterated that it is “a UK-based business with no specific connections to any country or government outside of the UK and does not fund Israel.”
In an interview with The Times in 2024, Gail’s co-founder and CEO Tom Molnar denied the “ludicrous” accusations that the company is owned by Israel or funds the Jewish state.
“Gail’s proudly has Jewish roots and there’s plenty of stuff out there celebrating our heritage and history, but it’s not true it’s Israel-owned,” he said. “There’s some just crazy stuff on the web thinking we are funding Israel, which is just completely ridiculous. We’re a wholly UK-based business, paying UK taxes, it’s just ludicrous and I think it needs to be called out.”