After four spectacularly Jewish and musically delightful seasons, Rachel Bloom’s CW hit “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” ended in April, and with it, our dreams of seeing a loudmouthed Jewish woman sing show-tunes on network television.
Or so we believed.
NBC has picked up “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” a musical television show about a woman who starts hearing other people’s thoughts as musical numbers,
Vulture reports
. The show, which will star Jewish actress Jane Levy, is being billed as “‘What Women Want’ meets ‘La La Land.’”
The ecstasies of good news about musical theater, as portrayed by Ben Platt
Jane Levy, of “Castle Rock,” who is Jewish (confirmed by the internet and this writer’s personal Jewish geography knowledge) will star as San Francisco coder Zoey Clarke, in a show created by
Jewish Broadway composer-lyricist Austin Winsberg
. Paul Feig, the director and producer behind such little projects as “Bridesmaids,” “The Office,” “Spy,” and “Ghostbusters,” will produce the show, which will also star “Crazy Ex Girlfriend” actor Skyler Astin (who is also Jewish) and Mary Steenburgen, Peter Gallagher, who are not.
It’s all so much major-key, up-tempo contemporary pop belt bounty. And if we had one more request — Rachel Bloom as a guest star?
Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter
@jeanvaljenny
This story "
The Next Musical TV Show Is In The Works, From NBC
" was written by Jenny Singer.
“Wine Country,” a mid-life crisis comedy starring Jewish actresses Rachel Dratch and Maya Rudolph, as well as Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Ana Gasteyer and Paula Pell, dropped on Netflix on Friday, like the Shabbat Bride alighting.
The bad news:
Reviews
suggest that this will not be the next “Bridesmaids.”
The good news: Literally everything else about this movie.
The film, written by Liz Cackowski and Emily Spivey and directed by Poehler, has been a long time coming. “We’ve had like 20 years of rehearsals,” Poehler
told The Washington Post
. The group of women who star in the raunchy comedy — which also features beloved Jewish weirdo Jason Schwartzman — have been friends for decades, since their overlapping turns in the writers room and on stage at “Saturday Night Live.”
All of the women involved have collaborated before, but never all on one project.
“When I think about this movie…I think about our history,” Rudolph told the Post. “I think about the choice that we’ve made to be a family,” she said, explaining that the women behind “Wine Country” have, for years, chosen to live like “a small village.”
These women have been friends for over 20 years. They’ve been through all of life’s ups and downs together and remained each other’s biggest cheerleaders.
Whether you wait until Saturday’s three stars are in the sky or stream it on Friday after work, pour yourself a glass and remember — Chardonay, Manischewitz, grape juice, and Franzia are all fruit of the vine. And let this Jewess-heavy squad of best friends transport you to “Wine Country.”
Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter
@jeanvaljenny
This story "
Shabbat Shalom! SNL Squad’s ‘Wine Country’ On Netflix
" was written by Jenny Singer.
The Israeli winner of last year’s international song competition dropped “Nana Banana,” her third single, just in time for the first anniversary of her triumph.
Israel is just days away from hosting Eurovision,
which starts this Tuesday, May 14. It’s a song about eating sandwiches and hanging out with your mom, and listening to your guiding instincts instead of outside noise. Bruno Mars wishes he wrote this song.
“Nana Banana” follows the singer’s ecstatic weirdo melody
“Basa Sababa”
— released in February, the jagged self-love anthem was accompanied by the most expensive Israeli music video ever made.
Like that song, “Nana Banana,” more than “Toy” sound like straightforward female power pop anthems, but the lyrics paint a more complicated picture. “Don’t save me,” the 26-year-old spits, “If you see me sleeping, don’t wake me” — these lyrics depict an artist going through a needed hibernation, but the chorus questions this flattering portrait. “Baby, it’s so comfortable!” she belts. “In my bubble I stay, always running away!”
Who is Netta? The fearless, subversive ball of joy bawks like a chicken and refuses to be treated like a toy? Or just a girl in a bubble, a ball of anxiety?
We’ll find out more in just a few days, when the singer performs her new single live, at Eurovision in Tel Aviv. This, we know for sure — she’ll do what she wanna, she’ll do what she wanna.
Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter
@jeanvaljenny
This story "
Netta Barzilai Drops Contender For Song Of The Summer
" was written by Jenny Singer.
Singer Billy Joel turns 70 today, and over forty years after making his debut on the music scene, he’s still selling out concerts and records alike.
New York-born and raised, Joel has become such an icon in American music history that generations young and old have become fans. Although he does not usually discuss his Jewish heritage, he has in recent years expressed his connection to being a member of the Tribe of Israel.
So to celebrate the Jewish singer, here are some songs to listen to:
“
We Didn’t Start the Fire
”
For a Jewish songwriter, there are a couple of Jewish references laced through the song. Menachem Begin? Check. Albert Einstein? Check. Walter Winchell? Check. He even throws in a little Palestine into it.
“
New York State of Mind
”
Although there aren’t any direct references to Judaism, Joel does discuss taking the Greyhound bus back home to the most Jewish city in the United States.
“
Leningrad
”
The song title refers to a significant point during World War II and the Holocaust - a subject Jews are all too familiar with. The singer has even performed concerts wearing a yellow star
in solidarity to his family history.
On Tuesday night, Ben Domenech, the founder and publisher of conservative website The Federalist and husband of Meghan McCain, did an odd thing. He tweeted a verbally abusive, sexually explicit rant, accusing late night host Seth Meyers of “going after” his wife with “Idiotic anti-Semitic bullshit.”
“I don’t think I tied her to it in particular,” McCain said. “I think that I’m calling out what I see as anti-Semitic language.”
The argument escalated, with Meyers insisting that Omar has apologized for her remarks and deserves sensitivity as a first-time congressperson with a marginalized identity, and McCain demanding to know if Meyers is Omar’s “press person” and accusing Omar of leading the Democratic party to “extremism” with her attitude towards Jews.
It’s a reasonable dialogue to have. But there’s one thing that needs to be made clear:
Meghan McCain is a religious Christian. She cannot be a victim of anti-Jewish hatred, because she is not Jewish. As a non-Jew, McCain is also not an ideal or even appropriate spokesperson on the topic of anti-Semitism. Though a megaphone in the hands of non-Jewish allies can be a helpful tool to combat anti-Semitism, a non-Jewish person can never really be the gatekeeper of what is or isn’t anti-Semitic, especially when speaking about the behavior of actual Jews.
And yet.
The talkshow pundit turned conservative media darling has, several times, taken it upon herself to speak for the Jewish people on the topic of anti-Semitism. Like her husband, she has also been so bold as to accuse Jews of being anti-Semitic when they criticize her.
When controversial Jewish artist Eli Valley first caricatured McCain in a piece posted to Twitter, she responded calling it “one of the most anti-Semitic things I’ve ever seen.”
This is one of the most anti-semitic things I’ve ever seen. Also, this reveals so much more about you than it does me…
https://t.co/IdfGuWcJZu
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) March 8, 2019
The cartoon shows McCain clutching a Nazi “Juden” star and crying over a litany of Jewish cultural objects. McCain’s treatment of the objects, not the objects themselves, are under scrutiny here. And since, once again, McCain is not Jewish, an image of her, however hurtful, that does not otherwise contain anti-Semitic imagery, cannot be anti-Semitic.
McCain has increasingly taken on the burden of explaining anti-Semitism to America — she very effectively
questioned Women’s March organizer Tamika Mallory
about her association with the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on The View in January 2019. She has also regularly used her platform on The View to speak about Omar. “Just because I don’t technically have Jewish family that are blood-related to me doesn’t mean that I don’t take this as seriously,” she said
of Omar’s comments about “Benjamins” and AIPAC.
Jews need our allies now, more than ever. But an ally who uses the serious charge of anti-Semitism to protect herself from her critics is no ally at all. Instead, she is a person who is deliberately using a massive platform to muddy the understanding of anti-Semitism, a concept that is already so poorly understood.
So let’s set the record straight: anti-Semitism can be veiled, subtle, complex, and hard to parse. But it cannot target people who are not Jewish.
[Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article misidentified Meghan McCain as a “former first-daughter.” She is not. Her father was Senator John McCain.]
Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter
@jeanvaljenny
This story "
Meghan McCain Cannot Be A Victim Of Anti-Semitism
" was written by Jenny Singer.