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Just in time for Hanukkah, an irreverent Jewish adaptation of ‘A Christmas Carol’ debuts on stage
(New York Jewish Week) — A selfish social media influencer, an all-knowing, benevolent ghost known as “Harry the Hanukkah Fairy” and “Tiny Tim” Cratchet, the good-natured ill child from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” may seem like they all come from different worlds, but each appears as a character in “A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT TRIP! The Musical” — a show its creators hope will become a winter tradition for years to come.
For co-creators Harrison Bryan, Rob Berliner and Aaron Kenny, the lighthearted “A Hanukkah Carol” is their answer to inundation of Christmas material and cheer throughout December.
“There is a plethora of Christmas entertainment options that we get every holiday season, especially in New York City,” said Jewish actor and playwright Bryan, a native of Brooklyn. “For me, growing up, there was a sense that Hanukkah is the second-place holiday.”
His new musical, however, “feels like this is an opportunity to join the party in a way that feels authentic,” he said. “It’s just allowing the season to feel more inclusive in a city that prides itself on being a melting pot.”
The plot of “A Hanukkah Carol” centers around Chava Kanipshin, a cruel and manipulative social media influencer who hides her Jewish identity because she was bullied as a child. But on one memorable Hanukkah, Chava is visited by spirits of the past, present and future to reckon with her life’s work — namely, her pursuit of internet fame by posting mean and embarrassing videos of her friends and family — before it is too late.
It’s a very obvious Jewish take on Dickens’ 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol” — which has already been adapted into various plays, movies and more in what feels like a thousand times over. (Did anyone else suffer through the 2009 Matthew McConaughey flick “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”?) But to remake this classic in a Jewish way feels refreshing, adding new depth by exploring themes of Jewish pride, tradition, family and tikkun olam. After all, what is “A Christmas Carol” if not a guilt trip (or, erm, a “gelt trip”) — that stereotypical purview of Jewish mothers everywhere?
Bryan claims the show is “authentically Jewish, but not exclusively,” meaning he and partners want their version of “A Christmas Carol” to be something Jews can participate in and love for themselves. At the same time, however, due to the musical’s inclusive and heartwarming holiday message, it can be appreciated by anyone.
“There’s no Hanukkah classic yet — there’s not a Hanukkah film or show that people go to see as a matter of tradition,” lyricist Berliner told the New York Jewish Week. “We have the opportunity to take our decades of Jewish life and pop culture and comedic sensibilities and love of musical theater and sense of what’s commercial and merge it all together and see how we could present something that even non-Jewish friends would love.”
Perhaps unexpectedly, the show is rife with references to “Fiddler on the Roof,” both implicitly and explicitly. For example, main character Chava, the Scrooge-like social media maven, has nearly lost her parents’ goodwill due to continually blowing them off for holidays and acting superior to them. When Chava has a visit from the ghost of Hanukkah future, she hears her father say: “She’s dead to us.” This, of course, is a callback to “Fiddler,” when protagonist Tevye says something similar when his third daughter — also named Chava — marries a non-Jew.
The creators of “A Hanukkah Carol” see their musical as “in conversation” with the classic Jewish musical. “There are no smartphones in Anatevka, but exploring what it means to be Jewish — both in a contemporary moment and looking backwards and forwards — is a core part of ‘Fiddler,’” Berliner said. “It asks, ‘what is tradition and how can we change with the times?’ Oddly, the framework of ‘A Christmas Carol’ is perfectly aligned with that.”
Bryan, for his part, describes “A Hanukkah Carol” as “Dickens meets ‘Fiddler’ meets Mel Brooks.”
The show, which had an “industry reading” at a Midtown rehearsal studio on Tuesday, has been a long time coming — the trio has been working on it since 2018, all while juggling day jobs and navigating a hiatus during the worst months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Kenny, a composer, and Berliner, a lyricist, met as songwriters through the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, which is considered a “top training ground” for up-and-coming theater artists. The two loved working together, and wanted to find a playwright to collaborate with. Kenny, an Australian — whom the group calls their “token goy” — reached out to Bryan, whom he had worked with on his masters thesis film at NYU. Bryan immediately sent over 20 short plays he had written — “A Hanukkah Carol” rose to the top.
Berliner, who is Jewish and grew up in Westchester, was sold immediately on Byran’s “A Hanukkah Carol” script. “The reaction that I had is the reaction that we’ve experienced a lot of folks have when we tell them the title of our show, which is, ‘how does this not exist yet?’” he said. “I would have been drawn to it at any point in my life. I certainly was in this moment.”
After working together on the script and songs, the trio put out an animated “proof of concept” trailer in early 2022. When they saw how much interest the trailer garnered, they opened up a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $33,000 in a month — which will allow them to stage a one-night-only performance at The Green Room 42 (570 10th Ave.) on Sunday, Dec. 18, the first night of Hanukkah. The concert will also be livestreamed.
Meanwhile, Bryan, Berliner and Kenny are in the process of searching for a producer — whether that be for Broadway, off-Broadway or an animated or live-action movie. During the Dec. 6 reading at Ripley-Grier Studios, where an all-Jewish cohort of eight Broadway actors played the more than 80 parts in the show, steady laughter throughout and a standing ovation at the end felt like finally seeing a dream come true.
“It felt amazing,” Bryan said about the first full run-through. “The sky’s the limit!”
“A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT TRIP! The Musical” will be performed at The Green Room 42, 570 10th Ave., on Sunday, Dec. 18. Livestream also available. Tickets from $15.
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The post Just in time for Hanukkah, an irreverent Jewish adaptation of ‘A Christmas Carol’ debuts on stage appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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As Trump betrays Ukraine, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Munich
In Munich on Sept. 30, 1938, the leaders of Britain and France signed an agreement with Adolf Hitler that caved to the Nazi leader’s demand that Germany be given a chunk of Czechoslovakia. Five months later, Hitler ordered the German military to forcibly take the remainder of the neighboring country.
On Oct. 9, 2026, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin struck a deal allowing Russia to sell diesel fuel to global markets, most importantly to the US. Then Trump waived a package of sanctions on Russia that had been passed by Congress. By replenishing Russia’s war coffers, it is likely more Ukrainians will die because of these twin gifts from America’s president to the warmongering Russian autocrat.
Why is Trump doing this? He seems to be hoping the diesel deal will help him avert disaster in the upcoming midterms. Or maybe there’s more to it than that. Perhaps Trump seriously thinks that this will get him the Nobel Peace Prize by ending the war in Ukraine through helping Putin win it. Perhaps it’s one more scheme to further enrich himself and his family. Or maybe Putin really does have something on Trump.
In any event, it feels like Munich all over again.
There are some remarkable parallels between Czechoslovakia’s predicament in 1938 and Ukraine’s nine decades later: separatists in two vulnerable Central European democracies were encouraged and supported by a neighboring authoritarian regime that sought to seize adjacent territory under the pretext of protecting a minority from oppression.
And at the center of both narratives is betrayal: of Czechoslovakia by Britain and France, and Ukraine by Trump.
In the spring and summer of 1938, Konrad Henlein, leader of the Nazi-allied Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia, held secret meetings with Hitler and other Nazi officials. They concocted a plan: Cause so much disorder in the Sudetenland that the Czech government would declare martial law, thus creating an excuse for German troops to march in to protect the ethnic German minority.
Tensions that had long existed along the Czech frontier erupted into gunfire and death in the Sudeten town of Habersbirk on the morning of Sept. 13, 1938. A mob of German separatists hung a swastika banner from a church tower, stormed the police station, kidnapped the wife of a cop, and engaged in gunfights with police officers that lasted hours. Four Czech police officers and four insurgents died. Outbreaks of violence, terror and torture raged along the border for days, backed by Freikorps paramilitary troops who crossed from Germany and by SA and SS men who took part in cross-border sabotage and armed attacks.
The uprising had the desired impact. Just 17 days later — on Sept. 30, 1938 — Britain, France, Italy and Nazi Germany signed the Munich Agreement, yielding to Hitler’s demand that the Sudetenland be ceded to him. After landing at an airport outside London, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved a document in his hand and jubilantly proclaimed:
“The settlement of the Czechoslovak problem which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.”
“I believe it is peace for our time,” Chamberlain said later that day.
But it didn’t take long for Hitler to show he could not be trusted. Hitler’s army marched into Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939. Germany’s invasion of Poland followed less than six months later, and by 1942 German forces controlled territory spanning from the Atlantic Ocean to deep inside the Soviet Union.
Ethnic Germans’ uprising in Czechoslovakia in 1938 found an echo nine decades later in Ukraine’s Donbas region, where unrest that began with pro-Russia protests in 2014 evolved into the war Russia has been waging on its neighbor for nearly five years.
In the spring of 2014, paramilitary units led by Russian intelligence officers stormed government office buildings in several towns and cities in Donbas, seizing weapons and clashing with police. In a scene reminiscent of the Habersbirk siege of 1938, on April 14, 2014, pro-Russian militants seized the police station in Horlivka, beat up the police chief, and murdered a member of the city council, whose body was found in a river. Similar clashes occurred throughout Donbas.
Two Kremlin-backed pseudo-states soon emerged: the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Russia funneled tanks, artillery, air defense systems and fighters into Donbas, fueling a war between separatists and Ukrainian forces that dragged on for years.
Like Hitler in the Sudetenland, Russia’s de facto occupation of Donbas was not enough for Vladimir Putin. His eyes were on all of Ukraine, and he spent years manufacturing pretexts for the full-scale invasion that began on Feb. 24, 2022.
Trump has been buttering up Putin for more than a decade, starting with his 2015 campaign for president, when he effusively praised the ruthless Russian autocrat’s leadership style. Putin is a “strong leader,” is “far more respected than our president,” meaning the immensely popular Barack Obama, and was someone he “would get along with very well,” Trump said back then.
Trump’s admiration for Putin took on ominous tones after becoming president. During a press conference after the two leaders’ 2018 Helsinki summit, Trump questioned intelligence findings on Russian election interference and said he believed Putin’s denial. “I don’t see any reason it would be Russia,” Trump told reporters, with the Russian strongman standing at his side.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, during Biden’s presidency, Trump called it “a pretty smart move,” praised Putin as a “genius,” and also said it wouldn’t have happened if Trump was still president, remarks that were amplified by Russian state media.
During Trump’s second term, his buddy-buddy relationship with Putin has turned into a virtual strategic alliance, as the American president repeatedly makes moves and statements that seem designed to please the Russian autocrat. There are Trump’s threats to abandon NATO, his humiliation of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during a February 2025 meeting inside the Oval Office, and most recently Trump’s demand that Ukraine cease its drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, his call for Zelensky’s ouster, and envoy Steve Witkoff thanking Putin for being a “humanitarian.”
Putin has proposed a summit between himself, Trump, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. It’s notable that Ukraine has not been invited. This is also what happened in Munich nine decades ago, when Czech delegates were excluded from the room, and others decided Czechoslovakia’s fate.
Last October, aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters the Donbas region should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands.
“Let it be cut the way it is,” he said. “They can negotiate something later on down the line.”
It seems the fate Trump envisions for Ukraine is similar to the one Hitler envisioned for Czechoslovakia. It would be naïve to think that Putin’s expansionist ambitions would stop there.
The post As Trump betrays Ukraine, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Munich appeared first on The Forward.
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A Chabad Jew was stabbed in NYC. He returned the next day to continue wrapping tefillin.
(JTA) — Less than 24 hours after he was stabbed in midtown Manhattan, Yosef, a Chabad-Lubavitch man from Crown Heights, was back on the same street where he’d been assaulted, popping into Diamond District businesses as usual to help employees wrap tefillin.
Yosef, 26, who did not share his last name to maintain his privacy, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was back on 47th Street on Thursday afternoon, the day after the stabbing, without missing a beat in his Monday-through-Thursday rounds even as police investigate the incident as a possible hate crime.
A number of the people he visited pieced together that the widely circulated footage of a man being stabbed the previous night was of him.
“They were in shock. They were obviously scared for me,” said Yosef, who has been wrapping tefillin and distributing Shabbat candles to Jewish Diamond District employees for about three years. He started that routine when his father, a Chabad Jew who works in the jewelry business, realized he needed his son’s help to handle the demand for those acts. Yosef told Chabad.org that he was “still shaken” by the attack a day later.
Still, he told JTA, “We can’t allow some hate to stop us.”
Yosef said he felt it was important to communicate that message because “we need more mitzvahs in the world, we need more light in the world.”
Yosef was taken to Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday evening around 6 p.m., where medical staff assessed that he had no internal bleeding and would not need stitches. No arrests have been made, but the assailant has been described as a woman in her 40s.
The attack has renewed concerns about security that have faced Chabad adherents and institutions, which often host public events and maintain a visible street presence. But the threat didn’t diminish their presence in midtown Manhattan on Friday.
Multiple Chabad men stood under a bright yellow tent on the sidewalk wrapping tefillin for a steady stream of workers in the heavily Jewish Diamond District.
“The Rebbe says that the way to defeat darkness is only through the addition of light,” said Shmuel Cohen, who was handing out small photographs of the movement’s late leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
Cohen told JTA that he had not heard about the attack that took place just down the block two days earlier, though his partner under the sidewalk tent had. Cohen said that the best way to respond is through “the observance of Torah and mitzvot without being ashamed of our Judaism but presenting it to everyone.”
Also on Friday, Chabad officials met with New York Police Department representatives for their annual meeting about security ahead of Chabad’s international conference in Crown Heights, the Brooklyn neighborhood where the movement is headquartered. The conference begins on Nov. 5.
Chabad has been targeted in multiple high-profile attacks in the past year, including the deadly Bondi Beach shooting in Australia in December. The following month, a man rammed a car into the doors of the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn, raising further questions over how the movement should balance its commitment to making its events accessible with security.
Meanwhile, Jews have been targeted in more than half of hate crimes committed in New York City in 2026, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
“Security is our top priority. Our goal is to provide an environment where every participant feels safe and can fully experience the purpose and spirit of the gathering,” said Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, a top organizer of the upcoming conference.
In the wake of the attack, Yosef said he is not concerned about going out in public as a visibly Jewish person and doesn’t plan to change how he approaches the world.
“I was wearing the same clothes on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday,” he said. “I didn’t change my routine.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A Chabad Jew was stabbed in NYC. He returned the next day to continue wrapping tefillin. appeared first on The Forward.
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They met on a Birthright trip then married. Now this American Israeli couple’s internet fame has turned to infamy.
Ethan and Hila Klein first met at Yad Vashem — Israel’s Holocaust museum — in 2007, a meet-cute they recounted, giggling, years later for their millions of YouTube followers.
“I think I went up to her and said something like, ‘They had it coming, don’t you think?’” said Ethan, known for his edgy humor and infamous internet trends, including Vape Nation and Papa Bless. “No I didn’t say that. I wonder if you would have laughed though.”
They were on a Birthright trip, Ethan an American and Hila an Israeli soldier on leave to join the group. Soon after the trip ended, Ethan moved to Israel to be with Hila, and the two began making videos under the name H3H3 Productions (the H for Hila and the 3 standing in as an E for Ethan). They married, moved to America, and started a popular podcast.
A Jewish love story, until Thursday, when Hila, now mother to their three children, accused Ethan publicly of having a months-long affair.
“The betrayal I feel is immeasurable,” Hila said in an Instagram post. “My only family on this side of the world. How do I even begin to make sense of this?”
Ethan reposted her statement.
Their podcast is run by a handful of crew members who often chime in and participate in various skits and bits. The crew also shared a statement saying they stand with Hila and refuse to work with Ethan, though they added they don’t know what this will mean for the future of the show.
A couple roiled by Oct. 7
The left-leaning, secular couple’s videos and podcasts focused primarily on pop culture, internet drama and general politics, not Jewish or Israeli issues.
Both Ethan and Hila would make statements sometimes when tensions in Israel flared, and they would occasionally speak out against IDF actions that upset them.
In 2021, Ethan started a podcast with political commenter Hasan Piker, a controversial left-wing influencer, called Leftovers, a nod to their leftist politics.
Then came Oct. 7.
Ethan, an American Israeli dual citizen like Hila, was horrified by the attacks but quick to call the IDF genocidal in the aftermath. In their first episode together after Oct. 7, Ethan and Piker said the show would continue through their disagreements. The episode was tense, and it was their last.
As Piker’s rhetoric on Israel intensified and became at times antisemitic, the two began a nasty internet feud, culminating in a nearly five-hour livestreamed debate.
Piker posted about the news of the affair on X, sharing a video of Ethan and expressing disgust for men who cheat.
“Now this is a high caliber man [with] good morals,” Piker said sarcastically. He also posted “Judge me by my enemies” after sharing Hila’s statement.
Hila, who owns a makeup and clothing company, increasingly came under scrutiny by Piker and others after Oct. 7 for her service in the IDF. Artists refused to work with her. One model she hired publicly disavowed her after finding out she was Israeli.
The couple was harassed, sometimes online, sometimes in-person, as they attempted to take what they viewed as a nuanced stance in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. The united front seemed to fortify their relationship, as Ethan, ever outspoken, routinely came to his wife’s defense.
Their show lost thousands of subscribers, but loyal fans stuck with them — fans who now say they are gutted and confused by the news of the affair. Many in disbelief noted that Ethan had Hila’s face tattooed on his arm less than two years ago as a surprise for her.
“The greatest thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother,” says the quote surrounding the tattoo.
The Forward attempted to contact the Kleins through their work emails and did not immediately hear back.
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