A Jewish mother says a city-funded puppet show in Lower Manhattan erupted into anti-Israel invective that left her feeling surrounded by “ideological enemies.”
The Brooklyn woman, 43, who declined to be named, told The Post she brought her 4-year-old son to “The Cardboard Pizza Puppet Circus” on Aug. 13 expecting a lighthearted celebration of New York. The performance, created by the Boxcutter Collective, was part of the International Puppet Fringe Festival, an event that received public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. The troupe bills the show as “a celebration of” the city, promising dancing skyscrapers, giant rats, fossil-fuel-fighting flowers, a live brass band, and Lady Liberty herself.
About 15 minutes in, the performance pivoted sharply from New York-centric themes to political attacks on Israel, the mother said. The packed courtyard held roughly 200 people for the hour-long show.
“The anti-Israel stuff came out of nowhere,” she said.
“It went from pizza rat and parallel parking to accusations of Israel bombing hospitals.”
The performance included a skit with eight performers recreating a flotilla, which drew enthusiastic jeers against Israel from audience members. Remarks were also made about American tax dollars going to Israel, she said.
“How does anti-Israel propaganda figure into a play that’s otherwise entirely about New York? Is hatred for Israel as synonymous with the City’s brand as pizza rat?” asked the mother, who describes herself as a “proud Zionist.”
Her young son noticed her distress. She said the boy “kept asking what was happening when he saw I was taken aback.”
The mother, a Soviet Union refugee who now lives in Windsor Terrace, said her “heart was racing” as she watched crowd members appear to endorse the accusations against Israel.
“(I was) feeling like I was surrounded by my ideological enemies,” she said.
“This particular group had very antisemitic views,” she said of the Boxcutter Collective. “It felt like a mob – the hairs on your neck stand up.”
She kept silent despite her alarm. “I knew that if I shouted something against Hamas, the crowd would turn against me, so I kept my mouth shut,” she told The Post. “My generation is now experiencing a fresh iteration of antisemitism here in New York that my family escaped back in the Soviet Union.”
The Boxcutter Collective had previously demonstrated its pro-Palestinian stance following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed. The troupe performed in the “Gaza Monologues” in November 2023, on what the United Nations designates as “The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” in response to what the collective called the “horrific war taking place in Gaza.”
Festival founder and producer Manuel Moran told Jerusalem News Syndicate this week that organizers may not have known the full content of the performance in advance. “As with many festivals, the full content of a production is not always known in advance, and the company premiered many elements of this work as part of the event,” he told JNS. “We stand behind our role in providing a platform for artists while recognizing that artists are responsible for their own work and should be able to speak to it directly.”
Moran noted that the festival also included a Yiddish-tinged skit, and that an Israeli troupe, Hanut Theater Company, had been invited but could not secure visas.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, condemned the performance on X. “This is an inappropriate use of public resources,” he wrote. “Publicly funded cultural programming should never contribute to an environment in which Jewish New Yorkers feel unsafe.”
Calls to the Boxcutter Collective, the International Puppet Fringe Festival, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts were not returned.