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Weinstein approached me ‘Jew to Jew’: Jodi Kantor opens up on the ‘She Said’ movie’s Jewish moments
(JTA) — When the New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor was reporting the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual assault story that earned her a Pulitzer prize, the powerful Hollywood producer and his team tried to influence her by using something they had in common: They are both Jewish.
“Weinstein put [Jewishness] on the table and seemed to expect that I was going to have some sort of tribal loyalty to him,” Kantor told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on a video call from the New York Times newsroom. “And that was just not going to be the case.”
Now, that exchange has been immortalized in “She Said,” a new film adaptation of the nonfiction book of the same name by Kantor and her collaborator Megan Twohey that details their investigation into Weinstein’s conduct, which helped launch the #MeToo movement.
The film, directed by Maria Schrader with stars Zoe Kazan as Kantor and Carey Mulligan as Twohey, is an understated thriller that has drawn comparisons to “All the President’s Men” — and multiple subtle but powerful Jewish-themed subplots reveal the way Kantor’s Jewishness arose during and at times intersected with the investigation.
In one scene, the Kantor character notes that a Jewish member of Weinstein’s team tried to appeal to her “Jew to Jew.” In another, Kantor shares a moving moment with Weinstein’s longtime accountant, the child of Holocaust survivors, as they discuss the importance of speaking up about wrongdoing.
Kantor, 47, grew up between New York and New Jersey, the first grandchild of Holocaust survivors — born “almost 30 years to the day after my grandparents were liberated,” she notes. She calls her grandmother Hana Kantor, a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor, her “lodestar.” Kantor — who doesn’t often speak publicly about her personal life, including her Jewish background, which involved some education in Jewish schools — led a segment for CBS in May 2021 on her grandmother and their relationship. Before her journalism career, she spent a year in Israel on a Dorot Fellowship, working with Israeli and Palestinian organizations. She’s now a “proud member” of a Reform synagogue in Brooklyn.
Kantor spoke with JTA about the film’s Jewish threads, the portrayal of the New York Times newsroom and what Zoe Kazan’s performance captures about journalism.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
JTA: How did you feel having Zoe Kazan, who is not Jewish, play you? Kazan has played some notably Jewish characters before, for example in the HBO miniseries “The Plot Against America.”
JK: I feel Zoe’s performance is so sensitive and so layered. What I really appreciate about her performance is that she captures so many of the emotions I was feeling under the surface in the investigation. You know, when you’re a reporter and especially a reporter handling that sensitive a story, it’s your responsibility to present a really smooth professional exterior to the world. At the end of the investigation, I had the job of reading Harvey Weinstein some of the allegations and really confronting him. And in dealing with the victims, I wanted to be a rock for them and it was my job to get them to believe in the investigation. And so on the one hand, you have that smooth, professional exterior, but then below that, of course you’re feeling all the feelings. You’re feeling the power of the material, you’re feeling the urgency of getting the story, you’re feeling the fear that Weinstein could hurt somebody else. You’re feeling the loss that these women are expressing, including over their careers. And so I think Zoe’s performance just communicates that so beautifully.
What Zoe says about the character is that there are elements of me, there are elements of herself, and then there are elements of pure invention because she’s an artist, and that’s what she does.
I think the screenplay gets at a small but significant line of Jewish sub-drama that ran through the investigation. It went like this: Harvey Weinstein and his representatives were constantly trying to approach me as a Jew. And they’ve done this more recently, as well. There have been times when Harvey Weinstein was trying to approach me “Jew to Jew,” like almost in a tone of “you and I are the same, we understand each other.” We found dossiers later that they had compiled on me and it was clear that they knew that I was the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and they tried to sort of deploy that. So speaking of keeping things under the surface, I privately thought that was offensive, that he was citing that. But your job as a reporter is to be completely professional. And I wasn’t looking to get into a fight with Weinstein. I just wanted to find out the truth and I actually wanted to be fair to the guy. Anyway, even as he was approaching me “Jew to Jew” in private, he was hiring Black Cube — sort of Israeli private intelligence agents — to try to dupe me. And they actually sent an agent to me, and she posed as a women’s rights advocate. And she was intimating that they were going to pay me a lot of money to appear at a conference in London. Luckily I shooed her away.
To some degree I can’t explain why private Israeli intelligence agents were hired to try to dupe the Hebrew speaking, yeshiva-educated, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. But it’s not my job to explain that! It’s their job to explain why they did that.
Then the theme reappeared with Irwin Reiter, Weinstein’s accountant of 30 years, who kind of became the Deep Throat of the investigation. I quickly figured out that Irwin and I were from the same small world. He was the child of survivors, and had also spent his summers at bungalow colonies in the Catskills just down the road from mine. I don’t bring up the Holocaust a lot. It’s a sacred matter for me, and I didn’t do it lightly. But once I discovered that we did in fact have this really powerful connection in our backgrounds, I did gently sound it with him – I felt that was sincere and real. Because he was making such a critical decision: Weinstein’s accountant of 30 years is still working for the guy by day and he’s meeting with me at night. And I felt like I did need to go to that place with him, saying, “Okay, Irwin, we both know that there are people who talk and there are people who don’t. And we both grew up around that mix of people and what do we think is the difference? And also if you know if you have the chance to act and intervene in a bad situation, are you going to take it?”
We didn’t talk a lot about it, because I raised it and he didn’t want to fully engage. But I always felt like that was under the surface of our conversations, and he made a very brave decision to help us.
That was a very powerful scene in the film, and it felt like a turning point in the movie that kind of got at the ethical core of what was motivating your character. Was that a scene that was important to you personally to include in the film?
What Megan and I want people to know overall is that a small number of brave sources can make an extraordinary difference. When you really look at the number of people who gave us the essential information about Weinstein, it’s a small conference room’s worth of people. Most of them are incredibly brave women, some of whom are depicted, I think, quite beautifully in the film. But there was also Irwin, Weinstein’s accountant of all these years, among them. It’s Megan and my job to build people’s confidence in telling the truth. And as we become custodians of this story for the long term, one of the things we really want people to know is that a tiny group of brave sources, sometimes one source, can make a massive difference. Look at the impact that these people had all around the world.
Did you feel the film captured the New York Times newsroom? There’s a kind of great reverence to the toughness and professionalism in the newspaper business that really came through.
Megan and I are so grateful for the sincerity and professionalism with which the journalism is displayed. There are a lot of on screen depictions of journalists in which we’re depicted as manipulative or doing things for the wrong reasons or sleeping with our sources!
We [as journalists] feel incredible drama in what we do every day. And we’re so grateful to the filmmakers for finding it and sharing it with people. And I know the New York Times can look intimidating or remote as an institution. I hope people really consider this an invitation into the building and into our meetings, and into our way of working and our value system.
And we’re also proud that it’s a vision of a really female New York Times, which was not traditionally the case at this institution for a long time. This is a book and a movie about women as narrators.
“Harvey Weinstein and his representatives were constantly trying to approach me as a Jew,” Kantor said. (The New York Times)
There have been comparisons made between this movie and “All the President’s Men.” One of the striking differences is that those journalists are two male bachelors running around D.C. And this film has scenes of motherhood, of the Shabbat table, of making lunches. What was it like seeing your personal lives reflected on screen?
It’s really true that the Weinstein investigation was kind of born in the crucible of motherhood and Megan and my attempt to combine work with parenting. On the one hand, it’s the most everyday thing in the world, but on the other hand, you don’t see it actually portrayed on screen that much. We’re really honored by the way that throughout the film you see motherhood and work mixing, I think in a way that is so natural despite our obviously pretty stressful circumstances.
I started out alone on the Weinstein investigation, and I called Megan because movie stars were telling me their secrets but they were very reluctant to go on the record. So I had gone some way in persuading and engaging them, but I was looking to make the absolute strongest case for them. So I called Megan. We had both done years of reporting on women and children. Mine involved the workplace more and hers involved sex crimes more, which is part of why everything melded together so well eventually. I wanted to talk to her about what she had said to female victims in the past. But when I reached her, I could hear that something was wrong. And she had just had a baby, and I had had postpartum depression myself. So we talked about it and I gave her the name of my doctor, who I had seen. Then she got treatment. And she not only gave very good advice on that [initial] phone call, but she joined me in the investigation.
I think the theme is responsibility. Our relationship was forged in a sense of shared responsibility, primarily for the work – once we began to understand the truths about Weinstein, we couldn’t allow ourselves to fail. But also Megan was learning to shoulder the responsibility of being a parent, and I had two kids. And so we started this joint dialogue that was mostly about work, but also about motherhood. And I think throughout the film and throughout the real investigation, we felt those themes melding. It’s totally true that my daughter Tali was asking me about what I was doing. It’s very hard to keep secrets from your kid in a New York City apartment, even though I didn’t tell her everything. And Megan and I would go from discussing really critical matters with the investigation to talking about her daughter’s evolving nap schedule. It really felt like we had to get the story and get home to the kids.
And also, we were reporting on our own cohort. A lot of Weinstein victims were and are women in their 40s. And so even though we were very professional with this and we tried to be very professional with the sources, there was an aspect of looking in the mirror. For example, with Laura Madden, who was so brave about going on the record, it was conversations with her own teenage daughters that helped her make her decision.
We didn’t write about this in our book because it was hard to mix the motherhood stuff with this sort of serious reporter-detective story and all the important facts. And we didn’t want to talk about ourselves too much in the book. But the filmmakers captured something that I think is very true. It feels particular to us but also universal. When Zoe [Kazan] is pushing a stroller and taking a phone call at the same time, I suspect lots of people will identify with that. And what I also really like is the grace and dignity with which that’s portrayed.
It must have been surreal, seeing a Hollywood movie about your investigation of Hollywood.
I think part of the power of the film is that it returns the Weinstein investigation to the producer’s medium, but on vastly different terms, with the women in charge. Megan and I are particularly moved by the portrayals of Zelda Perkins, Laura Madden and Rowena Chiu — these former Weinstein assistants are in many ways at the core of the story. They’re everyday people who made the incredibly brave decision to help us, in spite of everything from breast cancer to legal barriers.
Working with the filmmakers was really interesting. They were really committed to the integrity of the story, and they asked a ton of questions, both large and small. Ranging from the really big things about the investigation to these tiny details. Like in the scene where we go to Gwyneth Paltrow’s house and Megan and I discover we’re practically wearing the same dress — those were the actual white dresses that we wore that day. We had to send them in an envelope to the costume department, and they copied the dresses in Zoe and Carey’s sizes and that’s what they’re wearing. There was a strand of extreme fidelity, but they needed some artistic license because it’s a movie. And the movie plays out in the key of emotion.
—
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Canadian Senate Report on Antisemitism Calls for Hate Crime Units Nationwide, Guarding Synagogues From Protesters
People attend Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, in December 2023. Photo: Shawn Goldberg via Reuters Connect
Canada’s Senate on Tuesday released a report which offered a comprehensive roadmap for countering rising Jew-hatred across the country, urging multiple reforms including an expansion of law enforcement resources to investigate hate crimes, a boost in Holocaust education, and implementation of a digital literacy program for youth.
Jews remain the top targets of religiously motivated hate crimes, with Deborah Lyons, the former special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, reporting that the Jewish community comprises one percent of the Canadian population but experiences 70 percent of all such hate crimes.
Jews are also the top targets for hate crimes overall in Canada.
Public Safety Canada documented 1,345 hate crimes targeting religious groups in 2023, a 75 percent leap from 2022, with 71 percent targeting Jews.
“Standing United Against Antisemitism: Protecting Communities and Strengthening Canadian Democracy,” the report from the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights (RIDR), cites an alarming update from the Jewish Parents of Ottawa Students Association.
“Jewish students opt to conceal their identity rather than confront the distressing realities of derogatory name-calling, character assassinations, isolation, and peer rejection,” the group says. “In more extreme circumstances, children as young as seven years old have encountered harassment, intimidation, physical assault, threats of both physical and sexual violence, and even death threats.”
Justin Hebert, a former student and a former president of the Jewish Law Students Association at the University of Windsor, discussed encountering peers who advocated for atrocities. As documented by the Senate report, he asked, “How can I be expected to have a meaningful conversation with the student who told me the murder of Israelis is always justified while Israeli students are actively enrolled at the school, or that rape is a legitimate form of resistance, or that babies can be taken hostage if their parents are colonizers?”
The report also describes antisemitic incidents in medical settings and even at rape crisis centers.
According to a written brief submitted by Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism, in one example “staff physicians at a major children’s hospital [were] being told to remove pins expressing solidarity with civilians held by Hamas in Gaza, but that pins expressing opposition to Israel were not restricted in the same way. The organization also cited examples of medical residents refusing to work with their Jewish colleagues, and of movements to boycott Israeli-produced pharmaceuticals, ‘compromis[ing] patient care and professional ethics.’”
Revi Mula, vice-president of Canadian Women Against Antisemitism, said that “rape crisis centers, shelters, and women’s organizations have” excluded Jewish women, linking their identity with Israel’s actions in Gaza. “Jewish women also face gendered antisemitism. They are subjected to slurs,” Mula said.
The report offers 22 recommendations to counter this revival of the world’s oldest hatred. Foremost among them is the reinstating of a “Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism.” Other key steps the report emphasizes include establishing a Digital Safety Commission and ensuring that the Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion includes a focus on antisemitism in its mandate.
The commission also explores expanding efforts to counter hate crimes through growing law enforcement resources.
The 15th recommendation calls for the Canadian government and Royal Canadian Mounted Police to “work with provincial and territorial governments to establish and effectively resource specialized hate crime units in all major cities and regions across Canada, with a focus on education, community outreach, investigation, disaggregated data collection, information sharing, prosecution, and deradicalization efforts.”
Nearly a third of the recommendations reference education. The 10th urges the Canadian government to “develop and support digital literacy and social media education initiatives, including model materials and funding for programs, that help young Canadians recognize misinformation, disinformation, radicalization, extremist narratives, and online hate.”
Independent Senator Paulette Senior chaired the committee which drafted the 73 pages of analysis and recommendations.
“Canadians must stand united against antisemitism,” she said in a statement. “It is only by coming together to celebrate our shared values that we can thrive as a country. Antisemitism is a clear and present danger to our free and democratic society.”
Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada, praised the report, noting the inclusion of the organization’s ideas.
“B’nai Brith Canada applauds RIDR for elevating our recommendations to confront hate in this country,” he said. “We will continue to work with the Senate to ensure that these recommendations result in changes on the ground that benefit everyone in our society.”
According to the group’s latest audit of antisemitism in Canada released last year, antisemitic incidents in 2024 rose 7.4 percent from 2023, with 6,219 adding up to the highest total recorded since it began tracking such data in 1982. Seventeen incidents occurred on average every day, while online antisemitism exploded a harrowing 161 percent since 2022. As standalone provinces, Quebec and Alberta saw the largest percentage increases, by 215 percent and 160 percent, respectively.
B’nai Brith Canada cited four of its recommendations appearing in the Senate report: the call for an interdepartmental task force to address antisemitism in Canada, the digital literacy program for youth, the antisemitism focus on the Advisory Council, and an increase in antisemitism education for students.
“The Senate has listened to the community and produced pertinent and tangible recommendations to confront antisemitism in this country,” Simon Wolle, the Jewish advocacy group’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Now, it falls on the government to translate these recommendations into action.”
Noah Shack, CEO of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), also urged swift implementation.
“The Senate’s report on antisemitism comes at a moment of crisis. As Jewish institutions face violent attacks and Jewish Canadians experience unparalleled levels of hate crimes, antisemitism is no longer confined to the margins — it has spread across our society and institutions,” Shack said. “In fact, the committee’s report and the hearings platform extremist voices calling for the destruction of those who support Israel.”
Shack emphasized that CIJA especially appreciated “the rooting of recommendations in agencies dedicated to law enforcement and intelligence, as this is crucial to combat antisemitism and the growth of radicalism both at our borders and inside our country.”
The 17th recommendation calls for the establishment of “narrowly tailored ‘safe access’ or ‘bubble zone’ measures where appropriate to protect access to certain religious institutions, places of worship, and community spaces.” This instruction came following years of objections by Jews attending synagogues when anti-Israel demonstrators would specifically disrupt and intimidate services.
Conservative Senator Mary Jane McCallum noted this problem, saying that “everyone in Canada deserves to feel safe. The increase in antisemitic rhetoric and attacks at places of worship and education is beyond troubling — it is a cry for action.”
The commissioners also considered the threat of antisemitism spreading on social media.
“Social media has been a conduit for antisemitic ideas, exposing young people, who may lack an understanding of history, to an unregulated and unverified source of information,” said Independent Senator Mary Robinson. “Education, by ensuring students know how to critically evaluate online content, is a powerful inoculant against the cheap pull of hatred.”
At a press conference on Tuesday morning announcing the report, Independent Saskatchewan Senator David Arnot insisted on “no dithering,” adding, “We have to have action. The time is now.”
“The plain truth is that Jewish Canadians are under attack in this country,” added Conservative Senator Leo Housakos. “They are under attack where they live, where they worship, and in their schools. And it seems that every day seems to bring in new events that might have been unthinkable just a few short years ago.”
Emphasizing the role law enforcement plays in the fight, Housakos said the report also recommends “training for police and judges to improve their ability to identify and respond to hate crimes and to better react when mobs of protesters feel entitled to march through Jewish neighborhoods chanting hateful slogans, and when synagogues and schools get shot at.”
Housakos added, “To be a Jew in Canada should not mean that you become a target. It’s time to acknowledge this and to swiftly respond, so that Jews in Canada no longer have to live in fear.”
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An Orthodox Jewish hooper famous for viral dunks aims to break Division-I boundaries
A yarmulke-wearing basketball prospect who gained online fans with highlight-reel dunks announced his next major leap Wednesday: He’ll try to be the first Orthodox player to play four years of Division-I college basketball.
Chaim Galbut, a 6-foot-7 wing who played high school basketball for Miami Country Day School, a nondenominational Jewish K-12 school, before graduating in 2025, announced in an Instagram post that he will attend Duquesne University in the fall.
A post from the basketball outlet DraftExpress reported that Duquesne, a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, had discovered Galbut on social media.
Galbut said last year that his refusal to compete on Shabbat had meant turning down offers from other colleges.
“I’m like, I don’t play on Shabbos, they’re like, ‘Well, we don’t want you,’” Galbut told the Yeshiva League Pass Tip Off podcast in September. “It’s happened so many times, I can’t tell you. I’m like, ‘All right, that’s cool. Like, don’t worry, you’ll see me soon.’”
Galbut did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
Largely unknown outside of the Orthodox world during high school, Galbut’s moment in the spotlight did not come until after he graduated, when video of him throwing down dunks on the summer travel circuit, posted by a popular basketball channel, received more than 100,000 likes on TikTok.
He spent the next school year studying at a yeshiva in Israel.
Duquesne finished last season with 18 wins and 15 losses. The university last appeared in the NCAA Tournament in 2024, when they lost in the round of 32.
At least one other Orthodox hooper has played in Division I: Tamir Goodman, who started his career at Towson University in 2000 but left the program after two years.
And other Orthodox players have played for Christian schools in Division III — Ze’ev Remer played four years at California Lutheran University, graduating this year.
The post An Orthodox Jewish hooper famous for viral dunks aims to break Division-I boundaries appeared first on The Forward.
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Former Columbia professor tells NYU students to learn from Hamas at off-campus event
A group called Shut it Down NYU hosted an off-campus event near New York University on Tuesday that featured a lecture by Mohamed Abdou, a former Columbia University professor at the Middle East Studies Institute. During his two-hour-long lecture, Abdou told students they had much to learn from Hamas and other armed groups, including lessons from the planning of the Oct. 7 attacks and even martyrdom.
Abdou, whose employment at Columbia drew criticism during 2024 congressional hearings about campus antisemitism, leading to a contentious split between him and the university, has taught at numerous other universities, including Cornell University and the University of Toronto. He appeared via Zoom at the Tuesday event as the sole speaker. Roughly 10 people attended the gathering in person at a park near campus, with about 30 more joining online. A meal was provided for in-person attendees.
The event was part of a campus tour series titled “Death to the Akademy.” In March, Abdou lectured a student group at the Union Theological Seminary, a Columbia affiliate, where he encouraged students to engage in jihad.
Shut it Down NYU describes itself as being made up of NYU “students, faculty, staff, and organizers who are a community in but not of NYU.” The group is not formally affiliated with the university.
During his lecture, Abdou offered advice on campus organizing and said the Mujahideen, Muslim guerrilla fighters who engage in jihad, had referred to pro-Palestinian student groups as a “branch of the resistance.” Abdou described the Mujahideen as “the greatest people on the face of the earth,” telling participants that this designation is “a great honor,” but added that students could be doing more to live up to that role.
At several points, Abdou appeared to urge students toward violence. He criticized the 2024 student-run encampments for marginalizing radical voices who sought to use violence. “We need to understand that violence is a tactic and not a strategy,” he said. “The question of violence, there wasn’t even consensus about that! Students within the encampment fetishizing non‑violence,” he said, adding, “We don’t understand that there are revolutionary forms of violence, that there’s a need for sacrifice.”
The event included a question-and-answer session in which one attendee asked in the Zoom chat about balancing “the longevity of our movement with the violent urgency that our conditions require.”
Abdou said that if student activists see themselves as part of the axis of resistance, they should see themselves as coming from a group of people who believe in martyrdom. “If we are to meet Muhammad, then our blood serves as a testimony,” he said. “We do not fear death.”
An NYU official said that the university contacted Shut it Down NYU organizers to make clear that they did not have permission to hold the event on NYU grounds or to use university resources, Wiley Norvell, NYU’s senior vice president for university relations and public affairs, told the Forward.
“This event was not sanctioned by NYU, nor did we allow it to take place on campus,” Norvell said. “It was not affiliated with any university group and was attended by fewer than 10 people in a city park. NYU strongly condemns the brazen use of threatening language used in promoting the event and the encouragement of violence expressed by speakers. We are investigating several potential University policy violations associated with it.”
The flyer for the event was widely circulated on social media, featuring drawings of what appear to be armed Hamas militants. At the bottom of the flyer, a message reads, “want us to come to your campus? DM for details.”
During the Q&A, a participant who identified herself as a student asked Abdou about the lessons student organizers can take from foreign resistance movements.
Abdou responded that students can learn from the Oct. 7 attacks, stating, “There’s much that one can learn, again from the cunningness of our Mujahideen, particularly Sinwar.” He additionally described at length the way Hamas methodically “studied the Zionist entity and how to break through the barrier siege.”
In remarks about the United States, Abdou said, “If you think somehow you’re going to free Palestine and keep America, forget it…You need to actively work to destroy.”
“Be proud of your hate for America,” he said. “You love Islam, and you should be loving Islam more than this barbarous colony. It’s a plague upon the earth. And yeah, in that sense, you need to be a threat. We all need to be a threat.”
Shut it Down NYU did not immediately respond to comment.
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