JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Getting fired over treif chicken

By Ami Eden · May 9, 2008

Remember all the hoopla about two Orthodox Jews being on the Apprentice a few years back? Well, recently, BBC reports, one team lost a competition in the British version of the show because it failed in its quest to buy a kosher chicken:

As insults were traded among contestants on the losing team in this week’s Apprentice, Sir Alan Sugar berated the contestants for not knowing what a kosher chicken was.

It had to rank as one of the most peculiar spectacles in the history of the BBC reality game show, The Apprentice - a full-blown barney about what is and isn’t kosher. Contestants in this week’s episode had been flown to Marrakech in Morocco and instructed to bargain for a number of items on a shopping list, including a kosher chicken.

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Does The Fly do Passover?

By Ami Eden · April 8, 2008

An interview in The Independent with actor Jeff Goldblum takes a Jewish turn:

I nudge him on to the firmer ground of Adam Resurrected. “It was intense,” he says of his role as Adam Stein, a Jewish former circus performer forced by a concentration-camp guard to pretend to be a German shepherd dog. “Paul [Schrader, the director] likes to describe the film as a man who was once a dog who meets a dog who was once a boy. That’s a little cryptic though. I had a year to prepare for it, thank goodness, and I immersed myself in it, I did as much work as I could. I went to a concentration camp in Poland, the one that’s said to be the most intact – it was a very powerful experience. I went to Israel for the first time a couple of times and talked to some survivors in Los Angeles.”

This is the first time that Goldblum, who is Jewish, has done a part where his Jewishness is part of the character. Is that why he took the part? “Oh, it was a creative project. I’ve never done a movie about this subject, so there were Jewish things about it, you know. Yes. Mmmm.”

Is he observant about his religion? Does he celebrate Passover, for example? “Oooooh, you know,” he says, his giant hands wafting about in the air, eyes rolling in their sockets. “I celebrate it in my own way, nothing traditional or traditionally observant.” Does he believe in God? “Uhhm, not in the way I think people… ssss… uhh, do I believe in a figure outside myself, a being, who lives somewhere… where we can’t see them who, you know, umm, sends you to heaven or hell… I’m not sure I believe in that bit of it. I, I, I, err, ahh you know… I believe in stillness and spaciousness.”

It’s a mesmerising display of stammering and obfuscation. And all the while his head is rolling and his hands are drifting about and his rubbery face is performing acrobatics as he rolls his eyes back into his head, works his jaw and flutters his eyelashes. Then he jerks his chin up and his eyes twinkle. “Do you like Japanese food?”

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‘High School Musical’ coming to Israel

By Ami Eden · April 3, 2008

With shows like “In Treatment,” Israel is finally starting to carry its weight in the U.S.-Israel pop culture relationship. And how do we return the favor? Check out this piece of news from the Forward…

A consortium of Tel Aviv-based producers, talent agents and TV distribution specialists recently announced auditions for the first-ever Hebrew version of the play, which is based on the 2006 Disney Channel movie about teen love ignited during a session of karaoke. Despite its culturally specific setting — an American high school populated by such figures as a popular jock and a competitive drama club tyrant — “High School Musical” proved an international smash hit, viewed by young people in 100 countries and becoming one of the top-selling DVDs of all time. ...

The musical will be adapted, appropriately, by someone whose last name means “song” — Smadar Shir, a children’s book author and journalist also responsible for a number of youth-oriented plays. Shir, who is the writer of two weekly columns in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, has also translated into Hebrew versions of “Aladdin” and “The Little Mermaid,” and the stories of Mark Twain. She’ll have limited creative leeway in adapting her newest project, which, according to contractual agreements with Disney, must hew as closely as linguistically possible to the original.

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Record deal for Youngstown’s Jewish rapper

By Ami Eden · April 2, 2008

The student paper at Youngstown State University reports on the record deal signed by 18-year-old Jewish freshman Jonathon Tepper:

Tepper, aka Throwback the Jewish King, has just signed a major record deal to New York’s top independent record label, Affluent Records, which has a few other artists such as Outlawz, Dead Prez and Hood Surgeon.

“It’s an all-star line up, and a perfect fit for me,” said Tepper.

As far as being from Youngstown, Throwback raps that people hate on the Yo’, but he’s proud of where he comes from. In his songs, he focuses on misconceptions of a city back on the rise. …

Tepper describes his rap style as unique. He enunciates his words and embraces stereotypes about Jewish people.

Click here to visit his My Space page and listen to a clip of his music.

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The other Frank girl

By Ami Eden · March 27, 2008

The New Jersey Jewish News reports on a new musical comedy that looks at life in the annex from the perspective of Anne Frank’s little sister. (What’s next – “Long Night,” a comic romp on Auschwitz from the perspective of an inmate having to listen to Elie Wiesel moralize all the time?):

What if Margot, Anne Frank’s big sister, also kept a diary? What if hers offered a different perspective on life in the annex?

What if her diary revealed different truths — that it was she and Peter who were in love, not Anne and Peter, or that Albert Dussel, really Dr. Fritz Pfeffer, was actually a lovely fellow and not the fat, bald, selfish man as portrayed in Anne’s diary?

And what if Anne were actually, in Margot’s words, “a conniving little [rhymes with witch]”?

Most of all, what if someone wrote a play based on the premise and turned it into a musical comedy?

9 Comments | Share This | Comedy, Culture, Shoah, Theater

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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The Israeli television invasion

By Ami Eden · March 14, 2008

The Forward’s Rebecca Spence writes about Hollywood’s growing interest in Israeli television shows:

As Hollywood executives roll out the red carpet for television shows imported from overseas, Israel is emerging as an unlikely new starlet.

In the wake of this season’s new HBO drama, “In Treatment” — the Israeli television hit remade for an American audience — a spate of fresh shows from the Jewish state is now making its way across the Atlantic.

“There is a land rush on Israeli properties right now,” said independent producer David Himmelfarb, who has an exclusive deal with ABC Studios, the television production arm of The Walt Disney Company. “It’s almost like a farm team for Hollywood, is what it’s becoming,” he said, referring to the Israeli television industry.

4 Comments | Share This | Culture, Israel, Television

One more incentive for peace: A Rami Kashou studio in Ramallah

By Ami Eden · March 14, 2008

Rami Kashou, the Ramallah-born fashion designer who finished a close second on Season 4 of Bravo’s Project Runway, plays the checkpoint card in a Q & A with Jewcy.

What about [opening a studio] in your home country?

I’d love to open up in more than one country, but with checkpoints in the Middle East, it could be hard. But it would be nice to have my work in different countries, to make it more accessible.

Here’s a Project Runway montage of Kashou…

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An old newspaper and a new TV channel explore the Jewish-Rastafarian connection

By Ami Eden · March 14, 2008

The Forward has hooked up with The Jewish Channel to produce three shows: a round table featuring the paper’s staffers, an interview show with J.J. Goldberg and a movie-themed program with arts & culture editor Alana Newhouse.

In one recent segment on Newhouse’s show, she and the TJC crew looked at the Jewish-Rastafarian documentary Awake Zion.

http://tjctv.com/blogs/are-dreadlocks-the-new-peyos/

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