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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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Palestinian-French lawmaker arrested after praising 1972 bomber of Ben Gurion Airport
(JTA) — French police detained Rima Hassan, a member of the European Parliament from France, on suspicion of “advocating for terrorism” after she quoted one of the perpetrators of a 1972 terror attack on an Israeli airport in a social media post.
Hassan, 33, was detained for several hours on Thursday by French authorities over a March 26 post in which she quoted an individual convicted of participating in the 1972 terror attack on Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, which killed 26 people.
The post, which Hassan later deleted, included Japanese and Palestinian flags as well as a quote from Kozo Okamoto, a member of the terror group, which read, “I dedicated my youth to the Palestinian cause. As long as there is oppression, resistance will not only be a right, but a duty.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had released Hassan and given her a court date of July 7 “to be tried on charges of advocating terrorism committed online.” If convicted, Hassan could face up to a seven-year jail term and a fine of up to 100,000 euros, or $115,290.
Hassan, who was elected to the European Parliament in 2024 for the French far-left party France Unbowed, has previously said that “Hamas’s actions are legitimate from an international perspective” and argued that Franco-Palestinians “must be able to join the Palestinian armed resistance.” She also participated in the Gaza-bound flotilla protesting Israel’s blockade of the enclave last June, and, last month, was denied entry into Canada ahead of a scheduled conference appearance.
The arrest came after two France-based antisemitism watchdogs, the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism and the European Jewish Organization, lodged complaints over Hassan’s post.
“Statements presenting the acts committed by terrorists in a favorable light constitute an apology for terrorism,” the European Jewish Organization wrote in a post on X on Thursday. “It is on this basis that the OJE has filed a complaint against RH for the statements made on X and for which she appears to have been placed in police custody today.”
The prosecutor’s office said that Hassan is under investigation in six additional cases, and that 16 other cases involving alleged online hate speech have been closed. Police are also separately investigating “substances resembling CBD and 3-MMC,” illegal drugs, that were found among her belongings.
In a post on X Friday, Hassan, who was born in Syria in a Palestinian refugee camp and has made pro-Palestinian advocacy and fierce criticism of Israel a hallmark of her political career, said that she was the “target of political, judicial, and media harassment.”
“This custody hearing was followed by a fifth summons this Friday, well illustrating the politico-judicial harassment that the Palestinian cause is enduring after more than 2 years of genocide and inaction on the part of our government,” wrote Hassan in a subsequent post.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez dismissed claims that the case against Hassan was politically motivated, saying in a television appearance, “No one is above the law, especially on subjects as serious as the glorification of terrorism.”
The post Palestinian-French lawmaker arrested after praising 1972 bomber of Ben Gurion Airport appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan Democrats, Jewish leaders uneasy over Senate candidate’s alliance with Hasan Piker
(JTA) — Just weeks after an attack on a Michigan synagogue, a U.S. Senate candidate’s decision to campaign in the state with Hasan Piker — a streamer accused of antisemitic rhetoric — is prompting unease among Jewish leaders and fellow Democrats.
Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and former county health executive, is set to appear with Piker at two different Michigan universities on Tuesday.
The Hillel at Michigan State University said it was “deeply troubled” by Piker’s planned visit to campus, calling him a “known antisemite,” while at least one planned speaker, a state representative, backed out of the rallies citing the concerns of her Jewish constituents.
National Jewish leaders also criticized the planned events, with some comparing Piker to Nick Fuentes, the openly antisemitic livestreamer who has divided Republicans and others drawing a connection to the attack last month on Temple Israel.
“Abdul El-Sayed’s decision to host campaign rallies with Piker is not just alarming; it’s absolutely shocking. It reflects a broader trend: the dangerous normalization of antisemitism in our politics,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League. “That this is happening in Michigan, where Temple Israel was targeted in a violent antisemitic attack … makes it even more egregious.”
El-Sayed has defended his decision to campaign with Piker, including to Greenblatt, saying that he agrees with Piker on some issues but not others. Their points of agreement, he said, include “the way that AIPAC has decimated our politics and made us think that the most important goal of our foreign policy is to backstop Israel.”
He recently told a pro-Palestinian podcast that Piker’s past comments have been “taken out of context,” adding that Piker represents “where the disaffected people are” and that the streamer “has taken great pains to condemn any attempt to tie the government of Israel to the Jewish people.”
The campaign stops come as both Piker and El-Sayed — both Muslim progressives — face scrutiny over their comments about Jews and Israel.
Piker has increasingly divided Democrats, with a Jewish congressman from Illinois recently calling him “an unapologetic antisemite” even as some of his colleagues have continued to appear with him on his streaming show and in real life.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, grew up in a heavily Jewish suburb of Detroit and has the endorsement of some progressive Jews including former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin. He raised eyebrows with his response to the Temple Israel attack last month — he condemned the attack but also criticized Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, where the attacker’s brother was killed — as well as his reluctance to comment on the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A former security official with El-Sayed’s campaign recently told a local blog that he had witnessed comments from the candidate that the staffer thought would “give credibility to the claims of [El-Sayed’s] antisemitism and pro-Islamist regimes/factions” before resigning. The blog did not report any specifics.
“Personally, I regret and feel shame for excusing antisemitism and for not leaving sooner,” the former staffer said.
El-Sayed and Piker are set to appear with Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania as well as candidates for local office, at both MSU and the University of Michigan.
In the leadup to the rallies, one of El-Sayed’s primary opponents, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, as well as the head of the AJC compared Piker to white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who has celebrated Hitler and attacked “organized Jewry.”
Piker’s most vociferous critics have pointed to a history of his comments in which, among other things, he has denied or downplayed that rape took place during the Oct. 7 attacks and compared Houthi rebels to Anne Frank.
Piker rejects allegations of antisemitism. But in a recent interview he expressed regret over some of his more extreme rhetoric, including referring to Haredi Orthodox Jews as “inbred,” and offered additional context for some of his other remarks spotlighted by Greenblatt and other critics including the centrist Democratic group Third Way.
He has also said it is “Islamophobic to say: ‘Oh, this Muslim critic of Israel who has the majority opinion on Israel should not be going to a campaign rally.’”
El-Sayed has suggested that Piker’s critics are more broadly conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
“I love and revere the Jewish people because I love ALL people. And I criticize Israel’s genocide because I love ALL people. I pray someday you understand,” El-Sayed tweeted in response to Greenblatt’s criticism of his association with Piker.
In a subsequent video, the candidate pointed out that former Vice President Kamala Harris invited Piker to stream at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, during her bid for president. He said he would not apologize “for every single video that people put up there that Hasan said this or Hasan said that” — and that he thought the progressive cause was larger than those critiques.
“Any Democrat who tells you that you cannot speak with some group of people because of one offensive thing that they might have said is missing the point of what it means to actually bring people into a legitimate mainstream policy where we can actually fight for the things we need and deserve,” El-Sayed said.
Third Way has called on El-Sayed to outline specifically where his views and Piker’s differ.
“If you insist on campaigning with an extremist like Piker just weeks after an attack on Jews at Temple Israel in Michigan, voters in your state deserve to know what you truly believe and how closely you align with his most abhorrent views,” wrote the group’s president, Jonathan Cowan. He asked six questions including, “Do you also dismiss the mass rape of Jewish and Israeli women by Hamas?” and “Do you believe as he does that ‘Hamas is a thousand times better’ than the Israeli state?”
At least one planned participant, Ann Arbor-based state Rep. Carrie Rheingans, has backed out of the rallies. She told local media that she still endorses El-Sayed and has “heard him denounce antisemitism vehemently multiple times,” but added, “I don’t appreciate many of Piker’s antisemitic comments… Maybe Hasan Piker has some room to learn how his comments affect other people, but I have to say, Jews, Muslims, and Arabs in Michigan are hurting for a lot of really good reasons right now.”
MSU Hillel, meanwhile, did not mention El-Sayed by name in its statement.
“At a time when Jewish students are experiencing heightened fear and vulnerability — especially in the wake of the recent attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield — this choice is especially concerning,” the Hillel chapter wrote on Instagram. “Hosting individuals like Hasan Piker who consistently use harmful, inflammatory and antisemitic rhetoric creates a hostile environment for Jewish students, threatening their security and belonging.”
The comparisons between Piker and Fuentes have opened a new flashpoint in debates over the role that streaming personalities are playing in American politics.
“In Piker’s case, his record speaks for itself, the same with Nick Fuentes. I don’t need to go into details about who they are or what they represent,” Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, told Jewish Insider while urging Democrats not to associate with Piker. “Neither one of them belongs in the middle of the political process as a result of candidates choosing to put them there.”
In a statement, AJC Detroit, the region’s Jewish community relations arm, cautioned associating with both Piker and Fuentes but also did not name any candidates.
“AJC has reached out to leaders of both parties to warn about the dangers of platforming extremists like Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes and helping them spread their virulent antisemitism,” spokesperson Amy Sapeika wrote. “With increasing polarization and the rise of extremism from the far left and far right, both parties need to make clear that antisemites like them have no place on their stages.”
The comparison is also shaping the Senate race directly. Piker “is somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views and followers, which is not entirely different from somebody like Nick Fuentes,” McMorrow told Jewish Insider.
The other Democratic candidate in the Senate primary, Rep. Haley Stevens, said El-Sayed was “choosing to campaign with someone who has a history of antisemitic rhetoric” but did not make a Fuentes comparison. (Elissa Slotkin, the state’s centrist Jewish senator who is not up for reelection this year, said she wasn’t familiar with Piker’s rhetoric but that it “sounds deeply antisemitic.”)
Stevens, who is not Jewish, is generally seen as a centrist candidate preferred by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that has emerged as a bogeyman in Democratic politics. McMorrow, who has a Jewish husband and Jewish child, is battling El-Sayed for the progressive mantle: She has the endorsement of liberal Zionist group J Street and has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
The post Michigan Democrats, Jewish leaders uneasy over Senate candidate’s alliance with Hasan Piker appeared first on The Forward.
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Over Half of All New York City Hate Crimes Have Targeted Jews Since Mamdani Took Office, Police Says
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, as a major winter storm spreads across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, US, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
The majority of all hate crimes in New York City over the first three months of this year have targeted Jews, according to new data released by the New York Police Department (NYPD).
The striking figures, announced last week by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, will likely fuel criticism of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office on Jan. 1 and has been accused of promoting antisemitism and not doing enough to denounce violence against Jews.
“Confirmed hate crimes increased nearly 12 percent this quarter citywide. We continue to see that the vast majority of our hate crimes are antisemitic in nature,” Tisch said on Thursday in an appearance at 1 Police Plaza with Mamdani to discuss the overall crime data for the year.
“In fact, in the first quarter of 2026, more than half of all confirmed hate crimes, or 55 percent, were antisemitic, despite Jews only making up approximately 10 percent of the population of New York City,” the police commissioner added.
Explaining that the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force “determines whether an incident meets the legal standard for hate crime under New York state law,” Tisch announced that “as of today, and for the first time, our monthly hate crime data will include two clear, accurate sets of numbers. Reported hate crimes, those flagged for investigation by the task force and confirmed hate crimes as determined by the task force.”
Tisch called this approach “the gold standard for reporting on hate crimes, and that is what we are going to do going forward. This will ensure that the public has an accurate and timely and more robust view than ever of hate crime activity in New York City.”
Tisch’s comments came amid an ongoing surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City. In January, for example, such crimes skyrocketed by 182 percent during Mamdani’s first month in office compared to the same period last year.
Jews were also targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to data issued by the NYPD. A recent report released in December by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of 2025.
Under Mamdani, however, Jewish New Yorkers have expressed particular alarm about their safety.
A far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist, Mamdani has refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; supported boycotts of all Israeli-tied entities; and failed to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used to call for violence against Jews and Israelis around the world.
Last week, the mayor said that New York was welcoming to people of all backgrounds.
“This is a city where everyone who lives here should know that they belong across these five boroughs. There is no person of any faith that should ever be made to feel as if this is not their home, that this is not a place where they can be safe,” he said. “And frankly, we are looking to build a city where the threshold is not simply safety. We want this to be a city where New Yorkers are cherished, where they are celebrated. And we know that that is the case for many. And still, there is so much more work to be done to ensure that is the case for all.”
Hours after taking office, Mamdani revoked multiple executive orders enacted by his predecessor to combat antisemitism.
Among the most controversial actions was Mamdani’s decision to undo New York City’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, a framework widely used by governments and law enforcement around the world to identify contemporary antisemitic behavior. 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.
In February, a group of New York City politicians and civic leaders sued Mamdani, charging that members of his administration had stonewalled Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests related to his choice to cancel the executive order embracing the IHRA definition of antisemitism, a move supported by the mayor’s inner core of radical, anti-Zionist activists.
A reporter at 1 Police Plaza asked about the nature of New York City’s hate crimes and if they had grown more violent. Mamdani’s response notably avoided mentioning the Jewish community by name, despite the NYPD’s focus specifically on antisemitic attacks.
“So, the hate crimes that we are seeing are really, like, very across the board. It could be something — an act of violence. It could be drawing a symbol on a wall, like, for example, a swastika,” Tisch added. “So, I don’t want to characterize them in that way. What I can tell you is that the NYPD has released this month, the gold standard for data about hate crimes. We’ve done this in consultation with experts in the field. And that is data about reported crimes and data about confirmed crimes.”
Concluding the questions, Tisch said, “And so now everyone has access to both pieces of information, and that will continue into the future. I want to make sure that we are incredibly transparent about data because data is power, and I also don’t want to continue or perpetuate the practice of releasing bad data that doesn’t help draw meaningful conclusions.”
Despite Tisch’s comments, not everyone supports the city’s so-called “gold standard” change to hate crime data reporting, which some critics argue is conveniently timed to sanitize the administration’s record on rising antisemitism.
“We’re all watching the manufacturing of propaganda in real time,” Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side, told the New York Post. “They’ll change the method of counting antisemitic crimes and literally six months later the mayor’s office will claim that antisemitism has dropped.”
Elisha Wiesel, son of the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, shared Steinmetz’s suspicions, telling the Post that “I think there should be a loud outcry telling them to change it back.”
Former NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, called the much-lauded data style an example of “textbook fudging the numbers,” adding, “It’s going to look like they’re combating hate crimes, but they’re not being transparent.”
Alcazar said that if the NYPD really sought transparency, “then they should show the number of complaints they actually receive and what the investigations yielded.”