Blacklisted for Israel support, author draws strength from Holocaust survivor grandma
Bestselling writer Lisa Barr – targeted by hecklers and review bombers – vows that though she wants to ‘curl up in a ball’ after Oct. 7, she will ‘fight back constructively’
Reporter at The Times of Israel
Bestselling author Lisa Barr never expected to call her newest novel “eerily relevant” to modern times. Historical fiction, “The Goddess of Warsaw” is a compelling tale of Warsaw Ghetto resistance, old Hollywood and revenge as a final means toward justice.
In the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas onslaught on southern Israel, Barr, a former Jerusalem Post reporter, found herself on a list of “Zionist authors” to be blacklisted and the subject of heckling detractors. Over a year later, Barr said she sees common denominators between the past and present on a daily basis.
“When October 7 happened and I was in the throes of edits for this book… Well, a lot of writers get to escape in their work, but for me, there was no escape,” Barr said in a phone interview with The Times of Israel.
In recent months, there has been a veritable crescendo of antisemitism within the literary establishment. Author Sally Rooney and more than 1,000 writers and publishing professionals recently signed a letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions that “are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”
Signatories pledge to not work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights,” including operating “discriminatory policies and practices” or “whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide.”
Unexpectedly, Barr said she found herself taking strength from the character she’d created.
“The Goddess of Warsaw” is a page-turner telling the fictional story of Bina Blonski, a Jewish actress-turned-resistance fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto, and her transformation into Lena Browning, a Hollywood femme fatale with a secret past who uses her time off-screen to hunt Nazis and execute vigilante justice.
“I have drawn strength from Lena, born Bina,” Barr said. “I’ve drawn strength from her in everything, from what I am writing to what I am living in my real life. I am choosing not to be silent about what is going on now, just like my character made those same choices.”
A tale as old as time
When Barr started writing the book years ago, the author of The New York Times bestseller “Woman On Fire” had no idea how resonant antisemitism would soon become in her own life.
Soon after the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 in southern Israel, Barr was in a group chat with six Jewish authors who were contemplating what they could do to respond to the tidal wave of antisemitism that came in the onslaught’s wake. Quickly, Barr said, the six authors turned into 35 authors, and the group decided to form Artists Against Antisemitism.
Within weeks, the group raised $120,000 in an online auction, with 400 authors and artists donating prizes. Funds raised went to Project Shema, “specifically to help college students dealing with antisemitism on campus,” Barr said.
Soon after that, Barr said, she was being interviewed and her interviewer pointed out that “Woman On Fire” was review-bombed: two years after its release, 457 one-star reviews suddenly appeared on Amazon, a popular book website, after October 7.
“This was a book that had been doing very well,” Barr emphasized, noting that she was one of many Jewish author friends “being canceled and harassed at book events.”
BREAKING: CNN’s Dana Bash had her event, America’s Deadliest Election, at DC Bookstore, Politics and Prose, interrupted multiple times by pro-Palestine protesters who accused her of being complicit in genocide.
Bash’s response: “Take off your mask.” pic.twitter.com/mSPk4MFAbK
— Stu (@thestustustudio) September 6, 2024
Barr says she is grateful for the unflagging and unwavering support of her publisher, HarperCollins, in light of the antisemitic backlash against Jewish authors.
“As you can imagine, putting out a book in this environment is very difficult,” Barr said, referring to the declining circumstances for Jews in Israel and around the world.
“Imagine having to watch the videos of those girls being seized and captured and raped amid all this violence, and at the same time, promoting a new book when all I want to do is curl up and cry,” Barr said, alluding to the Hamas video of five Israeli girls taken hostage on October 7. “As a mother of daughters all the same ages as these girls, it’s very difficult and unbearable on some days.”
But just like her protagonist, Barr sees no option to opt out.
“I’m a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and the voice in my head is my grandma, Rachel,” Barr said. “She is the reason I fight for what I fight for and stand up to all forms of hate. She lost everything, all of her family in Auschwitz, and she always still believed love wins in the end and in the power of family and forging ahead.”
Beware the blacklist
Reflecting on the recent boycott drive spearheaded by Irish author Rooney, Barr called this particular letter “despicable, and yet another stab in the heart.”
“Is it possible to love an author’s or artist’s work and despise what they stand for — hate and antisemitism?” Barr asked rhetorically. “You have to look at the hypocrisy of these activist authors and artists, who use their platforms regularly to stand up for women’s and LGBTQ rights, but under Hamas, those rights are completely violated.”
“Sally Rooney and company don’t stand up for Israeli women and men who’ve been raped, as shown by evidence on Hamas’s own video cameras. What makes me sick is the hypocrisy,” Barr said. Even worse, she personally feels, are authors and artists “who’ve made millions off of Holocaust literature, and remain despicably silent when it comes to the surge of antisemitism.”
Barr said she refuses to play the game of reciprocally blacklisting anti-Zionist and antisemitic authors.
“I know, and every writer in my tribe knows, who is standing up and who is remaining silent. We are not going to stoop to that level of putting together a blacklist,” she stated. “However, we will fight back, and we are doing that constructively.”
One constructive initiative, Barr said, is author, podcaster and media maven Zibby Owens’s recently-released anthology “On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors and Advocates,” a compilation of essays from 75 authors, influencers and authority figures on fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism, in which Barr has an essay.
“I like to say that on October 6 [2023], I knew what I wanted from life — but after October 7, I knew what life wanted from me,” Barr said. “Living loud and proud is my mission — as a woman, as a Jew, as a mother of three young adult daughters, as an author and as a journalist. And from what I am seeing, there’s been an awakening, with so many Jewish authors and our non-Jewish allies.”
She heralds the unification of forces that has resulted from the outpouring of antisemitism and the “Jewish pride that has blossomed out of the weeds of hate,” Barr said.
“We are collectively, as Jews, standing together, and this is very empowering,” Barr said. “That gives me hope. That unity gives me hope.”
The Goddess of Warsaw: A Novel by Lisa Barr
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