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‘Parade’ and ‘Leopoldstadt’ each nab 6 Tony nominations in a big year for Jewish Broadway
(JTA) — Shows about the Holocaust and a notorious American antisemitic incident picked up several Tony Award nominations Tuesday morning, as Broadway’s biggest honors made room for a sizable Jewish presence.
Most notably, a revival of the 1998 musical “Parade,” starring Ben Platt as the early-20th-century Jewish lynching victim Leo Frank, scored six nominations, including best revival of a musical and a best actor nod for Platt. Jewish lead actress Micaela Diamond also scored a nomination for playing Leo’s wife Lucille, causing awards presenter Lea Michele to squeal with glee (pun intended) as she read Diamond’s name at the livestreamed nominations ceremony Tuesday morning.
Arriving during a heightened moment of national awareness about antisemitism, “Parade” attracted notice early in its Broadway run when a performance was picketed by neo-Nazis. That incident led to an outpouring of support from Broadway’s Jewish community. Platt himself arrived at last night’s Met Gala wearing a Star of David necklace, further driving home the show’s message.
A view of the cast of “Leopoldstadt,” which focuses on multiple generations of a Viennese Jewish family. (Joan Marcus)
“Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic, highly personal play about multiple generations of a Jewish Viennese family before, during and after the Holocaust, also received six nominations, including an expected nod for best play. Brandon Uranowitz also earned a nod for best actor in a featured role in a play, and Patrick Marber scored a best direction nomination; both are Jewish.
Oscar Isaac plays the titular character in a revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” at the BAM Harvey Theater in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Julieta Cervantes)
Signs were more mixed for another high-profile Jewish production, “The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window,” which eked out two nominations, including best revival of a play. The show, first written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1964 shortly before her death, follows a Jewish bohemian grappling with political and social change in Greenwich Village. It had not been staged on Broadway since its initial run. Neither of its A-list stars, Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan, earned acting nominations, though Miriam Silverman did receive the show’s lone other nomination for her featured role as Isaac’s character’s sister-in-law — who is casually antisemitic.
Besides “Parade,” the musical revival category was dominated by shows with Jewish roots. Also nominated was a new version of the 1960 classic “Camelot,” billed as “Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot” in recognition of the two Jewish Broadway scribes who crafted the initial production, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Written by Aaron Sorkin, who is Jewish, and directed by Bartlett Sher, who learned as a teenager that his father was Jewish, the new “Camelot” had five nominations in total.
Two reinterpretations of Stephen Sondheim standards, “Into The Woods” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” rounded out the category. The pop singer Josh Groban, whose father was Jewish before converting to his mother’s Christianity, was nominated for playing the lead role in “Sweeney Todd,” while Julia Lester, whose great-grandfather was part of a Yiddish theater in Poland, was nominated for her featured role in “Into the Woods.”
The play “Good Night, Oscar,” about the Jewish entertainer Oscar Levant’s struggles with mental illness, picked up three nominations, including for lead actors Sean Hayes and Rachel Hauck. “Death of a Salesman,” a new revival of the classic play by Jewish playwright Arthur Miller, also picked up two nominations.
Jewish actress Jessica Hecht picked up an acting nomination for her lead role in the play “Summer, 1976,” about a lifelong friendship between two women. Hecht is up against several star performers in the category, including Jessica Chastain, Jodie Comer and Audra McDonald.
Among the other nominees was a modern-day musical reimagining of “Some Like It Hot,” the 1959 cross-dressing comedy. The original movie had plenty of Jewish talent: It was directed by Billy Wilder, co-starred Tony Curtis and Jewish convert Marilyn Monroe, and featured recently deceased Jewish character actor Nehemiah Persoff in a small role. The new musical, by Amber Ruffin and Matthew López, led the pack with 13 Tony nominations including best new musical. Veteran Jewish songwriter Marc Shaiman picked up a nomination for co-writing the show’s score.
Another new musical based on a movie, “New York, New York,” also built off of Jewish talent: the songwriting duo John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote the music for the original 1977 film, and Kander is co-credited with Lin-Manuel Miranda for additional music on the new film. “New York, New York” received nine nominations, including best new musical.
The prolific Jewish theater composer Jeanine Tesori had another Broadway hit this year with the musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” which received eight nominations, including one for her music.
The nominations were co-announced Tuesday morning by Michele, who has been the talk of Broadway since she replaced Beanie Feldstein as the lead of the “Funny Girl” revival. Feldstein was snubbed at the Tonys last year amid tepid reviews for her performance in the musical about Jewish comedienne Fanny Brice.
The Tonys will air on CBS and various Paramount-owned streaming services on June 11.
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21 Arab, Islamic, African States and Entities Condemn Israel’s Recognition of Somaliland
The signatories’ flags enclosed in the statement in Arabic. Photo: Screenshot via i24.
i24 News – A group of 21 Arab, Islamic and African countries, organizations and entities issued on Saturday a joint statement condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland sovereignty.
The statement’s signatories said that they condemn and reject Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “in light of the serious repercussions to peace and security in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region, and its serious impacts on international peace and security, which also reflects Israel’s clear and complete disregard for international law.”
It was signed by: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Maldives, Nigeria and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The joint statement voiced support “for the sovereignty of Somalia and reject any measures that would undermine its unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty over all its lands.”
The signatories also “categorically reject linking Israel’s recognition of the territory of the land of Somalia with any plans to displace the Palestinian people outside their land.”
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Nvidia, Joining Big Tech Deal Spree, to License Groq Technology, Hire Executives
A NVIDIA logo appears in this illustration taken Aug. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Nvidia has agreed to license chip technology from startup Groq and hire away its CEO, a veteran of Alphabet’s Google, Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday.
The deal follows a familiar pattern in recent years where the world’s biggest technology firms pay large sums in deals with promising startups to take their technology and talent but stop short of formally acquiring the target.
Groq specializes in what is known as inference, where artificial intelligence models that have already been trained respond to requests from users. While Nvidia dominates the market for training AI models, it faces much more competition in inference, where traditional rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices have aimed to challenge it as well as startups such as Groq and Cerebras Systems.
Nvidia has agreed to a “non-exclusive” license to Groq’s technology, Groq said. It said its founder Jonathan Ross, who helped Google start its AI chip program, as well as Groq President Sunny Madra and other members of its engineering team, will join Nvidia.
A person close to Nvidia confirmed the licensing agreement.
Groq did not disclose financial details of the deal. CNBC reported that Nvidia had agreed to acquire Groq for $20 billion in cash, but neither Nvidia nor Groq commented on the report. Groq said in its blog post that it will continue to operate as an independent company with Simon Edwards as CEO and that its cloud business will continue operating.
In similar recent deals, Microsoft’s top AI executive came through a $650 million deal with a startup that was billed as a licensing fee, and Meta spent $15 billion to hire Scale AI’s CEO without acquiring the entire firm. Amazon hired away founders from Adept AI, and Nvidia did a similar deal this year. The deals have faced scrutiny by regulators, though none has yet been unwound.
“Antitrust would seem to be the primary risk here, though structuring the deal as a non-exclusive license may keep the fiction of competition alive (even as Groq’s leadership and, we would presume, technical talent move over to Nvidia),” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday after Groq’s announcement. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s “relationship with the Trump administration appears among the strongest of the key US tech companies.”
Groq more than doubled its valuation to $6.9 billion from $2.8 billion in August last year, following a $750 million funding round in September.
Groq is one of a number of upstarts that do not use external high-bandwidth memory chips, freeing them from the memory crunch affecting the global chip industry. The approach, which uses a form of on-chip memory called SRAM, helps speed up interactions with chatbots and other AI models but also limits the size of the model that can be served.
Groq’s primary rival in the approach is Cerebras Systems, which Reuters this month reported plans to go public as soon as next year. Groq and Cerebras have signed large deals in the Middle East.
Nvidia’s Huang spent much of his biggest keynote speech of 2025 arguing that Nvidia would be able to maintain its lead as AI markets shift from training to inference.
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Russian Drones, Missiles Pound Ukraine Ahead of Zelensky-Trump Meeting
Rescuers work at the site of the apartment building hit by a Russian drone during a Russian missile and drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine December 27, 2025. REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Russia attacked Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones on Saturday, ahead of what President Volodymyr Zelensky said would be a crucial meeting with US President Donald Trump to work out a plan to end nearly four years of war.
Zelensky cast the vast overnight attack, which he said involved about 500 drones and 40 missiles and which knocked out power and heat in parts of the capital, as Russia’s response to the ongoing peace efforts brokered by Washington.
The Ukrainian leader has said Sunday’s talks in Florida would focus on security guarantees and territorial control once fighting ends in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two, started by Russia’s 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbor.
The attack continued throughout the morning, with a nearly 10-hour air raid alert for the capital. Authorities said two people were killed in Kyiv and the surrounding region, while at least 46 people were wounded, including two children.
“Today, Russia demonstrated how it responds to peaceful negotiations between Ukraine and the United States to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Zelensky told reporters.
In Russia, air defense forces shot down eight drones headed for Moscow, the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Saturday.
THOUSANDS OF HOMES WITHOUT HEAT
Explosions echoed across Kyiv from the early hours on Saturday as Ukraine’s air defense units went into action. The air force said Russian drones were targeting the capital and regions in the northeast and south.
State grid operator Ukrenergo said energy facilities across Ukraine were struck, and emergency power cuts had been implemented across the capital.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said the attack had left more than a million households in and around Kyiv without power, 750,000 of which remained disconnected by the afternoon.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said over 40% of residential buildings in Kyiv were left without heat as temperatures hovered around 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday.
TERRITORIAL CONTROL: A DIPLOMATIC STUMBLING BLOCK
On the way to meeting Trump in Florida, Zelensky stopped in Canada’s Halifax to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney, after which they planned to hold a call with European leaders.
In a brief statement with Zelenskiy by his side, Carney noted that peace “requires a willing Russia.”
“The barbarism that we saw overnight — the attack on Kyiv — shows just how important it is that we stand with Ukraine in this difficult time,” he said, announcing 2.5 billion Canadian dollars ($1.83 billion) in additional economic aid to Ukraine.
Territory and the future of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remain the main diplomatic stumbling blocks, though Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv on Friday that a 20-point draft document – the cornerstone of a US push to clinch a peace deal – is 90% complete.
He said the shape of U.S. security guarantees was crucial, and these would depend on Trump, and “what he is ready to give, when he is ready to give it, and for how long.”
Zelensky told Axios earlier this week that the US had offered a 15-year deal on security guarantees, subject to renewal, but Kyiv wanted a longer agreement with legally binding provisions to guard against further Russian aggression.
Trump said the United States was the driving force behind the process.
“He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,” Trump told Politico. “So we’ll see what he’s got.”
Trump said he believed Sunday’s meeting would go well. He also said he expected to speak with Putin “soon, as much as I want.”
FATE OF DONETSK IS KEY
Moscow is demanding that Ukraine withdraw from a large, densely-urbanized chunk of the eastern region of Donetsk that Russian troops have failed to occupy in nearly four years of war. Kyiv wants the fighting halted at the current lines.
Russia has been grinding slowly forwards throughout 2025 at the cost of significant casualties on the drone-infested battlefield.
On Saturday, both sides issued conflicting claims about two frontline towns: Myrnohrad in the east and Huliaipole in the south. Moscow claimed to have captured both, while Kyiv said it had beaten back Russian assaults there.
Under a US compromise, a free economic zone would be set up if Ukrainian troops pull back from parts of the Donetsk region, though details have yet to be worked out.
Axios quoted Zelensky as saying that if he is not able to push the US to back Ukraine’s position on the land issue, he was willing to put the 20-point plan to a referendum – as long as Russia agrees to a 60-day ceasefire allowing Ukraine to prepare for and hold the vote.
On Saturday, Zelensky said it was not possible to have such a referendum while Russia was bombarding Ukrainian cities.
He also suggested that he would be ready for “dialogue” with the people of Ukraine if they disagreed with points of the plan.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Kyiv’s version of the 20-point plan differed from what Russia had been discussing with the US, according to the Interfax-Russia news agency.
But he expressed optimism that matters had reached a “turning point” in the search for a settlement.
($1 = 1.3671 Canadian dollars)