JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

High Holy Dazed

By Ben Harris · September 26, 2008

The Jewish Channel is producing a VH1-style series about the High Holidays. You know the drill – a bunch of media types whose names you sort of recognize talk smack about something. Yeah, I don’t watch them either.

Anyway, there are a coupla clips on their site. I’ve watched them all (yes, my job rules) and hereby declare this one the best:

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Eli Valley does superheroes

By Ami Eden · September 22, 2008

Click here (and magnify, unless you have X-Ray vision) to view artist Eli Valley’s review – in comic strip form – of ”Jews and American Comics: An Illustrated History of an American Art Form,” edited by Paul Buhle. He usually works his super powers over at Jewcy, but in this case he’s saving the day at the Forward.

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Why Kabbalah?

By Ami Eden · July 9, 2008

Writing in the New York Sun, Lenore Skenazy uses the A-Rod-Madonna story to tackle the question of why celebrities are attracted to Jewish mysticism:

It happened to Madonna, it’s happening to A-Rod, and for a while it even happened to Britney. One reaches the pinnacle of fame, fortune, and truly fabulous muscle tone, and what’s left?

Judaism.

Okay, so it happens to be the most esoteric expression of Judaism since the goose-shaped chopped liver: Kabbalah, a practice many American Jews will never even encounter.

What does Kabbalah have to offer our superstars, and why should we care? What do those superstars have to offer each other, and why do we care? And why did Guy Ritchie, aka Mr. Madonna, dress his kids in Yankee gear over the weekend?

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Jon Voight on his commitment to Jews and Israel

By Daniel Sieradski · May 16, 2008

Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight who is in Israel for the state’s 60th anniversary festivities. While here, Voight joined Chabad-Lubavitch in welcoming children evacuated from the devastated Chernobyl region of the Former Soviet Union to Israel.  I spoke to Mr. Voight about his relationship to the Jewish community, his involvement with Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl campaign, and his affinity for the state of Israel.

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[Update] Here’s video of Jon Voight dancing on the Chabad telethon:

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Anna Nicole found comfort in Jewish ritual

By Daniel Sieradski · April 17, 2008

According to ContactMusic, late Playboy pinup and B-movie starlet Anna Nicole Smith embraced Jewish mourning rites after her son Daniel died from a drug overdose in 2006.

In a new book called Anna Nicole Smith: Portrait Of An Icon, the tragic star’s stylist pals Pol Atteu and Patrik Simpson reveal the actress found great comfort in Judaism after her son’s death in September 2006. They even feature photographs of the late star posing in front of a mirror that has been covered in accordance with Jewish mourning rites. Atteu and Simpson write, “Anna embraced all religions, and followed the Jewish tradition out of respect for (companion) Howard K. Stern by covering all the mirrors in the house because she was in mourning.”

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The News Shticker

By Ami Eden · March 21, 2008

Jewschool’s Ben Dreyfus posits that Haftarat Zachor + Megillat Esther = The Lord of the Rings (and wonders which is totally plagiarized).

What, if anything, does it mean that the comic book industry was so heavily populated by Jews (and, while the Forward is on the topic, Mister E lights the menorah).

With the NCAA tournament underway, ESPN takes a look at Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl. Jewish federation leaders know him as Mordechai Shmuel.

Help wanted: Cute kid to be Jewish secret agent and a Jewish family willing to swap its mother.

Natalie Portman loses her Hasidic co-star.

With help from JTA digital master Daniel Sieradski and a big hat tip to Daniel Treiman.

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The News Shticker: Jewno, Britney & Mel

By Ami Eden · March 18, 2008

If Juno were Jewno ...

(Jewschool has more on the story behind the video)

Britney removes her Kabbalah tattoo and ... does lunch with Mel Gibson. On Shabbos!!!

Before the deadly construction accident last weekend, a Jewish octogenarian and retired contractor tried to warn New York officials that a crane on E. 51 St. wasn’t properly braced.

(With help from JTA digital master Daniel Sieradski)

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Madonna quotes some Talmud

By Ami Eden · March 12, 2008

During her acceptance speech at the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame, Madonna reflects on writing her first song in an abandoned synagogue in Queens (4:45) and quotes some Talmud (6:15).

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My (Israeli commando) bodyguard

By Ami Eden · February 27, 2008

The celebrity gossip Web site TMZ has a video segment on the latest wave of Jews to invade Hollywood: Israeli commandos.

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Dr. House vs. Chabad

By Ami Eden · February 14, 2008

Lubavitch.com has a post from writer Mordechai Shinefield breaking down the recent “Chabad” episode of “House” (which he notes was the highest-rated program of the night):

The episode opened with a wedding officiated by California Chabad House representative Rabbi Yossi Mintz, and the singing of a Chabad style Chasidic melody. Richard Kaplan, a cantor from East Bay, sang the niggun for the episode.

Kaplan, who was contacted by the music department at NBC Universal, says that he is “not formally connected with Chabad, but [I] have great respect for Chabad and derive great benefit from Chabad teachings.”

The episode of the medical drama revolved around a music executive (played by Heather Joy Sher Laura Silverman) who recently traded in her secular life for the world Chasidism actress played Tova, a recent returnee to Judaism. She is suffering from the expected mix of mysterious physical symptoms, plus, House insists, some sort of altered mental state that would explain her sharp turnabout ("She went directly to the extremes of Chasidism. A life of stringent rules. She became a masochist").

In the end, Shinefield writes, the woman’s problem is strictly physical, poking a hole in House’s mantra that “people don’t change.”

People do change. And as this show illustrates, even within the television industry, attitudes change, at least towards those who, like Chabad Chasidim, put no stock in the lifestyles and values of popular television.

Creator David Shore, 46, is not Orthodox himself. He grew up in what he calls ‘a typical Reform-type Jewish household,’ and now attends a Conservative synagogue in LA.

But the show he created does portray the baal teshuvah couple—human beings with the foibles of human beings—as loving, sincere, and committed to their faith and G-d.

To be sure, the dialogues contained a few one-liners stereotyping Chasidic Jews. And yet, in unscripted irony, the episode might have actually piqued the curiosity of some of the many millions glued to the tube, and motivated them enough to look beyond the TV screen for real life fulfillment that last week’s character seems to have found in living Jewishly.

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