Comedian Tiffany Haddish won a Grammy award for Best Comedy Album for her album Black Mitzvah, the recording of her 2019 Netflix comedy special. In the performance, Haddish explored her Jewish heritage, something she only discovered as a young adult when she learned that her father was an Eritrean Jew. Haddish embraced her Jewish heritage and held a bat mitzvah under the guidance of Rabbi Susan Silverman, including Torah reading and a d’var Torah speech about Jacob’s ladder from the Parsha Vayetze. But Haddish was no stranger to Judaism, as she had worked since the age of 17 as a dancer and an MC at more than 500 bar and bat mitzvah parties. What did Haddish say about that experience?
A. “I’ve been to like over 500 bar mitzvahs, and I’m so glad it’s finally my turn to get candy thrown at me.”
B. “I’ve been to like over 500 bar mitzvahs, and I can pronounce the ‘ch’s’ better than any of those old Jews.”
C. “I’ve been to like over 500 bar mitzvahs, and I am so tired of that f*** chicken dance.”
D. “I’ve been to like over 500 bar mitzvahs, and I’m tired of people telling me to go to the kitchen.”
E. She told of grabbing an 80 year old man by the tie and dancing with him. “And then I decided to turn it around on him and drop it like it’s hot and give him that booty action...and I turned around and he was on the ground on his back...and he passed away...I didn’t want to dance no more, I felt like this [behind] was deadly.”
Comedian Tiffany Haddish won a Grammy award for Best Comedy Album for her album Black Mitzvah, the recording of her 2019 Netflix comedy special. In the performance, Haddish explored her Jewish heritage, something she only discovered as a young adult when she learned that her father was an Eritrean Jew. Haddish embraced her Jewish heritage and held a bat mitzvah under the guidance of Rabbi Susan Silverman, including Torah reading and a d’var Torah speech about Jacob’s ladder from the Parsha Vayetze. But Haddish was no stranger to Judaism, as she had worked since the age of 17 as a dancer and an MC at more than 500 bar and bat mitzvah parties. What did Haddish say about that experience?
A. “I’ve been to like over 500 bar mitzvahs, and I’m so glad it’s finally my turn to get candy thrown at me.”
B. “I’ve been to like over 500 bar mitzvahs, and I can pronounce the ‘ch’s’ better than any of those old Jews.”
C. “I’ve been to like over 500 bar mitzvahs, and I am so tired of that f*** chicken dance.”
D. “I’ve been to like over 500 bar mitzvahs, and I’m tired of people telling me to go to the kitchen.”
E. She told of grabbing an 80 year old man by the tie and dancing with him. “And then I decided to turn it around on him and drop it like it’s hot and give him that booty action...and I turned around and he was on the ground on his back...and he passed away...I didn’t want to dance no more, I felt like this [behind] was deadly.”
The estate which controls the publishing of Dr. Seuss books has announced that six of his books will be pulled from publication because of racist and stereotypical images that appear in the books. The books are mostly unknown, including McElligot’s Pool, The Cat’s Quizzer and Scrambled Eggs Super!. The book being withdrawn that is most familiar to many readers is And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, which includes a stereotypical image of an Asian person with slanty eyes. While many on the right are criticizing this as a form of cancel culture or censorship, others recognize that the estate management made the decision on their own after having a panel investigate the author’s works. Representatives of Dr. Seuss Enterprises said, “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong. Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families.” In fact, later works by Dr. Seuss carried strong messages of the importance of acceptance of others, including Horton Hears a Who!, with a theme of “a person’s a person no matter how small.” Seuss was inspired by a post-World War II visit to Japan that opened his eyes to seeing the Japanese people differently than he had during the war. Which of Dr. Seuss’s works was inspired by something Jewish?
A. Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss’s real name) was inspired to write one of his most famous books, Green Eggs and Ham, by a Jewish boy who was friends with Geisel’s son. The boy, named Sammy, came over one day and refused to eat the ham dinner which was offered to him. This inspired Geisel to write about Sam-I-Am who did not like green eggs and ham.
B. One of Seuss’s lesser known works was Too Many Daves about a mother who named all 23 of her sons Dave. Geisel was inspired by two neighbors of the Geisel family. Each family was Jewish, and each had a son named David. When Theodor Geisel and his wife attended a Passover seder sponsored by one of the Jewish families and attended by the other, Geisel was amused by the fact that whenever someone said the name David during the seder both boys responded, always leading to confusion.
C. Seuss’s book Sneetches was about characters with a star on their chest who discriminated against others without the star. An entrepeneur invented a machine that placed stars on people’s chests, and all the non-starred characters suddenly had stars. The originally-starred characters then used a “star off” machine, and eventually everyone was running from machine to machine until no one knew who was part of which group originally. Seuss was inspired to write the book when he learned of Nazis forcing Jews to wear stars on their clothing.
D. In 1927 Geisel published his first national cartoon in the Saturday Evening Post, at which point he moved to Queens, New York. He met a neighbor, Mickey Katz, who was an Orthodox Jew. Katz always wore a yarmulke, something that Geisel had never seen before. So Mr. Katz and his “hat” became the inspiration for The Cat in the Hat.
E. In 1946, Dr. Seuss was invited to a Yom Kippur break-the-fast meal by his editor (who was Jewish) at Vanguard Press. He felt he should bring something to the meal but not being Jewish, he had no idea what would be appropriate. He went to a local Jewish deli and asked the counterman what he should buy for the occasion. Said the employee, “I have nice lox in my ice box.” That line kept whirling around in Geisel’s head, and sure enough, the next day he began writing Fox in Socks. An early draft of the book included the line “Fox in socks on box on Knox enjoyed nice lox from the ice box,” but the line was later cut from the book.
Governor Andrew Cuomo was seen as a voice of reason and calm during the early days of the pandemic, especially at a time when President Trump was offering practically no leadership at all regarding this crisis. Lately, however, Governor Cuomo is being seen in a different light as two former aides have accused him of sexual harrassment. Cuomo has denied the claims, and an independent investigation will likely take place under the auspices of the New York attorney general and the chief judge of the state court of appeals. Governor Cuomo once said “It was ugly. It was ugly. I’ll tell you the truth.” What was he referring to?
A. When Governor Cuomo was attempting to get the Orthodox community to follow state guidelines for public gatherings during the COVID pandemic, most leaders in the Orthodox community simply ignored him. However, Heshy Tischler, the Borough Park Orthodox activist and talk show host, verbally attacked Cuomo on his radio show, saying among other things that the Catholic Cuomo had “no clue what it was really like to be religious,” thus leading to Cuomo’s comment.
B. Andrew Cuomo was speaking about a trip he made to Israel in 2015. He had visited the Western Wall, and happened to be there when a group of Orthodox Jews began protesting a women’s minyan and Torah reading that was taking place in the women’s section. Cuomo was referring to the men who were yelling and throwing eggs, water bottles, and other objects across the dividing wall towards the women.
C. In 1991, Cuomo was serving as the chair of the New York City Homeless Commission in the David Dinkins administration. His comments were in response to the Crown Heights riot which occurred in August of that year. At that time Black residents in Brooklyn attacked Chassidic Jews in response to an auto accident where two Guyanese immigrant children were struck by a car whose passenger was the Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
D. Governor Cuomo was the main speaker at an event at the Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem in 2018. During his talk, Cuomo made the comments about Democratic consultant and Orthodox Rabbi Hank Sheinkopf, who was sitting in the front row. Cuomo was specifically referring to Sheikopf’s dancing, as Sheinkopf moved to the music that was playing in the church.
E. Cuomo was referring to the first time he attended a Passover seder, specifically when they served a food he had never seen before, the gefilte fish.
Much of the country was hit by severe weather last week, including snow, freezing rain, and frigid temperatures throughout the deep South. Texas was particularly hard hit, with major power outages resulting in water shortages that are ongoing. And Senator Ted Cruz found himself in the middle of a P.R. crisis as he and his family left town for a Cancún vacation. Organized Jewish life first began in Texas in the 1850’s, though the first North American Jew known to have been in Texas was Captain Samuel Noah who commanded a Mexican force against Spain at San Antonio in 1811. The current Jewish population of Texas is over 150,000, particularly centered in the larger cities of Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and El Paso. One significant event in Texas Jewish history was the Galveston Movement. What was that?
A. The Galveston Movement grew out of a regional meeting of Reform Jewish congregations along the Gulf Coast, including temples in Houston, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Biloxi. The Reform movement was struggling with the question of whether to maintain rules of Kashrut following the Trefa Banquet in Cincinnati in 1883. This event was a celebration of the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College and was held at a non-kosher restaurant. The Gulf Coast congregations met and decided to discontinue support of kosher rules and established the Galveston Movement to formalize this change and advocate for it among other southern Reform congregations.
B. The Galveston Movement was an effort by owners of hotels in Miami Beach in the 1950’s to capitalize on their success of bringing Jewish New Yorkers to Florida for Passover package vacations featuring seders and kosher-for-Passover food. The hoteliers hoped to attract Jews from Midwestern cities such as Chicago and St. Louis to spend their Passover vacation in the Texas beach resort town. They contracted with Galveston hotels including the famous Beach Hotel and the historic Hotel Galvez to provide rooms, and they arranged for the kashering of the hotel kitchens. While this Galveston Movement initially met with some success, the idea ultimately did not catch on as it did in Miami Beach and the last hotel to offer a Passover package ended the program in 1963.
C. The Galveston Movement was an effort in the early 20th century to divert European Jewish immigrants to an entry at the Port of Galveston rather than Ellis Island, to lessen the burden of huge immigration to cities on the Eastern Seaboard. Financially supported by philanthropist Jacob Schiff, the Galveston Movement saw more than 10,000 Jewish immigrants arrive in the United States at Galveston, from where they dispersed to other southern, midwestern and western cities.
D. The Galveston Movement was an effort to set up bungalow colonies in Galveston for poor Jewish families to escape to during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1905. Jews from Houston, Austin and even Dallas traveled to Galveston where the less crowded conditions and gulf breeze helped stem the spread of the disease. The effort, funded by wealthy German Jews who had settled in Houston beginning in the 1870’s, was geared toward providing safer housing for the recent Eastern European Jews who had emigrated to cities in Texas.
E. The Galveston Movement was a line dance which became popular at Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in Galveston in the 1980’s. Similar to the Chicken Dance, the Galveston Movement was danced to the Glen Campbell hit song Galveston, with movements replicating sea winds blowing, sea waves crashing, and sea birds flying in the sun. At Galveston.
Tomorrow, February 16, is Mardi Gras, the annual celebration in New Orleans marking the day before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. This year’s public celebration has been canceled, one more victim of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s probably just as well, given that New Orleans is facing unusual freezing temperatures with the possibility of sleet and light snow over the next 24 hours. Not surprisingly, New Orleanians are creatively celebrating through the decorating of more than a thousand Mardi Gras-themed House Floats for locals and visitors to view. Mardi Gras has a long history of exclusion of Jews from the Krewes, or parading organizations, though this has dramatically changed in recent decades. In 1996, the inclusion of Jews became even more noted, with the formation of a parading group known as the Krewe du Jieux, whose members expressly flaunted Jewish stereotypes for humor, wearing big noses, throwing decorated bagels to the crowds, and featuring characters such as the Big Macher and the Gaza Stripper. In 2006, the Krewe du Jieux split, however, over creative and philosophical differences, leading to the formation of a second Jewish-themed Krewe. What is the name of the newer Krewe?
Rabbi Abraham Twerski died last week in Jerusalem at the age of 90 from COVID-19. Rabbi Twerski was a a scion of the Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty who also went to medical school, leading to a renowned career as a psychiatrist, an addiction specialist, and a rabbinic scholar. He is credited with introducing twelve step programs against addiction into the Jewish world, which was resistant because of the Christian origins of that approach to treatment. Among Rabbi Twerski’s many Jewish accomplishments was the writing of a tune for the psalm Hoshea et Amecha which is sung in synagogues around the world. Who was Rabbi Twerski referring to when he spoke of an “ultimate example of unrequited love?”
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene continued to make headlines for her racist, demeaning, anti-Semitic, conspiratorial and other despicable and bizarre comments and social media posts. It was revealed that in 2018 she had posted on Facebook that the “Vice Chairman of Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm” may have used “space solar generators” to cause a huge wildfire across California. The invoking of the Rothschild family in conspiracy theories is a classic anti-Semitic trope, generally referencing the great wealth and international scope of the Rothschild banking family and the supposed use of their money and power for world domination. The Rothschild family banking history began with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812) who established his banking business in the 1760s in Frankfort. Through his five sons the business spread across Europe and eventually around the world with many separate branches active in banking and finance, philanthropy, the arts, Zionism, winemaking, and more. When Carl von Rothschild, founder of the Naples branch of the family, met with Pope Gregory XVI in 1832 to lend £400,000 (approximately $48 million in today’s currency) to the Holy See, what happened that shocked observers?
A. The meeting took place on a Sunday morning, when the Pope would normally be holding mass and greeting people in St. Peter’s Square. But the Pope delayed these events because of the importance of finalizing the loan.
B. When Carl von Rothschild met Pope Gregory XVI, he was not required to kiss the Pope’s feet, as was the rule for all others meeting the pontiff.
C. Pope Gregory XVI arranged for kosher food to be served, prepared by members of the local Roman Jewish community.
D. Carl von Rothschild was led on a tour of the Vatican, including the Sistine Chapel, by Pope Gregory XVI. This was a huge breach of protocol, wherein tours were always led by lower Vatican officials and never by the Pope himself.
E. When Rothschild and the Pope met in December 1832 to finalize the loan, the Pope showed Rothschild an oil lamp menorah that had been gifted to Pope Clement VII by the Jewish community of Rome in 1531. Rothschild, noting that their meeting was taking place on the last day of Chanukkah, immediately proceeded to light the menorah via a laser blast from outer space.
Larry King died last week at the age of 87, a month after being hospitalized with COVID-19. King, who was born Lawrence Zeiger to Jewish immigrants from Belarus, had a more than six decade career in television, radio, and digitial media, conducting thousands of interviews with actors, presidents, sports figures, world leaders, and so many others. Early in his career, what gaffe did King commit during an interview?
A. King’s first broadcasting job was at a radio station in Miami Beach. He did interviews with local people, discussing their daily lives. For one show, he invited on a Black man who was a member of the station’s cleaning crew. The broadcast was cut off almost immediately, as King had no idea that in Miami in 1957 it was not acceptable to interview a Black man on a white radio station.
B. In the mid-1960’s, King interviewed the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Trying to be funny, Larry King asked, “Is it true that we’re related?” Dr. King responded, “Well, sir, many of my people are related to your people. Do you really want to discuss why that is?”
C. King’s first celebrity interview was with singer Bobby Darin. King asked him about his recording of Roses Are Red (My Love), which was in fact a Bobby Vinton song.
D. In the late 1950’s King moved to Miami Beach where he got a job at WAHR radio. One of his first interview guests was the president of the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana. At one point in the interview King said, “I’m pretty new to Miami. Can you recommend a place to get tacos,” not realizing that tacos are not part of traditional Cuban cuisine.
E. When King was 23 years, old, he interviewed a Catholic priest and asked him how many children he had.
A few hundred Chassidic Jews crowded in front of the Satmar Meats & Takeout in Brooklyn last Friday afternoon, and eventually the police were called. Most of the Chassidim were not wearing masks and did not socially distance. Why did they all gather at that location?
A. The Chassidim were protesting Governor Cuomo and his attempt to enforce stricter public health rules which many in the Chassidic community believe interfere with their religious rights.
B. They were celebrating the birth of a baby boy in an apartment above the butcher. The boy is the grandson of the Grand Rebbe of the Satmar community, Aaron Teitelbaum.
C. The Chassidim were members of the Bobover sect of Chassidim, and they were protesting the opening of a Satmar butcher shop in their neighborhood.
D. They were lining up for COVID vaccines that were being given out on a first-come, first-served basis at the Hatzolah of Boro Park health clinic located upstairs from the butcher.
E. The Chassidim were watching a raccoon that was stuck in the window grate above the kosher butcher until the police removed it.
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