Blooming Jasmine, Joshua Ford's Miklat, and Ford's adaptation of Amos Oz's In The Land of Israel. In 2007, Roth expanded the embrace of the series, renaming it "Voices from a Changing Middle East." He also founded the Peace Café in 2000 with Mimi Conway, a Theater J council member, and friend Andy Shallal, to complement performances of "Via Dolorosa." This was to "get people talking about Middle East issues and to find common ground between Jews and Arabs." Shallal joined Theater J's council and was its first and only Arab member. In his 2012 article, "Heated Dialogue," in American Theatre Magazine, Lonnie Firestone wrote that Roth had sometimes generated controversy by his choices even though he led Theater J to become "one of the most prolific producers of Israeli-oriented drama in North America." In 2011, Theater J produced the United States premiere of Return to Haifa, adapted by Israeli playwright Boaz Gaon from a novella by Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani. It was considered too sensitive a topic by some American theaters, dealing with the expulsion of Palestinians at the time of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. For this production, Roth commissioned an Arabic translation for the conversations between the Palestinian couple. The show was presented in Arabic and Hebrew with English surtitles... The talkback sessions were held with different panels of scholars, artists, and activists, a total of 44. COPMA (Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art), a local group formed to protest the play criticized it as anti-Israel and appealed to a major donor to cut off funding. It also objected to the Peace Cafe. The JCC decided to move the Peace Cafe off-site, and it is hosted by Andy Shallal's Busboys and Poets. In 2012, members of COPMA attended readings intending to debate. Roth believes that theater addressing issues in the Middle East is important to broadening discussions. He has said he is attracted to the topic of "bridge crossing" between Jews and non-Jews from his own background. "It stems from my work as a playwright and as the child of Holocaust survivors." Roth says, "The black-Jewish dialogue, because of my own upbringing on the South Side of Chicago, is extraordinarily personal to me, too. The encountering of Palestinians and the dialogue between the Jew and the Arab has grown out of those same impulses—the commonality of experience." In 2014, Roth was terminated as Theater J's artistic director. Over