{"id":35049,"date":"2017-02-27T11:08:47","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T17:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=35049"},"modified":"2017-02-27T13:48:20","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T19:48:20","slug":"oscars-2017-7-unexpected-jewish-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/oscars-2017-7-unexpected-jewish-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscars 2017: 7 unexpected Jewish facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

(JTA) \u2014 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was happy to forget 2016, when it was widely eviscerated<\/a> for nominating only white artists in the major award categories for the second straight year.<\/p>\n

But things were different at this year\u2019s Academy Awards, which aired Sunday night, as they featured a more diverse set of nominated actors and a stronger slate of nominated films including big winner “Moonlight” and others like “Fences” and “Hidden Figures.”<\/p>\n

While the overall Oscars climate was merrier this year \u2014 not counting liberal Hollywood\u2019s malaise <\/a>over the election of Donald Trump \u2014 there were fewer than usual overtly Jewish storylines underpinning the ceremony. So, we did some digging and picked out some of the unexpected Jewish tidbits from among the nominees.<\/p>\n

The \u201cLa La Land\u201d director is Catholic, but he went to Hebrew school.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Damien Chazelle is not yet a household name \u2014 but he might be closer to becoming one after Sunday. He won as best director for his film \u201cLa La Land,\u201d which was nominated for a record-tying 14 Oscars. Chazelle, 32, who broke out with his 2014 film \u201cWhiplash,\u201d grew up in a Catholic household in Princeton, New Jersey. However, when his parents became dissatisfied with his religious education at a church Sunday school, they enrolled him in a Hebrew school class. He attended for four years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had that period of my life where I was very, very into Hebrew and the Old Testament, and then I went with my class to Israel when we were in the sixth grade,\u201d Chazelle told <\/a>the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles in 2015. \u201cI don\u2019t think they even knew I wasn\u2019t Jewish; I was, like, \u2018passing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

There are finally some Jewish characters in the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d universe.<\/strong><\/p>\n

J.K. Rowling\u2019s books about the young wizard enchanted readers around the world for years, so it was folly to think the series would ever end completely. The first of five new Potter \u201cuniverse\u201d films based on Rowling\u2019s 2001 book \u201cFantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them\u201d came out last fall. The entertaining flick was nominated for two awards, winning the Oscar in the costume design category. It also features two Jewish characters<\/a>, a first for a Potter universe story. Dan Fogler stars as Jacob Kowalski, a Lower East Sider trying to open his own bakery, and Katherine Waterston plays Tina Goldstein, an employee at the Magical Congress of the U.S. The story also works as an allegory about anti-Semitism<\/a> in the 1920s.<\/p>\n

A film about a Holocaust survivor\u2019s violin was nominated for best documentary (short subject).<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Joe Feingold, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor from Poland living in New York, stopped playing his violin a few years ago, he donated it to a campaign that gives\u00a0instruments to needy students. It ended up in the hands of Brianna Perez, a 12-year-old student at the Bronx Learning Global Institute for Girls. But this was no ordinary violin \u2014 Feingold bought it at a displaced persons camp just after the war, and it helped him get back to the music he enjoyed before the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Kahane Cooperman\u2019s 24-minute documentary on the violin\u2019s story and a meeting of Feingold and Perez is, as a JTA writer accurately called it<\/a>, a \u201cfive-handkerchief weeper\u201d \u2014 but the Academy went with “The White Helmets,” a film about Syrian heroes who save lives in that war-ravaged region.<\/p>\n

Natalie Portman put on an accent (non-Israeli) to earn a nomination for \u201cJackie.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the biopic about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the aftermath of her husband\u2019s assassination, the Israel-born Portman\u00a0sounds unrecognizable. That\u2019s because she studied extensively how to sound like the former first lady, whose famously eccentric version of an old New York accent has been described<\/a>\u00a0as \u201ca peculiar drawl that defies simple linguistic classification.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jackie O\u2019s voice wasn\u2019t the first accent Portman has had to perfect \u2014 in fact, she toiled in 2015 to improve her Israeli accent<\/a> for \u201cA Tale of Love and Darkness,\u201d her directorial debut and an adaptation of Amos Oz\u2019s autobiographical novel. Portman plays Oz\u2019s mother in the film, which has dialogue entirely in Hebrew.<\/p>\n

Two Jewish composer had big nights.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Justin Hurwitz, who was Damien Chazelle\u2019s Jewish roommate at Harvard, also made a name for himself. His soundtrack for \u201cLa La Land,\u201d written with lyricists Benj Pasek (who is also Jewish) and Justin Paul, was a lock<\/a> to win the best film score award and it did. The song \u201cCity of Stars\u201d also won in the best individual song category. Hurwitz and Chazelle have had a fruitful relationship: The Jewish composer has worked on music for all of Chazelle\u2019s previous films, including the acclaimed \u201cWhiplash.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Irish-sounding director of \u201cManchester By the Sea\u201d is also Jewish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kenneth Lonergan certainly sounds like an Irish Catholic name \u2014 and the writer\u2019s father was indeed Irish. But his mother was Jewish, making him a default member of the tribe. Lonergan, who has also written several plays and the film \u201cGangs of New York,\u201d was raised<\/a> in a pretty secular environment by his mother and a Jewish stepfather near Central Park in New York City.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always assumed everyone was Jewish,\u201d he told the New Yorker<\/a> last year about his upbringing. \u201cI didn\u2019t know it was unusual in any way. And then I finally met some people who weren\u2019t Jewish and I was, like, \u2018Oh, not everyone is Jewish \u2014 OK.\u2019 But that took a while to sink in.\u201d<\/p>\n

A nominated documentary focuses on a Jewish family with an autistic child.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Noted Jewish journalist Ron Suskind\u2019s son Owen began showing signs of autism at age 3, when he stopped speaking and communicating the way he had before. But Suskind found an unlikely source to help coax Owen out of his frustration and silence: animated Disney movies. Owen immersed himself in the films and began communicating by repeating phrases from them. Roger Ross Williams\u2019 touching film,”Life, Animated,” which follows Owen through a crucial year in his 20s as he looks to become more independent, was nominated for best documentary. Since form often follows content, the movie includes several animated sequences. Producer Julie Goldman who also was nominated for the film, was the executive producer on the film documentary “Weiner” that also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and detailed the flame out political career of Anthony Weiner.<\/p>\n

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