If you ever suspected that Jews run Hollywood, have no fear. If they did, the Hebrew on American TV would actually make sense. Two TV shows - Episodes and True Blood - recently had Hebrew-related mishaps. The first show, which stars
Matt LeBlanc, featured a Jewish funeral in one episode, where the Hebrew words on the tombstone were written backwards – from left to right, instead of from right to left. Even worse than that, when reversed, the letters read: "Beloved husband and father, pickled at great expense." After some investigation, Israeli blogger
Shahar Golan determined that "
pickled at great expense" in Hebrew is the response Google gives when asked to translate "dearly missed."
Meanwhile, a new, Lilith-worshipping
vampire cult was introduced on
True Blood, with
Law & Order's
Christopher Meloni portraying a lawyer by day, vampire high-priest by night, dripping blood into the mouths of his followers and chanting about
abba v'ima. Tablet Magazine slammed the show for playing into
blood libel stereotypes by combining the ceremony with Hebrew. Meanwhile, other bloggers
brought Tablet to task, pointing out that Meloni spoke Aramaic. Either way, it's creepy.
For those looking for a show with Jewish characters that seem more accurate, there's always HBO's
Girls, which ended its first season last week. Shoshanna (
Zosia Mamet), one of the show's four main characters, has quickly grown into
Girls' beloved source of comic relief, leading The Huffington Post to create a "Sh*t Shoshanna Says"
video.
If we're already on the topic of hilarious Jewish women in New York, the Schmooze would be remiss not to mention
Norah Ephron, who
passed away on Wednesday at 71. Ephron is best known for writing classic romantic comedies like
When Harry Met Sally and
Sleepless in Seattle, but was also a popular essayist, whose 2006 book
I Feel Bad About My Neck was a bestseller.
New York listed the
top-five scenes from Ephron's movies. Here's one of them:
In other news,
Matisyahu released a music video for "Sunshine," set in Israel and featuring his controversial bleach-blonde hairdo. The formerly-hassidic reggae star hangs out with a little girl and dances in the desert:
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