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Author looks to the Stars ... of David
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BY: LILA HANFT Staff Reporter
“I always feel I have to start with my Jewish guilt,” said journalist Abigail Pogrebin, as she took the stage at a May 14 luncheon presented by the Women’s Division of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.
“I talked with 62 machers, and here I am alone,” she said, referring to the influential Jews she interviewed for her 2005 book Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. Looking into the audience of about 400 people at Landerhaven, Pogrebin quipped, “I’m sure you’re all thinking, ‘Why couldn’t Dustin (Hoffman) drop in?’”
This is the first of many laughs Pogrebin got in the course of her amusing and informative presentation. Her talk proved that while the initial draw of Stars of David might be the big-name celebrities she interviewed (including Dustin Hoffman, Steven Spielberg, Gene Wilder, Joan Rivers, Leonard Nimoy, Kenneth Cole, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alan Dershowitz, Natalie Portman and Mike Wallace), its long-term appeal comes from Pogrebin’s own wit and intelligence. As CJN editor Cynthia Dettelbach wrote when reviewing Stars of David in October 2005, “Refreshingly, Pogrebin is not simply the anonymous journalist dutifully reporting and shaping answers to her questions. Rather, she is an active participant in each of the dialogues, often adding her own concerns, insights and, at times, insecurities to the conversation.”
Pogrebin referred frequently to her own personal stake in the Stars of David project. “I approached the book as a journalist, but I experienced it as a Jew. (The book) pushed me to an examination of my own Jewish life,” she explained.
Although her mother, feminist activist and writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin, had been raised in a Conservative home and given a Hebrew school education and a bat mitzvah (which was unusual for her era), Letty had rejected Judaism when her mother died. Fifteen-year-old Letty found herself excluded from the mourners’ minyan solely on the basis of gender. Although Letty eventually reclaimed her Judaism, Pogrebrin writes in Stars, “by the time she had her ‘rebirth,’ when she was in her late 40s, my Jewishness was already formed in its fragmentation and ignorance.”
As a result of this examination of her own Jewish identity, Pogrebin “became a bat mitzvah three days before turning 40.” Now a mother herself, living in New York City with her husband and their two children, Pogrebin faces constant questions about the best ways to raise her children Jewishly.
This year was the first Pogrebin “felt qualified” to tell the story of the Exodus at her Passover seder, she admitted to the luncheon audience. She bought a “bag of plagues” from the Judaica store for her kids and assigned them parts of the Exodus story to act out. When a 7-year-old cousin wanted a part to play, Pogrebin looked at how she was dressed n in red tights n and said, “You can be the Red Sea.”
“That turned out to be a terrible mistake,” she said, with the timing of a Borscht Belt comic. “When the Red Sea parted, a pair of 7-year-old legs went up in the air, and did this … ,” she said, gesturing with her fingers as the crowd dissolved in laughter.
The question of which celebrities were included in Stars and why came up both in Pogrebin’s talk and the audience questions which followed it.
“I had no master plan,” Pogrebin confessed. “I started with the famous people I had access to n and you could count them on one hand.”
A producer for “60 Minutes” at the time, she began with her boss, Mike Wallace. Pogrebin had gone to elementary school with actor Matthew Broderick, who convinced his wife Sarah Jessica Parker to be interviewed. Leonard Nimoy was in a Torah study group with her parents, and she also knew Gloria Steinem thanks to her mother, because the two women founded Ms. magazine together in the early 1970s.
Pogrebin said she’s often asked why she didn’t interview more Jewishly observant public figures. Her frank answer is that she expected the people she interviewed to be more observant than they turned out to be. However, after witnessing “these people wrestling with these questions about Judaism,” she feels it’s inaccurate to say that those who aren’t observant or have intermarried “are not authentic Jews.” On the contrary, every interviewee expressed “unapologetic pride in being Jewish.”
During the question period, Pogrebin was asked which celebrities declined to participate in the project. Laughing, she replied, “To my mind, that’s the quintessential Jewish question n ‘Who rejected you?’”
lhanft@cjn.org
A few of Abigail Pogrebin’s favorite celebrity responses:
• “Steven Spielberg told me that his wife (Kate Capshaw) ‘chose to do a full conversion before we were married, and she married me as a Jew.’ He said that, more than anything else, more than making ‘Schindler’s List’ brought him back to Judaism.”
• “Jason Alexander said that his parents made him go to Hebrew School against his will because ‘there are people in the world who will kill you for being a Jew n and you have to know what you’re dying for.’”
• Dustin Hoffman told Pogrebin that although the character of Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate” was supposed to be “a thoroughbred WASP,” director Mike Nichols wanted Hoffman to audition. Hoffman described spending “three hours in the makeup chair” while Nichols said things like “What can we do about his nose?”
• Playwright Tony Kushner said that “being Jewish was invaluable preparation for being gay.”
“I talked with 62 machers, and here I am alone,” she said, referring to the influential Jews she interviewed for her 2005 book Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. Looking into the audience of about 400 people at Landerhaven, Pogrebin quipped, “I’m sure you’re all thinking, ‘Why couldn’t Dustin (Hoffman) drop in?’”
This is the first of many laughs Pogrebin got in the course of her amusing and informative presentation. Her talk proved that while the initial draw of Stars of David might be the big-name celebrities she interviewed (including Dustin Hoffman, Steven Spielberg, Gene Wilder, Joan Rivers, Leonard Nimoy, Kenneth Cole, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alan Dershowitz, Natalie Portman and Mike Wallace), its long-term appeal comes from Pogrebin’s own wit and intelligence. As CJN editor Cynthia Dettelbach wrote when reviewing Stars of David in October 2005, “Refreshingly, Pogrebin is not simply the anonymous journalist dutifully reporting and shaping answers to her questions. Rather, she is an active participant in each of the dialogues, often adding her own concerns, insights and, at times, insecurities to the conversation.”
Pogrebin referred frequently to her own personal stake in the Stars of David project. “I approached the book as a journalist, but I experienced it as a Jew. (The book) pushed me to an examination of my own Jewish life,” she explained.
Although her mother, feminist activist and writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin, had been raised in a Conservative home and given a Hebrew school education and a bat mitzvah (which was unusual for her era), Letty had rejected Judaism when her mother died. Fifteen-year-old Letty found herself excluded from the mourners’ minyan solely on the basis of gender. Although Letty eventually reclaimed her Judaism, Pogrebrin writes in Stars, “by the time she had her ‘rebirth,’ when she was in her late 40s, my Jewishness was already formed in its fragmentation and ignorance.”
As a result of this examination of her own Jewish identity, Pogrebin “became a bat mitzvah three days before turning 40.” Now a mother herself, living in New York City with her husband and their two children, Pogrebin faces constant questions about the best ways to raise her children Jewishly.
This year was the first Pogrebin “felt qualified” to tell the story of the Exodus at her Passover seder, she admitted to the luncheon audience. She bought a “bag of plagues” from the Judaica store for her kids and assigned them parts of the Exodus story to act out. When a 7-year-old cousin wanted a part to play, Pogrebin looked at how she was dressed n in red tights n and said, “You can be the Red Sea.”
“That turned out to be a terrible mistake,” she said, with the timing of a Borscht Belt comic. “When the Red Sea parted, a pair of 7-year-old legs went up in the air, and did this … ,” she said, gesturing with her fingers as the crowd dissolved in laughter.
The question of which celebrities were included in Stars and why came up both in Pogrebin’s talk and the audience questions which followed it.
“I had no master plan,” Pogrebin confessed. “I started with the famous people I had access to n and you could count them on one hand.”
A producer for “60 Minutes” at the time, she began with her boss, Mike Wallace. Pogrebin had gone to elementary school with actor Matthew Broderick, who convinced his wife Sarah Jessica Parker to be interviewed. Leonard Nimoy was in a Torah study group with her parents, and she also knew Gloria Steinem thanks to her mother, because the two women founded Ms. magazine together in the early 1970s.
Pogrebin said she’s often asked why she didn’t interview more Jewishly observant public figures. Her frank answer is that she expected the people she interviewed to be more observant than they turned out to be. However, after witnessing “these people wrestling with these questions about Judaism,” she feels it’s inaccurate to say that those who aren’t observant or have intermarried “are not authentic Jews.” On the contrary, every interviewee expressed “unapologetic pride in being Jewish.”
During the question period, Pogrebin was asked which celebrities declined to participate in the project. Laughing, she replied, “To my mind, that’s the quintessential Jewish question n ‘Who rejected you?’”
lhanft@cjn.org
A few of Abigail Pogrebin’s favorite celebrity responses:
• “Steven Spielberg told me that his wife (Kate Capshaw) ‘chose to do a full conversion before we were married, and she married me as a Jew.’ He said that, more than anything else, more than making ‘Schindler’s List’ brought him back to Judaism.”
• “Jason Alexander said that his parents made him go to Hebrew School against his will because ‘there are people in the world who will kill you for being a Jew n and you have to know what you’re dying for.’”
• Dustin Hoffman told Pogrebin that although the character of Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate” was supposed to be “a thoroughbred WASP,” director Mike Nichols wanted Hoffman to audition. Hoffman described spending “three hours in the makeup chair” while Nichols said things like “What can we do about his nose?”
• Playwright Tony Kushner said that “being Jewish was invaluable preparation for being gay.”
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