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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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NYC Officials Sue Mamdani Over Failure to Disclose Docs on Decision to Scrap IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
A group of Queens elected officials and civic leaders has filed suit against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, accusing his administration of stonewalling a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request related to his decision to revoke an executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
The lawsuit centers on Mamdani’s move on his first day in office in January to rescind a series of executive orders issued by his predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, to combat antisemitism. Among the orders revoked was one formally adopting the IHRA definition, which has been widely embraced by governments and institutions across the democratic world.
Plaintiffs include Queens Councilmembers Joann Ariola and Vickie Paladino, along with Queens Civic Congress President Warren Schreiber, the Queens Daily Eagle reported last week.
They argue that the mayor’s office has failed to provide adequate transparency regarding the rationale behind rescinding the IHRA order, a move critics say weakened the city’s formal commitment to combating antisemitism at a time of rising anti-Jewish incidents both locally and nationally.
“The purpose of the FOIL applications at issue in this proceeding is to decipher and obtain the documentary trail of information illuminating Mayor Mamdani’s motives, policies, programs, legislative initiatives, and budgetary priorities implicated within the EO [executive order],” the lawsuit reads.
In their filing, the plaintiffs accuse the administration of having “stonewalled, deflected, delayed, and denied” their FOIL request, calling the response timeline “arbitrary and capricious.” Although the city’s Law Department acknowledged receipt of the request and projected a response date in April, the plaintiffs contend that such delays are unacceptable given the gravity of the issue. The lawsuit characterizes Mamdani’s actions as “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations. Law enforcement also uses it as a tool for matters such as hate-crime investigations and sentencing.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
Jewish community advocates have expressed alarm that rescinding the executive order could signal a retreat from clear standards at a moment when antisemitic incidents have surged in the two years following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The Israeli government and leading US Jewish groups sharply criticized Mamdani’s decision.
Mamdani’s supporters say the move was part of a broader action by Mamdani to revoke all executive orders issued by Adams since Sept. 26, 2024, when the ex-mayor was indicted for corruption, charges of which have since been dismissed. Mamdani’s office has framed the move as an administrative reset rather than a targeted policy shift, saying the new mayor sought to begin his term with a clean slate.
However, critics argue that lumping the IHRA adoption together with other rescinded orders was, at best, careless and, at worst, reflective of an ideological discomfort with pro-Israel policy frameworks.
The New York Times reported last month that Mamdani “knew from the moment he won the election” in November that he would revoke the executive orders related to Israel and antisemitism but believed rescinding them would upset Jewish groups whose concerns he spent months trying to allay. Therefore, the report continued, Mamdani’s team laid out a few options, and he chose to rescind every order that Adams issued after his indictment, “allowing him to frame the choice as a matter of good governance.”
The lawsuit now seeks a court order compelling the mayor’s office to produce internal communications and documentation explaining the decision-making process behind the revocation.
The IHRA definition could have been problematic for Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. A supporter of boycotting all entities tied to Israel, he has repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; routinely accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; and refused to clearly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used to call for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have expressed alarm about Mamdani’s electoral victory, fearing what may come in a city already experiencing a surge in antisemitic hate crimes.
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China Unleashes ‘Antisemitic Wave’ Amid Gaza Conflict, New Report Shows
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands as they meet, in Beijing, China, Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
The Chinese Communist Party has embraced overt antisemitic messaging in its domestic propaganda in recent years, according to a new report which ties the move to both geopolitical rivalry with the United States and efforts to curry favor with Arab and Muslim countries hostile to Israel.
The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), a prominent think tank based in Israel, documents in the report how China’s authoritarian government has deliberately cultivated antisemitism among the population and internationally as a strategy.
One key trend detailed by the study’s author, JPPI senior fellow Shalom Salomon Wald, is the way in Chinese media that Israel, Jews, and Judaism have grown conflated.
“In popular discourse, Israel and Jews are more or less synonymous. This is not much different from the West, where the anti-Israeli presentation of the Gaza war by official and social media is regularly causing verbal and physical violence against local Jews,” Wald writes. “Chinese officials, intellectuals, and news providers are generally aware of the difference between Israel and world Jewry. Officials acknowledge the distinction when it suits them, for example, when they insist that their criticism of Israel has no antisemitic connotation. They often fail to draw the distinction when it does not suit them.”
The report identifies 2021 as when “the Chinese government chose to harden its attitude toward Israel and its Jewish supporters. Chinese contacts informed some Israeli experts of this policy change. Whether [Chinese President] Xi Jinping himself made the relevant decisions is not known. No single reason, but a convergence of events caused this change.”
Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Wald identifies at least three factors driving China’s shift toward anti-Zionism.
The first is economic, with Israel walking back its relationship with China under US pressure.
“Israel, admonished by the United States, made Chinese investments, particularly in hi-tech and infrastructure projects, more difficult,” he writes. “The Chinese expressed their resentment quite openly.”
The second is geopolitical. “China was in the midst of expanding its presence in the Arab Middle East, offering major economic cooperation and long-lasting political ties,” Wald explains. “A harder attitude against Israel was a cheap sweetener for such offers.”
The third is the perception that, due to internal issues, Israel has grown weaker: “Israel’s domestic crisis eroded its ‘strongman’ image in Chinese eyes. A country wracked by mass demonstrations and numerous ineffective elections could no longer be taken as seriously as it had been.”
However, recent Israel-Hamas conflicts in Gaza were also key catalysts for upticks in antisemitism.
“Antisemitic waves washed over China’s social and official media following the Gaza conflicts of 2021 and 2023-25. They were authorized, if not initiated, by the Chinese government in pursuit of China’s political goals and based on anti-Jewish tropes,” states the report, which notes the hostility especially surged following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
“Chinese media began spreading antisemitic tropes under the cover of criticism of Israel’s military actions,” it continues. “While similar denunciations conflating Israel, Zionists, and Jews occurred in other countries too, in China all political speech is tightly monitored and censored if it is not in line with official positions. If antisemitism was spreading on China’s media, it meant that it was officially sanctioned. It appeared in government sources and public media, in social media, and in universities.”
Wald notes in the JPPI report that Beijing’s turn toward antisemitism will have a long-term impact on education.
“Universities are among the most influential promoters of Chinese antisemitism,” he states. “As they train China’s next generation, they risk transmitting current prejudices to some of China’s future leaders. Today, almost all Chinese government leaders and most Communist Party high officials are university graduates.”
The report describes how the rise in academic antisemitism in China has destroyed years of positive scholarship, quoting Prof. Ping Zhang of Tel Aviv University who said that “the foundation of the good relationship built between the two sides over the past three decades has been shattered.”
JPPI’s research notes that during the 20th century, China’s leaders originally supported Zionism. Sun Yat-sen, the first provisional president of the Republic of China and known today as the “father of modern China,” wrote in 1920 to the head of the Shanghai Zionist Association that he favored the “movement to restore your wonderful and historic nation which has contributed so much to the civilization of the world.” Similarly, in 1948 the Communist Party’s People’s Daily praised the founding of Israel.
Since then, however, China’s sympathies have shifted dramatically, recognizing a Palestinian state in 1988 and, more recently, moving closer to Hamas and Iran, whose leaders openly promote antisemitism and seek Israel’s destruction.
This month, for example, a Chinese military attaché in Tehran presented Brigadier General Bahman Behmard, commander of the Iranian Air Force, with a scale model of China’s J-20 fifth-generation stealth fighter. Even though no official contract was announced, experts interpreted the Chinese gesture as a sharp warning to the US and its ally Israel amid mounting fears of renewed conflict in the Middle East.
Days earlier, a new study revealed the extent to which the Iranian regime used Chinese technology to silence dissent during recent nationwide anti-government protests, imposing near-total internet shutdowns and disrupting satellite communications while carrying out a brutal crackdown. According to the international human rights organization Article 19, China has provided material and technical support to Iran since at least 2010, bolstering its surveillance and censorship capabilities as Chinese firms continue operating in the country despite international sanctions.
China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Tehran, has moved to deepen ties with the regime in recent years, signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.
China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, with nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports going to Beijing.
According to some media reports, China may be even helping Iran rebuild its decimated air defenses and ballistic missile program following the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Closer to home, Beijing has also lambasted the Jewish state for its increasingly close ties with Taiwan. China considers Taiwan, a nearby island run by a democratic government, as a renegade Chinese province that must be reunited with the mainland — by force, if necessary.
In September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a delegation of 250 US state legislators at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, warning of China’s role in demonizing Israel.
There is “an effort to besiege — not isolate as much as besiege Israel — that is orchestrated by the same forces that supported Iran,” Netanyahu said. One is China. And the other is Qatar. They are organizing an attack on Israel … [through] the social media of the Western world and the United States.”
That same month, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think tank, released a report examining how China has increasingly used state media and covert campaigns to spread anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives in the US. The effort includes the promotion of conspiracy theories about “Jewish control” of politics, the economy, and the media.
While China’s primary aim is to target and undermine the United States, according to the study, Israel ends up suffering “collateral damage” as a result.
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The real Holocaust history behind ‘Papillon,’ the Oscar-nominated short about a star Jewish swimmer
(JTA) — At first glance, “Papillon” (Butterfly), the 15-minute Oscar-nominated animated short by veteran French filmmaker Florence Miailhe, may appear like a meditative journey through water and memory. An elderly man swims in a hand-painted sea, flashing back to childhood memories of being bullied and a loving mother who makes it all right.
As he cuts through the water and moves through time, the fuller context emerges: The sun-soaked beaches appear to be North Africa, the boy becomes a champion swimmer, a swastika tells you that he is competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the soundtrack echoes with taunts of “Jew” and “kike.”
The film is based on the extraordinary real life of Alfred Nakache, a Jewish athlete whose story of resilience under Nazi persecution has previously been told in two French documentaries but is seldom remembered today.
Born in 1915 in French Algiers (his family immigrated from Iraq), Artem “Alfred” Nakache became one of France’s most celebrated swimmers in the 1930s, specializing in the butterfly stroke — a full-bodied lunge that looks like a bird, or butterfly, in flight. His success brought him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he competed under the shadow of rising antisemitism in Nazi Germany (and was part of a freestyle relay team that didn’t medal, but finished ahead of the Germans).
Under Vichy, the Nazi puppet regime, Nakache was stripped of his French nationality and forced out of Paris. He joined the resistance underground while still competing for Vichy. On Nov. 20, 1943, Nakache and his wife and daughter were arrested by the Gestapo, and the family was separated at Auschwitz. Only Alfred survived. He later endured the death march to Buchenwald before liberation.
Despite these unimaginable losses, Nakache returned to swimming after the war, competing at the 1948 London Olympics. (He, gymnast Agnes Keleti and weightlifter Ben Helfgott are the only known Jewish survivors to have competed in the Olympics after the war.)
Nakache remained a swimmer the rest of his life, and died of a heart attack after a swim in the sea near the Spanish-French border in 1983.
Miailhe, a 70-year-old animator known for her labor-intensive oil and pastel on glass technique, has a personal connection to Nakache’s legacy. As a child, she took swim lessons with his younger brother Bernard and heard stories of his triumphs long before she understood their full historical weight. The end credits explain that her father also knew Alfred, whom he met in the resistance during the war.
“I hope people will be moved by Alfred Nakache’s story and rediscover it, because it’s not well-known in France,” Miailhe said in an interview with Deadline. “Also, we are living in some very troubled times in a world where racism and antisemitism are back.”
Produced by Oscar-winning animator Ron Dyens alongside Luc Camilli for Sacrebleu Productions and XBO Films, Papillon took roughly 100 days to animate — a testament to the craftsmanship that makes every frame an essay on the various qualities of water. The film has earned a César nomination (the French Academy Award) and a nomination at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and won the International Competition for best animated film at the Grand Prix at Stuttgart.
Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, the animated short also depicts the camaraderie among the athletes who swam — and stood — by Nakache’s side before and after the war.
“Some people denounced the Nakache family [to the Gestapo], but others saved Alfred when he returned from the camps,” Dyen told Deadline. “The whole tragedy of human duality is ultimately reflected in Nakache’s story.”
The post The real Holocaust history behind ‘Papillon,’ the Oscar-nominated short about a star Jewish swimmer appeared first on The Forward.