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Our greatest folksinger wrote about America, Dust Bowl refugees and Jewish identity
Woody Guthrie is best known as one of the giants of 20th-century American folk music. From the late 1930s through the early 1950s, he wrote thousands of songs, many of which became modern-day standards, including “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh,” “I Ain’t Got No Home,” “Tom Joad,” “Hard Travelin’,” “Pastures of Plenty,” and, of course, “This Land Is Your Land.” His songs gave voice to working people and Dust Bowl refugees. He wrote playful children’s songs and songs that railed against fascism and greed. He even wrote a protest song called “Old Man Trump,” about developer Fred Trump, the father of the current president of the United States, decrying the strict racial segregation he enforced in his housing projects.
Guthrie’s influence on generations of singer-songwriters cannot be overstated. His songs have been recorded by hundreds of singers around the world, including Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Ani DiFranco, Lou Reed, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Lila Downs, and Susan McKeown. The desire to meet Woody Guthrie, who was his hero, is what led Robert Allen Zimmerman to hitchhike from Minneapolis to New York City, where he subsequently fell upon the thriving Greenwich Village folk scene and reinvented himself as a rootsy singer-songwriter named Bob Dylan. The latter’s eponymous first album included an original song entitled “Song to Woody.”
As Steven Pressman makes clear in his new documentary film, Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie, there was another side to Guthrie and his songs. As his son, Arlo Guthrie, explains in the film: “My father studied Judaism and he knew something about it. He never exchanged his faith for something else; he added to his faith. And that something else he added … was a Jewish identity. He understood what that meant traditionally, historically, culturally. And he knew more about Judaism than my zeyde. And so, my bubbe was thrilled.”
It just so happens that Arlo’s bubbe — his grandmother — was acclaimed Yiddish poet and lyricist Aliza Greenblatt. When Guthrie married Aliza’s daughter, Marjorie Mazia (née Greenblatt), the two chose to raise their children in Coney Island, and Marjorie’s parents, Aliza and Isadore Greenblatt, moved from Philadelphia to be close to their expanding brood. And it was primarily through his close relationship with his mother-in-law that Guthrie became knowledgeable about and enamored of Jewish history and culture. Says Arlo, “My father saw something inside the Jewish tradition that inspired him.”
Pressman’s documentary traces the close links between Aliza Greenblatt and Woody Guthrie. “My father and my bubbe had a respect for each other as writers, as thinkers, as people of the heart,” says Arlo. Arlo’s sister, Nora Guthrie, echoes her brother’s comments: “Bubbe would share ideas and lyrics with Woody. So, they were able to form a relationship.” Nora’s daughter, Anna Canoni — seen in the film at the Guthrie family plot in a cemetery in Woody’s hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma — elaborates on the special relationship between her grandfather and great-grandmother: “Aliza and Woody were actually interestingly similar in terms of a hardship and displacement that happens at a young age. There were so many interesting parallels between the two of them, which is why there was so much understanding, empathy and love between the two of them.”
While Aliza Greenblatt took to Woody right away, her husband Isadore was not thrilled about his daughter marrying a Gentile. He did, however, give Guthrie a gift of a Hebrew-English version of the rabbinical text called Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers). In the film, Nora Guthrie displays the book, which is filled with Woody’s notes and annotations — even drawings. Woody provided the cover illustration for one of Aliza’s poetry volumes.
The film includes interviews with dozens of people who either knew Woody Guthrie and Aliza Greenblatt or who became familiar with their story. Among them are Guthrie biographer Will Kaufman, who has written three books about the folksinger. Kaufman suggests that Woody and Aliza bonded over being artists and socialists. “[Woody] would have seen in Aliza and Isadore kindred spirits politically,” says Kaufman. “[As refugees], Woody would have seen in them a real fellowship with the Dust Bowl refugees that he had been championing….”
A who’s who of contemporary Yiddish musicians, including vocalist Eleanor Reissa, singer-songwriter Daniel Kahn, and Lorin Sklamberg, cofounder and lead vocalist of the Klezmatics, are among those who pay tribute to them and are heard performing Guthrie and Greenblatt songs. Kahn says, “[Woody] was a staunch anti-Nazi, which makes him Jewish in the most important ways to me.” When the U.S. became involved in the Second World War, Guthrie signed on with the Merchant Marine, and he was overseas for nearly two years. What he experienced there found its way into songs like “You Fascists Bound to Lose,” “Mister Hitler,” and “Ilsa Koch,” about the so-called beast of Buchenwald. In it he sang,
I’m here in Buchenwald.
My number’s on my skin….
The guards have shot a man.
Some more have starved to death.
Here comes the prisoner’s car.
They dump them in the pen.
They load them down the chute.
The trooper cracks their skulls.
He steals their teeth of gold.
He shoves them on the belt.
He swings that furnace door.
He slides their corpses in.
I see the chimney smoke.
I see their ashes hauled.
I see their bones in piles.
Lamp shades are made from skins.
Old Ilsy Koch was jailed.
Old Ilsy Koch went free.
The song was brought to life when Nora Guthrie, president of the Woody Guthrie Foundation, gave the Klezmatics a sheaf of lyrics with Jewish themes that Guthrie never put to music or recorded. The modern klezmer group released two albums worth of these songs in 2006, including “Wonder Wheel,” which garnered the group a Grammy Award, the only klezmer group ever to have received such honor. The album also included their version of the song “Mermaid’s Avenue,” a tribute to the very Jewish Coney Island neighborhood where the Guthries lived. The song even includes the Yiddish word meydele:
Mermaid Avenue that’s the street
Where the lox and bagels meet…
Where the prettiest of the meydeles
Leave their legprints in that sand….
Where the smokefish meets the pretzel
Where the borscht sounds like the seas….
The film also recounts the relationship between Guthrie and Moses “Moe” Asch, a Jewish-Polish immigrant whose father was Sholem Asch, the great Yiddish novelist and playwright. Moe Asch had a recording studio and record label based in New York City. In addition to recording and releasing many Guthrie songs, Asch encouraged Guthrie’s Jewish education and helped steer him to write songs with Jewish content, such as “The Many and the Few,” which retold the story of the Jews. The song was “basically the entire story of Hanukkah set up as an Appalachian ballad,” says Lorin Sklamberg, who recorded it with the Klezmatics on their album “Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah.”
Woody Guthrie died in 1967. His ashes were scattered at the beach in Coney Island. “For a guy from Oklahoma, that was pretty unique,” says Arlo Guthrie. Aliza Greenblatt died in 1975 at the age of 87. With Pressman’s Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie, their common legacy is now cemented for all time.
Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie will screen at the Nashville Jewish Film Festival (Aug. 18), Circle Cinema in Tulsa (Aug. 20) and the Yiddish Book Center — where Marjorie Mazia Guthrie was a board member — in Amherst, Mass., on Sept. 27.
The post Our greatest folksinger wrote about America, Dust Bowl refugees and Jewish identity appeared first on The Forward.
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Palestinian-American to challenge John Fetterman for Senate seat in 2028
(JTA) — Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian-American writer who has worked with anti-Zionists, is the first Democrat to challenge Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman in the 2028 primary.
Fetterman, who has faced sharp criticism from within the Democratic Party for his staunch support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, has yet to announce whether he plans to run in 2028. A defeat or retirement would remove one of the Democratic caucus’s most pro-Israel voices.
Moor, 42, enters the playing field with radically different positions on Israel, and on foreign policy in general, from those Fetterman has promoted. Claiming that the United States “funds wars based on corruption and lies and has turned its back on its own people,” Moor pledged on his campaign website to ensure “this never happens again.”
Moor, born in Gaza, moved as a child to Philadelphia, where he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard. He switched from finance to journalism, reporting in Beirut and Egypt for The Guardian and other outlets, and co-editing the book “After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine.” He also spent many years in Jordan, where he launched a peer-to-peer lending organization, before moving back to Philadelphia in 2021.
“A few years ago my birthplace was turned to rubble in a genocide funded by our tax dollars,” Moor stated, saying that this has occurred “with the support of politicians on both sides of the aisle who can’t find money for transit or removing asbestos from our schools.”
Moor, who has served on the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee, has never held public office. He says he is determined to address corruption, affordability, foreign policy and constitutional authority, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which first reported his candidacy.
Moor told the Inquirer that he was “not really running against Fetterman” but instead “running for the rule of law.” He acknowledged that he would face an “uphill battle” against Fetterman, who took office in January 2023.
Fetterman has irked some fellow Democrats by siding with Republicans on numerous issues, especially on Israel. He has also drawn praise from the pro-Israel community and Israel’s leadership. With Democrats securing a Senate majority of at least 54 seats, including two independents who caucus with the party, Democratic leadership will be less dependent on Fetterman’s vote when the new Congress convenes in January.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Palestinian-American to challenge John Fetterman for Senate seat in 2028 appeared first on The Forward.
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Northwestern launches civil rights investigation into club that banned pro-Israel group from its food festival
Northwestern University’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating a club that said it canceled its annual “Cultural Food Fest” after students objected to its initial inclusion of a pro-Israel student group.
Spoon University Northwestern, a student-run food magazine, wrote in an email to students that it was calling off its Nov. 6 food festival because of concerns about the participation of Wildcats for Israel, a club housed within Hillel that describes itself as focused on Israeli culture and society.
“There’s been a lot of disappointment expressed in and around Hillel today,” Michael Simon, executive director of Northwestern Hillel, told the Forward on Friday. “What should be an opportunity for connecting across differences and having really positive engagement got turned into a sort of political catfight.”
Students involved with Wildcats for Israel were initially “really excited” to participate in the fest, Simon said.
But amid student backlash, Spoon reversed course and disinvited Wildcats for Israel, Simon said. In a statement posted to Instagram, Spoon cited “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” to explain the group’s removal.
Yet even that exclusion was not enough for some student organizations. Northwestern’s Asian Pacific American Coalition; Alianza, the Latinx student alliance; and the Middle Eastern North African Student Association, issued a joint statement saying that they were withdrawing from the fest because of the original inclusion of Wildcats for Israel.
“A ‘culture’ born from the active land theft and genocide of Palestinians should not be recognized,” the student groups wrote on Instagram.
Spoon then cancelled the event altogether.
Now, Spoon’s status as an officially registered student organization has been frozen while the investigation into allegations of discrimination is being conducted, a Northwestern spokesperson wrote in an email to the Forward.
The investigation comes as Northwestern faces additional obligations to address and report allegations of antisemitism as part of its $75 million settlement with the Trump administration in November 2025. As part of the agreement, the university pledged that its Office of Civil Rights would publish annual reports with data about complaints of antisemitism, including investigative and disciplinary actions taken.
Spoon did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
In its email to students, Spoon said Wildcats for Israel was removed because of its status as “a political action group, not a cultural organization.”
Simon pushed back on that characterization of the club. “They’re not engaged in political advocacy or political work, certainly not in their current iteration,” Simon said. “They’re really focused on doing cultural and educational programming, connecting with Israel and with the Israeli people.”
The idea that Wildcats for Israel is considered political, while other student organizations opposing Israel are not, “appears to be a real double standard,” Simon said.
Still, Simon said the cancellation did not prevent Wildcats for Israel from having its own cultural food event — inviting students to the Hillel building on Friday to talk about what had happened over slushies in two flavors popular in Israel, limonana and iced cafe.
“They’re really turning to a place of being in community and supporting one another,” Simon said.
The post Northwestern launches civil rights investigation into club that banned pro-Israel group from its food festival appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s love affair with Trump may be over – with no other suitor in sight
Israelis were among the few groups outside America who genuinely liked Donald Trump, and they had persuaded themselves that the feeling was mutual. Now, as the American president pledges to terminate military assistance and blames Israel’s unpopularity for the Republicans’ electoral humiliation, they are confronting the possibility that their greatest supposed friend may become one of their gravest strategic liabilities.
In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey of 24 countries, 69% of Israelis expressed confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. Israelis saw a champion where much of the democratic world saw a menace.
Israelis, who tend to be more direct and plainspoken than other Western societies, were less inclined to be scandalized by Trump’s personal shortcomings. But mainly it was policy that made him so popular: Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and cultivated a conspicuously warm relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite his increasing toxicity around the world. Trump opposed Hamas and ultimately joined Israel in attacking the Iranian regime.
Still, warning signs were there – in the displays of U.S. dominance over decisions in the 2025 and 2026 Iran confrontations and in the Election Day announcement last week that Trump plans to terminate roughly $4 billion in annual military assistance to Israel this year.
The announcement threatened a cornerstone of Israeli security planning established under Barack Obama, whose administration negotiated a 10-year, $38 billion assistance agreement extending through 2028.
The precise legal and financial consequences remain uncertain, not least because Congress controls appropriations. But the political significance is unmistakable: The president whom Israelis regarded as their most dependable protector was proposing to dismantle an arrangement that even administrations regarded as unfriendly to Netanyahu had sustained.
Moreover, the aid is far more than a gift. Its greatest value is not financial but geopolitical: the unmistakable message to Israel’s enemies that Washington stands behind it.
As the dismal election results became clear, Vice President JD Vance highlighted a supposed demand among disaffected Republican voters to “change our relationship to Israel,” placing the alliance itself among the issues requiring political reassessment.
In Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview, Trump went further, identifying what he called a “great dislike” for Israel as one factor in the Republican electoral defeat.
Trump certainly has a point. A 2026 Pew survey found that 60% of Americans viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 42% in 2022, including 57% of Republicans under 50. Gallup found that, for the first time in its 25-year tracking, Americans were no longer more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians: 36% favored Israelis, compared with 41% for Palestinians. The longstanding bipartisan consensus is unraveling. Among younger Americans, the situation is even worse.
Whether the reason is a global propaganda campaign against Zionism, social media manipulation, Netanyahu and his noxious far-right allies, or Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank are almost beside the point – the collapse in Western and U.S. opinion is undeniable.
Trump also asserted that “those countries that we’ve protected” from Iran – meaning Israel – “wouldn’t exist” without the U.S. and “are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war,” which was another major surprise and mystery that caught Israelis off-guard.
Whether this implies a demand that Israel reimburse the United States, and for precisely what, remains unclear. What is clear is that Trump has begun discussing a relationship Israelis considered existential in the language of electoral liabilities and financial transactions.
Writing in Maariv on Monday, veteran Washington correspondent Shlomo Shamir reported that senior Washington commentators described Netanyahu as having become effectively persona non grata in Trump’s inner circle – and that Trump’s seeming affinity for Netanyahu was “more a media relationship than a genuine friendship.”
The change in atmosphere in Israel has been extraordinary.
On Monday, Israeli television seemed preoccupied with little beyond the coalition negotiations following Israel’s election and the growing fear that the country might lose its most important international relationship.
Appearing on Channel 13, I argued that another Netanyahu government would have faced economic sanctions from Europe and even serious discussion of an American weapons embargo. This provoked very little disagreement.
“Netanyahu put all his chips on Trump, and it’s falling apart,” observed anchor Daniel Zilberstein. “It wasn’t only him, but the entire system,” replied Omri Rolls, an expert in monitoring and countering anti-Israel propaganda. “We put all our attention on the United States. Europe, we’ve completely given up on. All over the world, important elements are simply not on Israel’s agenda.”
The alarm was loud and clear this week across the Israeli political and diplomatic establishment.
Tovah Herzl, a former Israeli diplomat who served in Washington as liaison to Congress, captured the predicament in the title of her article in Maariv: “Netanyahu Bet on Trump — and Israel Could Lose Far More Than Money.”
“Israelis are unaware of the depth of the hole into which the country has fallen,” wrote Yedidia Stern, a leading expert on Israel-U.S. relations, in Ynet. “The hourglass has been turned over: we have two years to regain the legitimacy that has been lost” before a Democrat potentially wins the White House.
Ashley Perry, a former senior Israeli government adviser, wrote in The Jerusalem Post that Israel must urgently start arguing its case – “consistently demonstrating what Americans gain” in intelligence cooperation, joint defense development, investment, trade and Israeli contributions to scientific and technological progress.
Beyond all that, there is a general understanding that Israel will need some real policy changes – for example, cracking down on Jewish extremists in the West Bank. And it will need to court the U.S. Democrats and the Europeans once more – as it did decades ago.
There is a grim lesson at play, and it has more to do with morality than ethics.
Israelis are people badly traumatized by the conflicts that implacable enemies have forced on them. Over the decades, however, they took some pride nonetheless in what they believed was a moral high ground. It’s safe to say this has eroded, at least somewhat.
In a reflection of that erosion, one of Trump’s greatest attractions to Israelis – sadly enough – was his indifference to Palestinian human rights, an issue that had long complicated Israel’s relations with more conventional Western leaders. Trump was clearly untroubled by the West Bank occupation, the expansion of settlements or the absence of a credible political horizon for millions of Palestinians. In February 2025, he even proposed removing Gaza’s Palestinian population in its entirety and placing the territory under American control, a scheme whose breathtaking implications seemed scarcely to concern him.
Many Israelis overlooked the dark aspects of such absurdities, seeing only evidence of exceptional friendship. They overlooked the possibility that a president so utterly uninterested in Palestinian rights might also prove indifferent to Israeli interests whenever they ceased to coincide with his own.
They celebrated his willingness to discard diplomatic conventions – or even basic human decency – when it worked in their favor. They are discovering now that sometimes cliches are true: What goes around comes around.
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