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Spielberg’s ‘Fabelmans’ earns 7 Oscar nods, WWII epic with anti-Nazi past gets 9
(JTA) – “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama about his Jewish upbringing, had an expected strong haul of Oscar nominations, picking up seven nods Tuesday morning.
A remake of a movie once targeted by the Nazis, a blockbuster embroiled in a lawsuit with an Israeli family and a documentary by the program director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival also got recognized in a list jam-packed with Jewish characters, stories and artists.
Spielberg’s movie overcame an anemic box office showing to score nominations in the major categories of best picture, director and screenplay, for Spielberg and celebrated Jewish playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner. The directing nomination brings Spielberg’s total nominations in the category to nine, tying him with Martin Scorsese for the second-most directing nominations in Oscar history.
The film also scored acting nods for Judd Hirsch, who is Jewish, and Michelle Williams, who recently said she is planning to raise her two children with Judaism.
“The Fabelmans” was the best picture nominee with the strongest Jewish themes, but it wasn’t the only one. The psychological drama “Tár,” starring Cate Blanchett as a problematic conductor, picked up six nominations, including for picture, actress and director; the film weaves Jewish mysticism into its storytelling.
“All Quiet On The Western Front,” Netflix’s new German-language adaptation of the classic 1929 novel about the horrors experienced by German soldiers during World War I, was also nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture, international feature and adapted screenplay. The film’s source material was once banned and burned by the ascending Nazi Party, which believed its anti-war stance made the German military look weak and constituted a threat to their plans for world domination.
When the book’s initial 1930 film adaptation, directed by Jewish filmmaker Lewis Milestone, was released in Germany, Nazis led by Joseph Goebbels set off stink bombs, released mice into the theaters and called the movie a “Judenfilm” (or “Jewish film”). Germany and Austria banned the film from being shown in their countries, and the public censorship campaign led the novel’s author, Erich Maria Remarque, to renounce his German citizenship (Nazis were erroneously labeling him as a Jew).
In response, Jewish studio head Carl Laemmle Sr., agreed to heavily edit the movie and remove material deemed objectionable to the Nazis in order to improve its commercial prospects in Germany. One possible silver lining for the remake’s producers: The 1930 film went on to win best picture that year.
Tom Cruise at a “Top Gun: Maverick” premier at Leicester Square in London, May 19, 2022. (Neil Mockford/FilmMagic via Getty Images)
Back to this year’s Oscars: “Top Gun: Maverick,” the action blockbuster sequel, picked up four nominations, including for best picture. The film’s distributor, Paramount, is currently embroiled in a copyright lawsuit with the family of Israeli journalist Ehud Yonay, whose magazine article about a Navy fighter pilot school was the basis for the original “Top Gun” in 1986. In November, a judge dismissed Paramount’s attempts to throw out the suit and ruled the Yonay family could proceed with their claims.
The writer, director and actress Sarah Polley also scored a nomination for best adapted screenplay for her drama “Women Talking,” about a group of abused women in an isolated Mennonite community, which was also nominated for best picture. Polley has a Jewish biological father, whose secret parentage she explored in her 2013 documentary “Stories We Tell.”
The Jewish film producer Gail Berman also scored her first Oscar nomination for producing best picture nominee “Elvis,” while Jewish producing partners Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel scored their own best picture nomination for “The Whale.” The movie, which Aronofsky directed, stars Brendan Fraser (also nominated) as a morbidly obese English professor.
In the performing categories, one actor was nominated for playing a real-life Jewish convert: Ana de Armas received a best actress nomination for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in Netflix’s “Blonde.” Monroe converted to Judaism in the 1950s and remained devoted to the religion even after divorcing her husband, Jewish playwright Arthur Miller.
Also, veteran actress Jamie Lee Curtis — whose father, Golden Age Hollywood actor Tony Curtis, was Jewish — picked up her first-ever Oscar nomination for her supporting role as a sinister tax officer in the multiverse sci-fi comedy “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”
Curtis is nominated in the category alongside her co-star Stephanie Hsu, who is also known to fans of the very Jewish TV series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as Mei Lin, a Chinese restaurant owner who gets together with co-lead Joel Maisel. Early buzz on the upcoming fifth season of “Maisel” says that Hsu’s character will convert to Judaism.
Another “Everything Everywhere” co-star, Jewish actress Jenny Slate, helped a different film score an Oscar nomination in the best animated feature category: the stop-motion mockumentary “Marcel The Shell With Shoes On.” Slate co-wrote the feature with her ex-husband Dean Fleischer-Camp, who directs; Slate also voices the lead role of Marcel. However, she is not one of the nominated producers on the film.
“All The Beauty And The Bloodshed,” a portrait of the outsider artist Nan Goldin and her years-long activism campaign against opioid manufacturers the Sackler family, was nominated in the best documentary feature category and is favored to win. The film documents how Goldin was born to Jewish parents but had an emotionally abusive family life and left home in her teens. The Sacklers are also Jewish.
The documentary short category saw the second nomination in a row for Jewish filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt, whose documentary “How Do You Measure A Year” chronicles many years of his daughter Ella’s birthdays. Rosenblatt is the program director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
Veteran Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski was also nominated in the international feature category for his drama “EO,” told from the perspective of a donkey. Skolimowski’s father was a member of the Polish Resistance and his mother hid a Jewish family in their house during World War II.
Jewish composer Justin Hurwitz, who won an Oscar for his work on “La La Land,” was nominated again for the score for “Babylon,” a follow-up production with that film’s director, Damien Chazelle.
And in the original song category, Jewish songwriter Diane Warren extended her nomination streak to 14 for the number “Applause,” from the feminist documentary “Tell It Like A Woman.” Warren has never won a competitive Oscar but did receive an honorary Academy Award last year.
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Another Graham Platner potential replacement now says Israel committed genocide in Gaza
(JTA) — Graham Platner concluded his Senate bid on a pro-Palestinian note on Friday, in the last lines of a letter to Maine’s secretary of state formally withdrawing his candidacy.
“F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts,” Platner wrote before signing off with the valediction, “Solidarity forever.”
The secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, is among the candidates seeking to replace Platner on the ballot, and she soon adopted his stance on Israel. Before becoming secretary of state, Bellows was the executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine.
Asked about Platner’s letter on CNN’s “The Source” on Friday, Bellows said she agreed with Platner’s claim that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. “Yes. Israel — the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza right now,” Bellows said. “And we should not be sending any taxpayer funds to be conducting that harm.”
Bellows did not immediately respond to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment on Monday.
Platner, a Democrat, posted the letter nearly two days after announcing that he would leave the race, following sexual assault allegations that caused even his most devoted allies to drop their support. It was a remarkable fall for an oyster fisherman and populist who emerged out of political obscurity to command such a lead that Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, suspended her own campaign in April.
In both the speech his announcing his withdrawal and the letter, Platner has painted his exit as the result of a conspiracy against him and the progressive movement, rather than a consequence of accruing controversies that undercut his ability to win in November.
“All we were asking for was healthcare, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas,” Platner said in a Facebook address announcing his exit, two days before sending the formal letter.
Platner’s successor will be selected during a nominating convention on July 25. Since his exit, candidates vying to replace him have staked out their own stances on Israel, with others besides Bellows saying publicly for the first time that they believe Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Israel and its supporters reject the claim, which a recent poll found that half of Democrats believe.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Another Graham Platner potential replacement now says Israel committed genocide in Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Rep. Ro Khanna says armed settlers detained him in the West Bank; IDF disputes account
(JTA) — California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who is eyeing a 2028 presidential bid, says he was detained last week by armed Israeli settlers in the West Bank last week — and that Israeli soldiers who arrived “took the settlers’ side.”
The IDF disputed that characterization. The military said in a statement that it received a report of Israeli civilians unlawfully blocking the vehicles of foreign nationals and members of the media near the Palestinian West Bank hamlet of Khirbet Zanuta, and that troops dispatched to the scene “quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians” and reopened the road. Its soldiers, the IDF said, did not take part in blocking the road. The military also said Khanna did not coordinate his visit with the IDF.
The incident took place Wednesday during Khanna’s to the West Bank and broke into public view over the weekend, as Khanna made a number of allegations against the Israeli military while sharing his account.
Khanna’s description of the length of his delay has varied, from about 20 minutes to 90 minutes. Khanna has also claimed the Israeli government and the U.S. Embassy were notified of his trip.
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, disputed that on Sunday, saying Khanna’s office had asked only about visas and declined the embassy’s request to coordinate the trip. Leiter also said Khanna’s office had not responded to an offer of meetings with survivors of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack.
The incident is the latest flashpoint in mounting criticism of Israel within the Democratic Party, where Khanna is a leader of the pro-Palestinian left flank.
Khanna has repeatedly pointed out that the settlers carried American-made M4 rifles, which he described as “machine guns.” Khanna has called for a ban on all U.S. weapons sales to Israel, including defensive Iron Dome munitions.
In the wake of Oct. 7, Khanna has evolved from a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat into one of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress. He went from taking money from the liberal J Street and voting to fund Israel’s Iron Dome in 2021 to securing the backing of Track AIPAC, a group that monitors donations from pro-Israel organizations and issues endorsements and “anti-endorsements” of candidates.
Appearing on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is “a country of laws” that prosecutes lawbreakers, and attributed settler violence in the West Bank to roughly 150 “juvenile delinquents” he described as unrepresentative of a mostly law-abiding settler community. He said he does not want “vigilantes of any kind.”
Appearing after him on the same broadcast, Khanna rejected the Israeli account. “The IDF is lying,” he said, calling for an investigation of the four soldiers.
“He said Israel is a country of law and order,” Khanna said about Netanyahu. “Well, let me be very specific. The prime minister needs to open an investigation on these violent settlers who are connected to Yinon Levi, who has destroyed Zanuta’s village and is a known person who has killed Palestinians.”
Levi was indicted last year following the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian activist, Awadh Hathaleen, in a village neighboring Kirbeit Zanuta.
Khanna is not the first American to have been detained in the West Bank. In March, CNN’s Jeremy Diamond and his crew were detained for about two hours by Israeli reservists while reporting in the northern West Bank. In that case, in which the crew recorded a soldier assaulting a detainee and making inflammatory comments about Jewish control of the disputed region, the Israeli military suspended the battalion involved and apologized to CNN, with its chief of staff calling the episode a “grave ethical incident.”
In Khanna’s case, no arrests have been made — though the IDF said in its statement that the identity of at least one armed individual is under review.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Rep. Ro Khanna says armed settlers detained him in the West Bank; IDF disputes account appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s elections are set for Oct. 27, triggering mad dash for scarce plane tickets for Israelis abroad
(JTA) — After several months in which it seemed possible that elections would be called earlier, Israel now has a date for its voters to head to the polls to pick a new government.
The Knesset House Committee on Sunday affirmed an election date of Oct. 27, the latest allowed under law, following months of political maneuvering to force an early collapse of the government by both the opposition and the governing coalition.
The determination puts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on track to be the first to complete a full term in more than half a century, with the Knesset set to disperse on July 17.
The timeline means that the intense final weeks of campaigning will overlap with the three-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that is looming large over the race, particularly for Netanyahu, who was in charge at the time.
It also means that Israelis living abroad — who number more than ever before — now know when they must be in Israel if they wish to vote. Unusually, Israeli law does not allow for absentee voting except in a narrow number of situations, meaning that almost anyone with an Israeli passport who lives outside of Israel must travel back to cast a ballot.
In past elections, Israelis abroad have faced tough decisions about whether to fly home to vote — most recently in 2022, when Israel had a fifth round of elections in four years.
This time around, there are even greater pressures. A record number of Israelis have moved abroad in recent years, with 70,000 leaving in 2025 alone and causing Israel to experience an unusual net migration loss. Flights, meanwhile, are historically expensive, owing to cancellations by foreign carriers amid war-induced uncertainty. At the same time, the stakes of the election are high, with analysts and politicians of all ideologies warning that Israel’s democracy is at an inflection point.
Netanyahu and his supporters say reelecting him is the only way to keep Israelis and Jews around the world safe, while a wide range of opposition parties say only they can safeguard the country’s future, For now polls suggest that the opposition has a majority of voters’ support — though it’s not clear which bloc will have the necessary votes to form a government and, within the opposition bloc, which parties will command
Recent polls have shown a new party formed by Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief whose son was killed during the Gaza war, leading among the opposition and rivaling Netanyahu’s own Likud party in its share of voters. A joint party led by the former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid also has support from significant numbers of voters, as does a left-wing party led by the retired army general Yair Golan. Parties will hold primary elections in the coming weeks.
Some initiatives are already underway to help Israelis abroad get home for the election. The AID Coalition is collecting information from interested Israelis with the goal of potentially chartering flights to boost the number of people who can make the trip — though each voter will bear his or her full costs.
“Don’t let distance silence your voice,” the group tweeted on Sunday, after the election date was announced.
Meanwhile, Israeli academics have set a slew of conferences for the days before the election, across dozens of fields. Israeli Science and Academia Week says it “seeks to leverage the arrival of thousands of Israeli researchers from abroad to Israel during the Knesset election period to create professional meetings, encourage research collaborations, reveal new academic opportunities, and strengthen the international status of Israeli academia.” It may also have the effect of enabling Israeli academics working abroad to get their institutions to subsidize their travel and permit them leave during the school year.
Israelis posting to social media are already noting a spike in ticket prices just ahead of Oct. 27. But many are also sharing screenshots of their ticket receipts that show the number of days until their trips — and the election.
“My entire feed is full of screenshots of flight tickets to Israel for election day. People spending money, taking time off, and coming specifically just to vote,” tweeted Avi Edelson, an anti-government activist. (His LinkedIn account identifies him as working at El Al, Israel’s main airline.) “It reminds me how much people care about the future of this country.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel’s elections are set for Oct. 27, triggering mad dash for scarce plane tickets for Israelis abroad appeared first on The Forward.
