If anyone had any doubts that the Chabad telethon has become a landmark on the pop culture scene, consider this: The entire cast of \”Friends,\” one of NBC\’s top-rated sitcoms, has produced a segment of the show to air only on the telethon.
Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin will once again be joined by JonVoight (left) and Jan Murray (right), at Chabad\’s annual telethon. As sure as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, the dancing rabbis are returning to TV stations nationwide for the annual Chabad telethon. Nothing in modern culture quite compares, or quite illustrates just how topsy-turvy modern culture can be: Here are Orthodox rabbis in traditional 17th-century Polish noble garb dancing with Hollywood stars in Armani suits, espousing lines of ancient Torah via the most advanced satellite technology, giving a centuries-old pitch for charity, and taking payment via credit card.What a wonderful world….\n\nThis year\’s telethon will take place on Sunday, Sept. 7, from 5p.m. to midnight, on UPN Channel 13. Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, theWest Coast director of Chabad and founder of the telethon 17 yearsago, will lead the marathon endeavor, and comedian Freddie Roman willhost. Among the stars slated to show up — and eventually dance withthe rabbis — are James Caan, Mayim Bialik, Tony Curtis, Sid Caesar,Fyvush Finkel, Estelle Getty, Jan Murray, Tony Danza, Judd Nelson,Jon Voight, Regis Philbin, Edward James Olmos, Shelley Winters, theLimelighters, the Tokens and Ed Ames. Producer Jerry Weintraub ischairman of the event.
Blythe Danner, David Lascher and Kevin Zegers star in \”A Call to Remember.\”In \”A Call to Remember,\” which airs on Aug. 30 on STARZ! and Aug. 31 on the encore cable channel, we meet David and Paula Tobias (Joe Mantegna and Blythe Danner), survivors who lost their first spouses and children in the Holocaust. They are, nevertheless, attempting the semblance of a normal life in suburbia, raising two boys who want only to assimilate, to become Americans. The younger ditches bar mitzvah practice for Little League; the older brother yearns to move out of his parents\’ home and partake of the 1960s counterculture. Then comes the telephone call that will change their lives forever. Paula learns that one of her lost sons is, in fact, alive and living in Poland. The aftermath nearly tears the family apart.\n
Among Jews, the subject of black-Jewish relations inevitably brings to the surface two impassioned, if not unrelated sentiments: a liberal nostalgia for the integrated social activism of days gone by and an embittered cataloguing of the latest anti-Semitic soundbites to come out of the mouths of black leaders.
About the time one is tempted to feel a wee bit sorry for the Swiss over the barrage of flak they\’re now getting, along comes a new probe of the country\’s conduct during World War II to set the blood boiling again.
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