Mazel Tov! Andy Cohen is a dad. The “Watch What Happens Live” host welcomed a 9-pound, 2-ounce baby boy born via surrogate Feb. 4 and posted an announcement on Instagram.
“WOW! This is my son, Benjamin Allen Cohen. He is named after my grandfather Ben Allen,” he wrote. “I’m in love. And speechless. And eternally grateful to an incredible surrogate. And I’m a dad. Wow.”
Cohen’s celebrity friends, including Kelly Ripa, John Mayer, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mariah Carey and several “Real Housewives” stars (many of whom hosted the baby shower) were quick to congratulate him on the birth.
“At long last,” Parker wrote on Instagram. “And February 4th will never be the same. We are already madly in love. Welcome Benjamin Allen Cohen we’ve got big plans for you.”
“Congratulations and Mazel Tov, Andy!!” Carey wrote. “Can’t wait to meet Benjamin, he’s very lucky to have you as a dad.”
The Disney Channel series “Andi Mack” celebrated a Jewish rite-of-passage last March with an episode devoted to the character Cyrus Goodman’s bar mitzvah. This week, it premieres an episode about another Jewish ritual: sitting shiva.
In “One in a Minyan,” Cyrus’ beloved Bubbe Rose has died and his family and friends gather at his home to mourn. But like most Jewish gatherings, it’s not without humor, including a furor over the raisin-less noodle kugel that one guest brings. After explaining the meaning and purpose of shiva to his non-Jewish friends, Cyrus jokes, “You know the story behind every major Jewish holiday. They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat!”
“Shiva is one of those times where everyone is together, and it happens to be a very social occasion,” series creator and producer Terri Minsky said. “It is a time of mourning but you’re mostly sitting around telling stories, eating and spending time with /the people you love. Cyrus’ grandmother’s shiva provided the perfect context to develop our characters’ coming-of-age stories. Plus, I liked being able to incorporate gefilte fish and kugel into the script.”
Inspired by shivas that she and the show’s writers have attended, Minsky included traditions like covering mirrors and reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish.
“Even though the story is set at a shiva, it doesn’t have to be a super-sad story. One of my favorite episodes of ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ took place at the funeral for Chuckles the Clown, and it ended up being one of the funniest episodes in that series,” Minksy said.
Sofia Wylie as Buffy, Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Andi, Joshua Rush as Cyrus and Asher Angel as Jonah experience Shiva in the upcoming “Andi Mack” episode.
She wanted to depict mourning, and show that it’s cathartic and universal. “I hope viewers are able to see that even though someone may be different from you or from another culture than you, we all grieve the loss of our loved ones,” she said. “Even though many in our audience may have never been to a shiva, they can identify with the experience our characters are going through.”
Joshua Rush, who plays Cyrus, is happy to see elements of his Jewish culture included in the show. “There are kids out there who have never seen a bar mitzvah before, did not know what that meant, did not know what that was. It’s the same thing with a shiva, probably even more so,” he said. “It’s great that we’re able to share that.”
Executive producer Michelle Manning, who directed the episode, cites a particularly resonant moment in the show, “When Cyrus is giving a toast to his Bubbe Rose and it really affects him. It’s a toast that he’s always heard being given by the adults in his family, but he’s never had to toast anyone he loves before, and it’s a beautiful coming-of-age moment for him,” she said. “I hope what people ultimately take away from this episode is that you have to cherish what you have while you have it.”
Inspired by the phrase engraved on Minsky’s father’s headstone, “One in a Minyan” premieres Feb. 8 on Disney Channel, the DisneyNOW app, and Disney VOD.
Just a couple of weeks ago we commemorated the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the entire western world mourned for the 6 million souls that perished. But what is often missed is the fact, that the Nazis didn’t only murder the people, they murdered whole parts of the Jewish culture that thrived in Europe for many centuries. They destroyed hundreds of newspapers and obliterated whole libraries. They murdered a language, Yiddish.
And indeed, before World War II, Jewish culture in Europe was extremely vibrant, with an endless stream of theater, books and newspapers. Literally, hundreds of newspapers were published throughout Europe and America, in Yiddish, Hebrew and the local languages. The people of the book were obviously obsessed with ink and paper, and it showed. Most of these publishings didn’t make it through the war, but some survived. One of those was Új Kelet, a Hungarian-Romanian newspaper founded 100 years ago.
The history of this paper is a long one, but the interesting part is how the paper nearly went bankrupt a few years back. Right when Kristof Steiner entered the story.
Kristof is a Hungarian, part-Jewish model and TV celebrity. He’s been living in Israel for the past ten years and when he heard about the state of Új Kelet, he decided he simply couldn’t let the paper die. What happened next is absolutely incredible. We’re proud to have Kristof Steiner here on the podcast to tell the story.
The CW comedy series “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” will wrap up its fifth and final season with a special concert event called “Yes, It’s Really Us Singing: The ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Concert Special!” immediately after the series finale on April 5. Rachel Bloom and the cast will perform live versions of fan-favorite numbers with a band and orchestra.
“The songwriters of ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,’ Rachel Bloom, Jack Dolgen and Adam Schlesinger, have written more than 150 outstanding songs in our four seasons,” the show’s co-creator and showrunner, Aline Brosh McKenna said. “It is an unprecedented contribution to the American songbook. I’m so thrilled we can share those songs with the world in a spontaneous format that really showcases their humor and genius.”
The special will be taped in March in Los Angeles.
Writer-director Aaron Sorkin has cast several Jewish A-list stars in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” about the infamous defendants in the 1969 conspiracy trial stemming from protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the year before. Sacha Baron Cohen will play Abbie Hoffman, Seth Rogen will portray Jerry Rubin and Joseph Gordon-Levitt has the role of Richard Schultz.
It’s the second time behind the camera for screenwriter Sorkin (“The West Wing,” “The Social Network”), who wrote and made his directorial debut with “Molly’s Game” in 2017.
“I’m thrilled to be making a movie about one of one of the craziest, funniest, most intense, most tragic and most triumphant trials in American history,” Sorkin said. “C-7 may take place in the late ’60s, but there’s no better time to tell this story than today.”
Rogen will next be seen opposite Charlize Theron in the comedy “Long Shot,” in theaters May 7, and will be heard as Pumbaa in “The Lion King,” opening July 19. He’s also in the voice cast of the animated Amazon Prime superhero series “Invincible” and will play Walter Cronkite in “Newsflash,” in which the John F. Kennedy assassination is shown from the news anchor’s point of view.
Baron Cohen will play Israeli Mossad agent Eli Cohen in the Netflix miniseries “The Spy,” due later this year.
