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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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Hundreds of Diaspora leaders call for action against ‘Jewish-extremist terror in the West Bank’
(JTA) — Over 1,000 Diaspora Jews are petitioning Israeli President Isaac Herzog to intervene against settler violence in the West Bank, saying that the settlers are threatening Israeli security.
“Mr. President, the terror, death and destruction inflicted by Jewish-Israeli extremists against innocent Palestinians across the West Bank is an abomination,” says an open letter published Thursday. “It is not only morally shameful but a strategic threat to the future of Israel. It damages world Jewry and the relationship of future generations with Israel.”
The letter continues, “Sadly, based on events and on the statements of the most extreme coalition partners it can be concluded that the violence now engulfing the West Bank is not only condoned by the government but is in fact policy.”
The letter was organized by the The London Initiative, a liberal Zionist network founded earlier last year to “strengthen Israeli democracy, advance a fairer shared future for all citizens of Israel, revive hope in the prospects of achieving secure peace, and improve relations between all Israelis and world Jewry.”
It comes as violence against Palestinians in the West Bank — often unpunished by Israeli authorities — has reached new heights, with settlers allegedly killing seven Palestinians in the last month, including one on Thursday, and driving others from their homes.
The situation has grown so extreme that the Israeli army this week took the unprecedented step of diverting soldiers from Lebanon, where Israel is battling Hezbollah, to the West Bank. Both the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces and the Central Command chief have warned in recent days that conditions in the West Bank are contributing to a dire manpower shortage in the army.
The issue has also ignited concern from the United States, and from Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Rabbi Yechiel Leiter, who told Ynet that he believed the situation was deterring some in Washington from supporting Israel. He called on the rabbis of the West Bank to constrain their disciples.
“I’m so angry about the issue of Jewish riots in Judea and Samaria,” Leiter said. “It’s a handful of a few hundred people who are staining an entire enterprise — and everyone is silent.”
The new letter signed by Diaspora Jews calls on Herzog to advocate for change with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers who have not interceded to stop the violence. The signatories include prominent philanthropists including Charles Bronfman; liberal rabbis from multiple countries; and former British and Canadian ambassadors to Israel.
“Mr. President, Pesach is upon us. As we have for millennia, Jews everywhere will reflect on the promise of freedom and responsibilities of power,” the letter says. “We call on you to use your position to implore the government to put an end to the abomination of Jewish-extremist terror and the era of impunity for its perpetrators.”
The post Hundreds of Diaspora leaders call for action against ‘Jewish-extremist terror in the West Bank’ appeared first on The Forward.
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NYC Council approves ‘buffer zone’ legislation insulating houses of worship from protests
(New York Jewish Week) — The New York City Council passed legislation on Thursday aimed at protecting synagogues from disruptive protests, marking a decisive victory following a months-long push by Jewish and local leaders to strengthen safeguards around houses of worship.
The “buffer zone” legislation for religious institutions, which was introduced by Council Speaker Julie Menin following a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside of Park East Synagogue in November, was passed with a vote of 44-5, reaching a super-majority that will make it immune from a potential veto by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The bill, which was altered from its initial format to exclude any mention of distance following concerns from the NYPD, will require NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to “establish a plan to address and contain the risk of physical obstruction, physical injury, intimidation and interference in places of religious worship, while preserving and protecting the rights to free speech, assembly and protest,” Menin said during the introduction of the legislation.
“The increase in hateful acts around the city is absolutely abhorrent, and we have to do something about it,” Menin said.
Another measure included in the package of legislation, which would establish buffer zones for protests outside of schools, was also passed with a majority of 30 to 19, making it subject to a potential veto from Mamdani.
Mamdani has not confirmed whether he will pass the legislation. Ahead of the vote, Dora Pekec, a City Hall spokesperson, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement that the mayor “wants to ensure both the right to prayer and the right to protest are protected here in New York City.”
She continued, “The Mayor is keenly aware of the serious concerns regarding these bills’ limiting of New Yorkers’ constitutional rights, and he will keep these concerns in mind for any bills that land on his desk.”
On the steps of city hall ahead of the vote, roughly three dozen protesters gathered as part of a demonstration organized by Jewish Voice for Peace NYC, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice and the New York Civil Liberties Union to object to the legislation.
Opponents of the legislation have said that it would have a chilling effect on First Amendment protections, including Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who said during the demonstration that “this is no time for the political leaders of our city to be pressing for legislation that could put our right to protest in danger.”
“Let’s be clear, the rise of antisemitism is real, hate is real, and we must confront it,” Lieberman said. “But no speech zones, restricting speech and assembly are simply not the solution.”
Audrey Sasson, the executive director of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, called on Mamdani to veto both pieces of legislation in a statement following the vote.
“We’re extremely disappointed that the City Council voted to pass Intros 001 and 175, bills that serve to generate headlines and convey concern, but not to materially make our city safer for all New Yorkers, including Jews,” Sasson said. “At best, the legislation changes little. At worst, it restricts New Yorkers’ free speech rights and empowers the NYPD to engage in discriminatory policing of protest outside houses of worship and educational facilities.”
But proponents of the bill have argued that it will offer an added layer of protection amid a rapidly escalating climate of antisemitism.
“The explosion of antisemitism in the past, let’s say four or five, six months, especially from Nick Fuentes becoming a major figure and Tucker Carlson going completely off on that has made the rhetoric so much more unstable that I think we just have to have a time where synagogues and all places of faith are protected,” Eitan Szteinbaum, a 25-year-old Jewish New York resident, said outside of City Hall.
Council Member Eric Dinowitz, who introduced the protest bill for educational sites, welcomed the outcome of the vote, saying, “I look forward to the conversation the mayor may want to have about how we protect our students’ safe access to schools.”
The passage of the bills was also welcomed by the Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey, which wrote in a post on X that the measures were an “essential first step to keep Jews — and all New Yorkers — safe.”
“ADL’s most recent audit showed a record 976 antisemitic incidents in NYC, many of which targeted synagogues and Jewish institutions, demonstrating a clear threat to religious freedom,” the statement continued. ‘We are grateful to @SpeakerMenin not only for sponsoring this legislation, but for her entire five-point plan to combat antisemitism.”
Rabbi Marc Schneier, a vocal critic of Mamdani, also celebrated the vote in a statement.
“I am proud of NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin for taking action so quickly, especially as it was clear the mayor once again flip-flopped when it comes to protecting New York’s Jewish community, and New Yorkers of all faiths,” Schneier said. “No one should have to be worried about protesters harassing them when entering a house of worship.”
The post NYC Council approves ‘buffer zone’ legislation insulating houses of worship from protests appeared first on The Forward.
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Instagram Pushes Antisemitic Videos to Hundreds of Millions of Users, Report Finds
Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of the Instagram logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Instagram actively recommends bigoted content to its users, according to newly published research from a leading antisemitism watchdog group.
The revelation followed two high-profile losses this week in lawsuits that charged billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which owns Instagram, with failing to protect children on its social media platforms.
On Wednesday, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) published new findings from its Antisemitism Research Center (ARC). The report, “Engineered Exposure: How Antisemitic Content Is Pushed and Amplified to Millions Across Instagram,” focused on tracking 100 antisemitic posts during a 96-hour period which Instagram directly pushed into users’ accounts through its own recommendation system.
CAM’s researchers found that these posts provoked 5.3 million likes and 3.8 million shares, which analysts estimate reached as many as 280 million users.
“Among the most disturbing findings is that the ARC researchers identified AI-generated ‘rabbi’ personas that were fabricated to push antisemitic tropes while projecting false religious authority,” CAM said in a statement announcing the report.
One bogus rabbi account CAM uncovered had collected more than 1.4 million followers. The report described how an account called Rabbi Goldman “pushes antisemitic conspiracy theories, including allegations of Jewish control of the global financial system, to a large audience, with some videos getting more than five million views.”
ARC identified 11 other fake rabbis, bringing the total followers for such accounts up to 2.1 million. According to the researchers, “each presents a distinct persona and voice, yet all promote narratives portraying Jews as obsessed with money, playing to classical antisemitic stereotypes.”
The report also documented substantial linking of Jews with occult themes including references to demons, Satan, 666, Moloch, freemasonry, the Illuminati, and especially the ancient Canaanite storm god Baal. The slander against Jews as secretly worshipping a deity who demanded child sacrifice and rivaled the God of Israel in the Bible has manifested elsewhere on social media. Far-right podcaster Candace Owens has claimed that the Star of David has “ALWAYS [sic] been associated with Canaanite cults and Baal worship.”
An important component of this new research is that rather than investigators searching for hateful content, they relied solely on “the standard use of Instagram over four days, via content actively suggested by the platform’s recommendation systems.”
“This distinction demonstrates that exposure to these narratives does not require users to seek out extremist material,” the researchers explained. “Instead, the platform itself can act as a vector, introducing and amplifying such content through its own distribution mechanisms.”
Through providing examples of the content analyzed, the researchers showed how conspiracy theories transition into calls for violence. One video discussed in the report blamed “the Rothschilds” and central banks as guilty of causing all global crises including wars, diseases, and 9/11. The video then “escalates into explicit eliminationist rhetoric, calling for their eradication as a solution. It uses the Rothschild family as a proxy for Jews and frames them as a singular, malevolent force controlling world events.”
CAM CEO Sacha Roytman said the report provided evidence “of a broad systemic failure on the part of Instagram and Meta.”
“When a platform actively recommends content that dehumanizes Jews to mass audiences, we are no longer talking about a simple oversight or a mistake in the algorithmic design. We are talking about infrastructure that normalizes hatred at scale that must be addressed immediately,” he added.
Regarding potential motivations for what might have inspired Zuckerberg to allow for such a proliferation of hate, the report noted in its introduction that Meta had been “generating substantial advertising revenue from engagement with the content in question.”
In 2025, Meta’s revenue reached $200.966 billion, an increase of 22.17 percent from 2024, when revenue hit $164.501 billion, a 21.94 percent increase from 2023’s $134.9 billion, which in turn had grown 15.69 percent from 2022.
Bloomberg currently ranks Zuckerberg as the fifth wealthiest person on the planet, with an estimated net worth of $211 billion. Earlier this month, he purchased a $170 million mansion in South Florida’s Indian Creek, noted as the most expensive sale in Miami-Dade County and listed as “the largest residence ever created on Miami’s most exclusive island.”
On Wednesday, Meta laid off 700 employees, largely those affiliated with the failed Reality Labs division, which burned through $80 billion in pursuit of creating the virtual reality platform Horizon Worlds. The platform will shut down on June 15.
Roytman said that Meta “must take a hard look at how its algorithms are promoting antisemitic content and put real, transparent safeguards in place to stop it.”
Meta may have additional motivation now to level up the safety protocols on its platforms following back-to-back decisions in a pair of lawsuits this week which, legal analysts suspect, may have now opened the floodgates for thousands of similar cases around the country.
On Tuesday in Santa Fe, jurors found Meta liable and imposed a $375 million fine for failing to prevent minors’ exposure to harmful sexual content including online solicitations, human trafficking, and explicit imagery.
“Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement following the verdict. “Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”
Torrez vowed to go after Meta for more money and force changes to the platforms.
“New Mexico is proud to be the first state to hold Meta accountable in court for misleading parents, enabling child exploitation, and harming kids,” Torrez said. “In the next phase of this legal proceeding, we will seek additional financial penalties and court-mandated changes to Meta’s platforms that offer stronger protections for children.”
On Wednesday in Los Angeles, jurors found Meta and Alphabet (parent company of YouTube) liable for the addictive qualities of their platforms exacerbating the mental health problems of a young woman and awarded her $3 million in damages with $3 million more in punitive damages.
Omri Ben-Shahar, a law professor at the University of Chicago, told the Wall Street Journal that “what is new is the addiction element.” He warned “that could create a very broad liability. The notion of addiction, there is something very abstract about it.”
Meta and Alphabet both plan to appeal the ruling. Alphabet spokesman José Castañeda sought to distance the company from Meta (which jurors found more heavily liable at a 70-30 penalty ratio), saying “this case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”
Previous legal challenges to social media and online video companies for failing to prevent exposure to harmful content have usually failed due to longstanding legal interpretations of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
This statute has prevented plaintiffs from suing a website’s host the way they would an individual committing slander or a publisher engaged in libel. The legal innovation which allowed for success in these cases was lawyers’ decision to focus not on the content itself but on the design of the products which intended to hold users captivated, glued to their phones for hours.
“They knew,” said Mark Lanier, the lawyer for the 20-year-old plaintiff in the addiction case. “They targeted the children.”