JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Winehouse snags top honors at Grammys

By Daniel Sieradski · February 11, 2008

I fear I must take leave of the Winehouse blogging, before I cast myself a one trick pony.  But before I do, I just wanted to share with you that Amy took home five Grammy awards yesterday:  Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Pop Vocal Album.

Now you know why, despite her antics, her fans are willing to put up with her:  She’s got talent.  Here’s hoping she’ll take this as inspiration to clean up her act.

[Update] Here’s the video of last night’s performance:

0 Comments | Share This | music, Pop Culture, video

‘Ink’ star sends hateful kiss-off to Jewish boss

By Daniel Sieradski · February 11, 2008

TMZ

Reality television star/tattoo artist Kat Von D raised some eyebrows this past week, when news surfaced that the illustrated woman had sent her former Israeli-born employer, Ami James, an autographed photo some months ago bearing a swastika and the invective “burn in hell Jewbag.”

James’ tattoo parlor is the subject of The Learning Channel’s popular reality program Miami Ink.  The show propelled the 26 year-old Von D (born Katherine Von Drachenberg) to stardom and landed her her own spin-off series, LA Ink.

TMZ reports,

Upon being fired from “Miami Ink” last year, tattoo artist Kat Von D allegedly signed a photograph addressed to her former boss, Ami James, and drew a swastika and a flaming Star of David on it. Subtle, no?

TMZ has obtained the photograph in question, a headshot of Kat that reads, “Burn in hell Jewbag.” No one witnessed Kat write the message, but Chris Garver, another tattoo artist on “Miami Ink,” tells TMZ Kat personally handed him the photo.

When Ami, who is Jewish, received the photo, sources tell us he went to TLC and was rebuffed. We’re told after Ami had a lawyer intervene, TLC went to a handwriting analyst who concluded “there is a 99% probability that Kat Von D” wrote the message. In early July 2007, Avi’s lawyer went to TLC with the analysis. They simply sent him a letter back that acknowledged receiving the results and said, “We trust that this information will be kept strictly confidential.”

Kat’s spinoff show, “LA Ink,” premiered a month later.

Both TLC and Von D deny the allegations, Von D telling reporters: “The recent accusation of a publicity photo of me with offensive and anti-semitic comments and graphics allegedly written by me is completely false and unfounded, and clearly a forgery.” She added, “I always have been, and will continue to be an advocate for tolerance of all races, religions and ways of life.”

0 Comments | Share This | Hate, Pop Culture

Winehouse denied US visa

By Daniel Sieradski · February 8, 2008

US officials have denied Amy Winehouse a visa to perform in the United States at the upcoming Grammy Awards, The Times Online reported today.

The US authorities gave no reason for refusing Winehouse a visa, despite a personal plea by the star. She will make her return to the stage from a London studio instead. She promised not to blow the “second chance” she has been given to perform in front of millions of US television viewers.

It is assumed that Whinehouse has been denied entry due to her drug problem.

Last year, Canadian psychologist Andrew Feldmar (incidentally a Shoah survivor) was permanently barred from entering the United States after a border official Googled his name and turned up an article in a literary journal in which he admitted taking LSD in the 1960s. Mike Milne, a spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection, told reporters at the time that “Anyone who is determined to be a drug abuser or user is inadmissible [to the United States].”

I suppose at the very least, we can all be grateful this isn’t Dubai.

2 Comments | Share This | Crime, Pop Culture

Aguilera adds unusual touch to circumcision ritual

By Daniel Sieradski · February 6, 2008

Sarah Gerke/Creative Commons

Christina Aguilera insisted on turning her baby son’s bris into a big celebration and decorated her home with penis balloons.

Aguilera, a Catholic, has adopted all the customs and holidays of her husband Jordan Bratman’s religion, and admits she now knows how to celebrate the rite of male circumcision.

The pop star refused to allow the sacred ceremony to become a somber affair and turned the bris into a big party.

She says, “I’m not Jewish, my husband’s Jewish ... I never really knew a lot of Jewish people growing up either, so I really had no idea about the bris and all the Jewish holidays. It’s all a learning process for me.

“It was a very sweet experience; we had a lot of close friends come over and experience the bris with us.

“We’re such a non-conventional couple, we had a lot of penis balloons everywhere.”

16 Comments | Share This | Intermarriage, Pop Culture, Ritual

Winehouse considers Chanukah album, rejects association with Jewish community

By Daniel Sieradski · February 5, 2008

Mike A. Kelly/Creative Commons

Pop songstress/tabloid fixture Amy Winehouse is contemplating recording a Chanukah album.  Her producer, Mark Ronson, recently told Rolling Stone:

“We’re talking about making a holiday record, with Christmas songs on one side and Hanukkah songs on the other,” Ronson explained. “She’s got songs called, like, ‘Kosher Kisses’ and ‘Alone Under the Mistletoe.’ She was kind of f–king around, but I was like, ‘You have all these amazing records to play for Christmas, like Motown and Carla Thomas and the Charlie Brown Christmas, and unfortunately, us Jews have nothing that cool to listen to. So we should do something.”

Yet despite the buzz around the project and around Winehouse’s Jewish identity in-and-of-itself, according to Paul Lester, a contributor to London’s Jewish Chronicle, the singer refuses to grant the Chronicle an interview because she wishes to remain disassociated from the Jewish community.

There’s only one Jewish performer who has declined the offer of an interview with me for the JC over the past 12 months, and that was Amy Winehouse. Her reason? She didn’t want to be associated with the paper, the Jewish community it serves, or indeed any of it. This struck me as strange, particularly after watching her appearance on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, during which the Helen Shapiro of the crack’n’tats generation joked with presenter Simon Amstell about the prospect of the pair of them having a Jewish wedding; stranger still in the light of the news of a mooted Chanukah album with producer Ronson.

Or maybe Winehouse just didn’t want to get involved in a serious discussion about the nature of belief and the role of religion in modern Jewish society.

Whatever her reasons, one can nonetheless remain hopeful that Winehouse, a nominee for six Grammy awards, will do a great deal to raise the bar for Jewish holiday music, let alone to help younger listeners feel more comfortable identifying Jewishly (even if she is less-than role model material in other ways).

Winehouse may also end up an unintentional ambassador for peace.  Mika, one of the UK’s other top recording artists, who so happens to be half-Lebanese and a native of Beirut, has expressed interest in collaborating with Winehouse on her Chanukah album. The Asian News Service quoted the singer as saying: “Think about this: me, a part-Lebanese artist working on a Jewish album. I think that’s a nice statement.”

8 Comments | Share This | music, Pop Culture

Wherever we stand, we stand with Springfield

By Ami Eden · January 28, 2008

Hillel got a shoutout on last night’s episode of the Simpsons, which had some sort of weird flashback thing going with Marge attending college in the ‘90s.

The following image appears as she mentions “fraternity pledges in their beanies”:

1 Comment | Share This | On Campus, Pop Culture

Finding the Heath Ledger angle

By Ami Eden · January 25, 2008

At times, the most challenging (or lamest, depending on your take) aspects of my job is trying to find the Jewish angle in the story that everyone is talking about. So, for example, for the past few days, Heath Ledger’s death has been a huge story.

Maybe it’s because my brain is too wrapped up in election coverage, but I’ve come up with nothing.

But then I received the following press release, and a news brief was born:

Heath Ledger’s Funeral Is No Place For Bigots

New York, NY, January 24, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), responding to the Westboro Baptist Church’s plan to turn Heath Ledger’s death into a homophobic spectacle, said the actor’s funeral “should be no place for haters, and especially a gay basher like Fred Phelps.”

Phelps and his virulently homophobic church have vowed to picket the actor’s funeral, objecting to what they view as the actor’s support of homosexuality through his starring role in the film “Brokeback Mountain.” It is a time-honored strategy for Phelps, a notorious hater who uses high-profile funerals as a means to promote his unique brand of bigotry to the masses.

“It is time to say to Fred Phelps and his ilk, enough is enough,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.  “Heath Ledger’s funeral should be no place for haters, and especially a gay basher like Fred Phelps.  It is outrageous that the Westboro Baptist Church would attempt to turn the untimely and sad death of a Hollywood celebrity into a homophobic spectacle.”

Since the summer of 2005, the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church has picketed the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with placards reading “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” Phelps believes that the soldiers represent a nation tolerant of homosexuality, and their deaths are God’s punishment for their sins.  The group also routinely rails against Jews, Catholics and other minority faiths.

In October 2007, a federal court ordered the group to pay $11 million to the father of a slain Marine after it was found guilty of violating a right to privacy and inflicting intentional emotional distress.

Members of the WBC first gained national notoriety when they appeared at the funeral of gay murder victim Matthew Shepard bearing signs reading “No Fags in Heaven” and “God Hates Fags.”

4 Comments | Share This | Pop Culture

Entering the Covenant: Aguilera baby gets bris

By Ami Eden · January 23, 2008

Enough with the bad news from Amy Winehouse and the Spears sisters. Finally a Mazal Tov in celebrity world:

E! News has learned exclusively that new parents Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman held a bris, the Hebrew baby naming and circumcision ritual ceremony, at their Beverly Hills home Sunday.

More than a dozen family and friends attended the gathering. Jewish rituals aren’t new to the Bratman family. In 2005, the couple wed in a Jewish ceremony in Napa Valley, California.

A bris is typically done on a baby’s eighth day of life, and sure enough, son Max Liron was born Jan. 12. He came home from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center earlier this week.

The ceremony formalizes the child’s name; his middle name, Liron, means “my song” in Hebrew. Fittingly, Christina is “already singing to Max,” we’re told.

11 Comments | Share This | Interfaith, Pop Culture, Ritual

Adam Sandler does ‘Munich,’ pop singer does ‘Hava Nagila’

By Ami Eden · December 18, 2007

Here are two keepers: a preview of Adam Sandler’s upcoming flick about a top Israeli commando who wants to become a hairdresser and British pop singer Lauren Rose performing her version of Hava Nagila, which is climbing to the top of the charts in England:

UPDATE: JTA’s resident music buff, Jacob Berkman (that’ll get fellow writer Ben Harris steamed), says Rosen is simply ripping off this guy’s holiday-timed Hava Nagila from two years ago.

8 Comments | Share This | Film, music, Pop Culture, video

Sorry, Mr. Bishop

By Ami Eden · October 22, 2007

Nearly a decade ago, back in my days at the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia, a co-worker and I were working late. His phone rang and he picked up.

The caller was screaming. My fellow editor kept saying, “Yes, Mr. Bishop. Sorry, Mr. Bishop.”

Yes, it was the Joey Bishop.

If memory serves (the Web is of no help on this one) we had published a letter from a reader who was upset that the Rat Packer – who died last week in Newport Beach, Cali., at 89 – didn’t stick with his given name: Joseph Abraham Gottlieb. The letter-writer suggested that Bishop must have been embarrassed by his Jewish roots.

The hell he was, Bishop let my fellow editor know. (And, I should add, he had no problem exposing Johnny Carson as a Midwestern Morano).

So, one last time: Sorry, Mr. Bishop.

0 Comments | Share This | Pop Culture, video