A Jew Named Oscar?

Oscar nominations were announced yesterday, and Jews and Jewish-themed movies, as you might expect, were among the honorees. Woody Allen (yes, he’s Jewish!) racked up four nominations for “Midnight in Paris” (though nothing for Adrien Brody, whose version of Salvador Dali is the only way we want to imagine the artist); “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, is up for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor; Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse” got a nod for Best Picture, among other nominations (We sneaked into this movie for five minutes before “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and, you know, it’s “War Horse.”); Jonah Hill is up for Best Supporting Actor (making up for the “Superbad” snub, natch); and in the Foreign Language category, office favorite “Footnote” from Israel (a Talmudic thriller? Yes, please!) faces off against “In Darkness,” a Holocaust story from Poland. In our January/February issue, Moment takes a look back at some notable Jewish Oscar winners from the past. Mazel tov to all the nominees!

The Jewish National Pastime

By Aarian Marshall

Some people collect stamps, others baseball cards—Neil Keller collects famous Jews. He speaks quickly, with a slight lisp, and with his red polo and faded jean shorts, looks like he took a wrong turn on the way to a suburban Little League game, though it’s unclear whether he belongs with the throng of eager parents in the stands, or with the overexcited kids in the diamond. Before him is a tableful of binders, each nearly five inches thick. They are color-coded, their titles neatly typed and affixed to their fronts. And Neil Keller is grinning, in a way one rarely sees among men in their thirties.

His website boasts that Neil is the “Expert On Who Is Jewish,” and that his collection of Jewish memorabilia, which includes over 15,000 items, is one of the largest in the world. And that is what’s in those binders—pages and pages of sports trading cards, signed headshots, and personally addressed letters from thousands of celebrities, either confirming or denying their Jewish-ness.

“John Kerry is half-Jewish,” he told me. “His father changed his last name from ‘Cohen.’” So is Katie Couric—through her mother’s side. Blonde, buxom, blue-eyed Scarlett Johansson was raised celebrating the Festival of Lights. And Marilyn Monroe, that other blonde, converted to marry the playwright Arthur Miller. Most surprising? “Probably Elvis Presley. There’s a Star of David on his mother’s gravestone.”

Neil began his project on a whim. He was at a flea market in 1990 when he spotted a Sandy Koufax trading card. “I knew he was Jewish,” Neil said, “and that he didn’t pitch on Yom Kippur.” As the product of an Orthodox community (though not an Orthodox household), Neil respected that. “I read something about him, learned that his catcher was also Jewish,” he remembers. From sports, it moved onto entertainment, to politics.

With the advent of the Internet, Neil’s research has become a lot easier, but he spends a lot of time corresponding with celebrities themselves. He estimates that of all the celebrities he has written, 90-95 percent have written him back. Robert De Niro sent him an autographed headshot (not Jewish). Madonna reported that she had shared his website with her friends at the Kabbalah center. When Hall of Fame baseball player Rod Carew wrote Neil to tell him that no, he had not converted to Judaism (despite his taking to wearing a chai in photographs), Neil sent the information to Adam Sandler, whose popular Chanukah Song had included Carew in its run-down of Jewish people. Sandler wrote back to thank Neil, and subsequently changed the lyrics of the song.

Neil’s total investment in this hobby might seem strange, but considering his warm receptions at speaking engagements, it might not just be Neil: this obsession spans the Jewish community. Neil travels to camps and JCCs alike to give short talks, consisting of forty-five minutes of straight trivia. Perhaps short is an understatement—at one talk in Toronto, the audience kept Neil onstage for a full four hours. “People love to hear about this,” Neil says. “They love to know who is Jewish.”

He might have a point—something of a cottage industry has cropped up around the question of who, exactly, is Jewish. Sandler’s Chanukah Song aside, there’s Guess Who’s the Jew, a website that allows users to, well, guess who’s Jewish. The Chicago Tribune inexplicably maintains a website of celebrity Jews, as does Wikipedia. And the blog Stuff Jewish People Like, which occasionally updates a list of things that really get Jewish people going (Florida! All You Can Eat Buffets!), names Famous Jews as its number one.

Which raises the question: Why? Why are Jews so into knowing who is Jewish? For some, knowing whether a public figure is Jewish can become a strange, inexplicable need, the seed of a thousand Googlings. Maybe it’s because there’s something a little goofy about imagining that hot stud on the television chanting at his Bar Mitzvah, kippah slipping off his head. We do silly things for Judaism sometimes, but so do you, Jake Gyllenhaal.

Neil had as much trouble putting his finger on it as I did. “It’s…inherited,” he said. “We all want to know.” Heebz!, a group that maintains its own Famous Jews website, asserts that Jews are “at the center of every creative, scientific, cultural, political and philosophical endeavor,” and while that might be a bit of an overstatement, it’s true that there is this peculiar “Jewish Mystique.” Maybe it’s because being Jewish occasionally veers into the not-so-cool—the hair, the nose, the books—that famous Jews are so thrilling. Think we’re ugly? Take a look at Natalie Portman. Think we’re wimpy? Challenge Bruce Goldberg to a wrestling match.

Maybe there’s a bit Neil’s self-affirming, red-poloed exhilaration inside all of us. Neil wants to find me a picture of Elvis Presley’s mother’s grave, and his keyboard clacks furiously. “Oh!” he stops. “The creator of Google is Jewish!” And that, I decide, is kind of cool.

All Converts Go To Heaven: The Case of Elizabeth Taylor

By Steven Philp

On April 6, 1959 Time Magazine reported the birth “of the most famous and perhaps most beautiful baby,” a Jewish girl named Elishaba Rachel Taylor. The prior week marked the conversion—or “birth”—of the 27-year-old actress Elizabeth Taylor to the Jewish faith, following six months of study under the late Rabbi Max Nussbaum of Temple Israel in Hollywood, CA. Over fifty years later, we mourn the passing of a screen legend, AIDS activist, and proud member of our faith community. Or do we? In an article posted on the Jewish-interest blog Jewlicious, Taylor’s commitment to her faith is skimmed over in favor of details about her multiple marriages and celebrity rabbi. The article ends, “Rest in peace Liz, and when you get to Kaballah [sic] Center heaven, say hi to Marilyn and Sammy.”

The reference to the center is a jab at Taylor’s faith.  The Kabbalah Centre—located near the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Pico-Robertson in Los Angeles, CA—has been embroiled in controversy since its genesis in 1965. Attracting A-list celebrities like Madonna, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, the center is at best tolerated as an idiosyncratic take on Jewish mysticism and at worst—as detailed in a BBC article from 2005—“an opportunist offshoot of the faith with charismatic leaders who try to attract the rich and the vulnerable with the promise of health, wealth and happiness.” To be associated with the Centre is to have the authenticity of your Jewish faith questioned, if not dismissed entirely.

The irony of the Jewlicious article is that Taylor’s association with the Kabbalah Centre is not well-documented. In a survey of Taylor’s commitment to the Jewish faith, an article posted to CNN claims that “Taylor had been a supporter of the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles.” Yet the Jewish Journal obituary it cites as the source for this information contains no mention of her involvement, or Jewish mysticism. What it does detail is a lifetime of service to the Jewish community—through her support of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, her participation in the 1981 documentary “Genocide: The Story of the Holocaust,” and her Israel activism—that shows a deep commitment to her adopted faith.

The Jewlicious article reveals a common bias against the Jewish convert, pegging them as somehow less authentic than those born in to our community. The idea of a “Kaballah Center heaven”—home to those A-list celebrities who pandered with Judaism—may have been intended as a light-hearted joke, and perhaps struck some readers as humorous, but it reinforces the stereotype that the Jew-by-Choice can never truly be genuine to the faith. Yet Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Elizabeth Taylor—each having converted before the foundation of the Kabbalah Centre—all demonstrated indisputable chutzpah in their faith commitment. In an article written by Time shortly after Davis’ conversion, he is quoted as saying:

I wanted to become part of a 5,000-year history and hold onto something not just material, which would give me that inner strength to turn the other cheek. Jews have become strong over their thousands of years of oppression, and I wanted to become part of that strength. As a Negro, I felt emotionally tied to Judaism. Certainly the background of my people and their history cannot be compared to that of Judaism, but the same oppression and obstacles thrown in our way were overcome by a greater force than mere tenacity…I wanted to become a Jew because Judaism held an honesty and spiritual peace that was lacking in my personal makeup.

Similarly, the decision to convert for Taylor—according to Time—was “no sudden shift.” Nor did she abandon her faith commitments after conversion, devoting her time and money to supporting Israel, fighting against AIDS, and advocating for equal rights for the LGBT community. Elizabeth Taylor is not destined for “Kaballah Center heaven.” She has a spot reserved next to all other great Jews, born or by choice.

Hollywood, Oscars and the Jews

By Sophie Taylor

This morning’s Oscar nominations did no favors to anyone hoping to dispel the myth that Jews control Hollywood. In the nine most prominent categories, all but one (supporting actor) included at least one Jewish Hollywood player; Jews represented nearly a quarter of the nominees in those categories.

The idea that Jews run Hollywood is as popular as the notion that they control finance or the media.  After CNN’s Rick Sanchez made comments in October implying that Jews control the media, Slate‘s Brian Palmer decided to look into Sanchez’ claims and discovered that while none of the major news stations are Jewish-owned, Hollywood is, in fact, heavily Jewish—forty-five percent of The Guardian’s “Top Twenty Directors of All Time” are Jewish.

Of course, having a heavy presence in an industry is a far cry from the implications of “controlling” it; the latter implies some sort of cabal, monolithic whole, or conspiratorial agenda, while the former is merely a sociological phenomenon.

Below, find a list of this year’s Jewish Oscar nominees in the top categories.

Best Film:
Black Swan, produced by Mike Medavoy
The Fighter, produced by David Hoberman
True Grit, produced by Scott Rubin and the Coen Brothers

Best Lead Actor:
Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)

Best Lead Actress:
Natalie Portman (Black Swan)

Best Supporting Actress:
Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)

Best Directing:
Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)

Adapted Screenplay:
Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)
Joel & Ethan Coen (True Grit)
Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone)

Original Screenplay:
David Seidler (The King’s Speech)
Stuart Blumberg (The Kids Are Alright)
Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are Alright)

Achievement in Music-Original Song:
Alan Menken (Tangled)

For more Jews in film, read Moment’s compilation of Great Jewish Films.

Inglourious Basterds Trailer is out; Tarantino Still Insane

By Benjamin Schuman-Stoler

Here’s the trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s newest bloody assortment of moving pictures. This one’s called Inglourious Basterds and includes Brad Pitt and a whole bunch of dead Nazis. Oh, and it’s a remake of a 1978 movie by the same name (but spelled correctly).

We’re not really sure what to say about it past that (we’re still reeling from the trailer) so we’ll just put it up and let you ITM readers have it out.

“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” And Its Young Jewish Heroine

By Marista Lane

Norah: “There’s this part of Judaism that I like. Tikkun Olam. It said that the world is broken into pieces and everyone has to find them and put them back together.”

Nick: “Maybe we don’t have to find it. Maybe we are the pieces.”

“Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist” recently came out on DVD. For those who haven’t seen it, you might be surprised by the positive, open-minded young Jewish main character, Norah Silverberg (Kat Dennings).

Not only does she openly divulge her Jewish heritage, she also willingly expresses her enthusiasm for it. Small hints are given throughout the movie regarding Norah’s Jewish background, even as it is not explicitly revealed until a pivotal moment involving her love interest Nick (Michael Cera).

While the film mostly focuses on the chemistry (or awkwardness) between Nick and Norah—as well as their mutual music obsession—there are hints throughout the movie to Norah’s identification with Judaism. She attends a prestigious Catholic private school (only because her best friend goes there) but asserts her connection to the Jewish faith in other ways. She has a semi-relationship with Tal, one-third of a wannabe Israeli band, and she asserts that being Jewish is just as much a part of her, if not more so, than anything else. By sharing that with Nick, she shows that it is a deeply invested part of who she is.

It’s a good way for Hollywood to sneak in a good Jewish role model in a film directed to the youth.

Originally based on the eponymous novel by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, the movie was released on DVD on Feb. 3 by Sony Pictures. It’s rated PG-13 for teen drinking, sexuality, language and crude behavior.

Chris Rock and Ben Stiller Love Israel

By Benjamin Schuman-Stoler

Chris Rock and Ben Stiller are in Israel for the premiere of Madagascar 2, and both of them said that Israel is better than Hollywood. From JPost:

The premiere was in Netanya on Saturday. Stiller says it’s a good place to roll out a new movie. He said, “This is better than any premiere we have had so far.”

Rock expanded on that. He said, “It’s much better than Hollywood. They don’t like us in Hollywood, but here they love us.”

Which brings us to the central question here: What the eff is Madagascar 2?