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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.”
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UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – The United Kingdom threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” the British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a special statement he posted on X on Thursday.
Targeted sanctions, Miliband wrote, would be part of a series of measures his government would take. His office also summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Thursday to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Tuesday, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.
“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
He said that the U.K. government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”
The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the U.K., Sa’ar wrote.
Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.
Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the U.S., with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the United Nations General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.
The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Tuesday and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27. Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.
But the move reverberated globally, with the U.K. signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in which they warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.
They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.
Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first
(JTA) — An Argentine federal judge was removed from office Tuesday for a series of antisemitic posts on his social media accounts that constituted misconduct incompatible with his role, an impeachment panel ruled.
Alfredo Eugenio López, who headed Federal Court No. 4 in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, was removed by Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment, a special panel composed of judges, lawmakers and lawyers.
It is the first time in Argentina’s history that a judge has been removed over antisemitic remarks.
In López’s social media posts, the judge referred to the Jewish people as “a brood of vipers,” Israel as a “fictitious state” and Argentinian Jews as “foreigners.” He has also used such terms as “Zionist” and “gay” as insults.
According to the panel, the judge committed acts of “discrimination and the denial of equal rights against the Argentine Jewish community. For the purposes of these proceedings, it is particularly significant that, by acting in this manner, he shattered public confidence in his continued fitness to administer justice impartially.”The case reached the panel through Argentina’s Council of the Magistracy, based in Buenos Aires, the constitutional body responsible for the selection and discipline of federal judges.
The first complaint against López was filed in February 2025 by the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, which is the umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community. One month later, the Argentine Forum Against Antisemitism also filed a complaint. In July 2025, attorney Yamil Santoro from Apolo Foundation added another one.
In his defense, López argued that his messages were “ subjective and decontextualized interpretations of exchanges on social media, which in no way affect the administration of justice or his impartiality” as a judge. He added that his remarks were unrelated to any pending case and that he had never been recused or removed from any judicial case.
Neither Lopez nor his attorney were immediately available for further comment.
“He was removed because he simply would not stop engaging in hate speech,” jury member Alberto Maques said during a live interview Tuesday on the A24 news channel. “It is absolutely disgraceful for a federal judge to engage in this kind of conduct.”
Maques said there were 15 social media posts that he acknowledged, but more than 50 posts in which he said “outrageous things that are not worth repeating because they truly constituted hate speech.”
“This is not merely an issue of hate speech against the Jewish community. This is someone who lacks common sense,” he added, interviewed by A24 news channel.
Prosecutors in the impeachment proceedings argued that the messages were not isolated political comments but reflected a pattern of hostility toward Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
“No position of authority can shield hatred. This is not a matter of punishing an opinion. It is about sanctioning repeated conduct involving antisemitism, hostility and dehumanization, conduct incompatible with the impartiality, dignity and public trust required of the judiciary,” DAIA said Tuesday in a statement.
“This case sets a precedent: for the first time in more than a century, DAIA initiated proceedings of this nature against a judge. No office is above democracy.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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