Call it a mash note to Jewish identity, and to the Jewish homeland. 

Hollywood heavyweights took to New York City’s world-renowned Carnegie Hall stage on Tuesday night to highlight the link between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, spanning thousands of years, in the form of recounting historic love letters to the Jewish state.  

“Letters, Light and Love” made its U.S. premiere in a one-night only performance hosted by UJA-Federation of New York as Jewish celebrities including Amy Schumer, David Schwimmer, Debra Messing, Tovah Feldshuh, Jonah Platt and Michael Aloni read excerpts of letters written about Israel across centuries. The notes came from writers such as Julius Caesar, Maimonides, Golda Meir, Sir Moses Montefiore, Albert Einstein, Harry Truman, John Adams, Winston Churchill and Leonard Bernstein.  

The performance was the second-ever showing of the three-act play, which first ran in 2024 in London’s West End. Co-produced by Sarah Sultman and Michal Noé, proceeds from the $1.5 million raised on Tuesday will go towards rebuilding Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel, where around one in 10 residents were killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. 

“I’ve always loved letters,” Sultman, who is the co-founder of the Gesher School in London, told Jewish Insider. The idea for the play came to her in early November 2023, while on a solidarity visit to Israel through a U.K. delegation weeks after the attacks. 

“Whilst I was out there, visiting a number of kibbutzim, they asked us what we would do when we went home,” recalled Sultman. “I had this idea about using letters to tell our story. I suppose it was driven by the pervasive narrative that Jews are white colonizers from Poland. That our connection to Israel [began] in 1948. For me, Judaism and its connection to Israel are inextricably linked and always have been.” 

“I came back from that trip and began researching letters, working with the National Library of Israel, digging through archives and accumulating hundreds of letters,” continued Sultman. “We have a 3,000-year-old history. We have letters from across time. [We created] a performance, interwoven with music, that tells our story in a way that is educational, soulful and moving. It’s also purposeful. It should be used as a project of regrowth in Israel.”

“We researched who are the actors proud of their Judaism and Zionism,” Sultman told JI, noting that most of the cast that came on board decided to “because of a personal connection” and it was easier to appeal to the actors directly rather than working through their agents. Several actors that Sultman thought would be interested turned down the opportunity, but she was surprised by others who were eager to participate.

Schumer, whose hits include “Trainwreck” and “Life and Beth,” said in a statement that “being on stage at Carnegie Hall, being a part of last night’s ‘Letters, Light and Love,’ was an honor … I am proud to be Jewish and to represent my ancestors, most of [whom] didn’t make it.”   

The London show “was a wartime effort” and was supposed to be a one-off, according to Sultman. But she described the audience’s response as “overwhelming.”  

It was then that she realized there was a further need for “a space where the artistic community can feel supported and safe and where an audience could feel pride in their story.”

“Post-Oct. 7, we’ve had lots of debate and fireside chat but there was nothing bringing joy in the room and celebrating who we are as a people. New York felt like it was aiming for the stars and a bit crazy,” Sultman said. “But we worked for a year on making it happen… and [finally] got the green light from Carnegie Hall in December.”

The show opened with the reading of a letter written by Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon to his professor, seeking guidance on “man’s purpose in life.” It closed with excerpts from a letter written by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in 2001, telling Jews that each one is a “letter in the scroll.”

Other readings included notes written by Maimonides to Rabbi Yaphet bar Eliyahu the Judge, in the 12th century; Stephen Norman, the only grandchild of Theodor Herzl, on his first visit to then-Mandatory Palestine in the years before Israel’s statehood was declared; Esther Cailingold, who was mortally wounded defending the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem during Israel’s war of independence; and a final letter written by Elkana Wiesel to his family, just before he fell in battle in the Gaza Strip in January 2024.

There was also a personal nod to Sultman’s love for letters. Schumer, in her comedic style, read an October 1994 note that Sultman mailed to her sister while on a gap year in Israel, sharing that, unlike back home, Israelis party all day during Simchat Torah and celebrating her experience meeting Jews from all around the world.   

“I have all my letters from gap year and camps in my attic at home,” Sultman told JI. The letter was “something personal, but I also felt it represents so many 18-year-olds’ experiences. It was written by me but it could have been written by thousands of young people visiting Israel for their first time and they’re like, ‘Wow, this is so cool.’” 

“When we curated the letters it was important to take the audience on an emotional journey that wasn’t just about being sad or reflective but also celebratory and happy,” continued Sultman. 

“It was important to me that this wasn’t a history lesson. We broke it into three acts so you had moments you learned something, moments you felt sad and moments you felt happy. We also adapted it for New York [to reflect] American Jewry’s relationship with Israel, so we added the letter from Israeli President Chaim Weizmann to President Harry Truman.” About 70% of the letters were the same from the London show, while the others were switched out, Sultman said.  

For many audience members, the two-hour performance offered a welcomed respite from the antisemitism that has plagued Jewish communities since Oct. 7. Attendees were asked not to promote the event in advance as a security precaution and there was heavy NYPD and Community Security Initiative presence. A few cast members asked for their names to not be disclosed in the media, presumably also as a safety measure.   

Sultman said that had the event not been postponed by a day due to this week’s blizzard, she would have expected to see protests outside Carnegie Hall, even though organizers tried to keep the event under wraps. “It was remarkable that there were no protests,” she said. “We pivoted so fast [after the snow storm] that I don’t know that anyone would have caught on to the fact that we rescheduled for the next day. Protesters may have thought it was canceled.”  

The sold-out audience was comprised of three groups, according to the organizers. The parquet seats were given to UJA’s invite-only guests, which included donors as well as cast members’ family and friends. The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation funded 800 seats for young people involved with groups including Hillel and Taglit to attend at no cost. The third group, about 1,000 tickets, were available for the general public to purchase through UJA.    

Among the star-studded cast — which also included musical performances by Matisyahu, The Maccabeats, Noa Tishby, David Draiman and others — only one presenter received a standing ovation: Eli Sharabi.

Sharabi, a former resident of Kibbutz Be’eri who was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 and held in Gaza for 491 days — and whose wife and daughters were murdered during the terrorist attack — took to the stage to thank American Jewry for its support.  

Sultman isn’t sure what comes next for the show, but she’s received requests to bring it to Los Angeles, Miami, Australia and even to translate it into Spanish for a run in Argentina. 

She said now that they’ve pulled off a performance in New York City — “then we could do it anywhere.”

An emerging fault line over how — or whether — to confront rising antisemitism is roiling the organized Jewish community, as some prominent groups have pushed back against sharp criticism questioning the effectiveness of their strategies.

The latest salvo comes from Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which has recently found itself in the spotlight. In an opinion article in eJewishPhilanthropy published Monday, Greenblatt defended his organization’s approach to combating antisemitism — after a New York Times columnist had called for the group to be dismantled.

Speaking at 92NY in Manhattan for the annual State of World Jewry address earlier this month, Bret Stephens, a Times opinion columnist, stoked controversy when he suggested that the American Jewish community should shut down the ADL and reallocate its resources to focus on building Jewish identity rather than combating antisemitism.

“The fight against antisemitism, which consumes tens of millions of dollars every year in Jewish philanthropy, is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort,” he said in his address. “We should spend the money and focus our energy elsewhere. The same goes for efforts to improve pro-Israel advocacy.”

In his response, Greenblatt dismissed Stephens’ argument as misguided, even as he said the speech had appropriately identified a “pathology” that can afflict those who define opposition to antisemitism as their “primary organizing principle.”

“It can turn Jewishness into a defensive crouch — more alarm system than civilization,” Greenblatt said.

Still, Stephens’ new “framing risks replacing one error with another,” he insisted, describing the fight against antisemitism and efforts to promote Jewish communal life not as binary choices but as mutually reinforcing objectives. 

“Security and identity aren’t competing priorities; they’re inseparable preconditions for Jewish flourishing in an open society,” Greenblatt insisted in his rebuke. “Shutting down the Anti-Defamation League or other Jewish organizations is not some magic formula that promises self-reliance; it’s a disastrous prescription for unilateral disarmament.”

The ADL has, in recent years, frequently drawn attacks from both the left and right over its closely scrutinized relationship to the Trump White House and its classifications of political extremism, among other sources of scrutiny the group has weathered. 

But as one of the nation’s oldest Jewish civil rights groups, the ADL has rarely seemed to find itself in the position of justifying its continued existence — particularly amid unusually direct backlash from an otherwise likeminded Jewish and pro-Israel pundit like Stephens.

The intense tenor of the debate underscores how Jewish groups are now grappling with polarizing divisions over how to move forward in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks and a resulting surge in antisemitism that has often stemmed from anti-Israel sentiment.

In addition to the ADL, such heated discussions have also recently centered around a costly Super Bowl ad seeking to raise awareness of antisemitism released by The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, an advocacy organization founded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

The ad, which featured a Black high school student consoling a Jewish classmate after bullies placed a “dirty Jew” sticky note on his backpack, was meant to reach a broad audience that is largely  “unengaged” on the issue of growing antisemitism while “lacking awareness, empathy and motivation to act,” according to Blue Square Alliance President Adam Katz.

But the 30-second commercial — part of a $15 million ad campaign extending to NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage — drew online denunciations from several critics who said it depicted Jews as in need protection from non-Jews and alleged that its framing ignored examples of antisemitism intersecting with anti-Israel hostility.

Greenblatt, for his part, was among the first Jewish leaders to praise the ad last week after it circulated online, in a statement that also functioned as a tacit defense of his own organization’s ongoing mission.

“Antisemitism has permeated all aspects of society,” he said in a social media post. “This ad is a simple yet moving depiction of resilience in the face of discrimination. It takes all of us, Jewish or not, to stand up against antisemitism. I’m glad this video will be getting the national attention it so deserves.”

Kinney Zalesne, a longtime Jewish community activist, is one of a slew of Democratic candidates mounting a bid to unseat the District of Columbia’s longtime nonvoting representative to Congress, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC).

Holmes Norton, 88, has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, with mounting questions about her age and her continued capability to perform in her job, which have been fueled by conflicting statements from Holmes Norton and her own staff about whether she plans to seek reelection in 2026. Her muted response to the Trump administration’s efforts to exert control over the District has further stoked criticism.

Zalesne, 59, said she’s running for the seat because “America is in the greatest danger in my lifetime, and D.C. is on the front lines.”

She said she has a “lot of respect” for Holmes Norton and that the incumbent has done “a lot of very important things for the city and was an important player on the national level,” but that D.C. now faces “different” challenges and the “stakes are high.”

“It’s a new era, and we need a new, fresh voice who can carry on her same, relentless advocacy,” she continued.

Zalesne grew up in a Conservative synagogue in Philadelphia, learning to read Torah at age 16 and lead services at 25. She said she’s been doing both ever since, including leading Mincha services on Yom Kippur annually for 32 years — a fact she said would distinguish her from any other Jewish member of Congress.

She also served as a board member and board chair of D.C.’s Jewish day school, serves on the American Board of the National Library of Israel and advised two hostage family groups, as well as worked with a group of Israelis trying to convene a constitutional convention prior to the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

“My run for office is really motivated by my Jewish sensibility,” she said. “My whole career has been about expanding opportunity for people, and that, to me, has always felt like that’s always been a huge part of my Jewish identity, and so this run for Congress is really an extension of that.”

She said she sees parallels between the city of D.C. and the Jewish community: “At the moment, we’re both under attack. We’re both small but mighty groups of people. And we both have so much to contribute and an impressive capacity to lead, so long as we’re not mistreated. And at the moment, we’re both … nervous and we’re vulnerable. I’m fighting for D.C. with a spirit that I learned fighting for the Jewish community.”

Zalesne highlighted that Jewish representation in the House has dropped precipitously over the past two decades, a poor omen at a time when antisemitism is also rising.

“As the D.C. delegate, I will stand strong against antisemitism wherever I see it,” she said. “We see it on the far right, we see it on the far left. I will call it out anywhere I see it. … It’s a terrible trend in our country, and we need more Jews in public life, not fewer.”

Antisemitic violence, she noted, hit at the heart of D.C. earlier this year with the slaying of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum, and “it will be a priority for me to guard against early warning signs and explicit manifestations of antisemitism.”

Though the D.C. delegate does not have a vote on congressional legislation, Holmes Norton has nonetheless made her voice heard on foreign policy issues in other ways, supporting various efforts and policies critical of Israel.

“I am deeply committed to a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, both because Israel is our strongest ally in the region, and because that strong relationship is in the United States’ national security interest,” Zalesne said. 

She said she supports President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza and praised Trump’s efforts in bringing it to fruition, but said it will be a long process to rebuild Gaza and remove Hamas from power. “I’m committed to that progress for the dignity and safety and security of everyone in the region.”

The mother of three college students and one recent college graduate, Zalesne said that she is worried about the “profound antisemitism problem on many campuses.” But she added that she’s “not persuaded” that the Trump administration’s policies, such as suspending funding to campuses, “really had anything to do with antisemitism.” She said it appeared to be fueled more by an “animus toward liberal arts” and a desire to force colleges into submission.

She argued that the Republican Party has to confront antisemitism in its own ranks, and that a proper approach to antisemitism on campus would be more targeted, rather than mass defunding research programs at prestigious universities.

“Their approach was way too crude, way too overblown, not targeted, not strategic and leads one to believe that antisemitism was something of a pretext in their solution. … The solution was not actually designed or narrowly tailored toward that problem,” she said. “As is often the case with Trump, he identifies a real problem, but then the solution is so over-broad and ideological and mismatched to the problem that people end up saying, ‘Well, there never really was a problem,’ and that’s wrong.”

She said she’s also worried that the Trump administration’s approach is going to “backfire,” make campus antisemitism worse and exacerbate on-campus tensions.

Asked about recent shifts in Democratic policy on Israel, Zalesne said that the party “has some work to do internally to be able to be a big tent, but not so big that we include policies and positions that are either antisemitic or harmful to minorities in the United States or elsewhere.”

She said that she would not support efforts to block offensive weapons sales or transfers to Israel, suggesting that such moves might make Israelis and Americans less safe, but she said the U.S. should use its influence over the Israeli government “toward peace, security and dignity for everybody in the region.”

Zalesne said the U.S. should “continue to be a strong voice, a strong influence in the region, to support the incredibly important U.S.-Israel relationship, and always back and guarantee the safety and security of Israel, and to work toward a dignified and economically prosperous future for Palestinians.”

She also said she supported the Trump administration’s decision to carry out military strikes on Iran in June, adding that Israel was also right to launch attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“I don’t agree with Donald Trump on much, but I was grateful for that move,” she said. To prevent Iran from rebuilding, Zalesne said the U.S. needs “constant vigilance and determination to act as needed” in the future, and to convey to the world that the U.S. “won’t permit a nuclear Iran.”

In addition to her work in the Jewish community, Zalesne worked in the White House and the Justice Department in the Clinton administration, started a nonprofit in D.C’s Adams Morgan neighborhood to support local first-generation college students and served as a deputy national finance chair for the Democratic National Committee.

After the 2024 election, she said that she “realized [the state of the country is] getting worse, not better, and no one is coming to save us, and we have to be the leaders we wish we had, so I decided to step up myself,” Zalesne told JI.

Zalesne was recently endorsed by former DNC Chair Jamie Harrison.

The candidate said she envisions a “bigger” role for the D.C. delegate than it has had in the past.

On the Hill, she said she’ll focus on traditional issues like protecting D.C.’s budget — which was slashed by Congress earlier this year — and protecting D.C’s autonomy.

Zalesne said that she wants to expand the delegate’s role off the Hill as well. She wants to work to “get the message about D.C. out and bring resources in,” by communicating to the whole country “the truth about who we are and what great strength we bring to the nation.” She said she also wants to work to bring in leaders from national business and philanthropic communities to work in the district.

She also argued that she’s the only candidate in the race with both the local and national experience and relationships to “deliver for D.C. on Day 1.”

Zalesne’s campaign says she’s breaking district records with her fundraising efforts — she raised $436,000 as of the end of September, many multiples of the $51,000 that Holmes Norton raised. But she’ll also be facing down several well-known D.C. city leaders who have entered the race since the last filing period.

But internal polling by D.C. City Councilmember Robert White’s campaign last month found Zalesne near the bottom of the pack, with just 1% support.

Growing up at a Reform temple in suburban Boston, Sarah Hurwitz learned that Judaism is just “four holidays, two texts and a few universalistic values.” 

When she left home, she largely eschewed all Jewish observance for two decades, she reflected in a recent interview with Jewish Insider. In that time, she got two degrees at Harvard and reached the pinnacle of Washington success, serving as a senior speechwriter, first to President Barack Obama and then to First Lady Michelle Obama. If she engaged with Judaism at all, it was with a light touch — she was merely a “cultural Jew,” as she usually called herself. 

“I just didn’t realize there was Jewish culture. I just meant, ‘Oh, I’m anxious and kind of funny,’” Hurwitz told JI last month. 

Approaching a midlife crisis, Hurwitz found her way to an intro to Judaism class at a Washington synagogue nearly a decade ago. She embarked on a journey of learning Jewish traditions and studying Jewish texts that sparked her first book, the 2019 Here All Along, a joyful and accessible primer to Judaism. 

“Its thesis was, ‘Isn’t Judaism amazing?’ Not a lot of Jews are going to disagree with that thesis,” Hurwitz said. 

She is doing something different with her new book, As A Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us, which was published this week. 

“This is definitely a book with an argument. It is definitely edgier than my first book,” Hurwitz said. 

That’s because in As A Jew, Hurwitz is grappling with a question that struck at the core of who she is, or at least who she was until a decade ago. Why, she asks, was she always qualifying her Judaism? She was always a “cultural Jew,” an “ethnic Jew,” a “social justice Jew,” she writes. Hurwitz was never simply a Jew, one word, proud, head tall. 

In her new book, as she tackles the millennia of antisemitism that led her to unwittingly minimize her own identity, she is asking questions that others who similarly distort or diminish their Jewish identity may not want to face. 

“I was really trying to make others comfortable with me, right? I didn’t want them to think I was one of those really Jew-y Jews, which … why would that be bad, again?” Hurwitz said. “Why did social justice have to be my Judaism? Why couldn’t Judaism be my Judaism?”

This doesn’t mean Hurwitz is criticizing people who engage with Judaism through a social justice lens, or through culture, or any other avenue besides religious observance. Her own personal Jewish learning journey has not made her an Orthodox Jew. The argument she’s making is that Jews should engage with Judaism … well, Jewishly — by learning what Jewish texts have to say about social justice, rather than taking some universal values like “care for the vulnerable” and calling that your Judaism.

“Social justice is also a gorgeous way to be a Jew when you actually know what Judaism says about social justice,” said Hurwitz. “When I was this kind of contentless Jew, I don’t really know what I was doing. I was often just articulating my own views and opinions and kind of attributing them to Judaism.” 

She begins with a basic question: The Holocaust happened because the Nazis hated the Jews. But why did they hate the Jews? OK, the Jews were the scapegoat after World War I. But why the Jews? That unanswered question makes it hard for anyone to identify modern-day antisemitism, Hurwitz argues.

“These poor kids, it’s very confusing, because they’ve gotten Holocaust education, and they’re like, ‘That’s antisemitism education,’” said Hurwitz. “And then you get to campus and there are no Nazis, and you’re like, ‘What is this?’”

To answer that, she goes back thousands of years. The book examines Judaism in the context of the historical movements that have tried to crush it, or at least confine it: early Christianity, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Enlightenment, the Holocaust. Not each of these eras sought to eliminate Judaism, but each one presented a particular idea of the good kind of Jew. 

Throughout history, some Jews always tried to adapt to the mores of the day and disavow essential parts of Judaism in order to fit in. The only problem, writes Hurwitz, is it didn’t work. You can be Jewish, but not too Jewish. Like when modernity swept across Western Europe in the 19th century, and Jews could suddenly become citizens of France and Germany — so long as they placed their country’s identity above their Jewish identity.

“This book was very much my journey to stripping away all those layers of internalized antisemitism, anti-Judaism, all of that internalized shame from so many years of persecution, and just saying, ‘You know what, no, I’m a Jew,’” said Hurwitz.

Hurwitz pitched this book before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that sparked a wave of global antisemitism. But she says the events of the last two years have only furthered her argument that Jews throughout history have felt the need to separate from parts of their community to earn the approval of the rest of society.

“Oct. 7 did not change the overall argument at all. It unfortunately, in many ways, gave this devastating, heartbreaking, new evidence from the argument,” Hurwitz said. 

Hurwitz hopes to reach a broad audience. But she spent a decade and a half enmeshed in Democratic politics professionally, and she particularly hopes to can reach Jews on the left who have distanced themselves from Zionism partly as a condition of their belonging in progressive spaces. 

“I am hoping that I can speak particularly to Jews who maybe have identified as Democrats, who are a little bit more on the left, and I can tell them why I am a Zionist. I can tell them why I think it is so important that Israel exists,” Hurwitz said. “I can make that argument, and I’m hoping that it will be credible coming from me, in a way that maybe it wouldn’t from others.”