Lawsuit: True Religion is Worth More than $325 Million

Bloomberg reported that the True Religion jeans company agreed to be bought out for $325 million.

A shareholder suit now alleges that the jeans company is worth more than than and that the company erroneously agreed to a below market value buyout.

Our question: "True Religion’s women’s Cameron Vintage “Boyfriend” jeans cost $317 for a pair, while the women’s Carrie Patchwork Flare jean are listed at $323, according to the company’s website." Who buys jeans for more than $300 a pair?

And yes, it looks like True Religion is Jewish, at least that its founder is Jewish. "True Religion was founded in 2002 by Jeffrey Lubell, who began embellishing jeans as a teen growing up in New York. He took the company public the following year, according to its website. True Religion operated 124 stores in the U.S. and 31 international locations as of March 31."

The buyers may not all be Jewish, "TowerBrook is a New York-based private-equity firm founded by Ramez Sousou and Neal Moszkowski, who also serve as co-CEOs. Its previous retail investments include the Jimmy Choo Ltd luxury brand, acquired by Labelux GmbH in 2011."

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Was Marc Rich Jewish?

Yes, Jewish-American billionaire Marc Rich was a Jew. He will be buried in Israel.

JPost reports on Rich's controversial life:

LUCERNE, Switzerland - Jewish-American billionaire Marc Rich, who invented oil trading and was pardoned by then US president Bill Clinton over what had once been the biggest tax evasion case in US history and busting sanctions with Iran, died on Wednesday from a stroke in Switzerland at 78.

Rich fled the Holocaust with his parents for America to become the most successful and controversial trader of his time and a fugitive from US justice, enjoying decades of comfortable privacy at his sprawling Villa Rosa on Lake Lucerne.

Belgian-born Rich, whose trading group eventually became the global commodities powerhouse Glencore Xstrata, died in hospital from a stroke, spokesman Christian Koenig said.

At the villa, with views of the nearby mountains and grounds sloping down to the banks of the lake, security guards and other staff could be seen but there was no sign of family members.

"He will be brought to Israel for burial," Avner Azulay, managing director of the Marc Rich Foundation, said by telephone. Rich will be buried on Thursday at Kibbutz Einat cemetery near Tel Aviv.

Many of the biggest players in oil and metals trading trace their roots back to Rich, whose triumph in the 1960s and 70s was to create a spot market for crude oil, wresting business away from the world's big oil groups.

To his critics, he was a white-collar criminal, a serial sanctions breaker, who they accused of building a fortune trading with revolutionary Iran, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, apartheid-era South Africa, Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, Fidel Castro's Cuba and Augusto Pinochet's Chile.

In interviews with journalist Daniel Ammann for his biography, The King of Oil, the normally obsessively secretive Rich admitted to bribing officials in countries such as Nigeria and to assisting the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

Clinton's regret

Rich became a fugitive in 1983, fleeing to Switzerland to escape charges of exploiting the US embargo against Iran to make huge profits on illicit Iranian oil sales. He was also indicted for wire fraud, racketeering and tax evasion.

He remained under threat of a life sentence in a US jail until Clinton pardoned him during the last chaotic days of his presidency, a move that provoked moral outrage and bewilderment amongst some politicians.

Clinton later said he regretted granting the pardon, calling it "terrible politics."

"It wasn't worth the damage to my reputation," he told Newsweek magazine in 2002.

Rich, who was born Marcell David Reich in Antwerp on December 18, 1934, began his career with one of the biggest trading houses of the time, Philipp Brothers, subsequently Phibro, aged 20. He left in 1974 with a fellow graduate of the Phibro mailroom, Pincus "Pinky" Green, and set up Marc Rich and Co AG in Switzerland, a firm that would eventually become Glencore Xstrata Plc.

"We are saddened to hear of the death of Marc," Glencore Xstrata Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg said. "He was a friend and one of the great pioneers of the commodities trading industry, founding the company that became Glencore."

In later years, Rich's fortune dwindled after his property portfolio was hit by the Spanish housing crisis.

"I invested a lot of money there and because of the crisis also lost a lot, at least on paper," he said in a rare interview, with Swiss economic magazine Bilanz. Forbes put his wealth at $2.5 billion.

Rich once told Fortune magazine he was a normal person with an image problem.

"I've been portrayed in a horrible way," he said, "as a workaholic, a loner, a money machine. It's not a true picture."

Ken Hill, a US Marshall who hunted Rich around the world for more than a decade, once said Rich profited from greed.

"The smoking gun is greed," he said. "This is what Marc thrived on - the greed of those who had commodities and were in positions of influence and power."

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Is Nik Wallenda Jewish?

No Nik Wallenda is not a Jew. He is a Christian. And he leaves no doubt about his religion in the soundtrack to his high-wire daredevil crossing of the Little Colorado River Gorge, near the Grand Canyon, as this humorously edited video dramatizes.



New York Magazine sums it up:

One thing was clear by the time Nik Wallenda reached the other side of that canyon last night: He is not a Muslim. Throughout the 22-minute tightrope walk, Wallenda, who was miked up on live television, invoked the name of Jesus 63 times, "Lord" 34 times, and "God" 12 times. He calls out to "Father" six times, praises the "King of Kings" twice, and makes one mention of a "sorcerer." If that seems like a lot of heavenly references for a 22-minute span, it seems like even more when condensed into a 87-second video.

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Was James Gandolfini Jewish?

He was such a powerful acting persona, sure we'd like to claim him as a member of the tribe. But no James Gandolfini was not a Jew. Shockingly, he passed away at age 51. He was a superlative actor who made his biggest hit in the Sopranos on HBO, considered by many critics to be the greatest series of its kind of all time.

The Times tells about him:

James Joseph Gandolfini Jr. was born in Westwood, N.J., on Sept. 18, 1961. His father was an Italian immigrant who held a number of jobs, including janitor, bricklayer and mason. His mother, Santa, was a high school cafeteria chef.

He attended Park Ridge High School and Rutgers University, graduating in 1983 with a degree in communications. He drove a delivery truck, managed nightclubs and tended bar in Manhattan before becoming interested in acting at age 25, when a friend took him to an acting class.

Gandolfini's father worked as the head custodian at Paramus Catholic High School in New Jersey, and we assume the family was Catholic.

Haaretz wrote about his characters' Jewish links. Gandolfini  made a humorous Israeli ad for yes.co.il.

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Is John Oliver Jewish?

John Oliver is filling in for Jon Stewart this summer, 2013. He is one funny dude.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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On 2/6/2011 we wrote:

We laughed out loud at the latest video clip that the Jewish Humor Central Blog posted (hat tip) from the Daily Show's John Oliver.

And then we thought, he is so funny, yes, John Oliver is Jewish. (But he isn't.)

We base our conclusion in particular on his ability to invent a new Jewish holiday for the purposes of celebrating a political victory in Texas as you will see in the hilarious clip below.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jewish Speaker of Texas State House
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Is Edward Snowden Jewish?

Okay, fine. New Yorker bloggers debate whether Edward Snowden is a hero or a villain:

• Jeffrey Toobin: Edward Snowden Is No Hero
• John Cassidy: Why Edward Snowden Is a Hero

But what we want to know: is Edward Snowden Jewish?

We will go out on a limb here and, even lacking firm evidence, based on his bio, we will say, no, Edward Snowden is not a Jew. 

US News on NBC news reports: "Born June 21, 1983, he grew up in Wilmington, N.C., but later moved to Ellicott City, Md., he told The Guardian. His mother, Wendy, is the chief deputy clerk for administration and information technology at the federal court in Baltimore, a court official told NBC News. His father, Lonnie, is a former Coast Guard officer who lives in Pennsylvania, the Allentown Morning Call reported. A neighbor said he has an older sister who is an attorney."

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Is Sigourney Weaver Jewish?

Now it is far-fetched that anybody would think that actress Sigourney Weaver is Jewish. No, Sigourney Weaver is not a Jew.

The tall actress who we know and love from Alien, to Working Girl to Avatar, and who we once met and told her how much we liked her work, is a Christian of Scottish-English extraction.

But it is noteworthy that IMDB reports that when she was young after graduating from high school in 1967, she spent several months on a kibbutz in Israel. /repost from 7/16/10/

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Is Economist Nouriel Roubini Jewish?

Yes, famous economist Nouriel Roubini is a Jew.

He was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1959 to Iranian Jewish parents. He moved to Tehran, Iran, when he was two.  He is currently a U.S. citizen and speaks English, Farsi, Italian, and Hebrew.

Roubini spent one year in college at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before moving to Italy and receiving his B.A., summa cum laude in Economics from the Bocconi University  in Milan in 1982.

He received his Ph.D. in international economics from Harvard University in 1988.

June 7, 2013 he predicted that gold prices will drop 30% to below $1000.

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Is Bob Dylan Jewish?

Yes, Bob Dylan is a Jew. He may also be a Christian. He is one strange and famous musician whose personal views on things have always been hard to figure out.

Dylan turned 72 on his birthday, May 24, 2013.

Dylan was born a Jew named Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew - Shabtai Zisel (or Zushe) ben Avraham) in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised there and in Hibbing, Minnesota. His paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa, Russia around 1905. His mother's grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in America in 1902. His paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kyrgyz and her family originated from Istanbul.

Dylan’s parents were Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone. When Dylan was six, his father was stricken with polio. The family returned to Hibbing, where Zimmerman grew up.

Now we read that Dylan is recording a Christmas album. Ryan McDuff, from the blog Bully! Pulpit reports:

LOS ANGELES, Calif -- Bob Dylan is recording his first Christmas album, Bullypulpit.com has exclusively learned and has been quietly compiling a collection that includes both Christmas carols and modern songs. At least four songs have reportedly been recorded for the album including, “Must Be Santa,” “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas" and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

The recording sessions have been taking place at fellow recording artist Jackson Browne's Groove Master’s Studios in Santa Monica, California, where Browne produced his album, "I’m Alive."

Prominent media expert and best-selling author Michael Levine said the move by Dylan was "completely consistent with his longstanding tradition of doing the unexpected. Concerning Bob Dylan literally nothing would surprise me which of course is part of his lasting appeal. He confounds like no other pop artist ever."

The inclusion of “O Little Town of Bethlehem," written by an Episcopal priest named Phillips Brooks in 1867 after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, is likely to fuel speculation about Dylan's religious beliefs that have swirled ever since he publicly converted to Christianity in 1979, recorded explicitly religious material on three subsequent albums and for a time refused to play his old songs. Religious references on subsequent recordings became less overt after 1981's "Shot of Love."

The other three songs, “Must Be Santa” by Hal Moore and Bill Fredricks, “Here Comes Santa Claus” by Gene Autry and Oakley Haldeman and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by Buck Ram, Kim Gannon and Walter Kent were all written between 1943 and 1960.

"A Christmas album by Bob Dylan in the pipeline doesn't really shock me," said Scott Marshall, author of a forthcoming book on the singer, "God and Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life". "At first glance it may sound bizarre, but I don't think Dylan cares much about what his detractors might make of it. Dylan still sings songs from "Slow Train Coming" to this day and he's both never renounced being Jewish or renounced his experience with Jesus some three decades ago. He remains enigmatic and this will probably be talked about for years to come."

We suppose that Dylan's spiritual pendulum has swung back to Christianity. Less than two years ago in 2007 Dylan went to Chabad Lubavitch for Yom Kippur, where he got an aliyah to the Torah. JTA Reported back then:

Bob Dylan's religious odyssey took a turn home on Yom Kippur.

The folk legend attended services at the Chabad-Lubavitch of Atlanta... Dylan was born Jewish but has dabbled in several faiths.

He arrived at morning services wearing a ski cap and a tallit, and stayed for the duration, the Web site said. Dylan was called to the Torah for an aliyah by his Hebrew name, Zushe ben Avraham, according to the Chabad outpost's rabbi, Yossi Lew.

Dylan was in Atlanta for a concert following the holiday.

As always be sure to see our friend Larry Yudelson's Tangled Up In Jews site for more background on the Jews and Jewishness connected with Bob Dylan.

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Is Stephen Hawking Jewish?

No, the famous scientist Stephen Hawking is not a Jew. He attended St. Albans, an independent Christian school, as a child.

Hawking is a noted British theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He has written a new book in which he challenges the notion that God created the universe.

According to the Guardian: Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God.

Even though Hawking is not a Jew, British Chief Rabbi Sacks has seen fit to challenge his heresy:

Chief rabbi challenges Stephen Hawking in row over origins of universe

Wikipedia informs us that, regarding religion:

Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws."

Our dad, Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy, wrote a book on the subject of cosmology and religion -- "Whence and Wherefore - Cosmological Destiny to Man Scientifically and Philosophically Explained: An Analysis Relating to 'In the Centre of Immensities' by Sir Bernard Lovell ".

Purchase the Kindle edition of this book here: Whence and Wherefore

He brilliantly defends the notion that God created the universe and finds solace and wisdom in that conclusion. In 2010 we sent a copy to Professor Hawking. We did not hear back from him.

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Is the author and spiritual seeker Paulo Coelho Jewish?

No Paulo Coelho is not a Jew. He was brought up Catholic and attended a Jesuit school in Brazil. Coelho is not a big fan of any organized religion. He speaks with lyrical disdain and disparagement in his books about the wisdom and ritual of religions.

His current publication, Manuscript Found in Accra, is set in Jerusalem before a battle. The people in the book gather to ask about life so that they can learn enough to save "the soul of Jerusalem." The publisher tells us:

July 14, 1099. Jerusalem awaits the invasion of the crusaders who have surrounded the city’s gates. There, inside the ancient city’s walls, men and women of every age and every faith have gathered to hear the wise words of a mysterious man known only as the Copt. He has summoned the townspeople to address their fears with truth:

“Tomorrow, harmony will become discord. Joy will be replaced by grief. Peace will give way to war. . . . None of us can know what tomorrow will hold, because each day has its good and its bad moments. So, when you ask your questions, forget about the troops outside and the fear inside. Our task is not to leave a record of what happened on this date for those who will inherit the Earth; history will take care of that. Therefore, we will speak about our daily lives, about the difficulties we have had to face.”

The people begin with questions about defeat, struggle, and the nature of their enemies; they contemplate the will to change and the virtues of loyalty and solitude; and they ultimately turn to questions of beauty, love, wisdom, sex, elegance, and what the future holds. “What is success?” poses the Copt. “It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.” ...

Now, these many centuries later, the wise man’s answers are a record of the human values that have endured throughout time. And, in Paulo Coelho’s hands, The Manuscript Found in Accra reveals that who we are, what we fear, and what we hope for the future come from the knowledge and belief that can be found within us, and not from the adversity that surrounds us.

This book is new age in every respect that we can think of especially in the way that it wanders through spiritual landscapes and themes without a care for a conventional framework of organization or presentation.

One passage struck us because it sounded like the utter opposite of the philosophy of life and values that we heard espoused at Yeshiva University by our teacher the Rav, Rabbi Soloveitchik and by his followers.

We will cite Coelho's passage and leave it without explanation; and we wish that understanding will flow to those who understand:

Beauty is present in all creation, but the dangerous fact is that, because we human beings are often cut off from the Divine Energy, we allow ourselves to be influenced by what other people think... And we become ugly and embittered.

At that moment, we can draw comfort from so-called wisdom, an accumulation of ideas put together by people wishing to define the world instead of respecting the mystery of life. This "wisdom" consists of all the unnecessary rules, regulation, and measurements intended to establish a standard of behavior. 

According to that false wisdom, we should not be concerned about beauty because it is superficial and ephemeral. 

That isn't true. All the beings created under the sun, from birds to mountains, from flowers to rivers, reflect the miracle of creation. 

If we resist the temptation to allow other people to define who we are, then we will gradually be able to let the sun inside our own soul shine forth... (pp. 60-61)

Back in 2011 we wrote about his previous book Aleph saying that the book... will greatly entertain the spiritual seeker. By that we mean if you are open to the concepts of past lives and the mystical energies of the universe, this book will speak to you. But even if you are such a seeker, you may feel, as we do, that at times the book overdoes some of its themes.

Within the story Coelho provides some gems of writing. We identified with his metaphor of the Chinese bamboo plant since we had spent several years putting down the roots of our latest book. And now, that book (God's Favorite Prayers) has sprouted up boldly after its publication.

Coelho explains that the Chinese Bamboo first, “...spends 5 years as a little shoot, using that time to develop its complex root system. And then from one moment to the next, it puts on a spurt and grows up to 25 meters high.”

Within the narrative Coelho casts in what can be wonderful observations, if they resonate for you. On the life-value of mistakes he tells us, “...only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risk and do what you really want to do. Seek out people who aren’t afraid of making mistakes and who, therefore, do make mistakes. Because of that, their work often isn’t recognized, but they are precisely the kind of people who change the world and, after many mistakes, do something that will transform their own community completely”.

He does get this inspiring exhortation partly right. We'd say to seek out people who are afraid to make mistakes -- that is a human trait -- but who nevertheless go ahead and make them. And he does need to differentiate and specify what he means by "mistakes". He surely means the worthy and meaty and bold and creative mistakes, not the foolish ones. And then of course, we all need to know some definition of the notion of "transform" -- but we never do get that from most of those who throw out the idea. We just know that they mean that transformation is something good and different and fresh and original.

It's all in a narrative that is highly intuitive and new age. And we get it and we like it. We also like the title.

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Is Jonathan Krohn Jewish?

No and yes. According to the Times, the young (former) conservative is being brought up as a Christian. So no, definitely Jonathan Krohn is not Jewish by religion.

Update: At 17, Krohn was doing teshuvah - repenting his conservatism - i.e., he adopted liberal ideas and went to study philosophy at NYU. MSNBC reported in the video clip below, wherein Lawrence O'Donnell lauded him for converting to the "bright side".

Update 2: The Times reported on Krohn: "The Growing Pains of Jonathan Krohn" (4/28/2013)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As to his religion, according to the Times, Jonathan Krohn's mother was Jewish before she converted to Christianity. According to Jewish law, Jonathan is a Jew. Appropriately, the Times is silent on the issue of whether his Baptist parents gave him a bris. It seems the young Christian conservative did not have a bar mitzvah but he did get a present,

He received a computer from his maternal grandfather for his 13th birthday. “In the Jewish culture in which my mom was raised, 13 is a big deal,” he said. “But since I’m a Jewish Christian, I don’t do a bar mitzvah.” (Decades ago, his mother became a Baptist.)

Even in parentheses, the fact that the boy has a Jewish mother, makes him a (latent) member of the tribe. In 2009 we said: We do envy this young man who has concluded at such an early age that the world is precisely the way it should be, that progress is not needed, that government ought to be curtailed and that Rush Limbaugh is NOT a big fat idiot. We wish we had learned all that by the time we were 14. Even now we are struggling to rid ourselves of the desire for progress and the esteem with which we hold those who dedicate their lives to public service in the quest for better government and leadership in our country. //reposted from 3/8/09 because this little feller is finally talking a bit of sense//

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Is Ryan Lochte, Olmypic Swimmer and Sex Symbol, Jewish?

No, we do not think that swimmer Ryan Lochte is a Jew. His national team bio does not specify his religion. We would guess from his last name that his family goes back to Dutch Protestant roots.

The Times' Style section had an extensive article about Lochte.

Ryan Lochte, Olmypic Swimmer and Sex Symbol

The U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte is poised to be the breakout star of the 2012 Summer Games, both in and out of the pool.

Ryan Lochte, Olmypic Swimmer and Sex Symbol - Slide Show

Mr. Lochte, 27, is being groomed to be a breakout Olympic superstar, with millions in corporate sponsorships.

Update April 2013: Lochte has an E! reality show, starting Sunday April 21 at 10pm EDT.

Here is a funny video interview about the show - watch to the end.

Hat tip to anonymous!

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Was Shulamith Firestone Jewish?

Yes, the pioneering feminist Shulamith Firestone was at the brackets of her life an Orthodox Jew. She was brought up as an Orthodox Jew as a child, and she was buried in an Orthodox Jewish rite.

During her life, the radical feminist activities that she engaged in and the critical books that she wrote were as far from the values of Orthodox Judaism as day is from night.

The inspiring and haunting New Yorker profile, "AMERICAN CHRONICLES: DEATH OF A REVOLUTIONARY," BY SUSAN FALUDI informs the reader that "Shulamith Firestone helped to create a new society. But she couldn’t live in it."

It informs us, "Best known for her writings, Firestone also launched the first major radical-feminist groups in the country, which made headlines in the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies with confrontational protests and street theatre."

The article begins, "When Shulamith Firestone’s body was found late last August, in her studio apartment on the fifth floor of a tenement walkup on East Tenth Street, she had been dead for some days. She was sixty-seven, and she had battled schizophrenia for decades, surviving on public assistance. There was no food in the apartment, and one theory is that Firestone starved, though no autopsy was conducted, by preference of her Orthodox Jewish family. Such a solitary demise would have been unimaginable to anyone who knew Firestone in the late nineteen-sixties, when she was at the epicenter of the radical-feminist movement, surrounded by some of the same women who, a month after her death, gathered in St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, to pay their respects..."

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Passover Shabbat Bris for baby Zev Zahavy

We welcomed Barak and Miriam's son, Elana and Maya's Brother, Shaiel, Yair, Gavi and Eitan's cousin, Yitz and Julie's nephew, our grandson Zev Mendel Zahavy, at his Passover Shabbat Bris today in Brooklyn, where he was named after my father Zev of blessed memory, who passed away 11 months ago.

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Is Julius Genachowski Jewish?

Yes, Julius Genachowski is a Jew.

Barack Obama named Genachowski as Head of the Federal Communications Commission in 2009. He announced his intention to resign in March, 2013.

Several news reports confirmed that, "Mr. Genachowski, attended yeshiva through high school and studied in yeshiva in Israel before going to Columbia... His parents are immigrants who survived the Holocaust."

Calling him a "Talmud Ace," The Forward reported:

Julius Genachowski was born August 19, 1962, to Adele and Azriel Genachowski. He grew up in Great Neck, a Long Island suburb, in a family that attended the local Young Israel. He attended Orthodox day school at North Shore Hebrew Academy and summered at Camp Raleigh. His high school was the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, which is part of Yeshiva University. Though he says he cut classes to play basketball, he won the Talmud award.

Genachowski spent a year after high school studying in Jerusalem at Yeshivat HaKotel, where he and his peers practiced “learning, discussing, questioning each other, even the possibilities of different points of view,” he recalled. “One of the things that you take away from learning Talmud, learning Gemara, is that two or three brilliant people can look at the same passage and have different interpretations and views, each of which makes a lot of sense, but they’re not all consistent. So I enjoyed that.”

Today, Genachowski attends Sabbath services regularly at Adas Israel, Washington’s largest Conservative synagogue.

He is the cousin of Rabbi Menachem Genack (we assume shortened from Genachowski), rabbinic administrator and CEO of O.U. Kosher, an Orthodox rabbi with liberal political views.

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Is sportscaster Marv Albert Jewish?

Yes, the always dynamic and sometimes controversial Marv Albert is a Jew.

According to Wikipedia, he was born Marvin Philip Aufrichtig on June 12, 1941 to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, where he went to Abraham Lincoln High School. Members of Albert's family owned a grocery store on Brighton Beach Avenue between 3rd and 4th streets known as Aufrichtig's.

Now did you know that Marv moonlights as a psychotherapist?

The piece by New Yorker's Jesse Eisenberg: “Marv Albert Is My Therapist” will make you chuckle.

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Is Lena Dunham Jewish?

Yes, Lena Dunham is a Jew. She is creator and star of the controversial hit HBO series Girls, which "we hear" is edgy and entertaining.

Wikipedia reports, "Dunham's father is Protestant, and according to Dunham, a Mayflower descendant; Dunham's mother is Jewish."

Dunham told the Jewish Journal: “I went to Hebrew school for, like, two weeks, and then didn’t get the part I wanted in the play and quit,” she said. “But I’ve always had a great love of all the holidays that we celebrate together as a family: Passover, Chanukah. I’ve spent a good amount of time in temple, and I definitely feel very culturally Jewish, although that’s the biggest cliché for a Jewish woman to say.”

Dunham dates Jack Antonoff, also Jewish and a former neighbor of ours in Bergen County. JStandard reported in a cover story that, "Solomon Schechter’s Jack Antonoff is a Grammy Award winner!" He won for song of the year and best new artist.

Dunham Instagrammed the cover of the Jewish Standard (3/11/2013) observing that, "Jewish boys are best." Thank you Lena.

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Is Times' Columnist David Brooks Jewish?

First off, is David Brooks Jewish? Yes, David Brooks is a Jew.

Okay then. Midday today there were over 400 comments on David Brooks' Times op-ed praising Orthodox Judaism. Many of those comments on the Times' web site were not quite as laudatory of the kosher lifestyle.

Brooks toured a Kosher supermarket in Brooklyn with a modern Orthodox rabbi and then waxed quite eloquent about the virtues of Orthodox life.

For the people who shop at Pomegranate, the collective covenant with God is the primary reality and obedience to the laws is the primary obligation. They go shopping like the rest of us, but their shopping is minutely governed by an external moral order.

The laws, in this view, make for a decent society. They give structure to everyday life. They infuse everyday acts with spiritual significance. They build community. They regulate desires. They moderate religious zeal, making religion an everyday practical reality.

The laws are gradually internalized through a system of lifelong study, argument and practice. The external laws may seem, at first, like an imposition, but then they become welcome and finally seem like a person’s natural way of being....

Is David Brooks Orthodox? No, Brooks identifies as a Conservative Jew, "in the political and religious sense,” according to a report in 2011 in the Jewish Week:

...While a student, he met Jane Hughes, who would become his wife, and three years after their marriage, she decided to convert to Judaism (and has since changed her name to Sarah Brooks). They had moved to New York by then, and she studied with Rabbi Harlan Wechsler, who became their rabbi. When Brooks was asked at the time by another rabbi about what being Jewish meant to him, he mentioned “Saul Bellow, Woody Allen, cultural things.”

But, as he explains, at his wife’s urgings, “I got pulled back in.” She became more deeply involved in Jewish life, becoming the “mikveh lady” at their shul when they moved to Washington. “She wanted to keep kosher, which we do. She wanted to send our kids to religious school, which we do.” Their three children — who have biblical names — have attended local Jewish day schools.

“It’s now quite a Jewish life,” says Brooks, who recently turned 50. “I’m still not as observant as my wife. I have a deeply ambivalent relationship to a lot of Jewish things.” He says that their social lives are less involved with Washington’s power brokers and journalists, but rather built around weekly Shabbat dinners with friends from their shul and their kids’ schools.

The family belongs to Washington’s large Conservative synagogue, Adas Israel Congregation. Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, senior rabbi, says, “There are people who live worldly and otherwise secular lives who — when hearing my messages of Jewish heritage and connection and meaning — either don’t relate or don’t resonate with it. But that’s never the case with David. He totally gets it, and he lives his life in a way that shows that he values the deepest messages of Judaism.” He says that he often uses Brooks’ columns as “jumping-off points for sermons and teachings because his conclusions so often jive so well with the ultimate conclusions of Judaism.”

Brooks participates in a Jewish study group with Erica Brown, scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, along with other Jewish journalists. Last year, he wrote a column about her and Jewish study, “The Arduous Community,” admiring her conviction, confidence and combination of “extreme empathy and extreme tough-mindedness.” He finds her “endlessly impressive.”
The columnist sees Judaism as a very rational tradition, and he sometimes feels frustrated that “rational dissections, like parsing the minute meanings of textual passages,” are emphasized far more than spiritual experiences. The Ne’eila, or concluding service, of Yom Kippur includes moments he finds profoundly spiritual.

Calling on his interest in the workings of the mind and the unconscious, he muses that Judaism’s powerful laws, customs and rituals — the understructure of life — get embedded in the mind, which explains his own particular journey. “Even though my Jewish life was not consciously willed, I could so easily fall into it.”

“I identify as a Conservative Jew, in the political and religious sense,” he says.

Postscript: Is it surprising that Brooks does not inform his readers that he is an apologist for the religion that he practices? Yes, it is. Stakeholder disclosure is part of the professional responsibility of journalism. Brooks makes it seem like he just discovered that kosher foods exist. That's a mockery of honest writing.

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Was Ludwig Wittgenstein Jewish?

At the Times, philosopher Paul Horwich asks, Was Wittgenstein Right? His answer is that most philosophers vote no, and yet Wittgenstein's reputation is stellar.

We want to know, was Wittgenstein Jewish? Despite his extensive Jewish heritage, according to Jewish law, no, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a not Jew. He was a Catholic.

His mother and maternal grandmother were Catholic. Despite that, Wittgenstein rejected religion, yet at times claimed to be Jewish in spirit and thought. And some have speculated that he went to school with Adolf Hitler.

Wikipedia explains all of this.

Wittgenstein's mother was Leopoldine Kalmus. Her father was Czech Jewish and her mother was Austrian-Slovene Catholic—she was Wittgenstein's maternal grandparent and only non-Jewish grandparent, whose ancestry was Austrian and an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on her maternal side. Ludwig was born at 8:30 pm on 26 April 1889 in the so-called "Wittgenstein Palace" at Alleegasse 16, now the Argentinierstrasse, near the Karlskirche. Karl and Poldi, as she was known, had nine children in all. There were four girls: Hermine, Margaret (Gretl), Helene, and a fourth daughter who died as a baby; and five boys: Johannes (Hans), Kurt, Rudolf (Rudi), Paul—who became a concert pianist despite losing an arm in World War I—and Ludwig, who was the youngest of the family.

The children were baptized as Catholics, and raised in an exceptionally intense environment...

Some speculated that W. went to school with Hitler.

There is much debate about the extent to which Wittgenstein and his siblings, who were of 3/4 Jewish descent, saw themselves as Jews, and the issue has arisen in particular regarding Wittgenstein's schooldays, because Adolf Hitler was at the same school for part of the same time. Laurence Goldstein argues it is "overwhelmingly probable" the boys met each other: that Hitler would have disliked Wittgenstein, a "stammering, precocious, precious, aristocratic upstart ...". Other commentators have dismissed as irresponsible and uninformed any suggestion that Wittgenstein's wealth and unusual personality may have fed Hitler's antisemitism, in part because there is no indication that Hitler would have seen Wittgenstein as Jewish.

Wittgenstein and Hitler were born just six days apart, though Hitler had been held back a year, while Wittgenstein was moved forward by one, so they ended up two grades apart at the Realschule. Monk estimates they were both at the school during the 1904–1905 school year, but says there is no evidence they had anything to do with each other. Several commentators have argued that a school photograph of Hitler may show Wittgenstein in the lower left corner, but Hamann says the photograph stems from 1900 or 1901, before Wittgenstein's time.

In his own writings Wittgenstein frequently referred to himself as Jewish, at times as part of an apparent self-flagellation. For example, while berating himself for being a "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" thinker, he attributed this to his own Jewish sense of identity, writing: "The saint is the only Jewish genius. Even the greatest Jewish thinker is no more than talented. (Myself for instance)." While Wittgenstein would later claim that "[m]y thoughts are 100% Hebraic", as Hans Sluga has argued, if so, "his was a self-doubting Judaism, which had always the possibility of collapsing into a destructive self-hatred (as it did in Weininger's case) but which also held an immense promise of innovation and genius."

In practice, W. rejected religion.

It was while he was at the Realschule that he decided he had lost his faith in God. He nevertheless believed in the importance of the idea of confession. He wrote in his diaries about having made a major confession to his oldest sister, Hermine, while he was at the Realschule; Monk writes that it may have been about his loss of faith. He also discussed it with Gretl, his other sister, who directed him to Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. As a teenager, Wittgenstein adopted Schopenhauer's epistemological idealism. However, after his study of the philosophy of mathematics, he abandoned epistemological idealism for Gottlob Frege's conceptual realism.

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