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Zohran Mamdani makes his case to Jewish New Yorkers at Congregation Beth Elohim
Tensions ran high Sunday afternoon at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim, where dozens of pro-Israel protesters gathered to oppose mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s appearance at the synagogue.
Mamdani’s visit, his first speaking engagement at a Jewish institution since before the primary election, was billed to the Reform synagogue’s congregants as an opportunity to hear directly from the candidate that has drawn condemnation from some Jewish New Yorkers for his sharp stances against Israel.
Mamdani has faced backlash from Jewish leaders for his failure to condemn the pro-Palestinian phrase “globalize the intifada,” as well as for his support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel. He has since said he would “discourage” use of the slogan and has sought to strengthen relations with Jews in New York.
Some congregants at Congregation Beth Elohim, or CBE, objected to Mamdani’s visit, which directly followed his participation in the NYC Gaza 5K raising money for the Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, held in nearby Prospect Park on Sunday morning.
Elaine Kleinberg, a 25-year member of CBE, joined the ranks of the roughly three dozen protesters gathered across the street of the event out of fear that her temple was being used as a “political prop.”
“I think it’s very clear that any group that wants Israel to be eliminated is not to be embraced by our congregation. It’s like inviting Yasser Arafat into our into our midst,” said Kleinberg. “I feel very tormented right now and conflicted because I felt like this was my welcoming sanctuary, and I’m not so sure.”
A Park Slope pro-Israel activist, Ramon Maislen, helped organize the event. “Does anyone think that CBE would invite a Proud Boy adjacent Republican candidate for Mayor who said that White Power meant different things to different people just 3 weeks before the election?” he tweeted late Sunday, reiterating his comments from the demonstration.
The demonstrators waved Israeli flags and held signs reading “No to Zoh-cialism,” “Jews for Jihadists?” and “Make Love not Intifada.” As the crowd grew, a passing driver yelled “Free Palestine,” prompting one protester to shout back at him.
While the protesters seemed to be mixed between congregants and those unaffiliated with CBE, as the demonstration began singing “Shalom Aleichem,” a song of peace, congregants in line across the street joined the chorus.
Rabbi Rachel Timoner, the senior rabbi of CBE, said she felt that the protesters misunderstood the purpose of Mamdani’s visit.
“I feel that there’s a misunderstanding with the people outside, because I think that they clearly are viewing this as if it’s an act of support, and it is actually an act of expressing the views of the Jewish people as they affect our city,” said Timoner, who spoke last week at an Oct. 7 vigil held by Israelis for Peace that Mamdani attended.
Last month, CBE hosted a member listening circle that centered on congregants’ thoughts about the mayoral race. There, Timoner said many expressed a desire to ask questions to the candidates directly.
In response to that sentiment, Timoner said CBE had invited all the mayoral candidates to speak and take questions from congregants. Mamdani’s appearance, she noted, would be followed by a discussion with Curtis Sliwa next week. (She added that Cuomo’s campaign had not responded to multiple invitations.)
Rabbi Rachel Timoner, the senior rabbi at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim, delivers her Rosh Hashanah sermon on Thursday, Oct 3, 2023. (Facebook screenshot)
For Mamdani’s appearance Sunday, Timoner said they had received almost 400 registrations and 82 member-submitted questions to pose to the mayoral frontrunner. Of the questions selected to be asked of Mamdani, she said about half related to his stances on Zionism, Israel and antisemitism while the rest focused on his policies.
Timoner said she received between 15 and 20 emails from congregants urging her to cancel the event, fearing it could be seen as an endorsement.
“This is not in any way about endorsing a candidate,” said Timoner. “This is about platforming our members’ concerns, lifting up our members’ concerns in the conversation about the future of our city.”
Among the synagogue’s most prominent members is Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who has not endorsed Mamdani despite criticism from others in the Democratic Party.
To quell concerns that the visit could be seen as a “photo-op” for the candidates, Timoner said Mamdani and Sliwa had both agreed not to post about the events on social media.
Speaking with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ahead of the event, which was closed to the press, Timoner said she hoped the engagement could offer Mamdani an opportunity to hear from Jewish New Yorkers directly.
“I am hoping that he is going to hear us. We’re going to ask some hard questions, and we’re going to raise some deep concerns, and I’m hoping that he is going to listen with an open mind and an open heart to the real pain and fear and experience of the Jewish community,” said Timoner.
Following the event, as roughly 300 congregants filed out of the synagogue, reactions to his appearance were mixed.
“I walked in on the fence, not feeling comfortable voting for Cuomo, although I voted for him in the primary, and definitely not going to vote for Sliwa,” said one 80-year-old congregant who requested anonymity to protect his privacy as a voter. “I left a little more leaning towards Mamdani. I really want to like him. He’s a likable guy. I think he provides some sense of enthusiasm for big portions of our population.”
When asked how he felt about Mamdani’s responses to questions about his stances on anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the congregant said he was “trying to figure out how to deal with that.”
“The guy has a history of being pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, anti-Israel as a Jewish state. I am typical of this community, anti-the prosecution of the war by the current Israeli government. I’m against them, but I am for Israel as a Jewish state, and I’m not quite sure. He’s still sort of vague where he stands or not,” the congregant said.
He described Mamdani’s responses to questions about Israel as including “a lot of nice rhetoric,” but said he was unsure how things would play out if he is elected.
“I’m not sure what happens if there are anti-Jewish protesters, protests or actions against Jewish students,” the congregant said. “I don’t know what he’d do about that. Would he come down hard? Does he lean a certain way?”
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He may have been the world’s most famous mime, but in this play, he won’t shut up
There is a kind of sublime poetry in Marcel Marceau’s first act.
As a young man in occupied France, Marceau (then Mangel) forged identity papers and shepherded dozens of Jewish children across the Alps to Switzerland. In scenarios where staying quiet was essential for survival, Marceau soothed his charges into silence with his own.
In Marcel on the Train, Ethan Slater and Marshall Pailet’s play of Marceau’s pre-Bip life, the world’s most famous mime is anything but silent.
The action of the play, which bounces through time back to Marcel’s father’s butcher shop and forward to a P.O.W. camp in Vietnam (don’t ask), unfolds over the course of a train ride. Slater’s Marceau is chaperoning four 12-year-old orphans, posing as boy scouts going on a hike.
The kids — played by adults — are a rambunctious lot. Marceau tries to put them at ease juggling invisible swords, performing Buster Keaton-esque pratfalls and exhausting his arsenal of Jewish jokes that circle stereotypes of Jewish mothers or, in one case, a certain mercenary business sense.
Pailet and Slater’s script toggles uncomfortably between poignancy and one-liners with a trickle of bathroom humor (the phrase “pee bucket” recurs more often than you would think.)
The terror of Marceau’s most melancholy escortee, Berthe (Tedra Millan) is undercut somewhat by her early, anachronistic-feeling declaration, “Wow, we’re so fucked.” The bumptious Henri (Alex Wyse) would seem to be probing a troubled relationship with Jewishness and passing, but does that discussion a disservice when he mentions how it wouldn’t be the biggest deal if he “sieged a little heil.” Adolphe (Max Gordon Moore) is described as “an exercise in righteousness” in the script’s character breakdown. Sure, let’s go with that.
The presence of a mute child, Etiennette (Maddie Corman), is tropey and obvious. It doesn’t suggest that she inspired him to abandon speaking in his performances, but it doesn’t dismiss that possibility either.
But the chattiness and contrived functions of the fictive children are made more disappointing by the imaginative staging maneuvering around the shtick. Slater, best known for his role in the Wicked films and as Spongebob in the titular Broadway musical, is a gifted physical performer.
When things quiet down, Pailet’s direction, and the spare set by scenic designer Scott Davis, create meadows of butterflies. Chalk allows Marceau to achieve a kind of practical magic when he writes on the fourth wall. One of the greatest tricks up the show’s sleeve is Aaron Serotsky who plays everyone from Marceau’s father and his cousin Georges to that familiar form of Nazi who takes his torturous time in sniffing out Jews.
Surely the play means to contrast silence and sound (sound design is by Jill BC Du Boff), but I couldn’t help but wonder what this might have looked like as a pantomime.
While the story has been told before, perhaps most notably in the 2020 film Resistance with Jesse Eisenberg, Slater and Pailet were right to realize its inherent stage potential. It’s realized to a point, though their approach at times leans into broad comedy that misunderstands the sensibilities of its subject.
Like Slater, who learned of the mime’s story just a few years ago, Marceau was an early acolyte of Keaton and Chaplin. But by most accounts he cut a more controlled figure — that of a budding artist, not a kid workshopping Borscht Belt bits on preteens.
The show ends with a bittersweet montage of Bip capturing butterflies (not jellyfish — you will probably not be reminded of Mr. Squarepants). It means to frame Marceau’s established style as a maturation that nonetheless retains a kind of innocence, stamped by the kids he rescued.
“You’ll live,” Berthe tells him in a moment of uncertainty. “But I don’t think you’ll grow up.”
In Marceau there was, of course, a kind of Peter Pan. But there’s a difference between being childlike and being sophomoric.
Marcel on the Train is playing through March 26 at Classic Stage Company in New York. Tickets and more information can be found here.
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US soldier who protected Jews in POW camp during WWII to be awarded Medal of Honor
(JTA) — An American soldier who is credited with saving the lives of 200 Jewish comrades in a prisoner of war camp in Germany during World War II will receive the U.S. military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor.
The award to Roddie Edmonds, who died in 1985, was announced last week. It comes more than a decade after Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, recognized him as a “Righteous Among the Nations” for his bravery and six years after President Donald Trump recounted his heroism during a Veterans Day parade.
Edmonds, a sergeant from Knoxville, Tennessee, was the highest-ranking soldier among a group taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge in January 2045 when the Nazis asked him to identify the Jews in the group. Understanding that anyone he identified would likely be killed, Edmonds made the decision to have all of the soldiers present themselves as Jews.
When a Nazi challenged him, he famously proclaimed: “We are all Jews here!”
The show of solidarity came to light only after Edmonds’ death, when a Jewish man who had been among the soldiers at the camp shared his recollection with the New York Times as part of an unrelated 2008 story about his decision to sell a New York City townhouse to Richard Nixon when Nixon was having trouble buying an apartment following his resignation as president.
When they found the article several years later, it was the first that Edmonds’ family, including his pastor son Christ Edmonds and his granddaughters, had heard about the incident. Soon they were traveling to Washington, D.C., and Israel for ceremonies honoring Edmonds, one of only five Americans to be credited as Righteous Among the Nations, an honor bestowed by Israel on non-Jews who aided Jews during the Holocaust.
As the family campaigned for a Medal of Honor, Edmonds was also the recipient of bipartisan praise from two American presidents.
“I cannot imagine a greater expression of Christianity than to say, I, too, am a Jew,” President Barack Obama said during remarks at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2016.
Three years later, President Donald Trump recounted the story at the New York City Veterans Day Parade. “That’s something,” he said. “Master Sergeant Edmonds saved 200 Jewish-Americans — soldiers that day.”
Last week, Trump called Chris Edmonds to invite him to the White House to receive the Medal of Honor on his father’s behalf, Chris Edmonds told local news outlets. The Medal of Honor ceremony is scheduled for March 2.
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Jewish hockey star Jack Hughes’ overtime goal propels US to historic gold medal in Olympic hockey
(JTA) — Jewish hockey star Jack Hughes scored the game-winning goal Sunday to clinch a gold medal for the U.S. men’s hockey team, its first since 1980.
The New Jersey Devils star center, who had scored twice in Team USA’s semifinal win, sent the puck between the legs of Canadian goaltender Jordan Binnington 1:41 into overtime to give the American team a 2-1 win.
“This is all about our country right now. I love the USA,” Hughes told NBC. “I love my teammates.”
The win broke a 46-year Olympic drought for Team USA, which had not taken gold since the famous “Miracle on Ice” team that upset the Soviet Union on its way to gold in 1980. The United States also won in 1960.
“He’s a freaking gamer,” Quinn Hughes, Jack’s older brother and U.S. teammate said, according to The Athletic. “He’s always been a gamer. Just mentally tough, been through a lot, loves the game. American hero.”
Quinn Hughes is a defender for the Minnesota Wild and a former captain of the Vancouver Canucks who won the NHL’s top defenseman award in 2024. He was also named the best defender in the Olympic tournament by the International Ice Hockey Federation after scoring an overtime goal to send the U.S. team to the semifinals.
The third Jewish member of the U.S. team, Boston Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman, won the one game he played, a Feb. 14 preliminary-round victory over Denmark.
The Hughes family — rounded out by youngest brother Luke, who also plays for the Devils — has long been lauded as a Jewish hockey dynasty. They are the first American family to have three siblings picked in the first round of the NHL draft, and Jack was the first Jewish player to go No. 1 overall. They are also the first trio of Jewish brothers to play in the same NHL game and the first brothers to earn cover honors for EA Sports’ popular hockey video game.
Jack, who had a bar mitzvah, has said his family celebrated Passover when he was growing up. Their mother, Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, who is Jewish, represented the U.S. women’s hockey team at the 1992 Women’s World Championships and was on the coaching staff of the gold-medal-winning women’s team in Milan. Weinberg-Hughes is also a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Hughes’ golden goal ushered in a burst of Jewish pride on social media, with one user calling it “the greatest Jewish sports moment of all time.” The Hockey News tweeted that Hughes was “the first player in hockey history to have a Bar Mitzvah and a Golden Goal! Pretty cool!”
Jewish groups and leaders also jumped on the praise train. “Special shout out to @jhugh86 on scoring the game-winning goal!” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “Beyond his incredible skill on the ice, Jack makes history as a proud representative of the American Jewish community, reminding us that the Jewish people are interwoven into America in her 250th year! Mazel Tov, Jack!”
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