Uncategorized
Richard Belzer was a Jewish comedian. Why didn’t his obituaries say so?
(JTA) — Ever hear Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” sung in Yiddish dialect? It used to be a regular bit performed by comedian and actor Richard Belzer, who died this week at 78. He also used to do a routine about Bob Dylan’s bar mitzvah in which he recited a Hebrew prayer in the singer’s distinctive tone. A similar Elvis bar mitzvah bit was also part of his routine.
Surprisingly, Belzer performed these niche routines in numerous comedy venues and even on the nationally televised “The Late Show with David Letterman.” In addition to a variety of other Jewish references embedded in his act, Belzer also performed Yiddish-inflected parodies of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” and “When Doves Cry.”
But like so many American comedians of the Hebraic persuasion, Belzer didn’t really work Jewish. The bulk of his act was general and observational. To be sure, there were bits and pieces of Jewish material that can be found scattered about his comedic oeuvre, though to have the broad appeal he achieved, he understood that he had to deal in comic generalities. But to have thrown bits like Dylan’s bar mitzvah into routines for venues as broad as Letterman is an indication that he was truly dedicated to his Jewish material.
Moreover, he enjoyed it. Around 2003, after he’d snagged a contract to do a special on a cable network, he approached Letterman’s legendary bandleader, Paul Schaffer, and told him he wanted to do something “Jewish” for the show. Schaffer suggested The Barton Brothers’ risqué Yiddish radio ad parody song “Joe and Paul.” Belzer loved the idea. The duo learned the Yiddish lines and performed the tune, which, in veiled Yiddish tones, talks about masturbation and going to a prostitute named “Cock-eyed Jenny.” It was so well-received and the two enjoyed it so much, they began to do it in other venues. It eventually wound up on a 2008 album titled “The Jewish Songbook,” together with songs sung by Neil Sedaka and Barbra Streisand.
Which is why it’s been strange to read obit after obit in outlets like The New York Times, The Guardian and The Hollywood Reporter, among others, that didn’t bother to mention that Belzer was Jewish — even when, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency pointed out, the character for which he was best known, Det. John Munch on “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” identified as Jewish. Obituaries, after all, are meant to be the final stock-taking of a person’s life. They should include the basics of who they were. And one of the basics of Richard Belzer is that he was a Yid.
Moreover, according to Paul Shaffer, he was a proud one. I should also point out that I don’t mean Jewish in a religious sense. Belzer, after all, appears to have been an atheist, so what is meant here is Jew as an ethnic category, one that apparently confounds a lot of people and which results in many Jewish artists being described as anything but Jewish.
To call Burt Bacharach an “American composer” or Barbara Walters a “pioneering woman newscaster” is accurate, but misses a significant ethno-cultural aspect of these people, one that was integrally responsible for making them who they are and influencing their creative choices. The notion that “Jewish” is something more than a religious denomination — that it’s a wide-ranging culture that includes art, literature, music, food, folkways and languages — is terribly difficult to grasp for some people.
One case in point is an excellent book by Kliph Nesteroff that appeared in 2015 called “The Comedians,” which richly details the history of stand-up comedy in America. Assiduously researched, it’s become the definitive work on the topic. The book, however, deracinates the history of the field. From reading it, you would never know that 20th-century American comedy was largely a Jewish enterprise. In fact, you’d hardly know that Jews were involved at all. You will read about comedians such as Milton Berle, Joan Rivers, Lenny Bruce and Jerry Seinfeld, but you’ll have no idea that any of them are Jews, or that Jewish history and culture might have had at least a nominal influence in their work and in their field. It’s like a history of opera that doesn’t bother to mention Italians: They weren’t the only ones involved, but the field would have been far poorer without their distinct contributions.
The matter of the mysteriously disappearing Jew occurs in other industries as well. It’s particularly egregious in the art world and popped up last year at the opening of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a lavishly funded new institution that celebrated the diversity of Hollywood, touting the contributions of minorities involved in the film industry. However, the one minority they initially left out was the one that was instrumental in building that very industry. It’s all part of a phenomenon comedian David Baddiel describes as “Jews don’t count.” They’re not considered a minority among the many others and have apparently become white people who don’t believe in Jesus. As such, they’re not worthy of distinction.
History, however, tells a different story. When Jews began to come to this country en masse at the end of the 19th century, the culture they met often mocked and derided them. Suffering discrimination in multiple realms, they were excluded from certain neighborhoods, clubs and a variety of occupations. Universities placed quotas on them. Many hotels denied them entry, a fact that led to the creation of hundreds of Jewish hotels in New York’s Catskill Mountains. While American attitudes toward Jews eventually changed, a fact that allowed them to become full participants in society, they still find themselves victimized by Jew-hatred. Even though it’s often denied, the mystery of Jewish difference, apparently, is still a thing.
And for Richard Belzer, it was a thing he obviously enjoyed. Comedy writer and novelist Seth Greenland, who worked on numerous projects with Belzer and whose first novel was based on him, told me, “Something about Richard was quintessentially Jewish. He was kind, disputatious, intellectually curious, and hilarious. Although he wasn’t at all religious, he was proud to be Jewish and embraced that identity.”
Alan Zweibel, a comedy writer who worked with Belzer beginning in the mid-1970s on “Saturday Night Live,” added, “Belz made no bones about being Jewish in his act or in his life.” Zweibel once took Belzer to his parents’ Long Island home for a Friday night dinner, over which the comedian bonded with Mr. and Mrs. Zweibel over milchig and fleishig issues, the minutiae of keeping kosher. Alan’s father pointed to Belzer and told his son, “You could learn a lot from this guy.”
“Belz and Gilbert Gottfried would always do Jewish shtick and saw themselves in a long line of Jewish comics,” said author Ratso Sloman. “And one time I was at Catch [A Rising Star], probably in the mid ’80s and at the end of the night, Belz and Gilbert went on stage and did dueling old Jewish weather forecasters. It was so hilarious, I almost pissed my pants.”
Paul Schaffer also recalled how Belzer once accompanied him to say Kaddish for Schaffer’s father at the Carlebach Shul on the Upper West Side. “I didn’t know what kind of Jewish education he had,” Schaffer told me, “but the cat could daven [pray].” Paul added that he and Belzer once bonded over old cassettes of Friars Club roasts. One of the tapes was of a roast emceed by DJ and Sinatra expert William B. Williams (born Velvel Breitbard), who, whenever someone’s joke bombed, would begin to utter the Jewish prayer for the dead — “Yisgadal, yisgadash, shemey rabo….” — and get big laughs. Belzer loved it so much, he stole it and would recite the prayer onstage at subsequent roasts whenever a comic bombed, and even when his own jokes died.
Yisgadal, yisgadash, Belz. You will be missed.
—
The post Richard Belzer was a Jewish comedian. Why didn’t his obituaries say so? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Iran Hardens Stance Ahead of US Nuclear Talks, Rejects Uranium Transfers and Ballistic Missile Limitations
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 3, 2026. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
A top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei signaled that Iran has hardened its negotiating stance ahead of renewed nuclear talks with the United States, publicly rejecting any transfer of uranium out of the country and refusing to negotiate over ballistic missiles or terrorist proxy forces.
The latest comments from Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a senior official on Iran’s Supreme National Defense Council, came as tensions continued to rise between the US and Iran over a potential military escalation in the Middle East.
In an interview with the Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen published on Monday, Shamkhani insisted that Iran’s nuclear program is “peaceful and within local capabilities,” while firmly reiterating nonnegotiable conditions for any resumption of talks with Washington.
“Iran neither seeks nor will ever seek nuclear weapons or stockpile them, but the other side must pay a price in return for this commitment,” Shamkhani said.
“Enrichment at 60 percent can be rolled back to 20 percent if there are concerns, but only if the other side offers something in return,” he continued.
The senior Iranian official also rejected media reports suggesting Tehran might transfer its stored enriched uranium abroad, including to Russia, saying, “There is no reason to move the stored material out” of the country.
This week, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are scheduled to meet with representatives from several Arab and Muslim countries, as they push forward renewed efforts to restart nuclear negotiations.
Set to take place on Friday, the high-level meeting would mark the first direct engagement between US and Iranian officials since nuclear talks collapsed after last June’s 12-day war, during which the US and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The potential restart of negotiations comes as Iran faces growing international pressure over its violent crackdown on anti-government protests, with the US escalating a massive military buildup in the region and repeatedly threatening the Islamist regime.
Just days ahead of the talks, the Iranian government has reportedly imposed new demands that retract previously agreed terms, including relocating negotiations from Istanbul to Oman and limiting them to a strictly bilateral format with Washington, threatening to destabilize an already fragile process, according to a report from Axios.
Cautious optimism about diplomacy has also been shaken by reported clashes between US and Iranian forces at sea.
The US military said on Tuesday that it shot down an Iranian drone that “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. Hours later, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces harassed a US-flagged, US-crewed merchant vessel in the Strait of Hormuz.
In his Monday interview, Shamkhani said that if the White House seeks a mutual understanding, diplomatic talks should take place “away from atmospheres of threats and coercion,” with both sides having “equal standing at the negotiating table” and avoiding “illogical and unreasonable demands.”
“Iran has repeatedly affirmed its readiness to hold practical negotiations exclusively with the United States, and not with any other party,” Shamkhani told Al Mayadeen.
“The negotiations are strictly limited to the United States and the nuclear file, where a mutual agreement is possible,” he continued. “If their proposals are free of threats, based on logical conditions, and avoid arrogance, there is hope to prevent an unjustified catastrophe or incident.”
However, US President Donald Trump had reportedly demanded three conditions for resumption of talks: zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program, and ending the regime’s support for terrorist groups and other proxies across the Middle East.
Iran has long said all three demands are unacceptable, but two Iranian officials told Reuters its Islamist, authoritarian rulers view the ballistic missile program, not uranium enrichment, as the bigger issue.
In the last few weeks, Trump has repeatedly warned that he may take “decisive” military action against Iran if the regime continues killing protesters and refuses to return to the negotiating table.
Amid rising regional tensions, Washington has significantly increased its military presence in the region, moving a range of assets into the area — including the USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group.
Echoing past comments from Iranian officials, Shamkhani said the country is “prepared for any circumstances that may arise,” emphasizing the regime’s readiness to confront both diplomatic pressures and potential military threats.
“We are essentially living in warlike conditions,” he said. “The Americans are in the region to defend Israel, while Iran serves as the force that restrains Israel and curbs its bullying and arrogance.”
“The assumption that the United States would act without Israel’s involvement is entirely wrong,” he continued. “Should the US strike, Israel will be inevitably involved and will face an appropriate response.”
The Iranian official warned that any attack on Khamenei, “no matter how small, would escalate into a colossal crisis far beyond what others can imagine.”
Iranian lawmakers last month similarly warned that any attack on Khamenei would lead to a declaration of “jihad,” or holy war, and a violent global response from the Islamic world.
“We will continue on this path,” Shamkhani said. “We will not allow them [the US and its allies] to make the region unsafe or force us into a situation we do not choose.”
“Iran will persist in its policies and continue supporting the path of resistance, including resistance groups in Palestine, Lebanon, and beyond,” he continued.
A common slogan of the Iranian protesters has been “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran,” with large swathes of the population opposing the regime’s commitment to spending billions of dollars to support terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Uncategorized
Robert Kraft’s new Super Bowl ad about antisemitism already feels dated
Not content with his team’s victories on the football field, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has in recent years taken it upon himself to lease the most expensive airtime on American television.
The Pats may be out of the Super Bowl, but ads from Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Antisemitism (formerly the Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism) are very much in, and have been for a few years. The campaign has given us two previous Super Bowl spots: one in which Martin Luther King Jr.’s speechwriter Clarence B. Jones urged us to speak out against silence and, last year, as a nice counterpoint, one where Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady yelled at each other. These commercials, unlike ones that the Alliance aired outside of major sporting events, each had their weaknesses in messaging.
The first ad, which primarily spotlighted other hatreds, was perhaps too generic for an organization committed to fighting antisemitism, and its slogan, “stand up to Jewish hate,” left some viewers mystified. The second conveyed essentially nothing, reading as a sort of wan, FCC-vetted homage to a sequence in Do the Right Thing.
Enter the newest campaign, set in an American high school. A boy walks down the hall as classmates — one in a “how do you do fellow kids”-style backwards cap — knock into him. Others make indistinct comments as he walks by. As the boy pulls up to his locker to put in his knapsack, we see what his peers were snickering at: a Post-It note tagged to his bag that reads “DIRTY JEW.”
Did a wormhole to the 1950s just open up? Was this an outtake from The Fabelmans or that old Frank Sinatra PSA? This just could be not feel more disconnected from how antisemitism now operates in school hallways.
High school students, as countless watchdog groups can tell you, are far more creative and subtle now with their Jew hatred. And those more insidious strains are the ones we should be alerting people to.
Kids these days prefer edgelord remarks about cooking 6 million pizzas in five years and slurs like “Zio” and baby killer or they tell you to go to the gas chambers. They recycle memes about globalist control and an Aryan society called “Agartha.” At their most dunderheaded, they don’t scrawl “Dirty Jew” — though they sometimes say it — they go to that old standby: the swastika. In 2024, the ADL reported 860 incidents in K-12 schools, and though their metrics for antisemitism are at times controversial, 52% of instances involved a swastika. (If you’re a hater of a certain income, like Ye, you can even have swastikas advertised covertly during the Big Game; Kraft’s crew could have stuck it to him by including one on the sticky.)
I get why they did it like this — you want to make your point in 30 seconds. But if you follow instances of antisemitism in schools or online — and it’s kind of an occupational hazard for me — you know this is not how today’s animus is typically expressed. And that can have a kind of unfortunate ripple effect.
If this was meant for the kids, they will laugh at how alien and out-of-touch it seems. And with that, there’s a risk that antisemitism will seem like a manufactured problem.
What happens next in the commercial holds true to what we teach kids about being an “upstander,” rather than a bystander. Another student covers the offensive sticky note with a blue one, and then, like the legendary King of Denmark with his yellow star — or Van Jones with Kraft’s trademark blue square lapel pin — sticks a blue sticky on his own chest.
However noble the intentions of the ad may be, in a world of Groypers, this is bait. I can already anticipate the memes. I also find it doubtful that blue square pins, available on the campaign’s website and the icon behind Kraft’s organization’s rebrand, will become 2026’s hot Gen Z accessory, the new Labubus.
That the message misses the mark is disappointing because Kraft’s organization previously had some quite powerful non-Super Bowl ads, some of which have won awards. The strongest showed a boy and his father in a truck, with the dad confronting his son about a social media post where he said “Hitler was right.”
The dialogue is on-the-nose, but gets at a real phenomenon: Teens, even if raised right, can still be radicalized by the internet and emboldened by its anonymity. (As in the case of the alleged Jackson synagogue arsonist, we know that radicalization can happen fast.) “You got something you want to say, get out of the truck and say it to their faces” the dad tells his son, and the camera pulls focus to what’s outside their windshield: Jews leaving synagogue. And then, text, a solid statistic of a real phrase circulating on the internet: “‘Hitler was right’ was posted over 70,000 times last year.”
That ad still hits me in the gut, and serves as a bridge for two audiences: parents and their kids.
The Post-It ad doesn’t do that.
It tells reasonable older people what they already know: Overt, unambiguous antisemitism is bad. It tells kids that adults don’t get what they’re dealing with. It tells people on the cusp, or already fully immersed, in conspiracies of Jewish control that Jews have unlimited resources, and a limited understanding of the facts on the ground.
If Kraft is committed to throwing money at a very real problem, he should at least get his money’s worth.
The post Robert Kraft’s new Super Bowl ad about antisemitism already feels dated appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
South Carolina Republican Senate Candidate Floats Antisemitic Conspiracies in Effort to Boost Long-Shot Campaign
Paul Dans, candidate for US Senate, speaks during the Anderson County Republican Party Charlie Kirk Tribute at the Civic Center of Anderson, South Carolina, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Paul Dans, a lawyer and Republican candidate for US Senate in South Carolina, has boosted antisemitic conspiracy theories online, suggesting that high-ranking Jews have imported drugs and implemented an extermination campaign against white people.
“The ELITES call us ‘goy cattle’ and sent OxyContin into our communities for a reason. EPSTEIN files confirm WHITE GENOCIDE and WHITE HATE is not a conspiracy but an operation in progress,” Dans posted on X on Monday.
Goy is a term for a gentile, a non-Jew.
Dans, who describes himself as an “America 1st warrior” and a counterweight to entrenched Washington, DC establishment interests, has portrayed himself as an ardent opponent of longstanding US foreign policy. He has been critical of what he calls America’s entanglement in “endless wars” in the Middle East and Ukraine.
”I’m America first and not Israel first, not Ukraine first. We always have to ask what is in the foreign policy interest of the United States citizen. How are we helping the people back home thrive and be safe?” Dans said during an October 2025 interview with South Carolina local news.
Notably, Dans is also a former director of the embattled Heritage Foundation and was the chief architect of Project 2025 — a sprawling political playbook which outlines how to overhaul the federal government to support a conservative policy agenda. The Heritage Foundation has found itself embroiled in mounting controversy in recent months after its president, Kevin Roberts, issued a passionate defense of antisemitic podcaster Tucker Carlson. Carlson had elicited backlash after hosting a chummy interview with the Holocaust-denying, anti-Jewish streamer Nick Fuentes.
Dans also appeared on “The Tucker Carlson Show” in November 2025, in which he and the podcaster criticized US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for his steadfast support for Israel, insinuating that Graham focuses more on uplifting Israel than the US.
Dans’ status as the mastermind of Project 2025 indicates that he likely has significant influence and reach within the Republican establishment.
Critics argue that Dans’ comments are part of a broader trend of long-shot political hopefuls using antisemitism to draw attention to their campaigns and galvanize fringe elements of the far right. James Fishback, a hedge fund manager who recently launched a campaign for the Republican nomination in the Florida gubernatorial race, has drawn significant attention by repeatedly invoked anti-Israel conspiracy theories.
Dans still remains a heavy underdog in the primary competition. However, some polls show that he’s gaining ground. An internal poll from the Dans campaign last fall showed the insurgent swelling from 9.2 percent in June 2025 to 22.1 percent in September among voters. Graham still holds a commanding lead with 46.3 percent of the vote, a slight decline from 49.5 percent during the same timeframe.