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Jonathan Safran Foer’s online flirtation with Natalie Portman inspires a new play
(New York Jewish Week) — When Jewish literary power couple Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss divorced in 2014 — amid rumors that he was in love with his longtime friend Natalie Portman — it captivated the nation.
Well, maybe not the nation, but certainly the literary and media worlds, as well as the hipster set in brownstone Brooklyn. Safran Foer and Krauss were rare literary megastars, whose “extremely loud and incredibly expensive” Park Slope brownstone was the subject of numerous articles (and a hefty dose of envy) when it hit the market for $14.5 million in 2013.
Portman, of course, was an actual megastar, and when the confessional correspondence between the celebrated actress and the “Everything Is Illuminated” writer was later published in 2016 in the New York Times, it elicited a fresh round of jealousy, speculation and eye-rolls from the masses, as well as numerous journalistic “takes” on the topic.
I was a teenager at the time, and had only a vague idea of why any of this mattered. But apparently it stayed with me for nearly a decade, because when I saw “The Wanderers,” a new Off-Broadway play running at the Roundabout Theatre Company, it didn’t take long for me to make the connection between this fictional production and the very real but mysterious drama that occurred between these famous Jewish writers.
“The Wanderers,” directed by Barry Edelstein, follows two couples in two different timelines. In the present day are Abe and Sophie, secular Jews and writers who live in Brooklyn and have been together since they were teenagers. The other storyline, set in the 1970s, centers around Esther and Schmuli, a Hasidic couple living in Satmar Williamsburg. The latter are introduced to the audience on the eve of their wedding, one of the first times they’ve ever been alone together.
Throughout the play, the couples, seemingly from different worlds, try to balance their careers, personal lives, internal desires and family obligations.
Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is a writer who boasts a Pulitzer Prize and several other literary awards. But he struggles with certain aspects of his life — his frayed relationships, mostly — and is hamstrung by an immense ego that is tempered only by a hefty dose of insecurity. As I watched the play, I began to feel like I knew the man, but I couldn’t quite place him. Was he just a stand-in for every genuinely talented, semi-pretentious, self-important male writer living in Brooklyn?
Abe eventually finds an outlet for his woes by striking up an email correspondence with fictional Hollywood actress Julia Cheever (Katie Holmes, the real Hollywood actress), whom he met when she came to a reading of one of his novels. Eventually, he declares his love for her — a pronouncement that essentially goes ignored by the actress. (In the play, Holmes sports a chic brunette bob not unlike a Jewish actress near and dear to our hearts.)
It became pretty clear who served as the inspiration for this play — and when I asked playwright Anna Ziegler about it, she said I was one of the few she had spoken with who had made the connection.
“In the summer of 2016, when I was writing, Natalie Portman and Jonathan Safran Foer were writing to each other in a correspondence they published in the New York Times,” she said. “She was promoting a new movie of hers, and I guess they had a previous relationship — that sparked the idea for one of the storylines in the play.”
What’s funny, Ziegler said, was that most audience members haven’t made the connection. “We haven’t really been talking about [Safran Foer and Portman] as one of the inspirations, and not many people have raised it,” she said. “I assumed that that resonance would be there for a certain percentage of the audience but, to be honest, I don’t think it’s there for the vast majority of people.”
At one point in the play, after learning his father died, Abe even says the line “Hineni, here I am,” to ground himself and calm his emotions. It’s a phrase in the Torah that usually translates to “I am ready,” which Abraham says to God before being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as well as a prayer of humility chanted on Rosh Hashanah. But it’s also, possibly, a nod to Safran Foer’s 2016 novel “Here I Am.”
Neither Krauss nor Safran Foer responded to requests for comment on the play. “For people in my generation and younger, the recognition might be there, but it was also so many years ago now,” said Zielger, 44. “So I guess the only people who remember it are the people on whom it made an impact.”
Which is fine — “The Wanderers” stands on its own even if you don’t know the backstory. Plus, the themes of the play stretch far beyond infidelity: It also explores loneliness, free will and inherited family trauma.
Originally, Ziegler set out to write something about arranged marriages, specifically within the Jewish community. “I had always been kind of fascinated and beguiled by the idea of arranged marriage — thinking about what it would be like spending that first night together, that notion always kind of haunted me,” she said.
“I had these two different plays [one about Portman and Safran Foer and the other about arranged marriages], and they seemed thematically related,” she added. “At some point, I concluded that they really were two strands at the same play and so I started weaving them together.”
Ziegler chose to write about the Hasidic Jewish community in particular because she was “somewhat familiar with that culture and community,” she told me.
Still, as a secular Jew, it’s a topic she approached delicately. She hired a cultural consultant and an accent coach for the actors who were both from the community. Ziegler herself, who lives in Brooklyn, spent time in Williamsburg, and read memoirs and watched documentaries.
In the play, the Hasidic wife Esther (Lucy Freyer) struggles to be seen by her community and to feel in control of her life. She doesn’t know where to turn and wonders if she’s fulfilled her potential — as a parent, wife, human and Jew. “One of the great joys of being an actor is being able to learn and dive head first into a community that you ordinarily wouldn’t get to know,” Freyer said.
As the story unfolds, it’s revealed that Esther left the community with her infant son, who grows up to be the renowned Jewish author Abe, who marries his childhood friend Sophie (Sarah Cooper, the comic and actress who broke big with videos mocking Donald Trump). The younger couple is almost entirely secular, yet they grapple with the same search for meaning and belonging, the same doubt as to whether they’ve chosen the right path for themselves — or if it had been chosen for them.
“All five characters, not just Schmuli and Esther, are trying to figure out how can you be happy with what you have, with where you stand in your own skin,” said Dave Klasko, who plays Schmuli.
“We say in the play the Hebrew phrase, ‘Ein ba’al hanes makir b’niso,’ which [Ziegler] poetically translates to ‘We are never aware of the miracles, especially when we are inside them,’” Klasko added. “How can I, in my own life, realize the miracle that I’m living in before I’m on the other side of it?”
For Ziegler, these are very Jewish questions — and the questions of the “Xillennial” generation. “We’re left [with] the complex heritage of feeling chosen, but also self-hating,” said Ziegler, whose previous plays include “Photograph 51,” about Rosalind Franklin, the Jewish X-ray crystallographer who helped Watson and Crick crack the DNA model. “I think this is the most Jewish of my plays, and it’s funny because I’m not that religious, but I have found in my career that there seems to be a hunger for plays about Judaism.”
“At some point in my career, I began to be thought of as a ‘Jewish writer’ — for better or for worse,” she added.
Safran Foer, 46, and Krauss, 48, have also wrestled with the “Jewish writer” term, as well as the play’s big questions of identity, self-doubt and complicated family relationships. In fact, as Ziegler and the actors point out, issues of the play are universal, and have nothing to do with how famous you are, how expensive your home may be, or how strictly you adhere to religious law. The celebrity allusion — plus the chance to see an actual celebrity, Holmes — may be a reason to buy a ticket to see “The Wanderers,” but the timeless message is what will keep you in your seat.
“The Wanderers” is playing at the Roundabout Theatre Company (111 West 46th Street) through April 2. Find tickets and more information here.
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Jewish groups defend European media monitors banned for what State Dept. calls ‘censorship’
Two major Jewish groups defended a digital hate-speech researcher who has been barred by President Donald Trump’s administration from entering the country.
Representatives for Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs responded after the U.S. State Department restricted the visas of five European digital speech activists. The banned activists include two who helped Jewish college students sue the social network X over the proliferation of antisemitic content on the platform, and another who has advised Jewish federations on social media hygiene. The government made the announcement late Tuesday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was taking these steps in order to combat “censorship.”
“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” Rubio wrote on X. “The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”
But representatives for JFNA and the JCPA, two groups that have worked extensively with the British digital researcher Imran Ahmed, stood up for him in interviews with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Ahmed, the group leaders said, is an important ally in the fight against antisemitism.
“He is a valuable partner in providing accurate and detailed information on how the social media algorithms have created a bent toward antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and he will remain a valuable partner,” Dennis Bernard, head of government relations for JFNA, told JTA about Ahmed.
Ahmed’s research has helped inform the federation movement’s larger strategy to counter antisemitism on social media. Last month JFNA and Ahmed’s group, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, jointly released a report detailing how Instagram’s algorithm promotes antisemitism.
Ahmed also presented his findings at JFNA’s recent General Assembly in Washington, as well as at a Jewish Funders Network convening, and has spoken at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit in Pittsburgh — which was founded in the aftermath of the 2018 Tree of Life shootings. Separately, he has researched the proliferation of antisemitic content across various social networks following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
Bernard declined to comment on Rubio’s move to restrict Ahmed’s visa, but noted, “We will look into this.” Regarding Ahmed, Bernard said, “If there’s something there we don’t know about, of course we will terminate our relationship with him.”
JCPA CEO Amy Spitalnick also praised Ahmed’s work fighting antisemitism. She harshly criticized the State Department’s targeting of him.
“He’s dedicated his career to fighting online hate and extremism,” Spitalnick told JTA about Ahmed. She denounced his targeting as “all part of the broader weaponization of the federal government to go after perceived political enemies and advance an extremist agenda, which in this case is to push back against any regulation of tech.”
Ahmed and Spitalnick began working together in the aftermath of Spitalnick’s successful effort to prosecute the organizers of the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia. They bonded over a shared interest in how online spaces were giving rise to hate activities like the rally. They have since partnered on a report about antisemitism on X. Shortly after Oct. 7, Ahmed appeared in a webinar with Spitalnick discussing how extremist groups were seizing on the attacks to spread antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiments.
Ahmed wasn’t the only target on the State Department’s list with connections to Jewish groups.
In 2023 the European Union of Jewish Students, a group representing pro-Israel Jewish university students throughout Europe, sued X, then called Twitter, in German court over the proliferation of antisemitic content, including Holocaust denial, on the social network. Filing alongside them was HateAid, a German legal group that says it “advocates for human rights in the digital space.”
HateAid’s leaders, Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, were also named on the State Department’s list of visa restrictions this week.
“Twitter has betrayed our trust. By allowing hateful content to spread, the company fails to protect users, and Jews in particular,” Avital Grinberg, then the head of the European Union of Jewish Students, said about her lawsuit at the time. “If Jews are forced out of the virtual space due to antisemitism and digital violence, Jewish life will become invisible in a place that is relevant to society.”
“Twitter owes us a communication platform where we can move freely and without fear of hatred and agitation,” Ballon, the head of HateAid’s legal team, said then.
Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, founder of HateAid, attends the ceremony for the presentation of the 2021 ifa Award for the Dialogue of Cultures, at Allianz Forum in Berlin, Sept, 14, 2021. (Adam Berry/Getty Images)
Reached for comment Wednesday, Grinberg said the Trump administration’s move against HateAid’s leaders was “dangerous for people like us.”
“For me personally, and I think for many young Jews who are exposed to antisemitism online, these organizations are crucial,” she said. “These are people who give us tools to respond to the hatred we experience online every day, across all the platforms.”
Today Grinberg is general manager of EU Watch, a watchdog group that critiques the European Union from a pro-Israel perspective.
The individuals were targeted as part of a larger battle on the right to fight what conservatives see as an effort by tech activists to silence conservative voices — an effort that is clashing with institutional Jewish groups’ longstanding push for tougher restrictions on tech platforms to limit the spread of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
In a statement explaining the restrictions, the State Department said the five activists had run afoul of a visa law passed earlier this year aimed at “foreign nationals who censor Americans.”
On X, Rubio said the administration “will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”
The U.S. crackdown on tech activists comes as antisemitism and other kinds of hate content have proliferated on American tech platforms, whose leaders — including some Jews like Instagram and Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg — have largely cultivated warm relationships with President Trump since he reassumed power.
Regulators in Europe, where laws around Holocaust denial and other forms of hate speech are stricter than in the U.S., have sought to impose a stronger hand on tech platforms that operate on the continent. European regulators have particularly expressed concern about X, where antisemitism and Holocaust denial have become a particularly acute problem.
X is run by billionaire Elon Musk, who is both the world’s richest man and a onetime key Trump ally who played a prominent role in the early months of his administration. Though Musk and Trump have since appeared to have a falling-out, Musk has continued to promote right-wing ideas and Republican causes on X, and has also endorsed European far-right parties. He has long flirted with antisemitic ideas on the platform himself, and has regularly feuded with the Anti-Defamation League.
Sarah Rogers, U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, gave a more extensive rundown of the reasons behind each visa restriction on X (itself reposted by Musk).
HateAid, Rogers claimed, “routinely demands access to propriety [sic] social media platform data to help it censor more.” Rogers also singled out a remark Ballon had given on a 60 Minutes episode that she said the government found objectionable: “Free speech needs boundaries.”
Ahmed, according to Rogers, was a “key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens.” She particularly took offense with the Centre for Countering Digital Hate’s focus on anti-vaccine rhetoric, which had included calls to deplatform Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, among other things, has spread conspiracy theories linking Jews to COVID-19.
Today Kennedy is Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. He praised the news of the visa restrictions on X, writing, “Once again, the United States is the mecca for freedom of speech!”
Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, speaks at the Eradicate Hate summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Oct. 5, 2023. On Dec. 23, 2025, the US State Department barred Ahmed and four other European digital anti-hate advocates from entering the country. (Screenshot via YouTube)
Rogers, the State Department undersecretary, also invoked a term closely associated with antisemitism — the blood libel — in her justification for why another European figure, Clare Melford, also fell under the new visa restrictions.
Melford runs the Global Disinformation Index, a British nonprofit that says it seeks to counter online disinformation but has been accused by conservative groups of bias. The group has in the past spoken out about misinformation “linking Jews to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“If you question Canadian blood libels about residential schools, you’re engaging in ‘hate speech’ according to Melford and GDI,” Rogers wrote on X. She highlighted a description, purportedly from the group, referring to “digital denialism around residential schools.”
The passage highlighted by Rogers references Canada’s infamous residential school system, an effort to force cultural assimilation on the country’s Indigenous populations that resulted in the deaths of thousands of children and persisted for generations. Canada has issued formal apologies for residential schools, with a truth-and-reconciliation commission report concluding that they amounted to cultural genocide.
Conservative parties in Canada have questioned, downplayed or rejected accepted historical accounts of abuses under Canada’s residential school system.
The other European activist barred from the U.S. on Wednesday is Thierry Breton, a former European Union commissioner.
In a statement to JTA, HateAid blasted the decision to bar its leaders from the US as “an act of repression by a government that is increasingly disregarding the rule of law and trying to silence its critics by any means necessary.”
The group added, “We will not be intimidated by a government that uses accusations of censorship to silence those who stand up for human rights and freedom of expression. Despite the significant strain and restrictions placed on us and our families by US government measures, we will continue our work with all our strength — now more than ever.”
Grinberg, the Jewish former student who had sued X along with HateAid, wound up losing her case in German court. But the State Department’s latest moves against her allies, she said, may not amount to much in the end.
“It’s just a statement. Like, OK, two people cannot enter the US. It sucks for them. It sucks for democratic values and for the debating culture. But ultimately, I don’t see how Musk is particularly benefitting from that,” she said. “For me, it’s more a performative act.”
In early 2023, when they first sued Musk’s platform, “we thought antisemitism had never been as bad as it is now,” she said. “Now we see that it is even worse. But that’s why you need counterforces. You need people like them.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish groups defend European media monitors banned for what State Dept. calls ‘censorship’ appeared first on The Forward.
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British police drop case against Bob Vylan for ‘Death to the IDF’ chant, sparking outrage from Jewish groups
British police ended an investigation into the British punk band Bob Vylan, months after the rap duo led thousands of Glastonbury music festival attendees in chants of “Death, death to the IDF.”
“We have concluded, after reviewing all the evidence, that it does not meet the criminal threshold outlined by the CPS for any person to be prosecuted,” wrote Avon and Somerset Police in a statement Tuesday. “No further action will be taken on the basis there is insufficient evidence for there to be a realistic prospect of conviction.”
Following the rap duo’s incendiary chant at Glastonbury, the pair were condemned Jewish leaders in the United Kingdom, and had their U.S. visas revoked by the State Department. In October, one of the band’s members, Bobby Vylan, doubled down on the anti-Israel chant in an interview with documentarian Louis Theroux.
“Simply because there is a high threshold for criminal conviction should in no way minimise the concerns raised by many sectors of society around the nature of the comments made,” the police statement continued.
In a post on X following the ruling, Bob Vylan argued that the criminal investigation into the chant “was never warranted in the first place.”
“We hope this news inspires others in the UK and around the world to speak up, in support of the Palestinian people, without fear,” the band wrote. “We have had our shows cancelled, visas revoked, our names tarnished and our lives upended, but what we have lost in peace and security we have gained tenfold in spirit and camaraderie.”
Bob Vylan’s chant at Glastonbury in June came months after the Irish rap group Kneecap kicked off a string of anti-Israel stunts by British musicians at the Coachella music festival in April. In September, terrorism charges against one of the band members, Liam O’Hanna, were also dropped.
The decision to drop the investigation into Bob Vylan was lambasted by Jewish groups in the United Kingdom, including the Community Security Trust, which cited the recent antisemitic terror attacks in Manchester, England and Sydney, Australia.
“It is deeply disappointing that vile calls for violence, repeated openly and without remorse, continue to fall on deaf ears,” the Community Security Trust told The Guardian. “Especially in the wake of the terror attacks in Manchester and Bondi, when will such calls finally be recognised for what they are: a real and dangerous instigator of bloodshed?”
Last week, police in London and Manchester announced that they would begin to arrest pro-Palestinian protesters who chant the slogan “globalize the intifada,” citing the Sydney attack on a Hanukkah event that killed 15.
“It is incredibly disappointing that the police and CPS have decided not to charge in this case, particularly when police forces in London and Manchester are adopting a stronger approach to tackling hateful rhetoric,” wrote the Embassy of Israel in London in a post on X. “It sends completely the wrong message at the worst possible time.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post British police drop case against Bob Vylan for ‘Death to the IDF’ chant, sparking outrage from Jewish groups appeared first on The Forward.
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A French Court Acquitted a Nanny Who Poisoned a Jewish Family of Antisemitism. Now Prosecutors Are Appealing.
Procession arrives at Place des Terreaux with a banner reading, “Against Antisemitism, for the Republic,” during the march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Prosecutors in France have appealed a court ruling that convicted a nanny of poisoning the food of the Jewish family for whom she worked but cleared her of antisemitism charges, in the latest flashpoint as French authorities grapple with an ongoing nationwide surge in antisemitism.
On Tuesday, the public prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, just west of Paris, announced it had appealed a criminal court ruling that acquitted the family’s nanny of antisemitism-aggravated charges after she poisoned their food and drinks.
Last week, the 42-year-old Algerian woman was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “administering a harmful substance that caused incapacitation for more than eight days.”
Residing illegally in France, the nanny had worked as a live-in caregiver for the family and their three children — aged two, five, and seven — since November 2023.
The French court declined to uphold any antisemitism charges against the defendant, noting that her incriminating statements were made several weeks after the incident and recorded by a police officer without a lawyer present
The family’s lawyers described the ruling as “incomprehensible,” insisting that “justice has not been served.”
The nanny, who has been living in France in violation of a deportation order issued in February 2024, was also convicted of using a forged document — a Belgian national identity card — and barred from entering France for five years.
First reported by Le Parisien, the shocking incident occurred in January last year, just two months after the caregiver was hired, when the mother discovered cleaning products in the wine she drank and suffered severe eye pain from using makeup remover contaminated with a toxic substance, prompting her to call the police.
After a series of forensic tests, investigators detected polyethylene glycol — a chemical commonly used in industrial and pharmaceutical products — along with other toxic substances in the food consumed by the family and their three children.
According to court documents, these chemicals were described as “harmful, even corrosive, and capable of causing serious injuries to the digestive tract.”
Even though the nanny initially denied the charges against her, she later confessed to police that she had poured a soapy lotion into the family’s food as a warning because “they were disrespecting her.”
“They have money and power, so I should never have worked for a Jewish woman — it only brought me trouble,” the nanny told the police. “I knew I could hurt them, but not enough to kill them.”
According to her lawyer, the nanny later withdrew her confession, arguing that jealousy and a perceived financial grievance were the main factors behind the attack.
At trial, the defendant described her statements as “hateful” but denied that her actions were driven by racism or antisemitism.
The appeal comes as France continues to face a steep rise in antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
In a disturbing new case, French authorities have also opened an investigation after a social media video went viral showing a man harassing a young Jewish child at a Paris airport, shouting “free Palestine” and calling him a “pig.”
Widely circulated online, the video shows a young boy playing a video game at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport when a man approaches, grabs his toy, and begins verbally assaulting him.
“Are you gonna free Palestine, bro?” the man, who remains off-camera, yells at the boy.
“If you don’t free them, I’ll snatch your hat off, bro,” the assailant continues, referring to the child’s kippah.
ANTISEMITIC INCIDENT AT PARIS–CDG AIRPORT :
Wednesday, June 25, 2025, at around 7:00 a.m, in the PlayStation Zone
of Terminal 2B at Paris–Charles de Gaulle Airport, a man in his early 30s, speaking with a British accent
, verbally and physically targeted two… pic.twitter.com/8XY3ze0EYb
— SwordOfSalomon (@SwordOfSalomon) December 21, 2025
The man is also heard repeatedly telling the child, “Dance, pig,” while the confused and frightened boy is seen trying to comply
Local police confirmed that an investigation has been launched into the incident, classified as violence based on race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion, as authorities work to identify the individual and bring him to justice.
Paris police chief Patrice Faure expressed his “outrage at these unacceptable and intolerable remarks,” promising that the incident “will not go unpunished.”
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews — condemned the incident, calling it “yet another illustration of the climate of antisemitism that has prevailed in Europe” since the Hamas-led atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.