Today is Thursday, February 23, 2023. Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine. It is definitely not a welcome anniversary, that’s for sure. The world did not expect that this small country would succeed in fighting against a supposedly more powerful enemy, Putin’s Russia, but they have. Most of us had expected that the conflict would tilt in Russia’s favor within a few months or even less, but the Ukrainians demonstrated so much pluck and resilience that it got them through a one-year anniversary. It’s been a miracle that Ukraine is still standing. This country has helped the country with massive military aid ever since the conflict began, on February 24, 2022. One must wonder what will happen to this country in the days and weeks ahead? CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is actually hosting a town hall on the Russian invasion of Ukraine right now. Let’s hope that Ukraine prevails in this brutal and unprecedented assault on it.

On to a very disturbing story that appeared in today’s edition of the Daily News in an article by Tim Balk on the shocking protest held by neo-Nazis in the heart of Broadway over the first preview of a revival of Parade, a musical that details the story of Leo Frank, an American Jew living in Marietta, Georgia, around 1913 who was wrongly convicted of murder and lynched more than a century ago. This demonstration was held in front of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre by a small crowd of anti-Semites who took part in this demonstration; the article is called “Bigots on Broadway: Neo-Nazis protest outside ‘Parade,’ a show about a lynched Jew.” I was revulsed by this protest that occurred on Tuesday night in front of theatergoers who were harassed by the vile accusations cast at the principal being a pedophile.

Leo Frank was a Georgia factory manager who was convicted in the murder of a 13-year-old girl who was found dead at a Georgia pencil factory. Many years later, in 1982 actually, a Tennessee newspaper carried the story of a crucial witness who asserted that he had given false testimony and that Frank had not killed the girl and that another man committed the heinous act. But at that time, it was too late to save Frank who was killed by a lynch mob during a surge in antisemitism following his murder conviction. On the positive side, his death led to the creation of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), but most unfortunately, led to a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.

I saw the video that was published on social media in which men held up a sign in red ink, declaring, “LEO FRANKLY WAS A PEDO.” Can you imagine what ticket holders must have thought when they saw these people demonstrating in front of a Broadway theater, in progressive New York City? It’s so disheartening – to think that there has been a noticeable surge of antisemitism since the beginning of a particular president’s one infamous term in office.

To counteract the deplorable demonstration at this time and age, the producers of the show, which is due to open on March 16, issued a statement yesterday deploring the protest. The statement reads, “If there is any remaining doubt out there about the urgency of telling this story in this moment in history, the vileness on display last night should put it to rest.”

The star of the show, Ben Platt, released an Instagram video on the occasion of the protest, in which he said, the demonstration was “ugly and scary,” but said it provided a “wonderful reminder of why we are telling this particular story.” To protect theatergoers and the cast, police officers stood guard during the protest outside the theater, on West 45th Street.

In a Wednesday statement, the ADL said that “the irony should not be lost on anyone that these antisemitic extremists decided to protest a play that details the true story of the lynching of an innocent Jewish man and used it as an opportunity to spread conspiracy theories and hate.”

The Broadway League vowed in a statement to “continue its work to ensure that theater is a safe and welcoming experience for all.” The League continued to say that it “stands firmly against antisemitism and all forms of harassment.”

What is very unsettling here is that rates of antisemitic hate crimes have risen sharply in the city recently, according to Police Department data. As you might recall, cops in Penn Station arrested two men accused of plotting an attack against a synagogue in November.

In strange accordance with this present-day demonstration of antisemitic hate is the 84th anniversary of the Nazi rally held at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. My friend “Harold” sent me today in an email the notice about this sad day in American history in which the German American Bund held an “Americanization” rally at the start of the conflict in Nazi Germany. That rally was attended by 20,000 supporters and members, but was met by a large group of anti-Nazis who had to be held back by 1,500 police officers.

Messages broadcast at the rally proclaimed “Stop Jewish domination of Christian Americans.” The Bund’s national leader Fritz Kuhn declared at one point, “We, with American ideals, demand that our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it.” Utterly disgusting!

A positive change to arise from this deplorable rally was that after America entered the war in December 1941, the U.S. government outlawed the German American Bund.

But fast forward to the terrible moment of August 11, 2017, when neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, and other white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus bearing torches and terrorizing students with chants of “Blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville. This is the infamous rally in which the sitting president said that there were “very fine people on both sides.” He was severely and deservedly condemned for such a stupid remark. And Dumpf never said anything about the anti-Nazi demonstrator who was killed by a car that plowed into her at the rally, Heather Heyer.

So as the saying goes, “the more things change, the more things stay the same.” It is a truism that antisemitism has always been here, lurking in the shadows. Whenever there is a roiling in society, these forces come to the surface to spread vile conspiracy theories regarding a minority group, in order to find an easy scapegoat with which to unload their feelings of frustration, anger, and envy, even. As long as there is ignorance out there, there will always be hatred, I’m afraid.

I truly hope that the protest at the theater playing Parade was an isolated one. It was disturbing to see it take place right here in this bastion of progressive ideals. But anything goes in this fractured time of ours.

This disgraceful demonstration by a small group of Jew haters outside this Broadway theater has piqued my interest in actually seeing the play. I missed the production the first time it played on Broadway, which was 1998 to 1999, when it ran for more than 120 performances. It won two Tony Awards back then – for best original score and best book of a musical. I bet that this incident will only spur more people to go to the Bernard Jacobs Theatre to see the play. And that’s a good thing!

Stay safe and be well.