To her credit, Whoopie Goldberg simply sits through the anti-Lubavitch crap looking rather pissed off. And Joy Behar makes a vague attempt to come to the Lubavitcher defense.
To her DIScredit, Baba Wawa lets the guest go on... I mean really Barb.. you've been conducting hard-hitting interviews since before I was born. You could have taken control of the situation much earlier.
And I gotta ask... what is WITH self-hating Jews and their need to write ridiculous screenplays and directors who are willing to produce these things without any research whatsoever... I wonder if the BBC gets scripts across their desk about how the Anglican Church is burning heretics at the stake in modern-day London... "Smashing idea! Wonder if we can get Hugh Laurie back on this side of the pond if we offer him the role of Bishop... it'll be a step up from playing that annoying Yank he's become popular with...
Showing posts with label fashion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fashion. Show all posts
Monday, February 02, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Essman irks Chabad with TV comments
Actress Susie Essman has upset the Chabad-Lubavitch community with comments she made on "The View."
In an appearance on the television talk show last week to promote her TV movie “Loving Leah,” in which she plays a Lubavitch woman, Essman commented on the appearance of female members of the Chasidic group.
“I learned that they're not very good dressers,” Essman said, describing what she discovered in making the film. “The wigs, you know they wear the wig because God forbid a man should see your hair and be driven wild with desire.”
Sara Esther Crispe, the editor of the Chabad Web site TheJewishWoman.org, said her community was buzzing about the segment and that she was hoping to go on "The View" to rebut Essman's comments, which she said were not only “obviously incorrect” but degrading and insulting to all women.
“To reduce any woman to her mere physicality is insulting, it's degrading, and it completely denies the overall power that a woman has and her unique abilities,” Crispe told JTA. “And I thought it was very sad that nobody stood up for that.”
“Loving Leah,” which aired Sunday night on CBS, is the story of a secular doctor who marries his widowed sister-in-law. Essman, who plays a foul-mouthed character on the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm," plays the woman's Lubavitch mother.
In an appearance on the television talk show last week to promote her TV movie “Loving Leah,” in which she plays a Lubavitch woman, Essman commented on the appearance of female members of the Chasidic group.
“I learned that they're not very good dressers,” Essman said, describing what she discovered in making the film. “The wigs, you know they wear the wig because God forbid a man should see your hair and be driven wild with desire.”
Sara Esther Crispe, the editor of the Chabad Web site TheJewishWoman.org, said her community was buzzing about the segment and that she was hoping to go on "The View" to rebut Essman's comments, which she said were not only “obviously incorrect” but degrading and insulting to all women.
“To reduce any woman to her mere physicality is insulting, it's degrading, and it completely denies the overall power that a woman has and her unique abilities,” Crispe told JTA. “And I thought it was very sad that nobody stood up for that.”
“Loving Leah,” which aired Sunday night on CBS, is the story of a secular doctor who marries his widowed sister-in-law. Essman, who plays a foul-mouthed character on the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm," plays the woman's Lubavitch mother.
Curb your disses on Chabad women
As JTA reported earlier this week, Susie Essman has upset the Chabad-Lubavitch community with comments she made on "The View":
In an appearance on the television talk show last week to promote her TV movie “Loving Leah,” in which she plays a Lubavitch woman, Essman commented on the appearance of female members of the Chasidic group.
“I learned that they're not very good dressers,” Essman said, describing what she discovered in making the film. “The wigs, you know they wear the wig because God forbid a man should see your hair and be driven wild with desire.”
Here's the full interview:
(follow title link)
Brace yourself, Susie, Chabad fans aren't please.
Here's a video response -- posted by user ahandemeidel -- titled "Susie Esman is Ugly!" (wait till the second half, for a beauty contest of sorts between teh Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star and various Lubavitcher beauties):
(follow title link)
In the info field on the video page, is a column by Debbie Schlussel:
The attacks on Jews--especially Orthodox Chassidic Jews--don't just take place in Mumbai, India, or during a late-night anonymous act of vandalism on a synagogue in North Carolina.
The attacks on Jews have spread to ABC daytime talk shows, watched by millions of mindless, easily propagandized women.
Jonathan Mark of the Jewish Week also weighs in, and also plays the Mumbai card:
The idea of Essman comparing right-wing Republicans, whom she despises, to Chabad’s kindness and willingness to socially interact with secular Jews, not one of whom is turned away from a Chabad House, is simply ignorant.
But what makes Essman’s righteous liberalism all the more unfortunate is what she goes on to say about chasidic women. Essman was asked by Joy Behar, “So what did you learn about the chasidic religion?”
Well, said Essman, “they’re not very good dressers... Have you seen what these women look like half the time?”
Behar replied, “Well some of them are pretty and some, you know, like everybody else.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Essman dismissively.
Now let’s imagine the subject were black women. Imagine someone on “The View” saying of black women, “they’re not very good dressers... Have you seen what these women look like half the time?”
Would not the speaker be branded as a racist, an instant pariah? Why is it OK to speak that way about Orthodox women?
I remember the photo of Rivka Holtzberg, the Chabad woman who was murdered in Mumbai. She wore a wig, like the ones mocked on “The View.” She was attractive, if I could be forgiven for speaking of her that way, all the more attractive for the dignity she exuded precisely because of her wig and modest style of dress. I was reminded of her not only for her style, but also because of her dead child.
There was an item in Reuters the other day from Gaza, quoting psychologists and trauma experts on how the war will make Gaza children into the Hamas terrorists of tomorrow: “Counselors and aid workers fear that Gaza’s children... will grow up hating Israel and become easier prey for extremists.”
Has anyone written, anywhere, that Jewish children, such as little Moshe Holtzberg, might grow up hating anyone, let alone become easy prey for terrorist recruiters? Why is that future only assumed for Islamic children? There have been many thousands of Israeli children whose parents were murdered by Muslims; millions more who were in concentration camps or whose parents were. Where are the psychologists interviewed by Reuters to explain why so few of these Jewish children, in Israel or the United States, have grown into violent adults? Why not, if a murderous second-generation resulting from wartime trauma is so inevitable?
In an appearance on the television talk show last week to promote her TV movie “Loving Leah,” in which she plays a Lubavitch woman, Essman commented on the appearance of female members of the Chasidic group.
“I learned that they're not very good dressers,” Essman said, describing what she discovered in making the film. “The wigs, you know they wear the wig because God forbid a man should see your hair and be driven wild with desire.”
Here's the full interview:
(follow title link)
Brace yourself, Susie, Chabad fans aren't please.
Here's a video response -- posted by user ahandemeidel -- titled "Susie Esman is Ugly!" (wait till the second half, for a beauty contest of sorts between teh Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star and various Lubavitcher beauties):
(follow title link)
In the info field on the video page, is a column by Debbie Schlussel:
The attacks on Jews--especially Orthodox Chassidic Jews--don't just take place in Mumbai, India, or during a late-night anonymous act of vandalism on a synagogue in North Carolina.
The attacks on Jews have spread to ABC daytime talk shows, watched by millions of mindless, easily propagandized women.
Jonathan Mark of the Jewish Week also weighs in, and also plays the Mumbai card:
The idea of Essman comparing right-wing Republicans, whom she despises, to Chabad’s kindness and willingness to socially interact with secular Jews, not one of whom is turned away from a Chabad House, is simply ignorant.
But what makes Essman’s righteous liberalism all the more unfortunate is what she goes on to say about chasidic women. Essman was asked by Joy Behar, “So what did you learn about the chasidic religion?”
Well, said Essman, “they’re not very good dressers... Have you seen what these women look like half the time?”
Behar replied, “Well some of them are pretty and some, you know, like everybody else.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Essman dismissively.
Now let’s imagine the subject were black women. Imagine someone on “The View” saying of black women, “they’re not very good dressers... Have you seen what these women look like half the time?”
Would not the speaker be branded as a racist, an instant pariah? Why is it OK to speak that way about Orthodox women?
I remember the photo of Rivka Holtzberg, the Chabad woman who was murdered in Mumbai. She wore a wig, like the ones mocked on “The View.” She was attractive, if I could be forgiven for speaking of her that way, all the more attractive for the dignity she exuded precisely because of her wig and modest style of dress. I was reminded of her not only for her style, but also because of her dead child.
There was an item in Reuters the other day from Gaza, quoting psychologists and trauma experts on how the war will make Gaza children into the Hamas terrorists of tomorrow: “Counselors and aid workers fear that Gaza’s children... will grow up hating Israel and become easier prey for extremists.”
Has anyone written, anywhere, that Jewish children, such as little Moshe Holtzberg, might grow up hating anyone, let alone become easy prey for terrorist recruiters? Why is that future only assumed for Islamic children? There have been many thousands of Israeli children whose parents were murdered by Muslims; millions more who were in concentration camps or whose parents were. Where are the psychologists interviewed by Reuters to explain why so few of these Jewish children, in Israel or the United States, have grown into violent adults? Why not, if a murderous second-generation resulting from wartime trauma is so inevitable?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
On the catwalk with Chabad
At this summer's Brooklyn Best outdoor fashion show, organized by Borough President Marty Markowitz to feature the dress and culture of all of Brooklyn's local ethnicities, nobody had volunteered to represent the hassidim.
That's where Mendy Pellin of Crown Heights came in to offer his modeling services.
And sure enough, when the fashion show rolled around, Pellin was there, sashaying down the catwalk dressed in full Chabad garb - with black suit and hat - as if he'd just come back from Fashion Week in Paris.
"I was doing the real catwalk walk and posing like a supermodel, and the place was just going crazy. They totally didn't expect that," the Chabadnik said.
Lanky, with a goofy grin, glasses and bushy black beard, Pellin, 25, definitely looks the part of the average Crown Heights Lubavitcher.
But to fans around the world, he's a celebrity star of the on-line comedy news show ChabadTube that's been seen by 500,000 viewers from Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood to Cairo.The show, currently in production for its third season, is an assortment of news - both real and fake, Jewish and not - from Crown Heights, the US and Israel, with a dollop of satire mixed in. One episode featured a tour of the new mikve (ritual bath) under construction in Crown Heights, in which Pellin kicks back in the empty pool with a six-pack of Budweiser beer.
The Budweiser stunt ruffled a few feathers among the top Crown Heights brass, and his supermodel skit was likewise not received well by many in the community.
"I got tons of flak. Hundreds of people wrote in, asking me how I could do such a thing. Some people didn't understand the whole concept of modeling, they said, you should have had a sefer [holy book] open, you should have been learning. Something to represent us accurately."
But ChabadTube, like any fake news show, isn't about accuracy, it was created with the aim of making people like him more personable to the outside world.
"Everyone stereotypes the Hassid as a smelly, sweaty, generously-sized individual who tucks his shirt into his underwear, with lots of dandruff and yellow teeth," Pellin said in an interview at Crown Heights Bunch O Bagels. "I wanted to give a human face to the Hassid, and show something other than the smelly part."
The passion for news - fake or otherwise - was ignited in Pellin by his late grandmother, an activist in the Reform community.
"She subscribed us to Time, magazine, and I always read it, cover-to-cover. Still do," Pellin said.
"So because of her, news was always a part of me, even though I couldn't really talk to most of my classmates about the news or politics. A lot of things they just didn't know about," he said.
In a community where the secular media is frowned upon and most people don't own televisions, Pellin said that his show, which equally mocks local, national and international current events, was actually the main source of news for his Crown Heights audience.
"I get e-mails from people responding to stories I'm mocking on my show now that are a couple of weeks old already, saying, 'I can't believe this happened!' because they're just finding out about it now, from me. People definitely see the news on my site and it's the first time they're seeing it," he said.
For this reason, Pellin decided that he didn't want to only cover Crown Heights or the Jewish world. His grandmother's love of current affairs inspired him to expose others to the outside world.
"Crown Heights people should be caught up with what's happening in the world. My show gives them, at the least, some main things, to try to get people talking, and I want them to get it in an entertaining medium."
Although television isn't accepted in Crown Heights, the Internet is, which is how Pellin's show became a kosher hit.
But Pellin remembered when the Internet was first coming out, and his principal told him that he couldn't return to school until he got a note saying that he no longer had Internet in the house anymore.
The times have changed, and surfing on-line is now acceptable in the community as long as you use a 'kosher filter' that weeds out unsavory content. "My show makes it through the kosher filter for some reason. I beat the filter," he said, smiling triumphantly.
So once Pellin found his passion, the next step was leaving his "boring job" in the cellphone industry.
"I figured that now, when I'm young, is the time to do that, because when you're older and you're forced to pay for colonoscopies, then you have to just take a job that makes money," he said. "But since I'm young, I have room to screw up."
When Pellin filmed the first episode of ChabadTube, he didn't think he would be in it for very long. "I didn't think people were actually going to watch it besides my friends," he said. But before long, he had around 30,000 viewers per episode, and had become the darling of Crown Heights.
"I thought the Chabad establishment would be pretty much against the show when I started out because it pushes the envelope," Pellin said. "I thought they would say, 'You can't put our dirty laundry in public.' But they love it."
"Even the big mohel [ritual circumciser] of Crown Heights with his long white beard came over to me and said, 'Nu, when's your next show coming out?' And I said, 'You watch it, too?' I didn't think any of these people had a sense of humor, but apparently they do." For news ideas, Pellin reads news sites from Al-Jazeera to the Drudge Report.
"I keep an open mind. I look at all sources. In traditional TV news, they have to deliver a story in a certain way that people will watch it, in a way that has urgency, that it affects you, that hits home, that's scary. Instead of that, I try to make it entertaining by adding in little spice here and there, and satire, and hope that most people get it."
But not everyone gets it. Pellin acknowledged that even his new wife does not understand all the jokes in his show. "She has the attitude of, 'If it makes you happy, do it. I don't get a lot of it, but if it makes you happy, go for it.'"
As for his international fan base, Pellin would like to think that he represents the human side of Chabad. "People who aren't from here don't understand where we're coming from. But when you get to know most of the people in this community, you'll see that they're very sensible people with many of the same desires of the outside, secular world."
"People make these blanket statements from a lack of knowledge and a fear of a culture that looks different than your own. So if I get to be the poster boy, I can help others see the softer side of Sears, the softer side of Chabad."
At this point, a fellow diner approached the table. "I just want to tell you I'm a really big fan," he said.
"I'm not really that famous," Pellin said, after the fan walked away. "I paid him to do that."
That's where Mendy Pellin of Crown Heights came in to offer his modeling services.
And sure enough, when the fashion show rolled around, Pellin was there, sashaying down the catwalk dressed in full Chabad garb - with black suit and hat - as if he'd just come back from Fashion Week in Paris.
"I was doing the real catwalk walk and posing like a supermodel, and the place was just going crazy. They totally didn't expect that," the Chabadnik said.
Lanky, with a goofy grin, glasses and bushy black beard, Pellin, 25, definitely looks the part of the average Crown Heights Lubavitcher.
But to fans around the world, he's a celebrity star of the on-line comedy news show ChabadTube that's been seen by 500,000 viewers from Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood to Cairo.The show, currently in production for its third season, is an assortment of news - both real and fake, Jewish and not - from Crown Heights, the US and Israel, with a dollop of satire mixed in. One episode featured a tour of the new mikve (ritual bath) under construction in Crown Heights, in which Pellin kicks back in the empty pool with a six-pack of Budweiser beer.
The Budweiser stunt ruffled a few feathers among the top Crown Heights brass, and his supermodel skit was likewise not received well by many in the community.
"I got tons of flak. Hundreds of people wrote in, asking me how I could do such a thing. Some people didn't understand the whole concept of modeling, they said, you should have had a sefer [holy book] open, you should have been learning. Something to represent us accurately."
But ChabadTube, like any fake news show, isn't about accuracy, it was created with the aim of making people like him more personable to the outside world.
"Everyone stereotypes the Hassid as a smelly, sweaty, generously-sized individual who tucks his shirt into his underwear, with lots of dandruff and yellow teeth," Pellin said in an interview at Crown Heights Bunch O Bagels. "I wanted to give a human face to the Hassid, and show something other than the smelly part."
The passion for news - fake or otherwise - was ignited in Pellin by his late grandmother, an activist in the Reform community.
"She subscribed us to Time, magazine, and I always read it, cover-to-cover. Still do," Pellin said.
"So because of her, news was always a part of me, even though I couldn't really talk to most of my classmates about the news or politics. A lot of things they just didn't know about," he said.
In a community where the secular media is frowned upon and most people don't own televisions, Pellin said that his show, which equally mocks local, national and international current events, was actually the main source of news for his Crown Heights audience.
"I get e-mails from people responding to stories I'm mocking on my show now that are a couple of weeks old already, saying, 'I can't believe this happened!' because they're just finding out about it now, from me. People definitely see the news on my site and it's the first time they're seeing it," he said.
For this reason, Pellin decided that he didn't want to only cover Crown Heights or the Jewish world. His grandmother's love of current affairs inspired him to expose others to the outside world.
"Crown Heights people should be caught up with what's happening in the world. My show gives them, at the least, some main things, to try to get people talking, and I want them to get it in an entertaining medium."
Although television isn't accepted in Crown Heights, the Internet is, which is how Pellin's show became a kosher hit.
But Pellin remembered when the Internet was first coming out, and his principal told him that he couldn't return to school until he got a note saying that he no longer had Internet in the house anymore.
The times have changed, and surfing on-line is now acceptable in the community as long as you use a 'kosher filter' that weeds out unsavory content. "My show makes it through the kosher filter for some reason. I beat the filter," he said, smiling triumphantly.
So once Pellin found his passion, the next step was leaving his "boring job" in the cellphone industry.
"I figured that now, when I'm young, is the time to do that, because when you're older and you're forced to pay for colonoscopies, then you have to just take a job that makes money," he said. "But since I'm young, I have room to screw up."
When Pellin filmed the first episode of ChabadTube, he didn't think he would be in it for very long. "I didn't think people were actually going to watch it besides my friends," he said. But before long, he had around 30,000 viewers per episode, and had become the darling of Crown Heights.
"I thought the Chabad establishment would be pretty much against the show when I started out because it pushes the envelope," Pellin said. "I thought they would say, 'You can't put our dirty laundry in public.' But they love it."
"Even the big mohel [ritual circumciser] of Crown Heights with his long white beard came over to me and said, 'Nu, when's your next show coming out?' And I said, 'You watch it, too?' I didn't think any of these people had a sense of humor, but apparently they do." For news ideas, Pellin reads news sites from Al-Jazeera to the Drudge Report.
"I keep an open mind. I look at all sources. In traditional TV news, they have to deliver a story in a certain way that people will watch it, in a way that has urgency, that it affects you, that hits home, that's scary. Instead of that, I try to make it entertaining by adding in little spice here and there, and satire, and hope that most people get it."
But not everyone gets it. Pellin acknowledged that even his new wife does not understand all the jokes in his show. "She has the attitude of, 'If it makes you happy, do it. I don't get a lot of it, but if it makes you happy, go for it.'"
As for his international fan base, Pellin would like to think that he represents the human side of Chabad. "People who aren't from here don't understand where we're coming from. But when you get to know most of the people in this community, you'll see that they're very sensible people with many of the same desires of the outside, secular world."
"People make these blanket statements from a lack of knowledge and a fear of a culture that looks different than your own. So if I get to be the poster boy, I can help others see the softer side of Sears, the softer side of Chabad."
At this point, a fellow diner approached the table. "I just want to tell you I'm a really big fan," he said.
"I'm not really that famous," Pellin said, after the fan walked away. "I paid him to do that."
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