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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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The post How Judy Blume’s ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ broke taboos around interfaith marriage appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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What the private equity takeover means for the bagel industry
The bagel’s stock is, apparently, rising — literally.
Private equity investors have decided, apparently en masse, that bagels are the new frontier for expansion.
A fund called Stripe invested $8 million into PopUp Bagels shortly after the trendy bagel shop, which hawks “rip and dip” bagels, first opened in 2023. A year later, they added $24 million to their contribution and became the majority owner. Now, PopUp Bagels boasts 30 locations.
Invus, an asset management fund, is now the majority owner of Call Your Mother, which began in D.C. but has expanded to 15 locations across the D.C. metro area and, for some reason, Denver. And Manhattan Funds, a large private equity firm, has a specific Bagel Equity Fund devoted to taking over bagelries. The industry is, they write on their site, “under-optimized at the national level.”
Even H&H Bagels, the iconic New York City institution — famed for its cameos in shows like Seinfeld and Sex in the City — has gotten shoveled onto private equity’s giant bagel baking tray. Though Wall Street investor Jay Rushin bought the brand over a decade ago, H&H, too, is beginning its boom era, opening dozens franchises outside of the city.
It’s time, these investment firms all contend, to scale bagels. But can the art of the perfect New York bagel be scaled?
Making the New York bagel in bulk is famously hard. The rings are finicky to roll out, they require boiling, and — perhaps most importantly — the long mythos to the New York bagel has at its core the premise that New York bagels cannot be made without New York water.
Many connoisseurs believe there is an alchemical process to the sought-after chew and crust only achievable with the particular water flowing in the city’s pipes, cascading down from the Catskill reservoirs almost unadulterated. Food science has somewhat debunked that concept, but the legend remains so strong that H&H is promising to par-boil its bagels in NYC water before shipping them to its new franchise locations to be finished in the oven. Even if it’s only marketing, that marketing is powerful.
This is far from the first time that companies have attempted to scale the bagel. In fact, it has worked, in a way: “bagels” can be found, at mass scale, in every major grocery store in the country, offered in plastic sleeves of a half-dozen.
The problem is that those bagels are gross. They’re made by machine, and steamed instead of boiled, which gives a glossy surface, yes, but none of the chew of a true boiled crust. The grocery store bagels are convenient and shelf-stable, sure, but they’re the Wonder Bread of the form: mushy and milquetoast. They have none of the hallmarks of a true bagel.
It’s possible that the private equity masterminds have landed on a secret to scaling the bagel without eventually reducing it to a wan grocery store offering. The results of the Wall Street takeover of the form are still emerging, and the business model could be dependent — at least at first — on devising the perfect product, and not just a passable one.
It just seems unlikely. The investment firms are built around, well, investors, not consumers. Their goal is producing equity and capital for their investors, not making the perfect bagel.
The term “enshittification,” coined by writer Cory Doctorow, has been around for a few years. It describes exactly what it sounds like — the phenomenon of everything growing, uh, worse. Specifically, it describes the way that large companies, often funded by venture capital and private investors, make their products worse over time in the process of wringing money out of the business to serve their CEOs and investors.
Doctorow, in his book on the subject, Enshittification, focuses largely on tech platforms as he examines the term. There’s Amazon: Long gone are the days of a well-priced product you could find more easily online than in a store. Now, search results are polluted by whatever someone has paid to boost to the top of the page, and it’s not even that cheap anymore. Or Twitter, which once bought by Elon Musk, fired its content moderation team to cut costs and turned its user verification, which was once limited to public figures, into a pay-to-play feature. As a result, the platform may have more income streams, but any regular user can attest that their feed is now full of neo-Nazis who shelled out for an algorithmic boost.
But it’s not just platforms — culture and aesthetics are targets for cash extraction now, too, with bad results. Netflix now churns out a constant stream of shows that are, instead of cultural touchstones, basically interchangeable, a far cry from their acclaimed early efforts like Orange is the New Black. Clothing brands like Reformation and even high-end designers like Escala, once symbols of luxury, taste and quality, are turning to lower quality materials and production in an attempt to churn out more designs, faster, and make more money. I’m trying to buy a couch right now, and have found through my research that age-old companies once lauded for their design and durability have been bought by private equity and changed their frames from hardwoods to particle board. (That information took a lot of research because you know what else has fallen prey to enshittification? Review sites.)
That means, regardless of whether these bought-out businesses have suffered yet, bagels are likely to fare poorly in the private equity boom eventually because of the need to extract increasing amounts of cash out of the project; the product itself is ultimately secondary. The Bagel Equity Fund is running trials on steaming their bagels instead of boiling them in its projected 400 shops it runs, the exact strategy that led to the mushy grocery store bagel. And a Washington Post review for the hyped new H&H location in D.C. was brutal, calling the bagels “generally unappealing” and “flavorless.”
But the bagel itself is only part of the mystique of the food. Which brings me to the more spiritual offerings of a good bagel: an ephemeral cultural cachet. That may be at even greater risk.
Having a favorite bagel shop or loudly defending your bagel order as the only possible correct way to eat a bagel — untoasted, scallion schmear, with capers, red onion and lox, and anything else is heresy, thank you for asking — makes you a real New Yorker. Or, if you don’t live in New York, it’s the mark of a devout cultural (and maybe religious) Jew.
Other, earlier attempts to innovate on the theme, and make it trendier and more lucrative, were all one-and-done fads that eventually crashed and burned, becoming a kind of scarlet letter of cringe. (Remember the vanilla-flavored rainbow bagels that were all over social media in the 2010s? They came with funfetti cream cheese. Disgusting, and also deeply uncool.)
Bagel shops are not just places that produce chewy bread with a hole in the center. They have a cultural value. Each is often unique, with its own set of delightful quirks — the place selling Lactaid loosies behind the counter, the brusque man who nevertheless remembers your order. They’re a symbol of uniqueness and authenticity — which, of course, is definitionally impossible to buy. The more constructed something is, the less authentic.
Yet that’s really what the private equity investors are trying to monetize: the idea of a bagel. If it didn’t have that symbolic power, it wouldn’t be a particularly interesting business, given how difficult the baking is to scale well.
The Bagel Equity Fund describes its target market as “fragmented, inconsistent, and devoid of a dominant brand.” But isn’t that the charm of your local bagel place? Not to those investors, which promise to rebrand every store they take over as “Go Bagels,” likely alienating the exact “strong customer bases and community presence” at the stores they aim to acquire.
Bagels have long been a metonym both for New York and for Jewishness. See: the phrase “pizza bagel,” describing people of mixed Italian and Jewish heritage. Good bagels inspire poetic food reviews — and literal poetry — but also lengthy cultural takes. There are dissertations on its history — and I don’t mean that as a kind of humorous exaggeration, I mean actual papers filed to receive a doctorate.
They were also core to unionization of American workers. The Beigel Bakers Local, which conducted its meetings in Yiddish, led strikes over pay and conditions, and standardized the bagel’s form into the icon we all know. That union was so powerful that its members put the city, during strikes, into what is memorialized as a “bagel famine” — a near-emergency for the city’s devoted consumers. The bagel and its attendant culture is a product of the blood, sweat and tears of New York City’s Jewish workers.
The union was ultimately undone by the mechanized mass production of grocery store bagels — an inferior product, yes, but one accessible at a mass scale, exactly what private equity is attempting to reproduce. The fact that a paltry imitation of a bagel still had enough financial power to destroy a once-powerful union is also worrying. People in cities other than New York — cities, that is to say, with a poor selection of bagels — will probably eat the sub-par private equity bagels, because there’s no other option, a key element of enshittification, as Doctorow observes.
But once the big conglomerates have the power, will they be so strong that the bagels they produce take over even on the bagel’s home turf? Will they exterminate the original New York bagel, and with it, its cultural history?
I don’t want to overstate the symbolic power of private equity buying the bagel brand. But at a time when antisemitism is rising, and Jews are increasingly being accused of, once again, greed, malicious control and undue influence, it certainly can’t help. If the bagel represents Jews, and the bagel has sold out, well, that’s a bad look.
But the real deal can still shine through the enshittification haze. “I just stayed in Brooklyn for the first time and felt so alive surrounded by all those bagel shops!” wrote one user on Reddit. They were there to complain — about Denver’s newest private equity bagel. Clearly, the New York bagel’s brand remains strong, even to outsiders.
The post What the private equity takeover means for the bagel industry appeared first on The Forward.
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Suspicious Explosive Package Targeting Jewish Leader Heightens Antisemitism Fears in Argentina
People hold up pictures of the victims of the AMIA Jewish center bombing during a ceremony to mark the 22nd anniversary of the 1994 attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2016. Photo: REUTERS/Enrique Marcarian
Argentina’s authorities are investigating yet another suspected antisemitic incident after a suspicious package addressed to a local branch president of the country’s main Jewish umbrella organization was intercepted, further heightening alarms among community leaders amid a recent surge in attacks.
On Wednesday, the Pilares del Rosario medical center received a package containing explosive material addressed to Gabriel Dobkin, who serves as both the institution’s director and president of the local branch of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA) in Rosario, a major city in the central-eastern Santa Fe province.
According to local media, clinic staff received a package containing a pack of Philip Morris cigarettes wrapped in transparent tape, which the facility’s manager said felt unusually heavy and immediately aroused suspicion.
Because the package had arrived unrequested via a delivery service, the clinic’s manager quickly raised concerns and called in the police explosives unit.
Police bomb squad dogs later detected explosive material inside the cigarette pack. According to the ongoing investigation, the package also contained a strange substance, though authorities have not yet released further details.
After digging a pit in the facility’s backyard, police experts carried out a controlled detonation of the material.
Even though the package did not include an automatic triggering mechanism, it reportedly contained a number of coins intended to serve as shrapnel in the event of an explosion.
Local law enforcement is treating the incident as a targeted antisemitic attack, describing it as either an attempted act of violence or, at the very least, an act of intimidation.
As the investigation continues, detectives are still analyzing the substance found inside the package but have not yet determined its composition or origin. Surveillance footage from the area is being reviewed, and staff from the clinic are also expected to be interviewed.
DAIA Rosario strongly condemned the attack, describing it as a troubling escalation of threats against Jewish institutions, reflecting a wider atmosphere of hostility toward the community.
“This is an expression of hatred that not only targets the Jewish community, but also undermines the fundamental values of coexistence, respect, and democracy. Such acts must be condemned unequivocally and confronted with resolve. Simply denouncing them is not enough — decisive action is essential,” the organization said in a statement.
“Impunity cannot be an option. Every act of antisemitism that goes unpunished sends a message of tolerance toward hatred,” it continued. “Every firm response from the state is a clear signal that society will not back down. To prevent these acts from recurring, determination, action, and justice are essential.”
This latest incident comes amid heightened security concerns within Argentina’s Jewish community after unknown individuals threw a homemade firebomb at the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Community Center in La Plata, a city in southeastern Buenos Aires Province, last Sunday.
The Buenos Aires Security Ministry and Police Counterterrorism Division have opened an investigation into the incident, examining possible links to another attack last week that appears to share a similar modus operandi.
The Israelite Literary Center and Max Nordau Library in La Plata were also targeted last Thursday when unidentified individuals threw a homemade Molotov-type device at the building’s entrance.
Although the device failed to ignite, it shattered the building’s windows and caused some material damage. Fortunately, no fires broke out and no injuries were reported.
In response to these latest attacks, Jewish institutions across the country have strengthened preventive protocols and reinforced internal security and surveillance measures.
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US, Israel Cripple Iran’s Nuclear Weaponization Work, New Report Shows
Symbolic mock-ups of Iranian missiles are displayed on a street, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 22, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
More than two months into the war, Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons has suffered a major setback as US and Israeli strikes have ravaged critical facilities, crippled essential infrastructure, and killed personnel central to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, according to a new analysis
On Friday, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, DC–based think tank, released a new assessment of the impact of Israeli and US strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, concluding that the attacks significantly damaged Tehran’s ability to advance nuclear weapons development, particularly by disrupting its weaponization activities.
A nuclear program generally begins with uranium enrichment, the process of producing material that can power civilian reactors or, at higher levels of purity, be used in a nuclear weapon. Much of Iran’s enrichment infrastructure was destroyed during last year’s 12-day war.
The second element is weaponization, which involves the design, testing, and production of the components needed to assemble a functioning nuclear device — a central focus of the more recent Israeli and US military campaign.
According to ISIS’s newly released report, at least six confirmed nuclear-related sites were destroyed so far, with three additional locations possibly connected to the program also struck, bringing the total number of targeted facilities linked to nuclear weapons development to between nine and 12.
Since the start of the war earlier this year, Israel and the United States have struck a wide range of military-industrial facilities involved in missile, drone, and conventional weapons production.
However, the report indicates that some previously undisclosed sites may also have had connections to Iran’s nuclear activities, potentially raising the true scale of the damage.
By analyzing satellite imagery, the report concludes that Iran’s ability to successfully complete a nuclear weapon has been significantly degraded, with the strikes greatly extending the timeline required to produce a bomb while sharply increasing the likelihood of technical failure.
Before the June 2025 war, intelligence assessments estimated Iran could likely produce a nuclear weapon in less than six months with a high probability of success.
Now, the regime’s chances of successfully completing the weaponization process are considered technically low even over a one- to two-year period, largely because the strikes destroyed not only facilities, but also critical equipment and personnel involved in the final stages of bomb development.
ISIS’s latest findings contradict earlier US intelligence assessments, which reportedly concluded that Iran’s nuclear timeline had not been significantly delayed, arguing that such data is inconsistent with extensive visible destruction across key nuclear sites.
The report also argues that there are no signs Iran has resumed uranium enrichment activities, as facilities repeatedly targeted by Israeli and American airstrikes remain heavily damaged with no detectable reconstruction efforts underway.
Despite extensive damage to the regime’s infrastructure, the report cautions that Iran’s nuclear threat has not been fully eliminated.
ISIS has identified tunnel complexes near Esfahan and Natanz in central Iran that were not directly targeted and are believed to contain most of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, including roughly 440 kilograms enriched to 60 percent — far above civilian requirements and much closer to weapons-grade material.