Can you imagine an Orthodox bar mitzvah celebrated in the Arizona desert soon after the Civil War — with a guest list that includes Apache warriors, gun-slinging outlaws and a minyan imported from Tombstone?
The journeys of 11 of the brightest names who left the Old for the New World are chronicled and visualized in the Skirball Cultural Center exhibit, \”Driven Into Paradise.\”
"I want to be the first Jewish country singer," Mare Winningham says. "Actually, Kinky Friedman was the first. But I want to be the next."
Lewis Black is pissed off.
In his HBO special, \”Black on Broadway,\” the black-clad Jewish comic from New York with the tobacco-tinged rasp unleashes a torrent of four-letter words and razor-edged observations about the world around him — a world that could be so much better, so much kinder, so much gentler. But isn\’t.
Andy and Opie. Archie and Meathead. The Professor and Mary Ann. Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia. We can all thank Sheldon Leonard, Norman Lear, Sherwood Schwartz and Susan Harris, respectively, for bringing these people into our living rooms and the pop culture landscape.
To some, they were the menches next door, but to the TV Land cable network they are \”Moguls,\” the ones with the \”golden touch,\” says Merv Griffin, host of the six-part series, which debuts Wednesday, April 21.
The 76th Academy Awards brought much cheer to New Zealand, home of the 11 Oscar-winning \”The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,\” but little to ethnocentric Jews.\n\nThere was a dollop of consolation in the best actor win for Sean Penn, son of the late Jewish television director Leo Penn. The elder Penn was the grandson and great-grandson of rabbis and the son of Russian and Lithuanian immigrants, whose surname, Piñon, was anglicized at Ellis Island.
In the sleeper hit \”Elf,\” Buddy (Will Ferrell) is a lovable\nchildlike oaf, raised by elves, who returns to New York to find his real father\nand spread Christmas cheer. It\’s a hip, witty, charming fairy tale that, like\nmuch of Christmas cinema, was created by Jews.
