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Was Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite play the original ‘Nobody Wants This’?
The Emmy-nominated Netflix show Nobody Wants This, a series about the challenges of an interfaith romance between a “hot rabbi” and his non-Jewish girlfriend, is now back for a sophomore season. When it debuted last fall, Nobody Wants This sparked heated criticism for trafficking in negative stereotypes about Jewish women. A writer for Glamour called her own mother to lament of the series: “I can’t imagine any guy who watches this show who would then say, ‘I really want to date a Jewish girl!’”
The commentary on Nobody Wants This is just as noteworthy for what it does not emphasize: the possible implications of interfaith marriage for the perpetuity of the Jewish people. That silence is all the more notable given the Jewish reaction more than a century ago to another dramatization of Jewish-Christian romance: The Melting-Pot, by the British Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill.
Whereas the early 20th-century play provoked outrage for seeming to endorse Jewish self-erasure, the modern TV program has not stoked such existential angst. Comparing Jewish reactions to these two tales of interfaith love reveals how much the landscape of Jewish life has shifted to accept blended families.
Noah Roklov, the hot rabbi in question played by Adam Brody, confronts professional and familial pressure to leave Joanne Williams (Kristen Bell) in favor of a Jewish substitute; Joanne—memorably described by Noah’s senior rabbi and boss as a “nice blonde crabcake”—struggles to confront the reality that she might have no place in his future.
When Nobody Wants This debuted, there was practically instantaneous pushback to its portrayal of Jewish women, all of whom were depicted as either materialistic, nagging or controlling—or some combination thereof. There’s Noah’s ex-girlfriend, Rebecca, who cares far more about achieving the milestone of marriage than about who she would be marrying. Even worse is Esther, Noah’s sister-in-law, whose principal purpose in life is to berate her daffy husband into obeisance.
The apex of Nobody Wants This’ deeply flawed Jewish female representation is that of Noah’s mother Bina, who tries to puppeteer her son out of his relationship with Joanne through both cajoling and sabotage. (Would it even be a hackneyed Jewish trope without the archetype of the overbearing Jewish mother?)
In contrast to the portrayal of Jewish women, the communal response to a rabbi in an interfaith relationship was notably muted. The show itself was very much alive to those stakes—Noah’s boss cautions that his path with Joanne, absent her conversion, would lead to a world in which every Jew “marries a goy, then there are no more Jewish children, and then our people become extinct.” Yet critiques of the series overwhelmingly focused on its unflattering portrayal of Jewish women.
This relative silence from critics about Jewish continuity would have stunned Jewish audiences of Theodore Roosevelt’s era, who railed against the celebration of Jewish-Christian romance in The Melting-Pot. That play tells the tale of David and Vera, both emigrants from Russia who found their way to New York. David is a Jewish survivor of the notorious Kishinev pogrom, a real-life massacre in what is now Moldova that took place in 1903. Vera is the Christian daughter of a Russian military official.
Their improbable romance takes root in the assimilative soil of the New World. The young couple is even able to overcome the morbid revelation that Vera’s father had ordered troops to shoot innocent Jews during the Kishinev pogrom. Yet in Zangwill’s idealized version of the United States, newcomers like David and Vera could free themselves from the tired identities and bitter tragedies of the Old Country and smelt their ethnicities into an unadulterated American identity.
In the play’s closing scene, David watches the sun set over the Western horizon and reflects in awe, “There she lies, the great Melting Pot. … Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian, black and yellow.” Vera warmly presses into David and adds, “Jew and Gentile.” He goes on, “Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross—how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame!”
The Melting-Pot premiered in October 1908 at the Columbia Theatre, mere blocks from the White House. Then-president Theodore Roosevelt himself was in attendance on opening night. After the final curtain, the president called down to Zangwill from his box, “A great play! A great play!” Roosevelt’s Jewish constituents did not share his enthusiasm.
Across the country, Jews denounced The Melting-Pot for ostensibly making a virtue of self-annihilation through interfaith marriage. A throng flooded into the Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side to hear Rabbi Leon Harrison condemn Zangwill’s production. The rabbi warned that “the little Jewish race would be diluted to extinction” if life imitated Zangwill’s art. Harrison excoriated the playwright for “sacrificing the ancient sanctities of his people’s faith on the altar of sentimental claptrap.”
The repudiation was no less pointed on the other side of Central Park, where Rabbi Judas Magnes of Temple Beth-El seethed against Zangwill’s “pernicious” play. “The melting process glorifies disloyalty to one’s inheritance,” Magnes griped. He saw in The Melting-Pot the alarming prospect of voluntary eradication, insisting, “We cannot be thankful to anyone for preaching suicide to us.”
Even as Zangwill’s fantasy of mass assimilation into the American Dream applied to all subgroups, Rabbi Magnes argued that intermarriage posed a particular menace to the Jewish people. After all, the new immigrant from Ireland or Germany could marry outside their heritage while resting assured that back home, their people would endure from generation to generation. But the Jew had no homeland where fellow coreligionists would ensure Jewish survival. “America spells his great hope for the preservation of Judaism,” Magnes pleaded.
The divergent reactions to Nobody Wants This and The Melting-Pot are striking. Perhaps one reason that the TV show has prompted a muted response regarding Jewish perpetuity might be that multi-faith matches have become normalized. When Zangwill’s play first ran, interreligious unions for Jews were exceedingly rare; his idealization of Jewish-Gentile love shocked the Jewish conscience.
But nuptials between a Jew and non-Jew are now more common than not, especially outside the Orthodox community. A 2020 study from Pew found that 72% of non-Orthodox Jews who had married in the preceding decade were wedded to non-Jews. Another possible explanation why Nobody Wants This did not elicit angst about Jewish self-erasure is that the children of Jewish-Gentile couples are increasingly likely to identify as Jewish. That same Pew study determined that among children resulting from interfaith marriages, those under 50 were more than twice as likely to identify as Jewish as their older peers.
This trend might preempt worries that intermarriage inevitably marks the end of Jewish tradition for that family line. Still another factor is Israel: no longer do Jews lack a homeland designed to safeguard their peoplehood.
The Jewish responses to Nobody Wants This and The Melting-Pot are in a sense mirror images of each other—the former effectively criticizes Jewish characters for being too insular, the latter for not maintaining enough distance. After all, the Jewish women of Nobody Wants This are at their worst in their rage-laden rejection of Joanne. Critics’ consternation about the show’s gender stereotyping can be understood, then, as a kind of plea: “America, don’t believe this show. Jews are actually warm and welcoming, not gratingly clannish.”
It is telling that the most favorably depicted Jewish female character, Noah’s former Jewish camp counselor, is also the one most favorably disposed toward his Gentile girlfriend. The Jewish reaction to The Melting-Pot was, of course, just the opposite, inveighing against any embrace of interfaith romance.
But in another sense, critics then and now have really wrestled with the same question: how should Jews navigate the fraught relationship between belonging and survival? To win the acceptance of Gentiles is to ensure Jewish security. Yet when acceptance becomes so complete that Gentiles are willing to marry Jews and raise children together, then Jews risk dissolving into the broader society. Belonging could well spell the end of survival.
Such is the tightrope walk of the Jew. Too little inclusion can threaten your safety; too much might result in your self-induced disappearance. Whether to shift your weight more to one side or the other in order to maintain equilibrium will depend on the contingencies of the day.
With season two of Nobody Wants This finally here, our own critical reaction—even more than the show’s plot—will suggest much about how Jews think they can best maintain an always precarious balance in our own uncertain moment. To stick to the tribe at all costs, or melt into the culture around you? No matter the decade, the same Jewish questions persist.
The post Was Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite play the original ‘Nobody Wants This’? appeared first on The Forward.
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Ilhan Omar Poses for Photo With Swedish MP Wearing Garment Depicting Erasure of Israel
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks at a press conference with activists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC, Dec. 14, 2023. Photo: Annabelle Gordon / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MI) has come under fire after being spotted posing for a photo with Malcolm Jallow, a virulently anti-Israel member of the Swedish parliament.
The picture, which was posted on Jallow’s Instagram page on Sunday, showed the controversial Swedish politician posing alongside Omar and anti-Israel political pundit Medhi Hasan. Jallow draped a stole around his shoulders depicting the complete erasure of the state of Israel and its replacement by a Palestinian state.
“Spending these days with so many inspiring leaders from around the world — including two of the most inspiring and courageous voices of our time, Congresswoman @ilhanmn Omar and international journalist @mehdirhasan — has been like reigniting an inner flame. I feel recharged with energy, hope, and determination,” Jallow wrote on Instagram.
Jallow has an extensive history of attacking Israel and promoting antisemitic conspiracy tropes. For example, he has “liked” a comment on social media that accused Jewish organizations of participating in freemasonry, fueling a false conspiracy theory that claims a secret coalition of Jews and Freemasons is working to control the world.
The Gambian-born lawmaker also lambasted Sweden for its supposed complicitly in a “genocide” in Gaza and stated in another social media post that Europe “betrayed” the Palestinian enclave by “financing the bombs” and “legitimizing the apartheid & the occupation.” He further appeared to threaten Swedish civilians who support Israel, writing, “To every ordinary citizen who waved the flag of the oppressor & laughed while Gaza burned, We will not forget you. We know your names. We save your statements. We screenshot your posts.”
He also seemed to threaten legal action against Swedish citizens who publicly demonstrate support for Israel’s defensive military operations against Hanas.
“And one day, whether in courtrooms of law or the court of history, In this life or the hereafter, you will be held to account,” Jallow posted. “That is not a threat. That is a promise to the people of Gaza.”
“Why is the Swedish government complicit in Israel’s acts of genocide against the Palestinian people?” he added on Instagram.
Jallow has also criticized Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson for taking certain measures to combat antisemitism, arguing that such actions endanger the country’s Muslim population.
“The Swedish Prime Minister’s statement that antisemitism holds a ‘special status’ and is worse than anti-Muslim propaganda is deeply problematic and dangerous. It not only diminishes the severity of hatred against Muslims but also normalizes the growing Islamophobia in Sweden,” Jallow wrote in an official statement last year.
“Ranking hate and prioritizing one group’s suffering over another is not only ignorant and offensive — it undermines our collective struggle against all forms of intolerance and discrimination,” he continued.
Sweden has reported a notable increase in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, prompting alarm within both the Jewish community and governmental bodies.
According to a report released by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRA) last year, hate crimes motivated by antisemitism in the country surged in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. The BRA found that police registered 110 complaints between the Hamas invasion and Dec. 31 in 2023, compared to just 24 incidents the prior year.
While Jews constitute a small fraction of Sweden’s population, they have represented a disproportionately high share of religious-hate-crime victims. In 2020, for example, antisemitic incidents made up about 27 percent of all religion-based hate crimes documented by police despite Jews making up only 0.1 percent of the population, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
Omar for years has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel in the US Congress, calling on Washington to impose an arms embargo on the Jewish state.
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Groundbreaking analysis of Hitler’s DNA shows no Jewish ancestry — but finds a genetic disorder
Adolf Hitler had a sexual disorder that made it more likely for him to have a micro-penis, according to the first-ever analysis of his DNA. He also did not have the Jewish ancestors that some have claimed he had.
The analysis is being revealed in detail in “Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator,” a new documentary premiering Saturday night in the United Kingdom. The documentary looks at the researchers who decided to tackle the genetic makeup of one of history’s greatest villains, as well as what they learned — and cannot learn — from his DNA.
They found that he had Kallman syndrome, a genetic disorder characterized by incomplete puberty, according to an exclusive report published Wednesday in the Times of London. They also found that he had genes making him more likely to have autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, though they cautioned that the DNA alone is not sufficient to deliver a diagnosis.
Among those quoted in the documentary is the prominent British Jewish psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen (father of actor Sacha). “Behavior is never 100% genetic,” he said in the Times report. “Associating Hitler’s extreme cruelty with people with these diagnoses risks stigmatizing them, especially when the vast majority of people with these diagnoses are neither violent nor cruel, and many are the opposite.”
The analysis, conducted by a team led by a prominent British geneticist, is more definitive on the subject of Hitler’s possible Jewish ancestry. Rumors about such a background were prevalent during Hitler’s rise: In one notable example, a newspaper aligned with the Austrian chancellor who the following year would be assassinated by Nazis in 1933 challenged German authorities to disprove his Jewish ties.
And the rumors have endured: In 2022, Russia’s foreign minister repeated the claim that Hitler had Jewish ancestry to rebuff criticism that Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine, that it needed to be “denazified,” was undermined by the fact that Ukraine’s president is Jewish.
But while previous analyses of the DNA of Hitler’s relatives suggested that he may have had some genetic links to groups that he sought to destroy, including Jews, the new analysis, on Hitler’s own DNA, shows only Austrian German ancestry.
The analysis is based on a swatch of fabric stained with blood that a U.S. soldier cut from the couch upon which Hitler shot himself. The researchers were able to confirm without a doubt that the blood came from Hitler by comparing the DNA found in it to DNA previously confirmed to have come from one of his relatives.
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The post Groundbreaking analysis of Hitler’s DNA shows no Jewish ancestry — but finds a genetic disorder appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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German Authorities Arrest Another Suspected Hamas Operative Amid Growing Terror Threat to Jews in Europe
Supporters of Hamas gather in Berlin. Photo: Reuters/M. Golejewski
As concern mounts over a potential surge in Hamas-linked attacks in Europe, German authorities have arrested another suspected member of the Palestinian terrorist group accused of acquiring firearms and ammunition to target Jewish communities.
On Tuesday, local police arrested Lebanese-born Borhan El-K, a suspected Hamas operative, after he crossed into Germany from the Czech Republic — part of an ongoing probe into the Islamist group’s network and operations across the continent.
The German federal prosecutor’s office confirmed the suspect obtained an automatic rifle, eight Glock pistols, and more than 600 rounds of ammunition in the country before handing the weapons to Wael FM, another suspected member of the terrorist group, in Berlin.
Local law enforcement arrested Lebanese-born Wael FM last month, along with two other German citizens, Adeb Al G and Ahmad I.
Prosecutors believe the three men acted as foreign operatives for Hamas and procured firearms and ammunition intended for attacks on Israeli and Jewish institutions in Germany.
Hamas, long supported by the Iranian regime as well as Qatar and Turkey, is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union and several other Western countries, including the United States.
Earlier this month, Mohammed A, another alleged member of the Palestinian terrorist group, was arrested in London at the request of German police. He is accused of taking five handguns and ammunition from Abed Al G before moving them to Vienna for storage.
Last week, Vienna authorities uncovered a hidden arsenal linked to Hamas, reportedly intended for “potential terrorist attacks in Europe” targeting Jewish communities.
The Austrian government confirmed that the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence Service (DSN) has been conducting an internationally coordinated investigation into a global terrorist network with ties to the Islamist group.
During the investigation, Austrian authorities uncovered evidence suggesting that this group had brought weapons into the country for potential terrorist attacks in Europe.
For its part, Hamas issued a statement denying any connection to the criminal network, calling the allegations of its involvement “baseless.”
However, experts have warned that Hamas has expanded its terrorist operations beyond the Middle East, exploiting a well-established network of weapons caches, criminal alliances, and covert infrastructure quietly built across Europe over the years.
Last month, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center released a study detailing how Hamas leaders in Lebanon have been directing operatives to establish “foreign operator” cells across Europe, collaborating with organized crime networks to acquire weapons and target Jewish communities abroad.
In February, four Hamas members suspected of plotting attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe went on trial in Berlin, in what prosecutors described as the first court case against terrorists of the Islamist group in Germany.