Mandy’s Magic Suit
An open letter to Mandy Patinkin following his ill-informed and offensive remarks about my country.
Dear Mandy:
It probably won't surprise you that scarcely a month has gone by in the last 41 years that I have not listened to your voice on the original cast recording of Sunday in the Park with George. To say I love your work, and especially your interpretations of our late great mutual friend (whom you once called your rabbi), Stephen Sondheim, massively understates the case.
I also hope you still take pride in having been inducted, by me, into the International Society of Airport Trivia for singing “White Christmas” in Yiddish from a pay phone at Indianapolis Airport onto Jonathan Schwartz’s Christmas program on WNEW.
Your comments in last week’s New York Times interview about Israel went viral, I could not let your words go unanswered. Not as a fan, nor as an Israeli, nor as a father of three soldiers. I wrote to you privately, hoping to initiate a respectful dialogue, but since you have not responded, and with the encouragement of many, I have decided to share my rebuttal to your remarks publicly.
It so happens that I voted against Netanyahu five times — but that is of no consequence to this discussion; I can only defend him against your dangerous invective. You may have well have just inveighed against all of us who live here, because none of us here would have accepted a government that did not respond with all necessary force to the genocidal attack of October 7, or to the genocidal threats from Iran, neither of which is an abstraction to us, both of which, we all understand, represent threats to our very survival.
Quoting you, in an angry and accusatory tone: “How could it be done to you and your ancestors, and you turn around and you do it to someone else?” You did not elaborate. Needless to say, most people believe, as you surely must have expected, that your allusion is to the Holocaust. The implication then is that we, our families here, are acting with genocidal intent against the people of Gaza.
Mandy, do you understand just how serious an allegation that is?
And, Mandy, I am confident that I speak for virtually all my fellow Israelis when I tell you that I take your accusations personally. That is because it is our children who are prosecuting this war.
Mandy, seriously now: do you think my son (who brought an old army-approved iPod without connectivity into Gaza to listen to audiobooks about AI and to listen to you sing “Oscar and Steve”), is deliberately targeting innocent people?
I can't imagine you believe that. I can’t live in a world where you believe that about my boy! BUT it is the clear implication of what you said. And it is certainly how the Israel haters are interpreting it. Just put your name in to X and meet your new admirers amongst neo-Nazis and far-left antisemites.
Mandy, you must understand that this is a war that could have been prosecuted with just our air force, and not lost nearly 500 neighbors who have been killed in Gaza since the ground war began. Why didn’t we do that? Because it would have cost the lives of too many civilians. And so we sent our boys in to try to surgically remove Hamas terrorists – even as those terrorists do everything in their power to maximize civilian deaths on their own side, as well as ours.
Mandy, my family collectively, including my four children, have attended over 30 funerals these last 21 months - more than I had been to in my life. Each one has been more heartbreaking than the last — all of them featuring parents burying their children — all people we had some connection to, including neighbors and classmates.
I could tell you stories for hours about those we have lost. So, forgive me if I take great offense to your dastardly assertion that we are "turning around and doing what was done to us." NO, Mandy. No, we are not. We are DEFENDING OURSELVES. Defending ourselves from people who MAKE NO SECRET about their desire to kill us all. Defending ourselves against those who carefully teach their children (allusion to Oscar intended) that there is no higher value than murdering Jews (with no distinction for more virtuous ones, like Mandy Patinkin).
Don’t draw false moral equivalencies, Mandy. Hamas is evil. We are not. We want to live in peace. That is why we pulled every single last Jew out of Gaza in 2005 and gave the population the resources to build Singapore. Instead, they built the most extensive tunnel system ever created to take our children hostage. As I type these words, 50 of my fellow citizens are in their 653rd agonizing day of being tormented in those airless tunnels.
Mandy, your words hurt deeply. They hurt emotionally for sure, but they also do just what you claim Netanyahu does. You accuse him of “endangering the Jewish population all over the world.” No, that’s exactly what YOU are doing with these outrageous, libelous, and reckless accusations against us. And you know what I never heard you say? I never heard you say that Zelenskyy’s actions endanger Ukrainians' lives everywhere. I also never heard you express outrage at half a million deaths in the Syrian Civil War, including tens of thousands of Palestinians massacred by the Assad regime. Or about the 12 million displaced people in Sudan, facing war and starvation. Or the Uyghurs' interminable suffering in China.
Mandy, no, neither Netanyahu nor our children are endangering Jews everywhere. On the contrary. They are defending Jews everywhere — and defending the very civilization that allows artists like Georges Seurat, Stephen Sondheim, and Mandy Patinkin to share with us their remarkable gifts. My kids have yet to find a theater in Gaza.
Mandy, if you are truly interested in enlightening yourself about the conflict, there are many resources I can offer you, not least among them, one-on-one conversations with people on the front lines. They would love to share their stories and answer your questions and let you take the measure of their virtue. That is a totally genuine offer.
Mandy, we don’t ask for your sympathy or even your concern. We do not ask you not to refrain from criticizing Israeli policy (I do so literally every day, be it mass transit, or permitting the irresponsible deluge of Chinese EVs). But at least have a little humility, at least endeavor to learn.
Finally, Mandy, one of my favorites of your recording, is your brilliant medley of “Everybody Says Don’t,” from Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle, and “The King’s New Clothes.” The emotion you convey at the climax of the latter number, “...one little boy who for some reason didn’t know what he was SUPPOSED TO SEE…” I bet you always fancied yourself that virtuous little boy. But you know what? You are actually with “the Ministers, the Ambassadors, the Counts and the Dukes,” who repeat the lie promulgated by terrorists and by institutions like the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, Al Jazeera, and more.
The King’s new clothes? Those are the accusations against us - apartheid, war criminals, baby killers, genocide. Lies just as naked as the king.
And that little boy? That’s us. Telling the truth, no matter what everyone says. Iran wants to destroy us, but it wants to destroy the entire liberal world as well. Iran is 75 times our size and 10 times our population. But with our survival at stake, we took them on. And, at least for now, we neutralized the threat against us – and against you. And I could not be more proud that my own kids contributed to that effort with full consciousness for what they fight.
Sondheim’s contribution to your medley, Everybody Says Don’t, ends with some of my favorite lyrics.
I believe in miracles
If you do them
Miracles
Nothing to them
I say don’t
Don’t be afraid!
Our first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, said, "In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles."
Mandy, please don’t let those hurtful words compete in my ear with the closing stanza of “Finishing the Hat.” Please search your soul, gain a deeper understanding of that of which you speak, and apologize to my country.
And then come here and do a concert. I’ll be happy to produce it.
Make a hat.
Where there never was a hat.