Reality and Dreams: Michael Feinstein and Dame Edna Together at Last
By Benjamin Ivry
The Ohio-born Jewish entertainer Michael Feinstein opened on Broadway on March 18 in a musical review, “All About Me,” co-starring the Australian comedian Barry Humphries (better known as Dame Edna Everage). As Feinstein explains in his 1995 memoir, “Nice Work If You Can Get It: My Life in Rhythm and Rhyme” (Hyperion), he has devoted his life to preserving and celebrating works by Tin Pan Alley composers, a great many of whom were Jewish. Feinstein’s reedy voice may be wispy, but his piano playing is charmingly fluent, when not overelaborate, in songs famous, forgotten and almost lost to posterity.
“All About Me” celebrates a New York that never existed beyond the Broadway stage. It is this surreal aspect of Broadway musical expression that makes the 76-year-old Humphries such a canny choice as a stage partner for Feinstein, whose persona as nice Jewish boy is due, at age 53, for some freshening up. Humphries’s warm rapport with Jewish comedians like Matt Lucas, and brilliant timing, make his relations with audiences a delight to watch. Dame Edna is so amenable of late that she has even claimed implausibly to be “possibly Jewish,” maybe for an even closer rapport with her co-star.
A sharper satiric edge was visible in Humphries’s earlier work. In 1971 he offered Australian television audiences a sober warning about the dangers of sitting on Santa’s lap at Christmastime, and as the character of Dame Edna evolved in the 1970s, Humphries also created a gross Australian character, less known internationally, Sir Les Patterson, an amalgam of everything potentially disgusting about Australian life. An acid test of Feinstein’s abiding status as nice Jewish boy and doyen of the elegant Park Avenue supper club Feinstein’s At the Regency would be to have him confront Sir Les Patterson instead of Dame Edna on matinees. A steelier, more defiant Feinstein might emerge from the struggle.
To see a promo for “All About Me” on Broadway, click here:
For Dame Edna in prescient maternal mode in 1978, click here:
Child Nutrition Seders Fight Hunger
By Nathan Guttman
Ten O’clock in the morning might be a little early for a Passover Seder, especially if one intends to drink all four glasses of wine. But this was a Seder with a cause, and for dozens of Capitol Hill staffers, anti-hunger activists and students, its seemed just right.
The Congressional Seder on March 18 was dedicated to fighting hunger and is one of 40 similar Childhood Nutrition Seders taking place across the country before and after Passover. Organized by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, their purpose is to mobilize both Jews and non-Jews to be anti-hunger advocates and to fight for reauthorization in Congress of the Child Nutrition Act before it expires.
It looked almost like a real Seder: Rabbi Steve Gutow, head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, read the Haggadah, which was written for the event, while sitting in front a traditional Seder plate. But nothing else was traditional. The Haggadah’s Four Questions were adapted to ask: “What does it mean to be hungry in America?” and “What will it take to end child hunger in America?” The Four Sons from the Haggadah were played by four students from the Tucson Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition, who spoke of their personal experiences as recipients of school food programs. And the Ten Plagues – they too got a new version to reflect 10 faces of hunger in America.
Three members of Congress stopped by for the early morning Seder, as did several administration staffers. The event ended with the signing of a petition calling on lawmakers to approve refunding for the child nutrition programs. The petition — no big surprise here — was printed on a matzo shaped poster.
Eric Cantor to the Forward: Administration Is 'Bullying Israel'
By Nathan Guttman
The lone Jewish Republican in Congress is taking the Obama administration to task over its latest spat with the Israeli government.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor phoned White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on March 15 — asking him to convey to his bosses the message that it is time to ease pressure on Israel.
“The administration needs to reduce the level of its rhetoric,” Cantor said in an interview with the Forward, “I don’t think that the notion of us telling Israel what is best for its security is a good one.”
Cantor and several other Republican lawmakers have criticized the administration’s tough stance on Israel in light of the dispute over the Jewish state’s approval of another 1,600 homes in contested East Jerusalem. Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, have also said that the Obama administration was wrong in pressuring Israel.
Israeli Teens Say No to Arab Rights and Compliant Army Service
By Nathan Jeffay
A new survey of Israeli high school students makes for depressing reading. When the Jewish sample was asked whether Arabs should have equal rights, some 49.5% said no.
An even higher percentage, 56%, said that Arabs should not have the right to run for office. Particularly alarming is that a repressive attitude towards Arabs and religious observance seem to go hand-in-hand. Looking just at the religious respondents from the Jewish sample, 82% said that Arabs should not have equal rights.
The figures come from a poll just conducted by the Maagar Mochot research company. The poll also contained figures which, if translated from talk to action, would raise major questions about how the Israeli army will be able to function when these youngsters are drafted.
Some 48% of respondents, including a significant number of secular students, said that they would refuse to evacuate outposts, while 31% said they would refuse to serve in the territories.
March 12, 2010, 1:05pm
Hummus Taste-Off Promotes Peace
By Jordana Horn
At the Peace Market party at M2 Ultralounge on March 10th, a crowd of over 1,000 people gathered to support Seeds of Peace, an organization founded to promote dialogue between young people living in regions of conflict.
And yet, at least one element of the event actively promoted conflict. The event was host to what organizers believed was the first New York City Hummus Taste-Off, in which four reputable restaurants put their homemade hummus to the test in both a popular vote and a judged taste test.
Entrants attempted to distinguish their offerings from one another by any means necessary. Pera, a Mediterranean bistro near Grand Central, was the sole entrant with warm, rather than room-temperature, hummus. Pera raised the ante even higher with homemade pita chips and pomegranate molasses drizzled over the hummus. “Let’s see them top that,” one Pera server said as he flourished a well-plated offering.
Casa La Femme saw the challenge and met it with dollops of spicy, homemade harissa sprinkled in their hummus (throwing in a free bottle of Perrier-Jouet to attendees who go to their restaurant in the next week was also a spicy touch). Moustache, a Middle Eastern restaurant specializing in “pitza,” brought hummus with more of a peanut butter-like consistency and flavor.
The winner of both the electoral and popular vote, Soho’s 12 Chairs, was the most tahini-like of the entries, with a vivid sesame seed flavoring. I’d argue that the friendliness of the hostesses serving at the 12 Chairs table may have helped them a bit in the judging. But who would begrudge a bit more friendliness where anything related to the Middle East is concerned?
Smoked Salmon No Longer Kosher
By Jake Marmer
It’s Karp vs. Salmon in the strange story of the Israeli rabbi who declared salmon non-kosher.
If you thought Rabbinic ruling which pronounced New York water treyf was not odd enough, in recent weeks Rabbi Moshe Karp of Modi’in Illit (Israel) damned salmon, halibut and flounder as no longer kosher due to Anisakis, a tiny roundworm, that lives inside them.
Although explicitly allowed by the Gemara, Karp and some of his haredi colleagues claim that the worm has mutated and grown to proportions unprecedented by Talmud, and is therefore now prohibited. No more lox and bagels for Modi’in Illit folks, his Brooklyn audiences seemed unconvinced though.
Sources: MSNBC and The Jewish Star
March 8, 2010, 8:47pm
Eat Kike's Treyf (pron. "Keekay")
By Dan Friedman
There’s something about street food and the word “kike.”
On November 19, 2009 I blogged about San Francisco’s “Kike on a Bike” and now, not to be outdone, Los Angeles has offered us “Kike’s Tacos.”
Though often an antisemitic slur KUOR assures us that, in this case, Kike is pronounced “Keekay” and is a regular abbreviation for Enrique. Plus, by all accounts, the menu offers a mouthwatering selection of pig-oriented treyf so the kosher clientele would be keeping away before they even reached the ambiguous welcome sign.
Although the number of Enriques in America is growing, the starting point is fairly low, with the 1990 census only ranking Enrique 298 out of 1219 new boys names. With relatively few Enriques and a little encouragement to standardize the rendering of the abbreviation as Quique or Keekay, the gentle sensibilities of our compatriots need not be disturbed too much in future.
Hat tip to Dan Polsby.
March 8, 2010, 7:17pm
Israel’s New PR Scheme: Healthy Zionism or Sinister Stalinism?
By Nathan Jeffay
So, Yuli Edelstein has decided to turn every Israeli in to an ambassador. As part of a new campaign called “Explaining Israel” he is putting out pamphlets, running television advertisements and operating a website asking citizens to get involved in a public diplomacy drive for Israel. “We decided to give Israelis who go abroad tools and tips to help them deal with the attacks on Israel in their conversations with people, media appearances and lectures before wide audiences,” Edelstein, Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister, told the Jerusalem Post close to the start of the campaign. “I hope we succeed together in changing the picture and proving to the world that there is a different Israel.”
Last week his office said that the campaign’s Web site Masbirim (“explainers”) received 150,000 hits in its first fortnight, and revealed that an English-language site is in the pipeline.
March 8, 2010, 2:45pm
From YouTube to Broadway
By Kelly Hartog
Singer-songwriter Michelle Citrin, perhaps best known for her YouTube hits “Rosh Hashanah Girl” and “20 Things to Do with Matzah,” has the Internet to thank for her latest gig: composer and lyricist for the Broadway-bound “Sleepless in Seattle: The Musical,” set to debut February 2011.
The show’s producer, David Shor, saw her YouTube postings and tracked down the diminutive, dreadlocked musician on her Facebook page, sending her an e-mail in September asking her to lend her musical chops to the production. She was asked to write a couple of songs as an audition.
After getting over the shock, Citrin contacted her good friend, fellow Jewish musician Josh Nelson, to co-write the audition lyrics. They sent Shor two songs, and “the next thing I know we’re flying to Santa Barbara to meet the team,” Citrin said.
The interview was a success, and Citrin and Nelson were asked to collaborate on the show’s music and lyrics.
Citrin is currently working with Hollywood veterans to bring “Sleepless in Seattle” to Broadway. Along with Shor, she’ll be collaborating on the lyrics with Michael Garin, a composer and lyricist who worked on the musical “Song of Singapore”; Jeff Arch, who wrote the original screenplay for the movie and is writing the dialog for the production; and Joel Zwick, who will direct the show.
These days, Michelle’s incredibly busy, pulling all nighters on the collaboration – “sometimes [we stay up working] until 4 a.m.,” she says – and simultaneously juggling the upcoming release of her first album, “Left Brained, Right Hearted.”
So has this former medical school student finally convinced her family that she made the right choice by dropping out to pursue her dream? “I don’t know,” she laughs, “They still send me the latest articles about upcoming professions in the medical world and say, ‘Oh, you’d be so good at this!’”
Perhaps that’s something she can fall back on if her current career doesn’t pan out. If however, she wins a Tony Award some day, Citrin says, “It would be great to be the first person to get up on stage and thank my family and friends … and unleavened bread.”
Kelly Hartog is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles. She is the founder and editor of Scribblers on the Roof, a Web site devoted to writers of Jewish fiction and poetry.
‘Ajami’ Co-Director Says He Does Not Represent Israel
By Nathan Guttman
Since everything in Israel ultimately boils down to politics, it was only a matter of time before “Ajami,” the Israeli movie nominated for an Oscar, would be thrust into the fray. And what a better time to do so than hours before the film’s creators walk down the red carpet, waiting for the envelope to be opened.
It was the film’s co-director, Scandar Copti, who ignited the debate. Speaking to reporters after attending a symposium with other directors of movies nominated in the foreign-language film category, Copti made a point of distancing himself from the state of Israel.
“I’m not here representing Israel,” he said. “I’m an Israeli citizen, but I cannot represent a state that doesn’t represent me,” Copti, an Arab Israel from Jaffa said.
March 6, 2010, 9:39pm
For the Unlikely Stars of 'Ajami,' Hollywood Is a Balancing Act
By Nathan Guttman
The actors of the Oscar-nominated Israeli film, “Ajami” are trying to soak up as much glamour as they can in America’s movie capital. It’s not only their first time in Hollywood; it’s their first time in America.
“Ajami” cast members are not professional actors. Most are Arab residents of Ajami — a violence-stricken neighborhood of Jaffa, where the film is set — and all are ordinary Israelis who thought it could be interesting to join this unusual movie project. They were handpicked by the film’s writers and directors Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani.
Now, seven years after the idea of “Ajami” began to take shape, these amateur actors are starting to feel the glare of stardom. In Israel, they’ve already become local celebrities and their visit to Hollywood made this even clearer — with cameras and reporters capturing their every move.
It’s a tricky balancing act for the actors, who left their day jobs in Jaffa, and made the trip to Los Angeles. Talking to reporters they struggled between natural enthusiasm and a need to maintain their cool, and not to let the glory get to their heads.
March 3, 2010, 11:52am
More Jewish Conspiracies? Avent and Microsoft
By Jake Marmer and Dan Friedman
We’re convinced that all these Jewish conspiracy theories originate with an in joke.
For instance, anyone with a young child, sleep deprivation and a history of working in the Jewish media would see how infant-product company Avent is a secret Jewish cabal.
And furthermore, a few weeks ago, Darren Garnick spotted the uncanny resemblance of the new MS Office for Mac icons to Hebrew letters and wrote about it on his Culture Shlock blog.
He went as far as contacting Microsoft about it, and a representative responded that the company merely attempted to create a new look that is “Approachable, Energetic, Exacting and Elegant. Any resemblance… is purely coincidental.”
The Hebrew letters, positioned one next to the other, as on the image above, spell out the word “kash,” which means “straw” in Hebrew (the alef is extraneous but phonetically it works out). What could all this mean? Nothing, of course, but we’re sure conspiracy-theory fans will find yet another message of Jewish world-domination here. The straw that broke the camel’s back! Camel being the white Western male, of course. The straw they sip their hummus through! The straw they gathered to make Pharaoh’s bricks — Israel is about to reclaim the storage cities of Pithom and Ramses.
No, no, we swear, we’re just being… Approachable and Energetic!
March 1, 2010, 1:30pm
Israel’s New P.R. Scheme: Healthy Zionism or Sinister Stalinism?
By Nathan Jeffay
Likud Knesset member Yuli Edelstein has decided to turn every Israeli in to an ambassador. As part of a new campaign called “Explaining Israel” he is putting out pamphlets, running television advertisements and operating a website asking citizens to get involved in a public diplomacy drive for Israel. “We decided to give Israelis who go abroad tools and tips to help them deal with the attacks on Israel in their conversations with people, media appearances and lectures before wide audiences,” Edelstein, Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister, told the Jerusalem Post close to the start of the campaign. “I hope we succeed together in changing the picture and proving to the world that there is a different Israel,” he said.
Last week his office said that the campaign’s website Masbirim (“explainers”) received 150,000 hits in its first fortnight, and revealed that an English-language site is in the pipeline.
Some are excited by the initiative — as much for its potential effect on Israelis as on the country’s PR. Hagai Segal, a right-wing columnist on Ynet wrote that a “lethal virus of skepticism has been running wild here for years and pulverized our faith in the righteousness of our way.” He believes that “these public relations efforts are not directed at the international arena, but rather, are aimed inwards. Israel’s citizens, who are supposed to use the website’s help in order to promote the country abroad, are the real target audience of this new venture, and rightfully so.”
February 25, 2010, 4:54pm
Secretary Clinton Urged To Press Israel To Remove Israel’s New Barrier — Against Foreign Gefilte Fish
By Nathan Guttman
As if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton doesn’t already have enough trouble with Israel, now this: Clinton is now expected to put some pressure on the Israelis once again, this time not because of the settlements, but because of gefilte fish.
Turns out that Israel has imposed a 120% import duty on processed gefilte fish — the famous Jewish Passover staple, and this decision made it to the floor of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.
“I have [in my district] the world’s only fish processor of gefilte fish,” stated Illinois Republican Don Manzullo when his turn came to present Clinton with questions. As Manzullo described the origins of the fish (Asian carp caught in Lower Mississippi and the Great Lakes), Secretary Clinton began to chuckle as did some of the committee members.
February 25, 2010, 4:23pm
Two States for Two Peoples: A Postscript
By Nathan Jeffay
Here’s an interesting postscript to the first installment of the new Forward series “Imagining Two States for Two Peoples.” In the article, published yesterday, we consider Palestinian claims about the difficulties that settlements cause for Palestinians trying to travel around the West Bank. Now, settlers are making the same claim about the new Palestinian city of Rwabi.
Rwabi, just north of Bir Zeit, has been under construction for two months, and will be home to around 25,000 Palestinians. It is a project of a Qatari-based firm called Bayti.
Residents of the nearby settlement of Ateret are furious. One, Motti Hominer, has written to lawmakers asking them to put a stop to construction. He told Haaretz:
February 23, 2010, 11:31am
Israelis Drink More Alcohol, Eat More American Food
By Nathan Jeffay
We may be in the midst of an economic crisis, but it seems there’s at least one good business to be in. Food imports to Israel are growing out of proportion to the overall growth of the Israeli food market.
The Israeli food market grew by 2.3% in 2008, to $14.4 billion. But food imports grew by an enormous 25%, to $1.8 billion, says a report by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.
So what is going on here? Well part of the picture is the weak dollar. Agricultural and food imports from the US to Israel increased by 33% to $628 million
But it can’t only be a question of currency rates, because the Euro has strengthened significantly and yet imports of agricultural and food products from the EU increased 23% to $1.7 billion in 2008.
February 22, 2010, 3:05pm
Jews on Ice
By Sarah Seltzer
I tuned in intermittently to the “cultural dance” segment of Olympic ice-dancing last night. In a night filled with several highly questionable routines including a Russian pair’s notorious (and racist) aboriginal costumes, I was jolted out of my apathy by seeing Israeli ice-dancing pair Roman Zaretsky and his sister Alexandra, called “Sasha” enter the rink wearing traditional Jewish head coverings and full on peasant-chic regalia. They proceeded to launch into a lively, if occasionally less than perfectly in sync, routine, dancing to the strains of “Hava Negila.” The Twitter hilarity ensued, including a reference to the pair getting fountain pens from the audience instead of flowers (a bar-mitzvah joke), complaints that this was the slowest Hava Negila ever, and moans that “we have more than one song.”
Personally, it immediately reminded my viewing companion and me of the last few minutes of Mel Brooks’ fanatically adored “History of the World, Part I” where he presents “Hilter on Ice” and “Jews in Space.” Elide those two together, and you have “Jews on Ice.”
February 19, 2010, 2:41pm
Snowboarder Torah Bright's Yiddishe Neshama?
By Zohar Rom
I just called my bookie, and I’ve never been so proud to be a Jew! She gave me good odds on the new sport in town: Predicting the percentage of sermons this Shabbat that will focus on Olympic snowboarding star Torah Bright. (I’m betting on 97% or more.)
Honestly, have you seen any sight more stirring than the ‘Go Torah!’ signs arrayed on the mountaintop? The screams of delight that filled my house woke the neighbor’s dog, because we lost control when Torah threw down her massive run to win the gold medal. I don’t care that she’s an Aussie — I felt like singing the Hatikvah!
Yes, she’s a Mormon whose parents adored the name Torah, but I see clues that she has a Yiddishe neshama. For instance, The New York Times describes her signature trick as “a switch backside 720, a perplexing double rotation with a blind landing that flummoxes all her competitors.” Now, that’s a description of Kaballah if I ever heard one!
February 18, 2010, 6:13pm
Israel's North Is 53% Arab
By Nathan Jeffay
While the international community is, for understandable reasons, fixated on the population balance between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, a demographic war is being fought in a lower-profile part of Israel — the north.
Zionist groups have long been encouraging residents of central Israel and new immigrants to move to the north in a bid to strengthen the Jewish presence. And there is a similar interest in laying roots by some Arabs. Influxes of Arabs in to certain northern towns, such as Carmiel are taken by many locals as evidence of this.
New figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics, an agency of the Israeli government, show that if you take Haifa out of the equation, there is already an Arab majority in Northern Israel. Some 53% of residents, the bureau reported, are Arabs.
February 16, 2010, 3:55pm
Israeli Arabs Lose Enthusiasm for National Service
By Nathan Jeffay
Two years ago, a Knesset panel discussed the possibility that Israel’s Arabs — who are currently exempt from any national service — could perform civic service in schools, hospitals and other non-political institutions that need volunteers. The polling at the time was fascinating in revealing a gulf between leaders and their constituents. Three quarters of Israel’s young Arab citizens favored the idea, while 90% of their political leaders opposed it.
Now, the percentage of young Arab citizens who favor the idea has fallen to 54%, a new Haifa University Survey indicates. So what has happened over the last couple of years to change the figure? It would seem that the opposition of the leaders has rubbed off on the general Arab population. When the idea was mooted back in February 2008, Arab leaders made their objections very clear. “Anyone who volunteers for national service will be treated like a leper and will be vomited out of Arab society,” Jamal Zahalka, a lawmaker with the Balad party declared at a rally.
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