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Judy Blume is having a moment. Here’s why Jewish women love her work.
(JTA) — As a young teenager growing up in Manhattan, Nina Kauder found it nearly impossible to ask her mother difficult questions about puberty or her Jewish identity, for two reasons.
Her mother had fled the Holocaust as a child and was, in Kauder’s words, “very tough” to talk to. And by the time Kauder was a teen, her mother was terminally ill. She got her first period just months after her mother’s death.
So Kauder, now 58 and a health coach, turned to Judy Blume.
She remembers reading Blume’s 1970 young adult classic “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” about a sixth grader with a Jewish father and Christian mother, in her closet with a flashlight after bedtime.
“I’m reading in there, devouring her book, learning about boys, learning about breasts, learning about brassieres, learning about religion, about identity, about growing up in the United States — learning about all of that,” she said.
Kauder isn’t alone. Blume’s 29 books, which have sold over 90 million copies and been translated into 39 languages, have been touchstones for women — especially Jewish American women — for multiple generations. Her protagonists deal with a range of teen issues, from bullying to sex to loneliness to menstruation, in a realistic way, but they also grapple with issues of Jewish identity as they come of age, adding an extra layer of relevance for young Jewish readers.
Blume is having a moment with the recent release of a documentary about her life and career streaming on Amazon Prime titled “Judy Blume Forever” and a major on-screen adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” which debuted on Friday to warm reviews. The topics Blume has written about since 1969 have remained relevant: her books still regularly land on banned book lists as states continually debate what young readers should be able to access. (Several of her books were banned in states including Texas, Florida, Utah and Pennsylvania last year.) She regularly speaks out on the dangers of book banning, which she attributes to fear, explaining that “because fear is contagious, some parents are easily swayed.”
The documentary tells the story of Blume’s life and career, beginning with her secular Jewish upbringing in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Born in 1938, Blume was seven when World War II ended, and she describes a nervous childhood in the film. Her mother reassured her that the war happened far away and that they were safe.
“Did I believe that?” Blume asks in the film. “I don’t know. I was a Jewish girl and this happened because you were a Jew. I was an anxious child.”
She also connects her childhood anxiety to her prolific imagination: “I felt adults kept secrets from the kids. I hated those secrets. I think I had to make up what those secrets were. That fueled my imagination.”
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” centers on an 11-year-old who moves to a new town with her parents and has intimate conversations with God. Margaret longs to feel normal, to start growing breasts and get her period along with her friends. She also struggles with her religious identity; her mother is Christian and her father is Jewish, and neither set of grandparents approved of the union. Margaret sets out on a quest to learn about and pick a religion, all the while wondering why she only feels God’s presence when she’s alone.
Rachel McAdams and Abby Ryder Forstson in the film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” (Lionsgate)
During the war, Kauder’s mother had “survived in France as a hidden child, [hidden] by the nuns in a Roman Catholic environment.” Subsequently, growing up, Kauder “didn’t have a Jewish or a religious or a spiritual influence at all.” She identified with Margaret.
“Here comes Judy Blume’s book, which for different reasons has a Jewish and a Catholic influence, but she’s trying to figure it out,” Kauder said.
To Jessye Ejdelman, a 31-year-old software engineer who attends a Modern Orthodox synagogue in New York City and is raising her children in a Yiddish immersive household, the book is also a strong expression of American Jewishness: of “not being sure where you fit as a Jew and not being sure where God fits as a Jew and as an American.”
To Edjelman, the Margaret character demonstrated something meaningful about the Jewish relationship to God. “The literal wrestling with God in a way is very like Jacob. I think of Judy Blume when I think of that, like that wrestling with God, that uncertainty.”
But the book’s relevance in her teenage years went beyond religion.
“[Like in] ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,’ I was also a girl who was waiting for my first period to come,” she said. “I remember pretending to have my period and I really related to Margaret as a character because of that… Like I was just waiting to not be awkward or weird or ugly or a child… Many, many women relate to that feeling.”
In the 1970s, after her writing career and the women’s liberation movement took off, Blume decided to leave the suburbs and her first marriage. “I wanted to see the world. I wanted to travel everywhere,” she explains in the film.
After her divorce, her books became more explicitly drawn from her own life. In 1977, Blume wrote what she calls her “most autobiographical novel,” the book “Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself,” about her post-war Jewish childhood. It includes a scene where the young characters grapple with their fear of the Nazis by playing make-believe.
Elisa Zuritsky, 53, a TV writer and producer behind shows like “Sex and the City,” “Odd Mom Out” and “Smash,” remembers watching “The Brady Bunch” on TV in the early 1970s — a time when Jewish themes were far less common on screen — and hoping they might include a Jewish moment or character.
“I started reading Judy Blume books and the thrill that there were any Jewish characters in her books and heroines and narrators of her stories was monumental, I think, for me,” said Zuritsky, who grew up attending Jewish day school in Philadelphia. “I so rarely saw Jews anywhere in the popular culture that I consumed.”
Rereading the books as an adult, Zuritsky said, “what struck me the most, and what I think I was responding to as a kid, was how unadorned and unapologetically honest she let her narrators be.” She aspired to be just as honest in her own writing about women’s life experiences.
“There’s a direct line between reading Judy Blume books and being an adult writing for ‘Sex and the City.’ It’s pulling from the same well,” she said. “The bar was set for me personally by [Judy Blume].”
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Ro Khanna distances himself after posting documentary clip featuring antisemitic influencer
California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna came under fire Thursday after he shared a documentary clip featuring comments by antisemitic influencer Ian Carroll.
The documentary, titled “Investigating Israeli Influence on US Politics” and made by the popular YouTuber Tommy G, takes aim at AIPAC and what it says is Israel’s influence over American policy. Khanna appears in the documentary as an example of a Democratic lawmaker who rejects the pro-Israel lobby.
The documentary features a wide range of voices, including Republican lawmakers and an IDF reservist who offer a pro-Israel perspective; a doctor who volunteered in Gaza; and Medea Benjamin, the founder of the anti-war group Code Pink.
It has also drawn criticism for favorably citing Carroll, a conspiracy theorist who claims that a “modern Jewish mafia” controls America, that Israel was behind 9/11 and that Israel conspired to kill conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. Speaking to podcaster Joe Rogan earlier this year, Carroll said Israel was founded by the “the Jewish mob” and that sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was “a Jewish organization of Jewish people working on behalf of Israel and other groups.”
“Ian Carroll is one of the internet’s top conspiracy analysts,” Tommy G says in the documentary. “His critics label him an antisemite spreading false information about Israel, but to others, he is a fearless journalist that speaks on what some perceive as an extremely strong Zionist pressure on our government.”
Khanna posted a clip of the documentary on Thursday to make the point that he has not accepted money from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. In the clip, Carroll claims that “93 out of 100 U.S. senators were taking money from a group that represents a foreign government and foreign interests in order to operate our government on behalf of someone else,” referring to AIPAC and Israel.
In the clip, Khanna later says that has not accepted any PAC or lobbyist contributions since entering Congress, adding that AIPAC’s stance was that “whatever Netanyahu does is right” and warning that those who disagree risk having the group “come after you.”
“I don’t take a dime from any PAC or lobbyist, including AIPAC,” wrote Khanna in the post on X. “I am proud to be one of the handful of Democrats standing up against Big Money.” He linked to an account of an organization called Track AIPAC that monitors the lobby’s donations.
Khanna soon drew criticism for appearing in the same production as Carroll and amplifying him. And hours later, he replied to his own post to distance himself from the conspiracy theorist.
“This was a documentary made by Tommy G who interviewed me. I did not speak to or meet Ian Carrol. I stand by my words and should be judged by them,” wrote Khanna.
Criticism resounded in the replies to Khanna’s post, with many commenters accusing the lawmaker of elevating Carroll’s antisemitic rhetoric on his platform.
“Stand by your words all you want. No one made you post a video where a Nazi talks favorably about you,” wrote one user on X. “In saner times, this would have [been] a career ending move. You are such a clown to defend it.”
Khanna, whose parents were from India and who was first elected in 2016, has long been one of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress, including over its operations in Gaza. He led an effort last month to push President Donald Trump to recognize Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly.
“Who says we’re going to starve the people so much that they suffer that we’re going to force the surrender? It’s sick,” said Khanna later in the documentary interview. “And your tax dollars, my tax dollars are funding them because both Biden and Trump gave Netanyahu a blank check.”
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Singer James Maslow Expresses Solidarity With Israel in New Song ‘On My Mind’
James Maslow in front of the Dizengoff Fountain in Tel Aviv in the music video for “On My Mind.” Photo: YouTube screenshot
Actor and singer James Maslow recently released a single in collaboration with Israeli artists that celebrates Israel and showcases his solidarity with the Jewish state amid its war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
The Jewish artist, who is famously known for his leading role in the Nickelodeon series “Big Time Rush” and as a member of the platinum-selling band of the same name, released on Oct. 3 a track titled “On My Mind,” featuring Shahar Saul, one of Israel’s up and coming rappers, and Israeli vocalist Maya Dadon. “On My Mind” combines “international pop with Middle Eastern influences, reflecting the diversity and vibrancy of Israel itself,” according to a media release about the single.
The music video for the song was filmed in Israel during the Gaza war and is “both a visual love letter to the country and a reminder of the resilience of its people.” The video was made in partnership with Birthright Israel Foundation.
“‘On My Mind’ is about connection, resilience, and remembering those who cannot be forgotten,” Maslow said in a released statement. “Filming in Israel, during such a difficult time, was my way of showing solidarity with a country and people I deeply respect. Working with two incredible Israeli artists made the project even more meaningful.”
During an interview Monday on “CUOMO,” Maslow said the song celebrates Israel’s “diversity, the acceptance, and all the things that I know to be true about it.”
“I have been over there shooting the video to utilize this as hopefully a bridge to bring a bit of a better light to Israel, to Judaism, and hopefully start a conversation where people may realize, ‘Oh, wait a second, I may not have all the facts or I might be being misled right now,’” he added.
“We have normalized antisemitism to the likes of which I never thought that I would see in my life,” Maslow said. “That’s not OK. And that’s why I created this song. And that’s why I’m here today and why I’m standing up.”
Maslow timed the release of “On My Mind” to have it debut mere days before the second anniversary of the deadly Hamas terrorist attack that took place in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Maslow traveled to Washington, DC, to join commemorations for the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre.
“On My Mind” is streaming on all major platforms. Watch the music video below.
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Israel Declares Hamas Defeated ‘Every Place We Fought Them’ as Ceasefire Begins
An Israeli military tank prepares to move atop a truck, after US President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, Oct. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Hamas is no longer the terrorist group whose invasion of Israel triggered the two-year war in Gaza, the Israeli military spokesperson said on Friday at the start of a ceasefire with the Palestinian Islamist organization.
“Hamas is not the Hamas of two years ago. Hamas has been defeated every place we fought them,” Brigadier General Effie Defrin, the military spokesperson, told reporters at a briefing.
He urged Palestinian residents of Gaza to avoid entering areas under control by the Israel Defense Forces in the enclave.
“I am calling from here on the residents of Gaza to avoid entering areas under IDF control. Keep to the agreement and ensure your safety,” he said.
Thousands of displaced Palestinians began flocking towards their abandoned homes after a US-brokered ceasefire took effect on Friday and Israeli troops began pulling back from parts of Gaza.