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Nathan Chavin, Jewish ad exec who wrote a raunchy country western hit, dies at 78
(JTA) — In a 30-plus-year career in advertising, Nathan Chavin wrote everything from signs on construction site scaffolding to classified ads to campaigns for several Trump properties, including Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.
But he was perhaps best known for the raunchy country music songs he wrote and recorded for a novelty album, “Country Porn,” released in 1976 by the nascent Penthouse Records label.
The album sold more than 100,000 copies, and included a minor hit, “Asshole from El Paso,” a parody of Merle Haggard’s 1969 song “Okie from Muskogee.” It was covered by Willie Nelson and Richard “Kinky” Friedman — Chavin’s old friend from the University of Texas — and Friedman’s band, The Texas Jewboys.
In the days before digital downloads and the internet, “Country Porn” was sold through the mail. The songs on the record had sexually explicit lyrics and, even 40 years before #MeToo, the record was criticized as puerile and misogynistic.
But for a brief moment it made Chavin a member of a tiny fraternity of popular Jewish country-and-western musicians, including Steve Goodman, Ray Benson and Friedman, his actual fraternity brother at UT.
“Chinga went way over the line, [saying things] that people didn’t think he should be saying,” Friedman said last week, using Chavin’s nickname. “Anything that was not suitable was perfect for Chinga.”
Chavin, also known as “Nick,” died in Boca Raton, Florida on March 15. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Brandi Chavin, who said the cause of death was uncertain but that many of his organs were failing. He was 78.
Chavin’s advertising career brought him into contact with some of New York City’s major real estate moguls. He became very close friends with Robert Durst, when he was still better known as the scion of the Durst real estate family rather than a convicted murderer. Durst hung around Chavin’s band when Chavin first came to New York, said Michael Bart, a bandmate who also worked with Chavin in the advertising industry. Bart attended the bris for Chavin’s son, at which Durst jokingly brandished a butcher’s knife.
“Durst thought that was hysterically funny,” recalled Bart.
Chavin and Durst started running around New York together in the early 1980s and, according to Rolling Stone, partied at the Plato’s Retreat sex club and the Mudd Club, the seminal punk rock venue. In a deposition given a year before Durst’s murder trial in 2020, Chavin told the court that Durst had confessed to killing their mutual friend, Susan Berman, the crime for which Durst would be convicted. And Chavin said that before she died, Berman told him that Durst had admitted killing his wife.
Chavin was born in Chicago on July 3, 1944. His parents, Muriel and Irving Chavin, moved to El Paso when Chavin was in the eighth grade.
Chavin took the nickname Chinga because he liked the alliteration and, no doubt, because it was Spanish slang for the act of sexual intercourse.
As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, Chavin was thrown out of Tau Delta Phi, one of four Jewish fraternities at the university at the time, according to Friedman. Friedman proudly recalled that during their time as members the fraternity they tried to admit African-American students, an effort that was ultimately thwarted. Chavin and Friedman graduated in 1966.
Chavin moved to California where he earned a graduate degree in creative writing at San Francisco State College. He lived in the Haight Ashbury district during the Summer of Love in 1967.
“Every other word out of his mouth was, ‘Far out man,’” recalled Ken “Snakebite” Jacobs, another Tau Delta Phi fraternity brother who ended up playing in Chavin’s “Country Porn” band.
Bart, who said he worked for Chavin for “eight or nine years,” remembers that Chavin had a flair for one-liners.
“He just had this ability to come up with great stuff on the spot,” said Bart. “He came up with a lot of it in crosstown cab rides and told our clients it took six months to create.”
His daughter Brandi said Chavin was quite proud of a slogan he thought up for a new shopping center on Sixth Avenue, now known as the Manhattan Mall: “Something’s Coming Between Macy’s and Gimbels.” The mall is located between Macy’s at Herald Square and the building that once housed Gimbels department store.
And he could write poetry.
“He wrote pretty good poetry in college,” said Friedman, reached at his ranch in Texas. “Might have been some of his best work.”
But for many of his friends, Chavin’s finest hour was that parody, “Asshole From El Paso,” which he co-wrote with Jacobs when they were living in Marin County, north of San Francisco. Haggard’s hit criticized the counterculture and anti-Vietnam War protests; Chavin’s version mocked its reactionary narrator.
“We wrote the song in the car coming back from a recording session,” Jacobs recalled. “We were in hysterics.”
Larry “Ratso” Sloman, a friend of both Chavin and Friedman, said, “Chinga was always dying to get up on stage. That was his first love. He was never able to parlay it into a [performance] career, though.”
But Chavin often did have a ball sitting in with Friedman and his band when they came to New York and played the old Lone Star Café in Greenwich Village or B.B. King’s in Times Square.
Friedman said of his Jewish frat brother: “He’s a guy who had a lot to offer. He really walked his own road.”
Chavin is survived by his wife Teresa Weldon, his sons Maxfield and Drew, his daughter Brandi and his first wife, Marsha Parker.
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Nearly Half of Jewish Students Report Experiencing Antisemitism on US College Campuses, Survey Finds
A student puts on their anti-Israel graduation cap reading “From the river to the sea” at the People’s Graduation, hosted for Mahmoud Khalil and other students from New York University. Photo: Angelina Katsanis via Reuters Connect
The campus antisemitism crisis has changed the college experience for American Jewish students, affecting how they live, socialize, and perceive themselves as Jews, according to new survey results released by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety.
The survey also found that 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism.
Meanwhile, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
“No Jewish student should have to hide their identity out of fear of antisemitism, yet that’s the reality for too many students today,” Hillel International chief executive officer Adam Lehman said in a statement on Tuesday. “Our work on the ground every day is focused on changing that reality by creating environments where all Jewish students can find welcoming communities and can fully and proudly express their Jewish identities without fear or concern.”
The survey, included in AJC’s new “The State of Antisemitism in America” report, added that 32 percent of Jewish students feel that campus groups promote antisemitism or a learning environment that is hostile to Jews, while 25 percent said that antisemitism was the basis of their being “excluded from a group or an event on campus.”
Jewish students endure these indignities while preserving their overwhelming support for Israel. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed identified caring about Israel as a central component of Jewish identity and 76 percent agreed that calling for its destruction or describing it as an illegitimate state is antisemitic.
“While we welcome the fact that the vast majority of campuses have not been disrupted by uncontrolled protests in the past year, the data make clear that Jewish students are still experiencing antisemitism on their campuses,” Laura Shaw Frank, the AJC’s vice president of its Center for Education Advocacy, said in a statement. “This survey gives us a critical look into the less visible, but no less important problems, that Jews face on campus.”
She continued, “Understanding the ways in which Jews are being excluded and changing their behavior out of fear of antisemitism is vitally important as we work with institutions of higher education to create truly inclusive campus communities.”
The AJC and Hillel’s survey results are consistent with others in which Jewish students have participated in recent months.
According, to a recent survey of Jewish undergraduates of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), a significant portion of Jewish students still find the climate on campus to be hostile and feel the need to hide their identity over two years after the campus saw an explosion of extreme anti-Zionist activity and Nazi graffiti.
The survey, conducted by Penn’s local Hillel International chapter, found that 40 percent of respondents said it is difficult to be Jewish at Penn and 45 percent said they “feel uncomfortable or intimidated because of their Jewish identity or relationship with Israel.”
Meanwhile, the results showed a staggering 85 percent of survey participants reported hearing about, witnessing, or experiencing “something antisemitic,” as reported by Franklin’s Forum, an alumni-led online outlet which posts newsletters regarding developments at the university. Another 31 percent of Jewish Penn students said they feel the need to hide their Jewishness to avoid discrimination, which is sometimes present in the classroom, as 26 percent of respondents said they have “experienced antisemitic or anti-Israel comments from professors.”
Overall, 80 percent of Jewish students hold that anti-Israel activity is “often” antisemitic and that Israel’s conduct in war is “held to an unfair standard compared to other nations.”
College faculty play an outsized role in promoting antisemitism on the campus, according to a new study by AMCHA Initiative which focused on the University of California system. The study, titled “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California,” exposed Oct 7 denialism; faculty calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; the founding of pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups; and hundreds of endorsers of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The University of California system is a microcosm of faculty antisemitism across the US, the AMCHA Initiative explained in the exhaustive 158-page report, which focused on the Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz campuses.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report stated. “It shows how those pathways are associated with recurring student harms and broader campus disruption. It then outlines concrete steps the UC Regents can take to restore institutional neutrality in academic units and set enforceable boundaries so UC resources and authority are not used to advance activist agendas inside the university’s core educational functions.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Forverts podcast, episode 6: At-risk languages
דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט שוין אַרויסגעלאָזט דעם זעקסטן קאַפּיטל פֿונעם ייִדישן פּאָדקאַסט, Yiddish With Rukhl. דאָס מאָל איז די טעמע „שפּראַכן אין אַ סכּנה“. אין דעם קאַפּיטל לייענט שׂרה־רחל שעכטער פֿאָר אַן אַרטיקל פֿונעם ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט דזשייק שנײַדער, „וואָס אַקטיוויסטן פֿאַר שפּראַכן אין אַ סכּנה קענען זיך אָפּלערנען איינער פֿונעם אַנדערן.“
צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
אויב איר ווילט אויך לייענען דעם געדרוקטן טעקסט פֿונעם אַרטיקל, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ און קוקט אונטן בײַם סוף פֿון דער זײַט.
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An audiobook narrator told Zionists to kill themselves. A popular romance novelist hired him anyway.
A bestselling romance novelist is facing backlash from her Jewish readers after hiring an audiobook narrator who previously posted on social media telling Zionists to kill themselves.
Abby Jimenez’s novel The Night We Met, set to be published next month, features voice actor Zachary Webber as the narrator of the audiobook.
“If you’re a Zionist and you exist, you should not do that anymore,” Webber posted on his Instagram story in September 2024. “No one likes you and you suck, and go f—cking kill yourself.”
Webber later apologized on Instagram, writing that his comment was “a poorly-worded joke aimed at a violent settler-colonialist enterprise. I regret any language that suggested otherwise. Fortunately, my anti-Zionist Jewish friends understood it was a joke, and moved on with their beautiful lives.” He did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
Webber, who has a low, gravelly voice and sums up his job as “I READ SEX,” has narrated more than 250 steamy audiobooks, including eight of Jimenez’s. But amid backlash over Webber’s social media comments, Jimenez originally said she would go in a different direction for the audio narration of The Night We Met, a novel about forbidden love between two best friends.
But earlier this month, Jimenez changed her mind.
“I know I mentioned that I was going with a male voice actor that I’ve never used before, but I’m going to be really honest with you — the fit wasn’t right,” Jimenez posted in her private readers Facebook group. “We did a day of recording and he just wasn’t Chris. All I could think the whole time was how perfectly Zachary would have captured the tone and personality of this character and at the end of recording Day One, I made the choice to change narrators.”
Several readers commented in the Facebook group expressing concern about Webber. But those comments were removed, with Jimenez citing group rules against “political or negative conversations.” She added that she did not “want to be forced to leave to protect my mental health. I cannot go to a comment section to see vitriol, even if it’s vitriol I happen to agree with.”
Neither Jimenez’s literary agent nor Hachette Book Group, the publisher of The Night We Met, responded to the Forward’s request for comment.
The backlash among Jimenez’s readers represents the latest flare-up over Israel in progressive-coded subcultures, from knitting circles to vegan cooking. The romance publishing world, consistently the top-grossing genre in adult fiction, has not been immune: Other recent flashpoints have included boycotts of authors labeled “Zionist” and the decision by SteamyLitCon, a romance book convention, to remove Israeli-born author Michelle Mars from its lineup last year over social media posts organizers said were “anti-Palestinian.”
“It just made me really sad about the state of the industry,” said Chayla Wolfberg, a Jewish author and former fan of Jimenez’s books. “There’s a lot of obviously very complicated things when it comes to engaging with criticism of Israel. And what [Webber] was doing wasn’t that.”
Happily ever after?
Romance publishing has spent the past few decades broadening its vision of who gets a love story — elevating LGBTQ+ narratives, highlighting authors and characters of color, and celebrating diverse body types. But some Jewish writers and readers say they have been excluded from that push.
The lack of Jewish representation in romance was part of what inspired 27-year-old Wolfberg to self-publish Late Night Love, a Saturday Night Live-inspired enemies-to-lovers rom-com featuring a Jewish protagonist. Too often, Wolfberg said, Jewish characters only appear in stories defined by trauma and suffering.
Romance, by contrast, is governed by two nonnegotiable rules: The story must center on a developing romantic relationship, and the conclusion must be emotionally satisfying — the genre’s trademark “happily ever after” (HEA), or at least “happy for now” (HFN). When it comes to Jewish storytelling, Wolfberg said, that structure can feel subversive.
But Wolfberg didn’t feel accepted by the broader romance book community. When she promoted her work online, viewers commented that she was a Zionist and thus shouldn’t support her book.
“It is a radical thing, especially if you are from a historically oppressed or a minority community, to be writing a story that has a happy ending and isn’t just about suffering,” Wolfberg said. “But I think that is where anti-Zionism unfortunately creeps in, in the way that it has become part of the lexicon for people who are anti-oppression.”
Wolfberg has instead found support mostly among other Jewish authors. She said her next book will feature a character who has family in Israel — even though she’s aware that aspect could make it a tough sell.
Meanwhile, popular romance authors whose books have nothing to do with Judaism or Israel have also been targeted.
In a 2015 interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Sarah J. Maas, author of the massively popular A Court of Thorns and Roses series, mentioned going on a Birthright trip to Israel. Maas said she “left Israel overflowing with pride,” and described the country as “a magical, welcoming place.” Nearly a decade later, those comments landed her on the X account Zionists in Publishing, which points out Zionist authors to boycott.
Rebecca Yarros, author of the bestselling romantasy series Empyrean, appeared on a similar account that exposes Zionist authors. Her offense? Posting on Oct. 15, 2023, that “children are not collateral damage” and that she was “horrified by the despicable attack on Israel” and “terrified for the children and Palestinian innocents in Gaza.”
The extent to which those blacklists actually impact sales is unclear; both Yarros and Maas have sold millions of copies.
But it’s still a dynamic Jewish romance enthusiasts would prefer to avoid. In response, they’ve carved out their own spaces: Author Jean Meltzer, who writes Jewish rom-coms such as The Matzah Ball and Kissing Kosher, runs a Facebook group called “Jewish Women Talk About Romance Books,” which has 3,300 members. There, women discuss books they read as part of the The Jewish Joy Book Club, which has one rule: “We read books where nobody dies at the end.”
The need for a Jewish space in the romance genre was also evident to Gillian Geller, a 35-year–old in Toronto, Canada, who used to run a book blog focused on all kinds of novels, with a focus on romance. But after Oct. 7, she shifted to spotlighting Jewish books.
For her, Jimenez’s decision to rehire Webber is another example of how Jewish authors and readers have been excluded from a genre that is otherwise increasingly sensitive to inclusion.
“I felt like if I wasn’t stepping up to help promote these books,” she said, “then nobody else would.”
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