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When Harry met ‘Hava Nagila.’ Belafonte’s lifelong love affair with Jewish culture
When Harry Belafonte let loose the word ”Day-O” in Webster Hall in 1955, it echoed a storied past.
He was in the ballroom recording “The Banana Boat Song,” a working man’s cry for reprieve, taken from the Caribbean’s banana loaders, who worked nights to escape the scorching heat, for his album Calypso.
Decades earlier, in the same, acoustically-blessed venue founded by a Jewish immigrant named Charles Goldstein, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America formed in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Emma Goldman, who encouraged a young Communist named Paul Robeson, later to become Belafonte’s mentor in politics and performance, gave speeches about anarchism and women’s rights there.
Belafonte’s song was a kind of call-and-response with history, and a Jewish one at that. He was no stranger to Jewish culture and would come to evangelize it. When he was a struggling actor, operating a burger joint in the Village at the height of the folk era, a local cantor wandered in and taught him a tune he’d make world famous: “Hava Nagila.”
“Harry’s affinity toward Jewish culture and for Jews was a huge part of his life,” said Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, the author of Daylight Come, a new biography on Belafonte.
Jelly-Schapiro first interviewed the late singer, actor and activist when he was a grad student writing his dissertation on the influence of Caribbean culture. He didn’t have a book in mind, but over the years he’d catch up with Belafonte at events around the globe. Jelly-Schapiro even scored invites to his birthday parties. An earlier book proposal was scuppered by news of Belafonte’s memoirs, but in the years since his death in 2022, Jelly-Schapiro wanted to tell the larger story of how he reshaped American culture, in the pre-Civil Rights era and in the dead center of the movement.
Daylight Come is a fascinating look at Belafonte’s extracurriculars. Outside of his tenure as a matinee idol, and the first solo act to crack 1 million LPs sold, Belafonte’s best friend was Martin Luther King, Jr., for whom his West End Avenue apartment served as a kind of New York headquarters for the Civil Rights leader. He had the ear of John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby. He mobilized movie stars for the 1963 March on Washington and bankrolled much of the campaign to desegregate the South. Among his other contributions was an early break he gave to a young Jewish Minnesotan looking to make it in the music industry (Bob Dylan’s first professional recording was as a harmonica player on the title track of Belafonte’s 1962 album Midnight Special).
I spoke with Jelly-Schapiro about Belafonte’s enduring connection to Yiddishkeit and the exceedingly strange film where he plays a Jewish angel on work probation. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The way you put it in the book is that Harold Bellanfanti, Harry’s dad, “said his father was a Dutch Jew from Martinique.” That makes me think it hasn’t been verified.
There’s no way to confirm it empirically, but that’s certainly the family story. Many family trees in the Caribbean are very mixed and hard to track because they involve mixtures of enslaved people from Africa and traders and others from the edges of Europe. He had this very mixed sort of family, but probably even more important is his growing up in New York around lots of Jews.
His mother worked as a domestic and a tailor. This Jewish tailor was kind to her and would give her these cheap suits that she dyed blue. But he also said in an interview once “I came to know the Irishman by knowing the culture of the Irish. I came to know the Jew by knowing the culture of the Jew.” He was quite literally around synagogues. He heard cantors sing. He was really taken as a young man with the stories of Sholem Aleichem and traditions of Yiddish storytelling and drama. That was a big part of his formation, and he talked about it.
He served in the Navy during World War II. Like many people of this generation, of all backgrounds, he was really shaped by this understanding of the Shoah and of the fight against Hitler.
I didn’t realize that he sang “Hava Nagila” in Berlin in 1958, so soon after the war; obviously the significance couldn’t have been lost on him there.
And “Hinei Ma Tov.” He made them a part of his repertoire. Germany is a fascinating moment. Here’s this Black Caribbean entertainer landing in Germany and singing “Hava Nagila” and really impressing on German folks who loved him — they absolutely adored Harry. He was a huge star in Germany, an even bigger star there than he was here — really conveying the sense of Jewishness as a culture and not just an identity. It’s an incredible fact that he was the conveyor of Jewish humanity and culture.
He took a break from making movies, but then right after MLK and Bobby Kennedy were shot, he comes back with this movie The Angel Levine, based on a Bernard Malamud story and co-starring Zero Mostel. Why do you think the material spoke to him at that moment?
In the late 1950s, he’d essentially turned his back on Hollywood. He had really scaled the heights of fame, and he appeared in some very big movies, but made this one called Island in the Sun in particular, which is a big blockbuster. But he hated the edit because basically they sort of neutered the interracial love affair that was at the center of it. They just had him drink out of the same coconut with Joan Fontaine. He was really soured on Hollywood. Did not want to take on roles or projects that, to his mind, were just designed to make whites comfortable, or that didn’t fit his politics. He was also hugely involved in the Civil Rights movement — I mean, he was making records, and he was still incredibly busy, but he was not making movies.
In this very dark, interesting time after the assassination of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, he was a little bit adrift personally and politically, but he decided to re-enter — make another movie, but on his own terms. The impetus for it was that he was really interested in the relationship between Blacks and Jews. He was interested in these old ideas about the human family and who gets to count as human, and mutual recognition of humanity of humans recognizing humans. But then you have this angel, so it adds this odd other element that’s really kind of interesting and strange. To me it’s an amazing thing that they just made that movie and it had national distribution because it’s so New York and so ethnic, for lack of a better term. This is way before Seinfeld made New York Jewishness hit the heartland. It was an experiment in trying to make movies that followed his politics, also in the sense of who was involved in the production.
He had all these interns of color; he wanted to integrate the entertainment industry and the film business. He also hired Bill Gunn, a very quirky Black screenwriter who’s kind of a genius. And Zero Mostel, who was blacklisted and then gave this memorable testimony in the House. An amazing character and a fellow denizen of the Upper West Side, he was a friend and a political ally of Harry’s. It’s a flawed and strange film, but it’s also a deeply touching one because it really gives it some of the complexities of the kind of deeply intimate and intertwined relationship between Blacks and Jews in New York, and also memorably features the Commandment Keepers up in Harlem, which is a synagogue of Black Jews of whose existence many people are ignorant outside New York or outside Harlem.
Belafonte was critical of the U.S. not participating in the 2001 World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa. This was the summit where a number of delegates declared Zionism as racism and singled out Israel for rebuke. He was asked about it on the Today Show the morning of 9/11, before the first tower was hit. I know that Harry had a relationship with Israel. He obviously was very supportive of the boycott of South Africa. People are pushing to boycott Israel. What do you think he’d think of Israel now?
His identification with Israel and with the cause of protecting Jewry and Jewish people was hugely important to him, and so he absolutely identified with Israel through much of his life in that way. I think certainly his politics were deeply anti-imperial, deeply anti-colonial, deeply skeptical of American foreign policy, and I think it, as evinced by that interview he gave on the morning of 9/11, he was developing a serious critique of American foreign policy and support for certain aspects of Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. Like many American lefties of his generation, as his life went on, I think his critiques of Israel grew. By the time the current catastrophes unfolded in that part of the world, he was leaving public life. He didn’t speak concretely on them.
But he had very close relationships with the activists and the lefties and the causes that he really identified with in the last couple decades of his life — people involved with the prison abolition movement, certainly Black Lives Matter, but people like Angela Davis, Cornel West, these people who have obviously become extremely critical of Israel, and he was very close to many of these people in political formations. I think that was a journey for him.
The American Jewish Historical Society has an exhibit up now and it’s 75 objects about Jews in U.S. history, and one of them is a picture of Harry and Julie Robinson, his Jewish wife, at a march in the section on Civil Rights. The text says he was part Jewish.
He would joke he was the most popular Jew in America. It was not lost on him that many of the most important allies and backers of the Civil Rights movement were Jewish, and he was extremely close with Stan Levison, who was really kind of King’s chief strategist. His involvement, both in show business but also really vitally in the Civil Rights movement, involved a deep identification with a tradition of Jewish political engagement with progressive causes, and certainly his wife Julie, who was sort of a red diaper baby raised by Jewish Marxists, was part of that as well.
In the same way we talk about how he popularized a folk tune like “Day-O,” he introduced a lot of the country and the world to “Hava Nagila.” I don’t think someone who looks like an Old World cantor could have made quite the same impression with it
He gave a platform to Jewishness also being a deep well of folk culture. And he did the same for the Caribbean.
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Irish national soccer team won’t shake hands with Israel after win
(JTA) — It only took 25 minutes of play for the Irish national soccer team to build a 3-0 lead over Israel in the countries’ UEFA Nations League B match on Sunday. But there were decades of bad blood that preceded Ireland’s shutout victory in a game dominated more by the geopolitics of the Gaza war than about sports. One soccer writer described it as “arguably one of the most contentious football matches of this century.”
At the match, held in a mostly empty stadium in the neutral site of Debrecen, Hungary, the Irish players wore black armbands and bowed their heads in protest during the Israeli national anthem. There were no pre- or postgame handshakes, and one Irish player declined to participate altogether, citing his “personal belief that the killing of innocent people is wrong.”
Ireland’s soccer federation did not reserve tickets for its fans, and the country’s public broadcaster scaled back its coverage of the game. The teams are set to meet again on Oct. 4 in Serbia, this time with Ireland as the “home” team.
Ireland and Israel have a long history of icy relations. Ireland became the first member of the European Union to call for an independent Palestinian country in 1980, and was among the first of the Western European countries to recognize an official Palestinian state in 2024. Israel closed its embassy in Dublin in response. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin has rejected claims that his country’s sharp criticism of Israel bleeds into antisemitism.
In the months leading up to Sunday’s match, Ireland’s football governing body faced intense pressure to boycott the match. At a meeting in July, the Football Association of Ireland voted 75-32, with three abstentions, in favor of proceeding with the match, “while acknowledging the strength of feeling regarding support for Palestine.” The motion also noted that a boycott would come with UEFA sanctions, both financial and competitive: In League B matches, mid-tier nations seek to advance to the top division and boost their chances of qualifying for the quadrennial World Cup tournament. The Irish team itself also held a last-minute vote over whether to participate.
Earlier this month, more than 160 Irish athletes and sports figures signed an open letter calling on the national team to pull out of the match. The signatories included former Irish national team head coach Brian Kerr — who had led Ireland to a 2-2 draw against Israel in a 2005 match in Dublin that also took place amid protests.
Former Irish national team star Kevin Kilbane also authored a column in The Irish Times, writing, “Ireland should not play Israel. Not in Dublin, not in Hungary, not in Serbia. Not when Israel is committing genocide.” Israel denies the charge of genocide.
There were also a number of public barbs exchanged between leaders of the two countries and their football associations.
At a press conference last week, Irish coach Heimir Hallgrímsson replied to questions about the match by saying, “We are not playing with genocide, we are playing against genocide. We are playing against Israel; we are not playing with Israel.”
Israel’s football association responded to that comment with a post on X, writing, “We have contributed to the world and humanity in countless fields, earning an impressive number of Nobel Prizes along the way. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a cure for stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy displayed by the @IrelandFootball team coach. We’re not playing with ignorance, hypocrisy and stupidity. We’re playing against the coach who embodies them.”
That drew a rebuke from Martin, who told reporters, “They are unacceptable remarks and should be withdrawn.”
And on Sunday, the morning of the match, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar posted a lengthy tweet referencing the 1939 Irish squad that gave a Nazi salute before a game against the German national team.
“Almost 90 years have passed. Ireland’s unique talent for finding itself on the wrong side of history remains intact,” Sa’ar wrote. “Back then, they gave the Nazi salute. This time, they stand on the side of Palestinian terrorism. Above the black armbands the Irish players will wear tonight flies the black flag of jihadism.”
After the match, Israeli captain Manor Solomon said the Irish players who bowed their heads during the Israeli anthem “don’t interest me.”
“We have a country 10 times better than theirs, stronger, an amazing country with amazing people,” said Solomon, who plays in the English Championship league. “We are proud to wear the team shirt and to be Israelis. We are proud of our state and of our soldiers. [The Irish] can play all their tricks. We are Israelis and love the country. And that will always be the case.”
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Why is Karl Rove supporting a progressive Jewish candidate in Texas?
(JTA) — Progressive Jewish Texas state Sen. Jon Rosenthal has earned an unusual distinction: He is the first Democrat to win the vote of GOP guru Karl Rove in more than 30 years.
What did the only Jew serving in the Texas state house do to earn this distinction? It’s more what he didn’t do: run for statewide office with a track record of spewing racially charged and antisemitic comments.
Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas Railroad commissioner, has a history of rhetoric targeting people of color, Muslims and Jews, including a social media poll last year asking whether “Jews” or “Muslims” pose “a bigger threat to America.”
He also faced bipartisan blowback for a recent post targeting college students of color, and this week a CNN investigation revealed that French, in since-deleted posts, had called for public executions for former President Barack Obama, Jewish California Sen. Adam Schiff and government workers targeted by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency last year.
The controversy has elevated the race for an obscure statewide office – albeit one that regulates the state’s all-important energy industry – into a larger referendum on the GOP’s tolerance for bigotry, including antisemitism, among its nominees.
Rove, for one, has made it clear where he thinks the party should stand.
“The GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches — and not only in Texas,” Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month in explaining his decision to back Rosenthal.
Rove singled out growing antisemitism in the party: “There are ‘just asking questions’ Jew-haters, misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots.”
Rove isn’t the only GOP stalwart to turn on French.
“Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized,” outgoing Texas Sen. John Cornyn wrote in condemning French’s social media musings. “This is how great political parties self-destruct.”
Cornyn has stopped short of backing Rosenthal, instead saying he might leave the ballot blank.
Texas Rep. Jon E. Rosenthal inside the House Chamber at the Texas Capitol in Austin on Aug. 18, 2025. (Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
Rosenthal and French have agreed to a debate on Oct. 22. French leads the race in polling released last week from Texas Southern University, but by a much slimmer margin than GOP candidates are accustomed to in Texas. Rosenthal’s campaign could also see a boost from fellow statewide Democratic candidate James Talarico, who is polling neck-and-neck with his opponent in the U.S. Senate race.
On social media, Rosenthal celebrated Rove’s endorsement, writing, “When GOP architect Karl Rove breaks a 30-year voting streak to endorse our campaign, it proves this race isn’t about party lines, it’s about competence vs. chaos.”
A former county Republican Party chair who defeated the incumbent GOP state railroad commissioner in a runoff primary, French spurred widespread backlash earlier this month after posting a photo of students of color at the University of Texas celebrating a football win to the social network X.
“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it,” French had captioned the photo on Sept. 13. “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” He has since doubled down on the sentiment, replying, “I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans,” and using the backlash to solicit donations.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state House Speaker Dustin Burrows were among the other Republicans who criticized French for the post, though neither formally rescinded their support, and French continues to list Abbott’s endorsement on his site.
It was not French’s first brush with bigotry. In 2025, during his stint as Tarrant County GOP Chair, French posted an online “poll” asking his followers whether “Jews” or “Muslims” pose “a bigger threat to America.” In a follow-up post, he argued, “You may not like Jews, but to suggest they are a bigger threat to Americans is Jew Derangement Syndrome.”
French later deleted both posts, and has few visible tweets about Jews today. In later posts, he claimed, of himself, “There has never been any evidence of antisemitism. It would certainly be surprising to my Jewish partners.”
Jewish Republicans in the state and beyond are largely keeping their distance from French, with one exception. His campaign site currently touts an endorsement from American Jewish Conservatives, whose only listed chapter is in Dallas.
Neither French nor the group, formerly Dallas Jewish Conservatives, responded to JTA requests for comment on the endorsement. A spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition also did not return a request for comment on French.
Last month French cited a desire to combat antisemitism when arguing that Texas should not use mosques as polling places. In other posts, he accused a university in the state of “harboring radical left/antisemitic professors,” identified himself as both pro-Israel and pro-Tucker Carlson, the talk show host who has platformed antisemites and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, and told one follower, “I have never served Israel. Don’t be a retard.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was among the GOP officials who condemned French’s tweet about Jews last year, calling on him to resign as county chair. “Antisemitism and religious bigotry have no place in Texas,” Patrick said then. French ultimately resigned months later in order to run for railroad commissioner.
Today, French lists Patrick as one of his endorsements. A spokesperson for Patrick, who recently told JTA he supported Texas schools assigning books on the Holocaust after public remarks apparently to the contrary, did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.
French’s other listed endorsements include Texas congressional candidate Brandon Herrera, who has made jokes about Hitler and the Holocaust in YouTube videos.
Rove’s essay led to President Donald Trump wading into the controversy, calling Rove “so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often,” in a post on his social network Truth Social. Trump’s post did not mention French, nor address his past post about Jews.
The Texas railroad commission, composed of three members, oversees the state’s large and powerful oil and gas industry. It has no oversight into immigration or religion. Even so, French’s campaign has drifted far afield from energy issues: One of his pledges is “Stop the Islamic Invasion of Texas.”
French’s controversies have elevated the profile of Rosenthal, who was raised a Reform Jew in an interfaith household and whose Houston-area district is home to large Muslim communities. This year Rosenthal marked Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur by sharing links to Chabad-Lubavitch webpages about the holidays.
Rosenthal’s campaign did not respond to a JTA request for comment, but he told the Forward last year that he identifies as agnostic and “multireligious,” and attends synagogues as well as mosques and churches.
Rosenthal is also a trained mechanical engineer, a background he has drawn on in his bid for railroad commissioner: one campaign ad, quoting a conservative radio host, approvingly calls him “a ‘drill, baby, drill’ Democrat.” He has accused French of “overt racism,” while French has dubbed his opponent “Radical Rosenthal” and posted images, generated using artificial intelligence, of cross-shaped Texas oil wells to promote his blending of energy policy with Christian iconography.
Last year, Rosenthal cited his Judaism in response to legislation that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. Rosenthal introduced an amendment that would have required a “Jewish” version of the commandments to be displayed alongside the “Protestant” one. The amendment failed, and the bill passed.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bill to create safe spaces around synagogues
(JTA) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has signed a law that will create protective spaces around religious institutions, after a pro-Palestinian protest at a Los Angeles synagogue last year turned violent.
The legislation, AB 2664, establishes 100-foot zones around the entrances to houses of worship. Within the zones, no one will be allowed to come within eight feet of a congregant without consent to distribute leaflets, hold a sign or engage in oral protests that aim “to harass, obstruct, threaten or intimidate the person.”
Failure to comply could result in fines of up to $1,000 and/or imprisonment of no more than six months, with second violations raising those bars to $5,000 and one year, per the law.
“Every Californian should be able to walk into a synagogue, church, mosque, or other house of worship without fear,” Newsom said in a statement.
“California is continuing to protect these organizations and the people they serve, and we’re strengthening that work from the front door to expanding security resources to community events statewide.”
Newsom’s status as a leading Democrat – and one considering a 2028 presidential run – makes his enthusiastic endorsement notable. Progressives in other locales, including New York City, have pushed back against similar laws, saying they endanger speech protections.
The bill’s signing came less than a year after a violent protest rattled the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. At the December event, pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked people from entering the synagogue and cut off parental access to the religious school. Protesters destroyed property and assaulted a security guard; one person was arrested for battery and another for vandalism.
At the time, Mayor Karen Bass denounced the incident, which took place at one of the largest synagogues in the city, as both “abhorrent” and antisemitic.
The following spring, California Assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat, introduced the legislation, drafted by Jewish California, a lobby representing a number of the state’s Jewish groups.Newsom signed the bill on Friday inside Wilshire Boulevard Temple, joined by Jewish California leaders, synagogue clergy and members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and the broader community.
The legislation advanced despite vocal opposition. The Council on American-Islamic Relations slammed the bill for infringing upon free speech by creating “new criminal penalties that would put peaceful protesters and community advocates at risk.”
In a statement following Newsom’s signing ceremony, the council’s California CEO, Hussam Ayloush, argued that some sales of “illegally occupied land” are occurring “exclusively to Jewish Americans at events hosted by American synagogues.”
“If a house of worship in America chooses to serve as a platform for illegal land sales meant to normalize Palestinian displacement, Americans should be able to peacefully demonstrate against that immoral activity,” Ayloush said. The protest at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple did not target land sales, but a public safety and technology event organized by the Consulate General of Israel.
Jewish California stressed that the legislation not only gained support from dozens of Jewish groups but also from Muslim, Sikh, Christian and Hindu organizations. Ultimately, the bill passed with 34 out of 40 State Senate votes and 61 of 80 State Assembly votes.
“With the Governor’s signature, California is sending a clear message: everyone has the right to practice their faith safely and freely,” Bauer-Kahan said in a statement.
“Antisemitism is rising, and so is hostility towards other religious communities,” she added. “This law protects all worshippers of all faiths, and it ensures that faith can be practiced without fear.”
AB 2664 was one of six bills relevant to the Jewish community that passed in California’s state legislature last month. Newsom signed one of the other bills, AB 1853, on Monday afternoon — enacting a ban on including misleading or threatening information, like hate speech, in California voter guides.
The governor has until Sept. 30 to either sign or veto the other four pieces of legislation. Among the most contentious is SB 1387, a bill that would expand the definition of ethnicity “to include Jewish identity” on state agency data collection forms.
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