Uncategorized
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.
Uncategorized
Congressional Hopeful Michael Blake Seeks to Erase AIPAC Support, Misleads on Past Trips to Israel
Former New York State Assemblyman Michael Blake is running for US Congress in the Democratic primary in New York’s 15th Congressional District. Photo: Screenshot
Michael Blake, a progressive Democrat running for US Congress in New York City, appeared to have recently made misleading statements about the nature of his previous trips to Israel and relationship with AIPAC, the country’s foremost pro-Israel lobbying group.
In Instagram comments, Blake characterized one of his visits to Israel as being done in his capacity as a reverend. Blake visited Israel in 2014 with the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and in 2017 with the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation.
“I attended a trip and spoke at previous events about my faith as an ordained reverend and about the Black & Jewish relationship but haven’t been involved in years,” he posted when asked to clarify his ties to AIPAC, which seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance.
Blake, a former New York state assemblyman, is running an insurgent left-wing campaign to unseat incumbent US Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres, a staunch supporter of Israel, in the state’s 15th congressional district.
Regarding previous support from AIPAC, Blake said, “Donations would have been minimal in the past.”
Social media screenshot
However, Blake’s social media comments contradict previous documentation about the nature of his trip to Israel and relationship with AIPAC. Although Blake asserted that he visited Israel with an AIPAC-linked group as a reverend, reports indicate that he attended AIPAC events through 2019 and only became ordained as a reverend following his 2020 Democratic primary defeat to Torres.
“The Bronx Democrat then gave up his Assembly seat to fall to Ritchie Torres in a 2020 congressional race. Since then, he’s run his public affairs firm, backed Maya Wiley’s 2021 run for mayor, and got ordained as a reverend,” Politico reported in 2024 in an article on Blake considering a bid at the time for New York City mayor.
Contrary to Blake’s assertions that he only participated with AIPAC as a reverend, the politician participated in multiple AIPAC events, including its annual policy conference in 2017 while serving as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Skeptics have suggested that Blake invoked religion to minimize progressive blowback over his connections to AIPAC.
Last year, the New York Post first reported that Blake deleted several past social media posts touting his attendance at AIPAC events.
Since announcing his campaign to unseat Torres, Blake has lurched farther left on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an apparent attempt to court progressive voters. Blake has issued blistering statements condemning Israel of committing a so-called “genocide” in Gaza and vowed to vote against any military aid to the Jewish state.
“I am ready to fight for you and lower your cost of living while Ritchie fights for a Genocide. I will focus on Affordable Housing and Books as Ritchie will only focus on AIPAC and Bibi,” Blake posted on X in a statement last year announcing his candidacy, referencing Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In May 2025, however, during his failed campaign for mayor, Blake walked back his accusations of “genocide” against Israel, claiming that he regretted using the term to characterize the war in Gaza.
“It was wrong language to use,” Blake said, referencing his October 2023 post which accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. He apparently again reversed his stance when launching his congressional bid in New York’s 15th district.
Despite his efforts, Blake’s previous trips to Israel and history of praising the Jewish state have elicited skepticism among left-wing voters in New York City. Progressive critics have pointed to his 2017 speech at the annual AIPAC conference in which he lavished praise on Israel. In 2020, while speaking with Jewish Insider, he compared his experience as an African American to the struggles of Jewish people in Israel.
As the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel continues to deteriorate following the breakout of the Israel-Hamas war, liberal politicians have continued to recalibrate their approach to Middle Eastern geopolitics. Many ambitious Democratic candidates have staked out positions on Israel more aligned with the far-left, progressive flank of the party, accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” while vowing to oppose any arms sales to Jerusalem.
Despite his aggressive overtures to progressives, Blake’s campaign to unseat Torres still remains a longshot. The 15th district encompasses Riverdale, a heavily Jewish and affluent community and hub of pro-Israel activism. Polling suggests that Torres maintains heavy levels of support in his district, placing him among the most popular politicians in the state of New York.
Blake’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Uncategorized
National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis
(JTA) — A national nonprofit that supports interfaith Jewish families has slashed its workforce after facing an unanticipated budget shortfall.
18Doors announced on March 31 that it had “significantly” reduced its staff due to budget constraints. In fact, about two-thirds of the staff were laid off the week before the announcement, board member Laurie Beijen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The nonprofit had 15 staff members last August, according to an archived version of its website. This week, it lists four employees, nearly all in the C-suite.
CEO Mike Wise has stepped down, and 18Doors is now being led by Ellen Frank, the chief operating officer, and Adam Pollack, the chief program officer, the organization said.
Among those no longer at 18Doors are employees responsible for fundraising, creating digital content about interfaith inclusion and running a referral service to connect interfaith families and clergy. That service, which the organization says reached 2,000 families a year, remains operational, Beijen said, but “to a lesser degree.”
She said the budget crunch was complex and had come as a surprise. She cited in particular the squeeze felt by nonprofits like 18Doors in recent years as foundations and donors shifted their giving priorities toward Israel and fighting antisemitism.
“We were kind of caught off guard by the severity of our funding issues,” Beijen said. “It’s a myriad of causes that are sort of short, medium and long term, and we ended up just getting caught in this storm.”
Jodi Bromberg stepped down as CEO in 2024 after helming the organization for a decade, including during its 2020 rebrand from InterfaithFamily. The organization hired a search firm to find her replacement and a consulting firm to help draw up a strategic plan, which Beijen said it had been “on the cusp” of announcing before instead sharply contracting.
A delayed annual gift also scrambled budget planning, Beijen said, with a gap of just a few months sending the organization into a financial crisis. 18Doors declined to identify the donor or the size of the gift.
The nonprofit has raised $2 to 3 million a year in recent years and spent all of that or more, according to its filings with the IRS. Its significant donors have included the Marcus Foundation and Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Jewish federation in Boston, where 18Doors is based. The Marcus Foundation and CJP did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement emailed to the 18Doors community and posted on social media last week, the nonprofit wrote, “The Board has since secured necessary funding to stabilize the organization in the short term.”
Jewish philanthropic giving has changed since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with many donors choosing to focus on pro-Israel giving and causes that address antisemitism.
In December, the Shabbat dinner nonprofit OneTable laid off a quarter of its staff, citing donors’ funding priorities. The group is adapting its programming to include more Israel content.
At the recent Jewish Funders Network international conference, speakers, funders and philanthropy executives put a heavy emphasis on giving toward Israel and antisemitism-related issues, according to video and recaps of the conference.
Activists and educators in other areas say that while Israel and antisemitism are important issues, other causes are being left behind.
Founded in 2001, 18Doors says its mission is to encourage mixed-heritage families to engage in Jewish life, while encouraging Jewish communities and clergy to become more welcoming and inclusive.
18Doors’ vision of inclusion for interfaith families has grown closer to reality in the decades since its launch. In 2001, a Pew survey found that half of Jews who married in the previous 10 years had married non-Jews. Two decades later, in 2021, it found that the rate for marriages in the last decade had risen to 61%. Most children of the couples were being raised Jewish, the survey found, with participation in synagogue life and Jewish institutions common.
Two major seminaries recently began admitting students who are in relationships with people who are not Jewish, saying that they wanted to ordain rabbis who match the communities they serve. And in December, while continuing to prohibit intermarriages performed by its rabbis, leaders of the Conservative Movement formally apologized for decades of discouraging intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews and vowed to create new opportunities for inclusion in Conservative synagogues.
But advocates for interfaith families say much more needs to be done.
“The idea that being warm and welcoming is sufficient is false. There’s much more to learn and to do,” said Keren McGinity, an interfaith educator and scholar. “18Doors is important because they are part of the work that gets done, including training clergy.”
McGinity has her own experience with layoffs in the interfaith inclusion space. She was the interfaith specialist at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism before her position was eliminated last year.
She said she is optimistic that 18Doors’ financial crunch will be temporary — but she said she believed the Jewish philanthropic landscape needs to change nonetheless.
“What concerns me is that there should be more funding channeled towards engaging interfaith couples and families,” McGinity said.
Though no other institution has quite the national reach that 18Doors has, other organizations addressing some aspects of interfaith family life include the children’s Jewish literacy program PJ Library; Embark at Mem Global, a program for interfaith and mixed-heritage couples in their 20s and 30s; and Honeymoon Israel, which provides trips to Israel for “young couples of all backgrounds.”
Beijen said 18Doors is aiming to preserve its flagship 18-month clergy program, the Rukin Rabbinic Fellowship, which provides training for spiritual leaders who work with interfaith families.
Bromberg, the group’s former CEO, says 18Doors serves families like hers: Her wife is Catholic and they have children together. Now a consultant helping other nonprofits, she said the cuts at 18Doors signify both a crushing loss and a pressing question.
“These are long time, long-tenured staff. The Jewish community as a whole will lose the institutional knowledge and the relationships that it’s had through 18Doors, through the laying off of those staff,” she said.
Bromberg added, “The question it leaves in the minds of families like mine is: Whose priority are mixed-heritage and interfaith families in Jewish life?”
The post National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Jewish groups condemn Trump’s threat that a ‘whole civilization will die’ in Iran
(JTA) — Jewish groups were among those criticizing President Donald Trump and accusing him of using genocidal rhetoric on Tuesday after Trump posted online that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”
The president’s comments came hours before his 8 p.m. deadline for Iran on Tuesday to reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and were met by swift condemnation by a group of Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“We speak today with one voice and one purpose: to condemn President Trump’s threat to extinguish an entire civilization,” Schumer wrote in a joint statement. “This is not strength. Intentionally destroying the power, water or basic infrastructure upon which tens of millions of civilians depend to punish the very civilians who suffer at the hands of the Iranian regime would constitute a war crime, a betrayal of the values this nation was founded on and a moral failure.”
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, condemned the president’s remarks, saying in a statement that there were “simply no words to describe the danger of a U.S. president openly threatening to erase an entire civilization.” She alluded to Jews’ history of facing genocidal leaders in her comments.
“Make no mistake: the president’s threats are deeply reprehensible to us as Jews and as Americans, and must be condemned by all leaders – regardless of their stance on the war with Iran,” Spitalnick said. “We know what it means when leaders call for communities and populations to be wiped out.”
Spitalnick was not the only Jewish leader to weigh in. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street, said in a statement that the group was “appalled by President Trump’s heinous remarks.”
“This language – a threat to carry out war crimes – is a searing violation of Jewish and American values, certainly will not lead to the de-escalation we desperately need and is a terrifying example of the senseless violence that has characterized Trump’s leadership,” Ben-Ami said, calling on Congress and the Cabinet to “do everything in their power to restrain and remove him.”
Other progressive Jewish groups and leaders accused Trump of promoting genocide, including Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, which wrote in a post on Instagram, “This is not strength. This is not safety. This is a call for genocide.”
Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust, also leveled the accusation against the president in a Substack post published on Tuesday titled “The president speaks genocide.”
“To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state,” Snyder wrote.
For some Jews, the president’s looming deadline for Iran carried added significance as it came during the final days of Passover — and as Iran continued to barrage Israel with missiles.
“Tonight, I pray that the Pharaohs who insist on our demise recognize the harm that they may bring on themselves,” Rabbi Arie Hasit, associate dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Israel, wrote on Facebook. “That they recognize that Iran can put aside its insistence that Israel must be destroyed and that they can make the necessary steps to end this war.”
“And I pray that if they are overcome by Pharaoh, that no leader try to play the part of God,” Hasit continued. “That in the name of my future, we do not wipe out any civilization. That we understand that even the worst of enemies does not justify the use of the fiercest of our power.”
The post Jewish groups condemn Trump’s threat that a ‘whole civilization will die’ in Iran appeared first on The Forward.