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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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Yad Vashem says it has identified 5 million Holocaust victims with help of AI
(JTA) — Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, says it has reached a major milestone in its efforts to uncover the identities of all of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, crossing the 5-million name threshold with the help of AI.
That leaves 1 million names still unknown from the tally of 6 million murdered Jews that is synonymous with the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II.
Two years ago, Yad Vashem inaugurated a 26.5 foot-long “Book of Names,” which included the names of 4,800,000 victims of the Shoah, at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Since then, researchers deployed AI technology and machine learning to analyze hundreds of millions of archival documents that were previously too extensive to research manually, according to Yad Vashem. In addition to covering large amounts of material quickly, the algorithms were taught to look out for variations of victims’ names, leading to the new identification of hundreds of thousands of victims.
Yad Vashem estimates an additional 250,000 names could still be recovered using the technology.
“Reaching 5 million names is both a milestone and a reminder of our unfinished obligation,” said Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, in a statement. “Behind each name is a life that mattered — a child who never grew up, a parent who never came home, a voice that was silenced forever. It is our moral duty to ensure that every victim is remembered so that no one will be left behind in the darkness of anonymity.”
The post Yad Vashem says it has identified 5 million Holocaust victims with help of AI appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish exodus underway from Heritage Foundation’s antisemitism initiative over Tucker Carlson
The Heritage Foundation’s marquee effort to combat antisemitism, a coalition known as Project Esther, is rapidly losing members following the conservative think tank’s public defense of Tucker Carlson after he gave a friendly interview to the white nationalist and antisemitic provocateur Nick Fuentes.
At least seven individuals and organizations affiliated with Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, launched last year under the Project Esther banner, have resigned or threatened to do so, citing Heritage president Kevin Roberts’s decision to stand by Carlson and his description of the television personality’s critics as a “venomous coalition.”
The defections suggest that Project Esther — unveiled on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack as a conservative “national strategy to counter antisemitism”— could be imploding.
Neither the co-chairs of the initiative nor the Heritage Foundation immediately responded to a request for comment about the resignations.
Conceived as a counterweight to the Biden administration’s 2023 antisemitism strategy, Heritage’s plan focused almost entirely on left-wing and pro-Palestinian activism, portraying what it called a “Hamas Support Network” as the chief driver of antisemitism in America.
From the outset, the project drew skepticism for not including most mainstream Jewish organizations and for downplaying antisemitism on the political right. That tension has now widened into a rupture.
The first public resignation from the task force came Sunday with an announcement from Mark Goldfeder, an Orthodox rabbi and the CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, that he was quitting in protest of Roberts’ defense of Carlson.
“Elevating him and then attacking those who object as somehow un-American or disloyal in a video replete with antisemitic tropes and dog whistles, no less, is not the protection of free speech. It is a moral collapse disguised as courage,” Goldfeder wrote in a letter posted to X.
On Monday, the New York Post reported on the resignation of David Bernstein, author of “Woke Antisemitism” and founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, who had served on the Heritage task force. Bernstein said Roberts’ language felt like “a real attack against Jewish political agency on the American scene.”
“The phrase ‘venomous coalition aligned against him [Carlson]’—that’s me and any Jewish person who cares about condemning antisemitism,” Bernstein said. “It allows you to justify almost anything said in the name of political conservatism, and that empties it of all meaning.”
There’s no public list of all Project Esther members, but several groups that are named on the initiative’s website told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they had disaffiliated or were prepared to do so.
Lori Lowenthal Marcus, a lawyer with the Deborah Project, a legal group that fights antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, said she had resigned from all Heritage affiliations.
“The Heritage folks I’ve encountered on the Task Force have been uniformly terrific and sincere about fighting antisemitism,” she wrote. “But the edifice of Heritage is no longer one which I can trust. … I cannot be questioning the commitment of those who claim to be at my side.”
The Jewish Leadership Project, a conservative network co-founded by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser, said it is “evaluating our involvement” and will withdraw absent “a vigorous explanation that Judaism and Jews are inherently allies of Christians” and “a disconnect from Carlson immediately.”
The Coalition for Jewish Values, led by Rabbi Yaakov Menken, said it has already communicated its intent to resign if Roberts does not retract his remarks and sever ties with Carlson. “Today Heritage has chosen to vocally stand with an antisemite, call his Jewish critics a ‘venomous coalition,’ and slander organizations like CJV,” the group said. “Whether we continue is a ball that is at present in their court.”
Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, echoed that warning: “If [Roberts] doesn’t retract, apologize, and condemn Tucker Carlson… we at the ZOA will no longer be part of the Esther Project.”
And in a statement, Young Jewish Conservatives, another member group, said it was withdrawing its membership entirely. The group accused Carlson of “spewing antisemitism,” ridiculing Christian Zionists, and spreading propaganda for “enemies of the United States.” Roberts’s defense of him, YJC said, was “100% inconsistent with conservative values. … Anyone who aligns with Adolf Hitler must be unequivocally disavowed.”
The World Jewish Congress, an international federation representing Jewish communities and organizations in over 100 countries, remains listed as a participating organization on Project Esther’s website, despite its assertion that it has never been involved.
“WJC was not involved in the creation and is not involved in the implementation of Project Esther,” a spokesperson said.
Asked to respond, a Heritage spokesperson said in a statement, “The WJC was among those present at the launch stage of the task force, which informed the initial list of participants and is reflected on our website. We appreciate the engagement of those who contributed at all stages of this critical mission.”
When Project Esther debuted in 2024, Heritage hailed it as proof that the conservative movement takes antisemitism seriously. The 33-page blueprint called for purging “Hamas propaganda” from school curricula, firing “Hamas-aligned faculty” from U.S. universities, and pressuring social-media platforms to restrict antisemitic content. The goal, it said, was to make “Hamas Supporters” as socially toxic as the Ku Klux Klan or al-Qaida.
Yet the rollout was chaotic. Multiple groups Heritage named as participants — among them Christians United for Israel, the Hudson Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the Republican Jewish Coalition — denied any involvement.
Heritage officials responded by saying they had “invited” numerous Jewish organizations but purposely limited their inclusion. “More of my concern was really with the non-Jewish groups,” James Carafano, Heritage’s senior counselor and a leader of the antisemitism task force, told Jewish Insider. “Quite honestly, if [Jewish groups] were being effective, we wouldn’t have the problem that we have.”
Carafano told Jewish Insider he did not believe antisemitism was a problem on the American right. “White supremacists are not my problem,” he said. “They are not part of being conservative.”
Carafano declined to comment for this story.
Those comments, along with remarks from Luke Moon, executive director of the Christian-Zionist Philos Project, reveal how Heritage’s internal debates foreshadowed today’s crisis. Moon last year disclosed that task force members had discussed whether to call out Carlson and conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has also trafficked in antisemitic tropes, but decided against it.
“We had a long conversation several times about whether or not to, or how much energy do we spend going after, like, Tucker and Candace Owens, or do we really focus on where the majority are right now, at least, which is these folks on campus, [Students for Justice in Palestine] and stuff,” Moon told Jewish Insider last year.
He did not respond to a request for comment about recent events.
That decision now looms large as critics accuse Heritage of adopting a “no enemies to the right” ethos.
Robert’s statement drew swift rebukes from Republican senators Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell, as well as from Ben Shapiro, Mike Huckabee, and others who denounced Carlson’s platforming of Fuentes.
“I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer, either,” Roberts said.
Roberts later issued a follow-up post condemning Fuentes’s antisemitism but stopped short of retracting his praise for Carlson.
Shapiro pushed back on Roberts’ characterization. “It is not cancellation to draw moral lines between viewpoints,” Shapiro said in an episode of his podcast Monday. “In fact, we used to call that one of the key aspects of conservatism.”
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Mamdani Remains Favorite on Eve of New York City Mayoral Election Despite Struggling With Jewish Voters
Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, delivers remarks while campaigning at the Hanson Place Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, US, Nov. 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ryan Murphy
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani remains the favorite heading into Election Day on Tuesday, polling indicates, despite the Democratic nominee facing huge vulnerabilities among Jewish voters amid concerns over antisemitism and far-left policies outside the mainstream.
Most polling over the past month of the race has shown Mamdani ahead of his chief rival — former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary earlier this year — by 10 to 18 percentage points, with Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa trailing in third place. One outlier was an Emerson College poll released last week showing Mamdani in the lead by 25 points.
However, a new bombshell survey from AtlasIntel published on Monday showed Cuomo within striking distance, trailing Mamdani by just five points, 44 percent to 39 percent. The survey — which came a day after the same polling outfit had Cuomo trailing Mamdani by six points, indicating an upward trend for the former governor — also found that Cuomo would beat Mamdani 50 percent to 44 percent in a hypothetical two-way race.
Mamdani is currently struggling to win over Jewish New Yorkers, according to several polls, including one from Quinnipiac last week showing only 16 percent of the Jewish vote going to the Democratic nominee compared to 60 percent for Cuomo. A striking 75 percent of Jewish voters said they hold an “unfavorable” opinion of Mamdani, echoing similar findings from other surveys in recent months, such as a Sienna College poll from August.
New York City has the highest Jewish population of any area outside of Israel, giving the Jewish vote in the largest US city significant weight. The lack of support for Mamdani is especially telling given the Jewish community’s typical overwhelming support for Democrats in New York.
Despite his apparent failure to galvanize the Jewish vote ahead of the election, Mamdani has signaled that he will fight on behalf of the city’s Jews if elected mayor.
In a new Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview, Mamdani struck a conciliatory tone, acknowledging Jewish concerns about his candidacy. “I don’t begrudge folks who are skeptical of me,” he said. “I hope to prove that I am someone to build a relationship with, not one to fear.”
The statement marked a notable shift in tone for the outspoken progressive, who has faced criticism for past comments describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and for his refusal to affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist aligned with the left flank of the party, has long been an anti-Israel activist who has supported boycott campaigns targeting Israeli-linked institutions and frequently joined rallies condemning Israeli military actions targeting Hamas terrorists in Gaza. While he insists that his positions are aimed at achieving what he calls “equal rights” in Israel, many Jewish groups have accused Mamdani of engaging in antisemitic tropes.
Mamdani sparked outrage over the summer after he repeatedly refused to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” a phrase widely interpreted as a call to harm Jews and Israelis worldwide.
“I fear living in a city, and a nation, where anti-Zionist rhetoric is normalized and contagious,” Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, a prominent Jewish voice at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, said during Shabbat services on Friday night. “Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has contributed to a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism.”
She cited Mamdani’s reluctance to label Hamas, which calls for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel, a terrorist group and his 2023 remark, which surfaced this past week, erroneously saying the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had learned aggressive policing tactics from the Israeli military.
“We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” Mamdani said.
A CNN analysis of his electoral strategy noted that Mamdani’s relationship with Jewish voters “remains fraught.” Polling data suggests that while he performs reasonably well among younger progressive Jews, support among Orthodox and traditional Jewish blocs, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens, remains minimal.
Jewish voters will likely only harden their opposition amid reports that Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the UK Labour Party who has long been accused of antisemitism, was working the phones on Sunday for Mamdani at a Democratic Socialists of America fundraiser.
Cuomo quickly seized on the development, accusing Mamdani of promoting extremism into New York’s politics.
“Having Jeremy Corbyn — someone whose party was found to have committed unlawful acts of discrimination against Jewish people under his leadership – phone-banking for @ZohranKMamdani says everything you need to know,” Cuomo posted on social media. “NY doesn’t need politics of moral compromise. We need leadership that rejects antisemitism, extremism, and division in every form and in every corner.”
Mamdani, for his part, has repeatedly tried to reassure voters that he would advocate for Jewish New Yorkers, reiterating that “antisemitism has no place in this city” and vowing to expand funding for the protection of houses of worship if elected. Yet, for many Jewish voters, his reassurances have not been enough.