Even more alarming than the rise of an intemperate real estate tycoon/reality TV star to our nation’s highest office has been the blunt realization that our democracy is fragile.
The Jewish dating Web site JDate recently announced results from a study that claims the site is responsible for facilitating more Jewish marriages than all other dating Web sites combined. The study, commissioned in-house by JDate’s parent company, Spark Networks, and conducted by the research company ResearchNow, reportedly was based on a survey of 948 Jewish Internet users who have married since 2003. Of those surveyed, 52 percent said they met their match on JDate, compared with Match.com, which facilitated 17 percent, and eHarmony, which can claim 10 percent.
Haim Saban is sitting at the head of the table in his conference room on the 26th floor of his Century City tower offices. Here, he is kingpin, an image strongly reinforced by where he sits, as well as the attentiveness of his traditionally dressed office butler, who ducks in and out of the meeting continuously, pouring Pellegrino and serving cappuccinos.
Jews are always talking about how Israel needs better PR — in Hebrew, hasbara, a term that connotes something between promotion and propaganda — so it’s worth asking, with so many Israelis working in Hollywood, what are they doing about it?
If you want to pack a ballroom full of Jews, try this theme: Hollywood and Israel.
One day last spring, Jill Schary-Robinson Shaw was walking through a quiet, darkened corridor in the long-term care unit at The Motion Picture Home, the iconic Woodland Hills nursing home for entertainment industry veterans and their families. Hardly anyone was around — lights were dim, residents alone in their rooms — as Schary-Robinson Shaw, the daughter of Isadore “Dore” Schary, who ran MGM in the 1950s, wheeled her husband, Stuart Shaw, a resident of the home, around his desolate indoor neighborhood.
It is 7 a.m. on a Friday, 12 hours before Shabbat, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has a dozen meetings ahead of him — an office Torah study, lunch with a network head, coffee with a potential employee, a new book to promote, a few TV shows to pitch and several family errands that will take him from Beverly Hills to Century City to Glendale to downtown Los Angeles and back again, plus a 40-minute walk from his hotel on Rodeo Drive to his brother’s house in Pico-Robertson — all before candlelighting.
Shabbat dinner with Shmuley Boteach and his family in Los Angeles is called for 8 p.m. But since I’ve spent all day with him and am, frankly, exhausted, I find myself power walking through Pico-Robertson 40 minutes late and absolutely petrified that I’m about to open the door and disrupt a serene Shabbos table in the middle of Kiddush.
Every year, one of Hollywood’s top talent representatives invites a group of industry executives and tastemakers to visit Israel for the first time. Although it’s nearly impossible to get on David Lonner’s guest list, you can get a taste of his trip as he shares his favorite, not-to-be-missed Holy Land hot spots.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance (MOT) once again proved that flaunting a cuddly relationship with Hollywood helps boost its cause. This year’s national tribute dinner, honoring director-producer team Ron Howard and Brian Grazer along with three recipients of the organization’s Medal of Valor award, attracted one of the most star-studded crowds in recent years. Some of the industry’s heaviest heavyweights — including DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney President/CEO Bob Iger and actor Russell Crowe — gathered in the Beverly Wilshire ballroom for a two-hour homage to MOT’s human rights work.
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