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How Judy Blume’s ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ broke taboos around interfaith marriage
(JTA) — When Judy Blume’s young adult novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” appeared in 1970, intermarried families were a small segment of the American Jewish population. Perhaps 17% of Jews were married to someone who wasn’t Jewish; today, 42% of married Jews have a spouse who is not Jewish, and in the past decade, 61% of Jews married non-Jewish partners.
Through the 1960s, middle-grade and young adult fiction rarely acknowledged the existence of these families, reflecting and reinforcing their outsider status. Today it is routine for authors to address the reality of inter-religious and culturally mixed families, portraying them with insight and compassion. (See “Not Your All-American Girl” by Wendy Wan-Long Shang and Madelyn Rosenberg, “Becoming Brianna” by Terri Libenson and “The Whole Story of Half a Girl” by Veera Hiranandani.)
This change was made possible partly by Blume’s story of sixth-grader Margaret Simon and her one-sided conversations with God.
Blume’s status as a pioneer in young adult literature is usually associated with her honest approach to the emotional, physical and sexual milestones of growing up, with her works still attracting readers and still finding an honored place on lists of banned books. That legacy is being celebrated in April with a new documentary, Amazon Prime Video’s “Judy Blume Forever,” and a theatrical release by Lionsgate of a feature film version of “Are You There God?”
Yet her treatment of contested identity in intermarried families is as revolutionary as her openness about bras, menstruation and sexual feelings. Actors Lena Dunham and Molly Ringwald, comedian Samantha Bee and many authors, including Raina Telgemeier, Tayari Jones and Gary Shteyngart, have cited Blume’s influence on both their lives and their work. Book lists for intermarried families frequently list the novel as a resource.
Margaret Simon is 11 years old at the start of “Are You There God?” Her Jewish dad and Christian mom have pointedly ignored the possibility that their daughter might have questions about her identity. Along with other issues of teen angst, she feels compelled to decide if she is Jewish, Christian or neither. Without any guidance, the last alternative leaves her in a frightening void. As she pointedly asks God, in her ongoing series of questions for Him, “I can’t go on being nothing forever, can I?”
Margaret’s parents, Barbara Hutchins and Herb Simon, fell in love and defied their respective parents by marrying out of their faiths. They assure Margaret that she has no religion, but can choose one when she is older, oblivious to the fact that this solution seems more of a burden than a promise of future freedom. Their avoidance of any serious engagement with either religion or culture renders any possible choice unlikely.
Blume situates Margaret’s search within the specific landscape of post-World War II America. When the Simons decide to leave their Upper West Side home in New York City and move to suburban New Jersey, their decision suggests a coded reference to their religious status. Long Island is “too social,” an implied euphemism for “too Jewish.” Living there might have made it harder for their relatively unusual situation to be discreetly ignored. On the other hand, the more affluent Westchester and Connecticut are “too expensive” and “too inconvenient.” Farbrook, New Jersey has enough Jews for it to feel right for Herb, but not so many as to make their mixed family stand out.
Margaret also suspects that her parents’ are determined to put distance between the Simons and Sylvia, her paternal grandmother, who lives in New York City. This gregarious woman shows up at their new home unannounced and toting deli foods, making it clear that Margaret’s one unambiguous connection to Judaism is not going to disappear. While Barbara’s parents utterly rejected her when she married a Jew, Sylvia has pragmatically decided to accept what she cannot change. In the postwar era, more Jews began to abandon or minimize religious practice, while still maintaining ethnically distinct customs. Like holiday observance or synagogue attendance, ethnic Jewish culture is also absent from the Simon home. Sylvia’s Jewish food, her frequent trips to Florida, even her combination of sarcasm and smothering warmth, provide Margaret with markers of the tradition her parents have eschewed.
Still, when Sylvia repeatedly asks Margaret if her (nonexistent) boyfriends are Jewish, the young girl is baffled. Given her own lack of consciousness of herself as Jewish, why would Margaret care?
Rachel McAdams and Abby Ryder Fortson in the forthcoming film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” (Dana Hawley/Lionsgate © 2022)
In the larger world of Farbrook, Margaret’s new friends seem to have more secure identities, conveniently defined by membership either in the “Y” (Young Men’s Christian Association) or the Jewish Community Center. Perfunctory attendance at Hebrew school until after one’s bar mitzvah is the furthest extent of her peers’ Jewishness. Margaret explains that her parents are “nothing” and that, prior to their marriage, they were Jewish and Christian, as if those identities could be cast off like an article of clothing. When Mr. Benedict, her enthusiastic young teacher, distributes a questionnaire, Margaret completes the prompt “I hate” with “religious holidays.” He attempts to draw her out about this troubling answer, and she scornfully observes that her teacher acted as if “he had uncovered some deep, dark mystery.”
On one level, he has. Her mother’s blandly universal definition of God as a “nice idea,” who “belongs to everybody,” is clearly a denial of the fractures in her family members’ lives.
Blume also captures the essence of mid-century non-Orthodox Judaism as comfortably accessible, yet also somewhat empty. On a visit to Grandma Sylvia’s elegant temple, the atmosphere is quietly decorous, the sanctuary filled with well-appointed congregants and beautifully arranged flowers. Sylvia’s rabbi greets Margaret with an enthusiastic “Good Yom Tov,” which he translates as “Happy New Year,” although it is actually a generic holiday greeting.
When Margaret later visits Presbyterian and Methodist churches, she notes the remarkable similarity among all three experiences.
The novel’s one incident of specific religious practice involves Margaret’s brief, unfinished confession in a classmate’s Catholic church. Having participated in bullying, Margaret tries to assuage her guilt through a ritual alien to both her father’s Judaism and her mother’s Protestant Christianity. She even momentarily confuses the priest with the silent God of her conversations. Nothing could be further from her parents’ rejection of religion, or from Grandma Sylvia’s loving assurance to Margaret that “I knew you were a Jewish girl at heart.”
When Margaret’s Christian grandparents decide to resume contact, the suppressed anger in the Simon home finally erupts. Herb is furious, and accuses his in-laws of only wanting to meet Margaret “to make sure she doesn’t have horns!” — a caustic reference to a persistent antisemitic myth. Blume had subtly foreshadowed this disruption of the status quo in a parallel event at school. When a Jewish student, backed by his parents, refuses to sing Christmas carols, the implicit agreement of the town’s Jews to quietly conform is broken. A Christian girl, in what seems an act of retaliation, then refuses to sing Hanukkah songs. These acts of resistance reinforce Margaret’s marginal status. Her intermarried family represents neither conformity with postwar norms nor an assertion of Jewish pride.
Blume appears to tip the scales in her portrayal of Mary and Paul Hutchins, Margaret’s maternal grandparents. Entirely unlikeable, simultaneously pushy and cold, they insist that the granddaughter they had never acknowledged is Christian. After their failed visit, Grandma Sylvia returns, along with her sweet and obviously Jewish new boyfriend, Mr. Binamin (“rhymes with cinnamon”). Readers rooting for the triumph of Margaret’s Jewish roots may breathe a sigh of relief here, but hope for a satisfying ending is illusory. Margaret’s search for a stable sense of self is still unfinished, and will not be satisfied by choosing membership in either the Y or the JCC.
For young readers, the novel’s discussion of religious identity proved as life-changing as its honest portrayal of puberty and menstruation. “I related to that kind of conflict of religion,” the comedian Chelsea Handler, who grew up in a mixed Jewish-Mormon home, told Blume in 2020. “At that time, I just found out my mom was Mormon, on top of thinking she was Jewish, and your books were such a reprieve for me and such a joy.”
More than 50 years ago, Judy Blume tackled a difficult subject, about both changing demographics and the search for authenticity in American Jewish life. Margaret’s conclusion that “twelve is very late to learn” about the essence of who you are still poses a challenge, while her persistent search for a meaningful identity offers a degree of optimism.
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Ed Sheeran’s support acts bail on Loop Tour after Macklemore dropped
(JTA) —
All of Ed Sheeran’s opening acts and his backing band have withdrawn from his Loop Tour after the pro-Palestinian rapper Macklemore was dropped as an opening act amid pressure from Robert Kraft and other stadium owners.
Kraft, the Jewish and pro-Israel billionaire who owns the Boston-area stadium where one of the tour stops had been scheduled, said on Monday that he had told Sheeran’s team that Macklemore wouldn’t be allowed to perform there.
Macklemore was subsequently dropped from the tour following pushback from unnamed venues that “will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup,” Rolling Stone reported on Monday.
At a Macklemore performance at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., earlier this month, the rapper declared “Free Palestine” before performing his 2024 song, “Hind’s Hall,” referring to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall. Pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the building and unofficially renamed it for Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed during the war in Gaza. Israel is investigating her killing.
Sheeran said Tuesday that he wasn’t behind the tour promoter’s decision to drop Macklemore.
“I am not complicit,” Sheeran wrote in a statement on Instagram Tuesday, saying that Macklemore leaving the tour “was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine.” It was Sheeran’s first public statement on the controversy.
Hours after Sheeran’s comments, acts began pulling out of the tour.
His backing band, Beoga, said in an Instagram post that it was leaving the tour “following the silencing of Macklemore by zionist lobbies.”
“We believe in dialogue as a means of progressing the plight of the Palestinian people,” they added. Beoga’s management did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
Kraft’s decision to bar Macklemore from performing at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. got the backing of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.
“Mr. Kraft drew a clear moral line in the sand about the demonization and offensive conduct that he will not allow in ‘his home’,” Jeremy Burton, the JCRC CEO, said, referring to the stadium. “He also showed leadership and complexity … by rejecting those who would diminish the suffering of innocent Palestine people.”
“This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf,” Kraft had said in his statement. “Their pain and loss are real.”
Other acts scheduled to support Sheeran on the Loop tour, including Aaron Rowe, Finneas and Lukas Graham, also withdrew Tuesday. Rowe and Lukas Graham were supposed to replace Macklemore on the remaining U.S. dates, AP reported.
It’s not yet clear what the fate of the tour is, given the withdrawal of his backing band. At least one Israeli musician joked that he was ready to put together a replacement band for “unlimited beer.”
Sheeran’s own note added, “I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” The British singer-songwriter wrote that he had been “involved in direct talks” between Kraft and various promoters “to try and find a mutual resolution for all.”
Sheeran didn’t mention Jews in his statement, but noted, “I have always used my platform and music to bring people from all backgrounds and cultures together and this won’t ever change.”
He also had some veiled criticism of his tourmate’s methods. “Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum,” Sheeran wrote. “I respect Macklemore’s strength of purpose to stand up for what he believes. However, there is room for multiple approaches to the same end: peace… If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change.”
The Israeli-American Council, which organized a boycott against Macklemore following his New Jersey show, criticized Sheeran in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“It’s time to take responsibility for giving a stage to antisemitic messaging,” the IAC said, of Sheeran. “This isn’t just ‘criticism of Israel.’ It’s a message that crosses the line between legitimate political criticism and antisemitism. This is Ed Sheeran’s stage, it’s the tour that carries his name — and so the responsibility for what happens on it is his too.”
The post Ed Sheeran’s support acts bail on Loop Tour after Macklemore dropped appeared first on The Forward.
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Vance: Trump willing to ‘part ways’ with Netanyahu when necessary, and has often opposed him
(JTA) —
President Donald Trump has an unprecedented track record of opposing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when it comes to advancing the interest of the American people, Vice President JD Vance said during a virtual address Tuesday at a Los Angeles-based technology summit.
More than any president in the last 40 years Trump “has shown a willingness to actually part ways with ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu when he feels like the interests of the American people are different from the interests of the government of Israel,” Vance told the All-In Summit on technology.
The claim that Trump is the “one president” who would differ with Netanyahu is one that would surprise many watchers of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
The most significant U.S.-Israel rupture since 2009, when Netanyahu was first elected prime minister, was with President Barack Obama in 2015 over Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
Vance’s comments were the latest in a series he has made emphasizing the widening gulf between Jerusalem and Washington as November midterm elections approach and at a time when Netanyahu’s popularity in the United States is at a low after three years of Middle East wars.
A Pew poll from the end of March, when the United States was actively at war with Iran, found that 60% of U.S. adults unfavorably view Israel and that 59% lacked confidence in Netanyahu’s handling of world affairs, an increase of 7% in both categories.
Republicans are scrambling to shuck off unpopular policies and associations, fearing the party will lose control of Congress in the midterms, a result that would cripple Trump’s agenda in the final two years of his presidency.
“I find it a little ironic … that you have Democrats criticizing Donald Trump for his relationship with Bibi when Donald Trump is the one president of the last 40 years who’s been willing to say, you know what, yeah, Bibi is a good partner, but also Bibi and I have a different opinion on this, or Bibi’s wrong about this, or maybe Bibi’s right about this from the perspective of Israel. But the American people need us to go in a different direction,” Vance said.
Trump has often touted himself as the president who has done the most for Israel, including relocating his country’s embassy to Jerusalem and rupturing Obama’s Iran deal, during his first term in 2018 and securing the release of the Gaza hostages in 2025 during his second, nonconsecutive term. The war he and Netanyahu launched against Iran in February is the first ever joint U.S.-Israeli military action.
The friendship between the two leaders is a highly public one, with Netanyahu enjoying more White House visits than any other world leader. Each has made the close ties central to their electoral campaigns. Netanyahu pitches himself as the world leader most influential with Trump, while Trump’s evangelical base lauds his closeness with Israel.
Vance, however, has often taken a harsher line, including accusing Israel of trying to manipulate U.S. public opinion on the Iran war.
“Israel has been an important partner when it comes to military technology, when it comes to intelligence sharing, but also sometimes the United States doesn’t always agree with Israel,” Vance said on Tuesday.
Serious differences have emerged since the joint U.S.-Israel goals in the Iran war – to change the regime and end once and for all Iran’s potential to acquire a nuclear weapon – have foundered. Among these has been the U.S. decision to end the Iran war without a clear plan to block the Islamic Republic’s path to nuclear weapons and its agreement to enter into a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, without insisting on a normalization deal with the Jewish state.
“We cannot let our Middle Eastern foreign policy be subservient to the state of Israel,” Vance told the All In Summit.
Vance has also ruffled American Jewish feathers by refusing to disavow media personality Tucker Carlson, who has promoted conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews.
Vance’s remarks rankled pro-Israel figures who have otherwise been supportive of Trump’s policies.
“American foreign policy should be subservient to no country,” Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an influential think tank that backed the Iran war, wrote on X. “Why does the VP feel compelled to call out Israel in this respect? Why not call out the Qataris, or the Saudis, or Ukraine? Odd how this keeps happening.”
Heather Johnston, a Christian evangelical who founded the U.S. Israel Education Association, accused Vance on X of catering to Israel haters.
“Our U.S. foreign policy has never been subservient to Israel’s foreign policy,” she said, attaching a clip of Vance’s remarks. “He knows that. Why would he need to say that unless he’s trying to politically gain some points with Israel haters?”
The accusation hit a nerve. Vance’s communications director Taylor Van Kirk quoted Johnston’s tweet, and posted the entire exchange on X. “Let’s all take a moment to actually watch this exchange in full, where the VP was specifically asked about Israel,” Van Kirk said.
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LA Federation sues museum for custody of looted paintings once hoarded by Hermann Göring
(JTA) — The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and the heirs to a Jewish artist filed suit against a California museum to recover a pair of 16th-century oil paintings seized by the Nazis and held in the private collection of Hermann Göring.
Also on Monday, the daughters of Holocaust survivor Dina Gottliebova Babbitt sued the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum to recover watercolors of Roma victims she was forced to paint for Josef Mengele, the physician who tormented and experimented on inmates at Auschwitz. The artist died in 2009.
The two lawsuits were filed at the end of the filing window under a 2024 California law that permits claimants in previously dismissed lawsuits to refile for the retrieval of looted artworks. The law permits claimants to recover personal property stolen as the result of “political persecution” when earlier lawsuits were dismissed on procedural grounds.
The federation is suing the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for the retrieval of a life-sized oil diptych of Adam and Eve by the German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. In 1940, the Nazis seized the pair of paintings from their Jewish owner, the art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. The art wound up in the hands of Göring, the Nazi air force commander and convicted war criminal, along with about 800 other pieces from Goudstikker’s collection. The paintings eventually made their way to the Norton Simon in 1971.
In a press release, the Jewish federation said it would use the majority of the proceeds from the sale of the art to care for Los Angeles-based Holocaust survivors living in poverty. (A 2018 study from the Jewish Federations of North America found that one-third of Holocaust survivors in the United States are living below the poverty line.)
“By pursuing the recovery of the Cranachs, we are seeking to reverse a great injustice perpetrated by the Nazi theft of a Jewish family’s property, and securing the resources that will enable us to provide for the many needs of thousands of impoverished Holocaust survivors in the greater Los Angeles area so they can live in dignity for the remainder of their lives,” Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Los Angeles federation, said in a statement.
Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law, Marei von Saher, first sued the Norton Simon Museum in 2007, claiming the paintings belonged to her family. A 2018 ruling determined on procedural grounds that they belong to the museum.
In addition to the 2024 California law, Congress passed a law earlier this year that eliminated “state doctrine,” the principle that acts committed by foreign countries within their territory are immune from lawsuits, strengthening the cases for the heirs of Goudstikker and Babbitt.
Dina Babbitt in 2006, at work on a recreation of the “Snow White” mural that she painted in the children’s barracks at Auschwitz. Her family is seeking the recovery of the portraits she drew of Roma inmates at the concentration camp. (Lawrence Stern for The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies)
Also in 2024, 21 countries agreed to updated guidelines for restituting Nazi-looted art, which specifies that works sold to the Nazis under duress are also considered looted or stolen property.
“I am grateful to the Jewish Federation Los Angeles and its Chairman Daniel Gryczman for taking up this cause and pursuing the recovery of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder,” von Saher said in a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “This effort represents a meaningful step toward justice for Holocaust survivors and victims of Nazi era atrocities.”
Jewish federations rarely file lawsuits as the plaintiffs in a Nazi-looted art restitution case. The San Diego Jewish Federation was a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit in 2015.
JTA has reached out to the attorneys for the Jewish federation for comment.
The Pasadena museum held onto the Cranachs even as other works that had been looted from Goudstikker’s collection were restituted by the Dutch government in the decades since their seizure.
“After decades of litigation, court after court including the United States Supreme Court ha confirmed that the Norton Simon Art Foundation has proper title to Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder,” a spokesperson for the Norton Simon Museum told JTA in a statement. “We will continue to make these important artworks accessible to the public, as we have since 1971.”
The spokesperson said the museum is reviewing the complaint, and referred to a 2016 court decision that placed the artworks in their possession.
Goudstikker first acquired the paintings at a 1931 Berlin auction hosted by the Soviet authorities, which also included many works previously owned by the Russian Stroganoff family. In 1940, after Jacques Goudstikker’s death, his collection was sold to the Nazis under duress — but no cash ever came to his family.
In the Norton Simon Museum’s online catalogue, provenance cards for the works say they were “[s]aid to have been in the Stroganoff Collection” and describe the transfer from Goudstikker to Göring as “appropriated 1940.”
The quest to restitute Goudstikker’s artwork began in 1946, when his wife Désiree, an opera singer, filed a claim in the Netherlands that was initially rebuffed. Though she was able to retrieve one painting just a few years later, all of the pieces that had been seized by Göring were kept in the Dutch national collections. In later years, more than 200 artworks were returned to von Saher’s possession.
But in 1961, George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, a descendant of the aristocratic family whose works were sold en masse along with the Cranachs, claimed the diptych from the Dutch government. He later sold the works to the Norton Simon Museum for $800,000.
In the case of the Gottliebova drawings, a spokesperson from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum told JTA that the memorial was their appropriate home. “The drawings of Roma victims made in the camp must remain in the Memorial as part of the documentation of the crimes of Mengele,” the spokesperson for the state-run museum said.
“We fully understand the emotional approach of Dina Gottliebova’s family,” said the spokesperson, but “we express the deep conviction that the watercolors should remain at the Memorial.”
“The portraits of Roma victims are the few remaining fragments of the documentation made by Mengele as part of his criminal experiments,” the spokesperson continued. “Therefore, they should be treated as unique documents related to the history of Auschwitz.”
Earlier this month, an Argentine court ordered the restitution to van Saher of a looted painting, after the painting was spotted on a real estate website advertising the sale of a home of the daughter of a former Nazi official. The painting came from Goudstikker’s collection.
Earlier this year, a judge ruled that a painting by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, once valued at more than $25 million, must be returned to the descendants of its original owner, who was forced to sell the painting to the Nazis under duress.
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