The Tribe Hits the Tube

                                      

Beam us to Boca, Scotty!

Back in the 1950’s and early 60's, there were very few Jewish characters on commercial TV.

In fact, there was one --- Buddy Sorrell, the fast-talking, joke-a-minute, actually kind of annoying comedy writer working with Rob Petrie and Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show, as played by Morey Amsterdam.

And we were kind of proud of him.

Then came Seinfeld, Will and Grace, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and many more,  and now Jewish folks are as plentiful on TV they are on a Sunday morning in Murray’s grabbing a shmear!

Next season’s no exception.  Here’s a few of the new Jews on the Tube you'll be tuning in to  this fall: 

Jersey Shnorrer. From Hackensack to Haddonfield,  Mike “The Insinuation” Tsooristino charms his way into nice Jewish homes  throughout the Garden State without so much as opening his wallet or bringing a bottle of Manischewitz!

First up, the Insinuation ensconces himself for two weeks at a Ventnor oceanfront villa frolicking on the beach with the family’s 18 year old daughter all the while the dad under the impression he’s from Comcast there to restore the family’s Lifetime. 

 Watch out, Snooki!  A new reality star is born! 

Meet the Putz. Each week a panel of Jewish journalists questions a prominent, influential, and totally full-of-crap newsmaker who attempts to evade the panel's  every question by commenting excessively on how much he or she loves Seinfeld, Marc Chagall, and the Jewish vote. 

The distinguished panel of questioners includes Barbara Walters, Andrea Mitchell, and Gilbert Gottfried (he needs the work) who will weekly demonstrate the wide variety of styles, cadences, and tonalities in which to pose the question "But is it good for the Jews?"

Moderator Geraldo Rivera will close each program with commentary as to why anyone who’s not meshugah would hire him as the moderator for a news and affairs program in 2011 and why his mustache is indeed good for the Jews. 

This Old House for Jews. The popular PBS program returns in a new format chosen especially for the Chosen People. Host Bob Vilaberg explains how to select carpenters, electricians, and painters to accomplish those home repair and remodeling jobs that you and I could perform about as readily as cloning, nuclear fission, or explaining what the hell's  going on in a movie by the Coen Brothers.

Using the phone book to find non-Jewish contractors, asking sage questions about complex equipment such as a hammer (learn how to pronounce it, click here: http://www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/hammer), and passing the time while waiting for the contractor to show up, if ever, are presented in clear monosyllabic English even we woefully unhandy Hebrews can understand. 

How I Met Your Mohel.  For hard-working but shy mohel Sidney Snipberg,  the single life is about as exciting as the eighth night of Hannukah until he meets dynamic Rabbi Saul Mellow, a spiritual leader so good with the ladies male congregants touch their prayer books to him!

Together the two head for the Promised Land --- Las Vegas --- for 40 days and 40 nights of fun-fun-fun, as Sidney and Saul  set out to disprove the old adage that all Jews "have a little dreidel."    It's the Hebrews meet "The Hangover," and when it comes to laughs, it ain't chopped liver! 

Star Shlep. It’s “steady as she goes” once more as out of retirement shlep William (Oy,  I’m too old for Warp Speed!) Shatner as Admiral James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as the half Vulcan/half Jewish Mr. Spock, whose new credo is “Live Long and Prosper and Never Shop Retail.” The ship’s crew will boldly go where no Jew has ever gone before --- K-mart!

The multi-ethnic but mono-religious cast features George Takei as newly converted (to Judaism, that is!) Lieutenant Sulu and new Jewish cast members in the roles of Dr. Bones McCoy, Lieutenant Uhuru, and Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, the world’s first Jew to speak with a Scottish brogue.

The intrepid crew aboard the Enterprise will battle Klingons, Romulans, and the Deadly Race of Jewish Mothers, which has Scotty crying out in the premiere episode “We need more power! She's going into a MACH 7 Why Can't You be More Like Your Cousin Joel The Harvard Man Who's President Of The Campus Hillel!”

The Dick Van Dykeberg Show is a program which hearkens back to a classic situation comedy of the late fifties and early sixties. Working for the Alan Bernstein Variety Show are writers Rob Petrowitz, Sally Ruggulah, and Buddy Sorrell, the one gentile member of the writing team.

Buddy’s a fast-talking, joke-a-minute, actually kind of annoying guy, but isn’t it refreshing to have a non-Jewish character on national television these days?

Bet it will be a real source of pride for gentiles from coast to coast!

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Not a Member of the Tribe?

     Shnorrer - a user, a moocher.

     Mohel - person who performs ritual Jewish circumcision on male infants.  Ouch!

     Touch prayer books to him - actually they are touched to the Torah, not the rabbi.

     Shlep - to drag along.

     Shul - synagogue.

     Putz - Come on!  You know that one.

The Happiest Mixed Marriage in Show Business

                   

By Courtesy of Parade Magazine

Rose “Ma” Nishtanah turns from the stove, having tossed the last sprig of dill into her bubbling and internationally famous Matzoh Ball Soup.

“You know,” she says, “he’s never eaten so much as a spoonful of it, and yet I still love the guy anyway!”

At the kitchen table, Eustace “Pa” Rumpumpumpum smiles. “I know she and some of the children love it, but frankly it can’t hold spit to my delicious Safeway Cream of Mayonnaise soup!”

It’s like that a lot in the home of show business’ happiest mixed marriage, that of the iconic Ma Nishtanah and Pa Rumpumpumpum. Married for almost 35 years, the two of them keep their relationship flowering despite differences that’d make Sarah Palin and film maker Michael Moore seem like bunkmates!

Pa explains as he gives me a tour of the elaborate wood and metal working shop in the basement of their home.

“It’s the respect we have for each other’s traditions,” he says, “that keeps us going strong. She doesn’t bug me when I’m watching NASCAR, and I don’t bother her when she’s busy looking at Jon Stewart or some other Jewish-dominated mainstream media crap!”

This idyllic relationship didn’t happen overnight.

Eustace Rumpumpum (as he was then known; he added the third ‘pum’ later when he was able to afford it) came out of a dirt-poor Arkansas town so poor it didn’t even have dirt to score a number of gospel based hits, including “Jesus Loves Me, But I Just Wanna Be Friends, ” ”Amazing Nancy Grace,” and the cross-over album that forever associated him with the holidays “A Glenn Beck Christmas.”

Subsequently acquiring the nickname Pa for no discernable reason whatsoever, Eustace’s shaky first marriage to cocktail waitress/roller derby queen/ Associate Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Southern California Tammy Lynette Hairnette ended tragically when he audited her course on Tolstoy and still managed to flunk.

Rose Nishtanah's journey to fame began when her parents fled the Russian shtetl of Anapaquin to escape marauding bands of Cossacks which chased them all the way to 57th street before deciding to give up and sail back home. With a talent for song and dance, Rose became the toast of Broadway performing with her sisters as “Ma and the Joongs,” earning herself a nickname that would forever ensure her tons of free press every Passover.

Like Pa, Ma suffered a failed first marriage to the charming Irwin “Buddy” Berenson, a dapper Broadway ne’er do well who wore a pencil thin mustache because he had gambled away all the hairs in a regular size one. Smitten hard, Rose stood by Buddy as he systematically went through her Fortune, her Time, and her entire collection of National Geographics before dying penniless and mustache-less at age 43.

Both unlucky in love, Ma and Pa met each other on the set of the old “Hollywood Palace” TV program.

“I never realized how attractive a Jewess could be,” says Pa, “before she’d yet fallen under the sway of the Devil’s dominion.” For her part, Rose adds “I’d hadn’t ever dated a man who wasn’t a doctor, lawyer, or someone who’d inherited his father’s auto parts store.”

Within a week, the two were married and disowned by both sets of parents. Nonetheless, both credit their personal happiness as sparking the separate phenomenal success each has since enjoyed in motion pictures, television, concerts, Hadassah fundraisers, and “I Love the Second Amendment” bake sales.

Rejoining Ma in the kitchen, the couple affectionately speak about their large family of six children, three of which are Jewish and three of which are Southern Gentile What's-a-Who-Sis.

“I have three wonderful children,” kvells Ma, “and three more too.” 

“I dearly love all my children," Pa adds, "the Jewish ones almost as much as the real ones.”

With both still highly active in show business, we asked Ma and Pa what performers they each personally enjoy today.

“That Mel Gibson,” says Ma, “he’s quite an exciting action hero, and still such a dreamboat!”

“And I have always loved Ms. Barbra Streisand,” chimes in Pa. “She was so very affecting in Yentl.”

For a moment, each stares at the other.

Suddenly a steaming hot plate of Matzoh Ball Soup comes sailing on a direct course toward the venerable country star’s ever greasy head. It narrowly misses his pompadour and splatters off the wall behind the kitchen table. Pa swiftly sends his half-opened Budweiser in the direction of the sink, missing Ma but scoring a frothy hit on a nearby jar of herring.

All at once both of them break out laughing hysterically.

Sometimes our differences,” Ma Nishtanah and Pa Rumpumpumpum --- two halves of the happiest mixed marriage in show business --- say almost in unison, “are less than they seem.”

That should be true for us all.

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Not a Member of the Tribe? 

    Ma Nishtahah  -  name for the traditional "Four Questions" asked every Passover by the youngest child at the Seder. The questions ask "Why is this Night different from all other nights?" and go on to confound and perplex from there.

    kvell - to express delight and pride.  I know, I know --- doesn't happen much with you and me.