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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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The post Jonathan Safran Foer’s online flirtation with Natalie Portman inspires a new play appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Jewish groups plan to protest Ben-Gvir’s arrival in NYC. Will he show?
(New York Jewish Week) — Jewish groups are readying for the arrival of Israeli far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir in New York City next week.
Several progressive Jewish organizations have planned a protest at a plaza outside the United Nations, where Israeli media reported that the minister would be attending a conference on policing. Meanwhile, other left-wing groups have planned their own demonstrations and circulated an open letter with thousands of signatures calling for State Attorney General Letitia James to prosecute Ben-Gvir for war crimes upon his arrival.
But it’s unclear whether Ben-Gvir is coming at all.
“To our knowledge, Minister Ben-Gvir is not coming to New York at the moment,” a staffer for the Consulate General of Israel in New York wrote the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an email on Thursday.
Separately, a UN official confirmed to JTA on Thursday that Ben-Gvir was not yet registered for the UN Chiefs of Police Summit, which brings together ministers and law enforcement leaders from around the world. The conference is taking place on July 7 and 8, though it is still possible for him to register in the coming days.
Ben-Gvir, a highly controversial figure in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet, is the leader of the country’s far-right “Otzma Yehudit,” or “Jewish Power” party. Before he entered the Knesset he was convicted of supporting a terrorist group and other offenses, and since taking office he has advocated for policies such as renewed Jewish settlement in Gaza and has been sanctioned for allegedly “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Liberal Jewish groups have come out in vocal opposition to the idea of him setting foot in the Big Apple following Haaretz’s initial reporting that Ben-Gvir was coming.
“It’s really important for people, both American Jews and Israelis, to say that extremists like Ben-Gvir aren’t accepted in our community,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the progressive rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, told JTA in an interview. “He just doesn’t belong in New York, or in the Israeli government, or espousing his views anywhere in Jewish society,”
T’ruah is co-organizing a protest outside the UN’s summit on Tuesday, along with close to a dozen other liberal Jewish groups. Among them are New York Jewish Agenda, J Street, Israelis for Peace and the Union for Reform Judaism.
Jacobs said she believes the demonstration will be particularly impactful because it’s coming from “people who are not looking to destroy the state, who are not anti-Israel in any way,” but who envision a “place of both Israelis and Palestinians being safe.”
Another planned protest scheduled just hours later at the same plaza is being led by left-wing groups more sharply critical of Israel. Anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace is among the organizations promoting it. Their open letter calling on James to prosecute Ben-Gvir has more than 6,500 signatures.
The last time Ben-Gvir visited New York City, just over a year ago, his presence drew a series of heated protests and counter-protests. A few of them took place in Crown Heights, the neighborhood where he visited 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Chabad Hasidic movement.
He also made pit stops at another Chabad institution and the gravesite of the movement’s late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as well as at a Midwood kosher restaurant, where he drew a friendlier crowd. A number of other planned events during that trip were canceled the week before.
The same coalition of liberal Jewish groups held a rally last year outside a Wall Street restaurant where Ben-Gvir was speaking. New York Rep. Jerry Nadler introduced legislation during that rally aimed at combating settler violence in the West Bank.
Margo Hughes-Robinson, who’s now the executive director of NYJA, co-emceed last year’s demonstration. She said in an interview on Thursday that she hopes that elected officials attend this year’s and make clear that “what he represents, and his worldview, is anathema to our Jewish values, it’s anathema to the vision of Israel that we support.”
Ben-Gvir was slated to make another trip to the U.S. more recently for a wedding, though he ended up canceling the trip after he was asked to provide his fingerprints in order to obtain a visa.
Unlike during Ben-Gvir’s last visit, New York’s mayor is now an anti-Zionist who has vowed to arrest Netanyahu if he steps foot in Israel due to his outstanding International Criminal Court arrest warrant, even though the US is not a party to the ICC. (There is no reported ICC arrest warrant for Ben-Gvir.) Following the election of Zohran Mamdani, Ben-Gvir described the result as “a moment when antisemitism triumphed over common sense.”
Mamdani’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
A number of local officials spoke out following the most recent appearance of a far-right Israeli minister in New York, condemning finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who attended the Israel Day parade. None have weighed in so far on Ben-Gvir’s possible return next week.
The post Jewish groups plan to protest Ben-Gvir’s arrival in NYC. Will he show? appeared first on The Forward.
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Races to watch: As staunch Israel critics notch wins, these candidates could be next
(JTA) — A wave of left-wing candidates with sharply critical Israel stances have won their Democratic primary this year and are set to head to Congress. Who else of like mind could join them in the coming months?
Several candidates who fit the bill have benefited from the endorsement and vast volunteer infrastructure of the Democratic Socialists of America. Others are simply meeting the moment for the growing number of Democratic voters who think the U.S. government is too supportive of Israel. Meanwhile, some Jewish groups and other critics have been concerned that their campaign rhetoric in this election cycle has at times veered into antisemitism.
Last week’s New York City results showed the power of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement and alarmed some Jewish leaders who watched as two pro-Israel incumbents lost their seat. Some onlookers questioned whether those victories could be replicated in other parts of the country, but Melat Kiros’ decisive win in Tuesday’s Colorado Democratic congressional primary for a district representing Denver answered the question with a resounding yes.
With just over two months left in the primaries, here are the upcoming races featuring left-wing insurgents whose results may hinge, at least in part, on sentiment toward Israel, Zionism and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group.
Arizona: 4th Congressional District (July 21)
Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton is facing a primary challenge from activist Kai Newkirk in Arizona’s 4th District, which covers parts of Phoenix and Maricopa County.
Stanton, who took office in 2018, is pro-Israel and has picked up the endorsement of AIPAC — support that Newkirk, whose activism has largely focused on campaign-finance reform, has blasted.
Newkirk’s platform includes imposing a complete arms embargo on Israel and ending all military subsidies to the Jewish state, which he accuses of committing genocide. He identifies as a democratic socialist (though he’s not endorsed by the DSA), and is backed by a number of progressive organizations, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ group Our Revolution and Track AIPAC.
“Kai is Israel Free and has fought to get money out of politics his whole life,” wrote Cenk Uygur, the host of the Young Turks, who has spread conspiracy theories about Israel.
Newkirk spoke out against last year’s killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. “I stand always with my beloved Jewish siblings against the scourge of antisemitism just as I will never stop in the nonviolent struggle to end the genocide in Gaza, release all hostages, and open the way to just, lasting peace,” he wrote.
Missouri: 1st Congressional District (Aug. 4)
Former Missouri Rep. Cori Bush is running for Congress in St. Louis again, two years after AIPAC’s super PAC poured millions into her race to oust the former “Squad” member from the House. Bush, who was first elected to Congress in 2020, will now take on Wesley Bell for the second time in the Democratic primary.
Bush, who supports the movement to boycott Israel, has alarmed a number of Jewish leaders in St. Louis over her positions on Israel.
She has expressed reluctance about calling Hamas a terrorist group, saying in a 2024 interview that racial justice protesters in Ferguson were also called terrorists. Bush was one of two members of Congress to vote against a measure to deny entry into the United States to Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 massacre.
Her opponent, Bell, a supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship, has the backing of a number of Jewish and pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus.
Bush, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman — who was ousted the same year as Bush in a race with heavy spending by AIPAC — St. Louis’ DSA chapter and the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.
Missouri: 4th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
Tenant organizer and radio host Hartzell Gray is running with the DSA’s backing in a Democratic primary in hopes of supplanting AIPAC-backed GOP congressman Mark Alford in the November general election in a solidly Republican district that includes some of Kansas City and its suburbs.
During a recent interview with Hasan Piker, Gray said that American elected officials, including Alford, are “catering to Israel, not to our folks here at home,” and broke down his views on the issue that he called “very much at the core of who I am.”
“I’m very honest. Listen, Israel’s apartheid ethnostate has been committing genocide to Palestinian people since before the Nakba,” Gray said. “They’re committing ethnic cleansing in Lebanon as we speak. We should be ending all ties — all diplomatic ties — with Israel.”
Gray had raised close to $170,000 as of March 31, according to FEC filings, by far the most of the seven Democrats in the running (none of whom are elected officials).
Michigan: U.S. Senate (Aug. 4)
The race for an open U.S. Senate seat between former county health executive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Rep. Haley Stevens and the trailing State Sen. Mallory McMorrow has been one of the country’s most closely watched primaries, with Israel and AIPAC at its center.
A physician and former public health official, El-Sayed, who led Stevens by 5 percentage points in the latest poll, has made Medicare for all a core plank of his campaign.
He is also a staunchly pro-Palestinian candidate who’s campaigned alongside fellow hardline Israel critic Hasan Piker. A number of major left-wing figures are backing El-Sayed, including Sanders and a handful of Congress’ most outspoken pro-Palestinian members, such as Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and California Rep. Ro Khanna. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added her endorsement on Thursday.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent more than $2 million on ads boosting Stevens, who describes herself as a “proud pro-Israel Democrat.”
In a recent interview with Semafor, El-Sayed called Stevens “a suit with a large AIPAC bank account,” adding that he hopes AIPAC finds “some way to teach her how to string together two coherent sentences.”
Following the attempted attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, earlier this year, El-Sayed drew criticism from some Jewish leaders — including the synagogue’s rabbi — for releasing lengthy remarks that discussed Israel’s war in Lebanon, after initially condemning antisemitism in a statement.
Michigan: 13th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
State Rep. Donavan McKinney could be the next to join the wave of DSA-backed insurgents heading to Congress. He has the backing of major democratic socialists Sanders and Tlaib, as well as Metro Detroit DSA.
Unlike many DSA congressional candidates, McKinney has not made Israel or Gaza a primary focus of his campaign. On his campaign website, AIPAC is not mentioned by name in the section on “getting big money out of politics,” and Israel is not cited in the foreign policy section.
PAL PAC, an anti-AIPAC pro-Palestinian organization, endorsed McKinney. He thanked the group and said that his policies “reflect the growing majority of Americans who want to end US tax funding of weapons to Israel to destroy Palestinian communities, and instead invest resources back into American working families.”
Rep. Shri Thanedar, the incumbent looking to stave off McKinney, is backed by pro-Israel groups AIPAC and DMFl, and has supported military aid to Israel since joining Congress in 2023.
AIPAC mobilized against Thanedar when he ran in 2022 because of legislation he once co-sponsored in the Michigan House that described Israel as an “apartheid state” and urged Congress to end U.S. aid to Israel. Thanedar later walked back his legislation, telling Jewish Insider that it had been an “emotional reaction” to the 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and that he would support Israel in Congress.
Michigan: 7th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
A Democratic primary between three major candidates is unfolding in a swing district in Michigan, with its winner hoping to unseat Republican Rep. Tom Barrett in November.
William Lawrence, 35, is occupying the race’s left lane, with endorsements from Sanders, Khanna and Tlaib. He co-founded Sunrise Movement, a climate advocacy organization, in 2015. (The group, which he left in 2020, has since become increasingly vocal in advocating for Palestinians.)
Lawrence is facing off against retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink, who’s said she resigned because Trump “kept siding” with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.
At a candidates’ forum in June, Lawrence was the only participant to refer to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide. Lawrence opposes weapons sales and American military aid to Israel. Though not endorsed by the DSA, Lawrence is a member of the left-wing group.
Wisconsin: Governor (Aug. 11)
In the crowded Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s open gubernatorial seat — a seat that is seen as winnable by either party in November — state Rep. Francesca Hong has established herself as the left-wing candidate, with backing from two DSA chapters in the state.
She introduced statewide legislation earlier this year that would repeal a 2018 law banning state contracts with businesses that boycott Israel. In March, Hong criticized outgoing Gov. Tom Evers after he signed into law the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Progressives have criticized the definition for characterizing some criticism of Israel as antisemitism. Hong wrote that adopting it “will compromise free speech across the state and academic freedom at our universities.”
She recently appeared on both Hasan Piker’s show and on the stream hosted by Michael Beyer, an influencer known as “Mike from PA” who came under fire after saying that Jewish identity is “a constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity, wholly invented.”
“If Wisconsin is going to be a state that actually values human rights, then we have to ensure that we’re supporting, we’re fighting for the pro-Palestine movement,” Hong said on Beyer’s show.
The race’s most recent polling, conducted in March, had Hong leading with 14% of votes ahead of former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, at 11%. Sixty-five percent of voters were undecided.
Florida: 25th Congressional District (Aug. 18)
Oliver Larkin, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, has made an effort to compare himself to Zohran Mamdani.
Larkin is up against the staunchly pro-Israel, AIPAC-backed Rep. Jared Moskowitz in the district that includes Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton. Larkin is being backed by DSA and advocates for the suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel, which he accuses of committing genocide. His platform also includes the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Now, some of the energy generated by the Mamdani-backed candidates’ success in New York appears to be lifting Larkin’s candidacy: His campaign reportedly raised $115,000 in the week after the New York primaries.
In an appearance on Piker’s show, Larkin differentiated his policies on Israel from those of Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, the anti-Israel, fringe GOP candidate who has courted the online far right.
“The key difference is that when we talk about banning U.S. military aid to Israel, banning U.S. colleges and government from investing in Israel bonds, we’re talking about universal economic benefits,” Larkin said, meaning those tax dollars would go toward domestic programs for all.
November’s general election for the recently redistricted seat is seen as a toss-up. Should Larkin win the primary, his candidacy could serve as a test of how left-wing candidates fare in swing seats as opposed to moderate Democrats.
A recent poll showed Moskowitz with a 32-point lead; 72% of voters were unfamiliar or had no opinion of Larkin.
Massachusetts: 4th Congressional District (Sept. 1)
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, another staunchly pro-Israel Democrat, is facing a primary challenge from AI and policy researcher Jason Poulos.
Poulos’ platform calls to end U.S. support for Israel by signing onto legislation like the Block the Bombs Act and Tlaib’s bill stating that Israel is committing genocide. He also calls for AIPAC and DMFI to register as foreign lobbying groups.
Poulos told the Newton Beacon that Israel was an animating force in his entrance into politics.
“What really was radicalizing for me was watching the United States send tens of billions of dollars in military arms to Israel and watch them participate actively in the genocide of the Palestinian people,” Poulos said. He also said that he sided with the campus pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024 and their aim of lobbying the schools to divest from Israel.
Poulos has slammed Auchincloss for his endorsement from AIPAC. At a recent town hall, Auchincloss said it “concerns” him that there are numerous lobbying groups influencing politics, but only “one group of people get pummeled above all others.”
The next day, Poulos called Auchincloss “comically out-of-touch.”
“The reason why AIPAC is singled out is because it has already poured nearly $50m into congressional races nationwide, is bankrolled by MAGA mega-donors, and is in lockstep with the foreign policy interests of a foreign gov’t,” he wrote.
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Quiz: For America 250, how well do you know U.S. Jewish history?
The Forward produced The Great American Jewish History Quiz! using Claude, a generative artificial intelligence tool by Anthropic. All questions and answers were researched and written by Louis Keene, who prompted Claude to create the user interface and underlying code and to track statistics.
Questions or feedback? Send us an email: forwardquiz@forward.com.
The post Quiz: For America 250, how well do you know U.S. Jewish history? appeared first on The Forward.
