Jews in the News: Jason Gould, Adam Levine and Ginnifer Goodwin

 

Streisand opened the two Brooklyn concerts by proclaiming: ““I love people from Brooklyn. Because they’re real. Down to earth. They tell it like it is.” Later on in the concert she joked, “The last time I sang in Brooklyn it was on a stoop on Pulaski Street!”

 

Backed by a 60-piece orchestra, Streisand sang most of her big hits. Her songs were framed by video montages of her Brooklyn childhood and early career. They include images of her high school and the yeshiva she attended.  Also on stage was her son, JASON GOULD, 46, the son of Streisand’s ex-husband, actor ELLIOTT GOULD, 75. Jason sang a solo song and a duet with his mother.

 

By the way, Streisand pleased locals by re-working a few lyrics, like rhyming “Brooklyn Docks” with “nova lox”-- and in case you were wondering—her shimmering gowns were designed by DONNA KARAN, 65, Streisand’s long-time “BFF.”

 

Bayer’s Bar Mitzvah Boy

 

VANESSA BAYER, 32, joined Saturday Night Live four years ago. She has gradually emerged as a stand-out cast member with dead-on impressions of Miley Cyrus, and Hillary Clinton, as well as funny characters she has created, like Jacob, the bar mitzvah boy.

 

 She recently spoke to Rolling Stone magazine about the creation of Jacob: “The town I grew up in [Orange, a small Cleveland suburb] was at least fifty percent Jewish, so every weekend in the 7th grade, we went to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. It's kind of based on that. A lot of my brother's friends who have seen it think that the gestures I make are based on my brother, which is pretty funny and might be true. When I started doing standup in college, I just started doing that character. My first year on the show, one of the writers wrote me into a sketch where I played a Bar Mitzvah boy and I got to do it, which was so cool. . . but the whole thing started in my standup. I felt like I had seen that boy so much, and it's so fun to play that little awkward boy who likes to tell dad-style jokes.”

 

Levine is Sexiest

 

People Magazine has named rock musician and “The Voice” coach ADAM LEVINE, 34, their sexiest man alive for 2013.  1998 winner HARRISON FORD, 71, whose late mother was Jewish, is the only other tribe member to be named “sexiest” since 1985, when the award began.

 

Here’s the Jewish “411” on Levine, including some info not in other sources: Levine, who identifies as Jewish, has been secular as an adult. His father is Jewish, while his mother is the daughter of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father (his maternal grandfather descends from English Jews and maybe some Sephardim).  His Jewish step-mother is the mother of Levine’s younger half-brother, SAM.

 

Levine told a British Jewish paper that he was raised with only a little Jewish religious observance and, in light of that, he decided to decline his father’s offer to give him a bar mitzvah ceremony. He said he felt it was a serious ceremony that evidenced a spiritual commitment he hadn’t been prepared for. He thought it wrong that many of his Jewish peers had a bar mitzvah because they wanted a big party and gifts.

 

By the way, Harrison Ford once seriously said that he wasn’t tattooed so he could be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Trust me: while Jewish religious law seriously frowns on tattoos---it is a persistent myth that Jewish cemeteries refuse burial to the tattooed. So, in case you were wondering and worrying: the “very tattooed” Levine could be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

 

 

The Stork Visits Snow White

 

Last week, it was confirmed that actress GINNIFER GOODWIN, 35, and her fiancé, actor Josh Dallas, 31, were expecting a child. The two met when they were cast as the co-stars of “Once Upon a Time,” the ABC fantasy series (she plays Snow White and Dallas plays Prince Charming). Last May, Goodwin re-affirmed her commitment to Judaism before her hometown synagogue and stated that her then- boyfriend (Dallas) was fine with their home being a “Jewish home.”

 

 

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