In an interview in February’s Elle magazine, actress Natalie Portman admits she avoids playing Jewish characters.

“I’ve always tried to stay away from playing Jews,” she told the mag. “I get like 20 Holocaust scripts a month, but I hate the genre.” As far as her role as a Hasidic bride in the recent “New York I Love You,” Portman says it was the first Jewish character that “intrigued” her.

She isn’t terribly fond of romantic comedies either, telling the magazine, “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do comedy. It’s just that I would only get offered girlfriend parts in guy comedies, which aren’t exciting to me, or those offensive roles in romantic comedies where the woman has to have a job in fashion so that she can have nice clothes, and her goal is always marriage.”

Apparently she prefers to play Indian princesses as she did in her ex-boyfriend’s wacky Bollywood video (see below). And speaking of boyfriends, I hear she has a new one: rumors have her dating up-and-coming ballet choreographer Benjamin Millepied who trained her for her role in Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” Millepied trained in France and is currently a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, though that seems to be the least of his accomplishments.

According to Vogue:

Even while continuing to dance, Millepied, 32, has choreographed works for ABT, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and his own touring ensemble, Danses Concertantes. Deeply committed to new music, he has commissioned scores from composers like Nico Muhly and Thierry Escaich, the celebrated French organist with whom he will premiere a work at NYCB this spring. “I enjoy making large-group works a lot now,” he says. “That’s what a real choreographer is supposed to be able to do. It takes a lot more—it’s composing a ballet like composing a score.” He’s also branching into film, as the choreographer for Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, a psychological thriller about ballerinas starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. “The interesting thing is to be working with someone who knows how to tell a story,” he says.

Portman as Princess Carmensita:

Why is English the go-to language for science fiction, even when it isn’t the writer’s mother tongue?

Israeli-born sci-fi writer Lavie Tidhar skipped an opportunity for “shameless self-promotion” on World SF News to mull this phenomenon, citing as example French, Finnish and Dutch sci-fi authors who are choosing to write in English. Tidhar, author of the English-language novel “The Bookman”—due out in the UK and Australia tomorrow, summer/fall-ish in the United States—uses his editorial (which Charlie Jane Anders blogged at io9) to look at the English-centric world of science fiction through a Hebrew lens:

So… why English? I ask the question not for myself but because a common argument – across languages, in fact, since I’ve heard it expressed with regards to any non-English language, from Hebrew to French – is that English is the language of science fiction.

What do they mean by that? Why can’t science fiction be written in other languages?

My own view, of course, is that this is (to borrow a term from that great showman, P.T. Barnum) complete hokum. Yet it is so prevalent, and I see it repeated again and again. Partially it is the terminology of science fiction – anything from wormhole to ansible, from warp drive to FTL, from “plugged in” to BEM to the “science fiction” itself. In Hebrew, for instance, science fiction was initially called mada dimyoni, or “imaginary science”, before being replaced with mada bidyoni, or “fictional science”, then shorthanded conversationally to madab, the sort of acronym Hebrew likes so much. English is the language of science fiction! And there’s something in that – when you even have to argue about which word to use for the English “telephone” or “computer”…

But consider.

One of the nicest words Hebrew doesn’t use is “sach-rachok” (try pronouncing the ‘ch’ as that sort of deep-in-the-throat sound). It means something like “speak-distance” and was an early word proposed, by that most venerable institute, the Academy of the Hebrew Language, for “telephone”.

Of course, it also sounded a bit silly, and no one wanted to use it, and Hebrew ended up borrowing the word “telephone” and making quite nice use of it after all.

But see, that’s the beauty of language – any language. Not just the act of borrowing (what is also called ‘loan words’) – the way English borrowed “amen” or “cabal” or “sack” from the Hebrew, or borrowed “algebra” and “bazaar” from Arabic, or “chocolate” from Nahuatl…

Languages always evolve, and they do so by borrowing, and by modifying, and by adapting, and by making up new words (neologisms). English does a lot of it… and so does any other language. Being a speaker of Bislama (the pidgin English – and now, sometimes, creole – of the South Pacific islands of Vanuatu), I was delighted recently to come across a new verb – gugelem. Which means, of course, to google! (as in, bae mi gugelem – I’ll google it).

The argument about vocabulary really doesn’t hold. Indeed, it should be one of the most fun parts of writing science fiction in another language – coining new terms or transforming existing ones to create a new language of science fiction.

And yet…

Here I am, “guilty” just as much for writing in English.

The thing is, I do love English. And by writing in English I can assure myself not only more readers, but also – and this is rather crucial, alas – better pay for my work. But I continue, albeit rarely, to write in Hebrew for the pure joy of it – short stories such as “Shira” (later translated and published in English in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy, ed. Ellen Datlow), or “Chalomot Be’aspamia” (translated and published, as “Daydreams” in Apex Digest) – I even wrote an entire book in Hebrew, with Nir Yaniv, just for the hell of it – “Retzach Bidyoni”, or “A Fictional Murder” (itself a play-on-words on the Hebrew term for science fiction), a tongue-in-cheek murder mystery set in an Israeli SF convention, a la Bimbos of the Death Sun…

I’m even working on a book that incorporates at least segments of Bislama into the narrative – and would happily write an entire book in that language, if only there was someone to publish it…

For it is market forces that dictate the writing of science fiction, not “a limited vocabulary” or some mythical Campbellian (John, not Joseph) strictures; it is not lack of words but lack of finance that restrict, in many parts of the world, the writing of science fiction into the foolhardy act of a maddened lover. And yet there is a joy in it, a purity that can be captivating.

My love of Hebrew science fiction – however obscure the titles, however bad some of its early forms – remains alongside my love of English science fiction. And it shapes my own writing, whatever the language.

A common Jewish communal gripe is that there are too many organizations out raising money to do the same things.  There’s no quicker way to get a rise out of donors or activists than to ask why we need to fund and run an alphabet soup of Jewish defense organizations: the ADL, AJC, AJC,Aipac,StandWithUs,NJCRAC,JCPA,CPMJO.  (Put all those letters together and what do you get?  OY.)

In this week’s Jewish Week, Gary Rosenblatt, Jewish journalist extraordinaire (we mean it), examines a fascinating, long-buried study that found duplication and waste in the panoply of Jewish groups and made proposals to create a more efficient communal enterprise.

We love Gary’s suck-‘em-in lead:

… A report has been commissioned by the national policy-making body on Jewish community relations to study the relationship between and among the top national defense agencies — including the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress and Anti-Defamation League — specifically dealing with longstanding complaints about their “duplication, excessive competition, lack of coordination and actual conflict.”

But before you breathe a sigh of relief and think to yourself, “it’s about time,” let me point out that the report in question was commissioned in January 1950, exactly 60 years ago this week.

The McIver Report, prepared by the eminent sociologist Robert McIver, rocked the Jewish world, mostly by finding out what everyone already knew: that duplication and waste were inherent in the system.  That made the organizations unhappy—not because of the waste, but because of the idea that they would have to consolidate:

In the fall of 1952, almost two years after the report was commissioned and four months after it was submitted to the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), the precursor of today’s Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), it was opposed most vocally by the ADL (then part of B’nai B’rith) and the American Jewish Committee.

They charged that the proposals would create a centralized authority — namely, NJCRAC — and, according to a news story in The New York Times of Sept. 6, 1952, “violate the autonomy of the organizations and the voluntary character of the Jewish community.”

As a result, the ADL and American Jewish Committee split from NJCRAC for years over the report’s findings.

In the end, as a result of the bitterness the report generated — half of the six key national groups approved of the findings and half did not — nothing came of the extensive study, and it has remained a footnote of 20th-century American Jewish life.

The rest of Gary’s piece looks at the lessons of the McIver Report (love the name, by the way—as if you could save the Jewish community with a paper clip, a stick of gum and a match).  He speaks with numerous organization heads who say—SHOCK!—that duplication is good. 

Not surprisingly, Marc [Stern, American Jewish Congress acting co-executive director] does not agree with critics who say his organization has outlived its usefulness. He points to its highly respected legal briefs and its advocacy style, which he describes as distinctively aggressive. He also emphasizes the need for the community to have a wide range of voices and positions.

Stern readily acknowledges that “there is duplication” among the national agencies “and sometimes wastefulness,” but he contends that there is “less duplication than many people think.”

He says that in fact, the national groups do work together on foreign policy causes like advocacy for Israel and sanctions against Iran — primarily through the Presidents Conference — and respect each other’s areas of expertise and try to avoid repetitive efforts.

“MacIver was right about some things,” Stern said, like the need for the organizations to work more closely together. But he added that MacIver’s call for consolidation would give more power to a shrinking number of funders today, who in turn could determine the agenda for the whole community.

“Let’s face it,” Stern continued, “we are all depending on fewer large givers.”

The result is an implicit push for the organizations to focus on the same issues, with much the same approach, as they woo these donors. This leads to duplication and reluctance to take divergent positions.

Stern said that while NJCRAC was established as a consensus organization, seeking coordination among the national agencies, it “does almost none of that now.” Instead, it primarily has its own agenda, he said, focusing on a domestic agenda that highlights poverty in America and environmental concerns, in addition to advocacy for Israel and calling for sanctions against Iran.

Steve Gutow, executive director of the JCPA, disagrees with the assessment, asserting that “the rationale for the JCPA as a consensus finder and builder is more important than ever, and that is a role we play.”

Some of that coordination is done behind the scenes, he notes, “but much of it is public,” like passing resolutions on a range of issues, including some controversial ones in recent years: endorsing the principle of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and calling for divestments from companies doing business with Iran.

Other national leaders say the JCPA does not have the clout it would like to in achieving consensus.

Independent Streak Remains

And so it goes. Conversations with the principals in various national organizations result in each one casting his organization in a key role, and describing other groups as performing a lesser service.

And maybe that’s the point. Each of our national organizations has its own culture, constituency and outlook. And for better or worse, the logical proposals of a MacIver Report are never going to happen in today’s American Jewish community.

It seems that in 50 years, “duplication” has come to mean, “diversity.”  And who’s against diversity?  David Harris, Exec Direc of the American Jewish Committee, has a reasonable critique of the excess—though we notice he’s not exactly volunteering to merge or purge efforts with, God forbid, the ADL.

“MacIver was on to something,” Harris said, “but he underestimated the degree of institutional resilience, stubbornness and protectiveness that allowed the Jewish community, for all its successes, to, in effect, defy the obvious, which would have meant rationalizing and distributing its finite resources more strategically.”

As for the ADL:

Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, says it was not wrong to reject MacIver’s recommendations six decades ago, or to do so now.

“My view is let the marketplace decide,” he said. “The community is best served by many voices rather than a homogenized group that would represent the lowest common denominator. And the world would only hear one voice.

But, he added, “the spirit of MacIver remains” in that “he made us aware of the community’s concerns about cooperation and coordination. So his work had a positive, if indirect impact. The organizations have tried to live up to it, short of merging.”

Read all of Gary’s piece here.

To read key excerpts from the MacIver Report, courtesy of JInsider.com, click on JInsider.