Remember back in August? We know, it feels so very, very far away given the world we’re in now. But if you concentrate really hard, you may recall that Aly Raisman kicked butt in the Olympics, including winning the silver medal for all-around female gymnastics. You may also remember that one Colton Underwood, a professional football player (formerly of the Oakland Raiders, but he’s currently a free agent, whatever that means), asked her out via video that she watched for the first time during an on-camera interview.

Well, it turns out that the meet-cute worked, and she and Underwood have been an item since shortly after the video. They happened to be in the same city, and went on a date. For dates two and three, Underwood (who’s 24) drove over an hour to see Raisman (22).

As the two grew more seriously involved, they kept their relationship from the media, but they finally went public yesterday at the Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year event in New York. (Raisman looked amazing by the way, in a red scaly dress that made her look like some sort of gymnastics dragon.) Raisman also mentioned that she would be spending the holidays with the Underwoods. Well, if she’s there for Christmas, that still gives her most of Chanukah to bring the boyfriend back to Massachusetts for time with everyone’s favorite Jewish athlete parents (hers, of course).

Can we say that we’re NF-Kvelling? No, OK, sorry. Chag Sameach, Aly and Colton.

Image via Wikipedia

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Aly Raisman is doubtless one of the greatest Jewish athletes competing today, having just taken the silver medal for all-around female gymnastics at the Olympics in a year where all conventional standards ran out the door.

But there are lots of non-athletic reasons to love Raisman. There’s her pride in her Jewish heritage (remember 2012’s Hava Nagilah floor exercise?). There’s her outspokenness— like when she expressed disappointment of the Olympic committee’s decision to not commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Munich Massacre. And of course, there are her parents, who react so viscerally and expressively to her competitive routines that you just want to scoop them up and tell them Aly will be fine.

Because Raisman is a female celebrity, she’s been in the news this week for a public proposal to double date made by Colton Underwood, the tight end for the Oakland Raiders. The other couple on the date would be his teammate Andrew East and East’s wife, Olympic gold medal gymnast Shawn Johnson (who knows Raisman).

In general, this was Not Cool.  It’s really putting someone on the spot with some sort of romantic public proposal, and when you’re a female celebrity, there are all sorts of weird gender dynamics and extra pressure at play. There’s also been creepy speculating about what a great couple they’ll make, when they don’t even live on the same coast, and Raisman won’t be in San Jose until next month.  But Underwood still made the video, and a Yahoo journalist still showed it to Raisman, so here we are.

So let’s see how she did (You can watch the video here).

As the video begins, despite trepidation, Raisman is pleasant, but generally impassive, keeping the upper hand while watching Underwood make his case. At the end of the video date proposal, she looks up.

“They’ve actually told me about him.”

A good start! Raisman nonchalantly reveals that word of young Underwood has reached her (presumably from Johnson, who Raisman thinks has put the journalist up to this antic). She is prepared, but clearly not too giddy that she reached out to him when she first learned of his yearnings.

“He’s very cute,” she continues, as she hands the phone with the video back to the reporter.

Perfect! A compliment that sounds sincere without being overenthusiastic. The reporter asks Raisman if she knows who Underwood is (despite the fact that he said was an NFL player in the video AND that she says she heard about this).

And… the landing.

“Yeah,” she smiles, “Yeah, I’d go on a date with him.”

NAILED IT. Despite being put in a bad situation by a kind of creepy media (this video concludes that Underwood is a “boyfriend match,” despite the fact that they literally have not met yet. Ugh), with grace, Raisman accepts the date proposal and compliments the asker without seeming nervous, or even really impressed by his humble-brags of being a professional athlete (standing in front of the Raiders banner wearing a Raiders sweatshirt was a bit much, dude).

Finally, to prove that she was not just caving to the pressure of the moment, Raisman tweeted, perfectly, at Underwood:

@Colt3FIVE thanks for the sweet video…. looking forward to meeting you :)

— Alexandra Raisman (@Aly_Raisman) August 21, 2016

(His response, finally on her level, was appropriate and polite.)

https://twitter.com/Colt3FIVE/status/767453745294606336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

I know Olympic gymnastic scoring isn’t on a 10 point scale anymore, but I’m not an Olympic Judge. 10/10. Raisman is the coolest. Cucumbers get the silver, and Snoopy wearing sunglasses and a sweater gets the bronze.

Image via Wikipedia

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Move over, Aly Raisman—the gold medalist turned Dancing with the Stars contestant is no longer the Jewish community’s Olympic Golden Girl. Who has dethroned the Hava Nagila-playing gymnast? None other than Ryan Lochte, the grill-wearing, nonsense-spouting swimmer.

Jeah.

At least that’s what Malina Saval, a mother and lifelong swimming enthusiast, argues in a Tablet essay:

And yet, I’m here to argue that it’s time we stop making fun of Lochte, at least long enough to focus on a career achievement that has thus far gone completely unnoticed in the Jewish community. Lochte, who isn’t Jewish but believes God has a “plain” for everyone, may not be a rabbinical scholar, but what he has done—and to a much larger degree than most swimmers in the history of the sport—is spread Talmudic wisdom to swim fans, Jewish and non-Jewish, all over the world.

According to Saval, “The Talmud (Kiddushin 29a) specifies three skills that parents must teach their children: Torah, how to make a living, and how to swim.” By her logic, since Lochte has made swimming cool—not just to watch on TV once every four years but to actually do—and has toured the country encouraged kids to get in the pool, he’s done a Talmudic-level service for Jewish parents.

Read the full essay here and let us know what you think in the comments.

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This past weekend, the American Cup, the only international gymnastics competition held in the United States, took place in Worcester, Massachusetts, near Aly Raisman’s suburban Boston hometown. It was at this very gymnasium in 2010 that a then-unknown Raisman burst onto the senior elite scene by placing second in the all-around competition,

This year, however, the Olympic champion did not compete. She was on hand to sign autographs for young fans and speak to the press about her latest venture—her upcoming stint as a contestant on Dancing With The Stars.

Raisman is following in the footsteps of 2008 Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson, who beat out Giles Marini to win her post-Games season on the show. Raisman even performed with Johnson and the rest of Fierce Five during the DWTS: All Stars finale back in November.

Giving interviews at the American Cup this weekend, the Jewish gymnast said that when she was in Los Angeles to film last season’s DWTS cameo, she made it clear that she wanted to be a contestant on the show. “I made sure that I let everyone know I wanted to do it when I went on the show,” she said. Sounds like she took some of Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean in” advice.

The golden gymnast has even been partnered with Mark Ballas, who co-won the mirror ball trophy with Johnson. After coaching Johnson to the win, Ballas probably knows better than anyone how to break the many bad dancing habits—flicked wrists, anyone?—that gymnasts learn as part of their athletic training. (Gymnasts’ dance training is often laughable. Raisman’s gymnastics dance background will help her as much Baltimore Ravens’ Jacoby Jones’ end zone dances will help him.)

Olympic athletes—from Kristi Yamaguchi to Apollo Anton Ohno and others—have fared very well on the ballroom dancing show, which bodes well for Raisman, who seemed excited to apply her famous work ethic to the dance floor. But this isn’t merely a competition of dance skill and physical prowess. The voting aspect of the show still makes this, at least in part, a popularity contest—not unlike the election for a high school class president.

Though Raisman left the Olympic Games as a bona fide star, she was still overshadowed by Olympic all-around champion Gabby Douglas and the ever meme-able McKayla Maroney, who herself turned down an offer to be on the show in order to get back to the gym and resume training.

Johnson, as gymnastics blogger (there are several of us!) Blythe Lawrence observed, did more than learn the dances; she created an appealing coming-of-age narrative arc during her time on the show. She grew up, literally and otherwise, while she was a contestant on the program. The youngest member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic team, she arrived as a fresh scrubbed, corn fed Iowan girl and morphed into a strutting woman who wore provocative costumes and makeup, not scrunchies and bows.

Raisman will begin her run without that kind of backstory. She will be older—almost 19—and does not have the same Midwestern appeal, hailing instead from a suburb just outside of Boston. Also, Raisman has a reputation for competitive verve and consistency, not adorableness.

Other past contestants have made their improved physical fitness and weight loss a central part of their experience on the program. Obviously, this would be ridiculous for an Olympic athlete who just completed a nationwide gymnastics tour. So the question is—what will Raisman’s storyline be for DWTS?

It may, at least in part, be Jewish. Her bio, after listing her gymnastics accomplishments, reads:

The eldest of four kids in her family, Raisman comes from a Jewish background and famously performed her gold medal-winning floor exercise to the traditional Jewish wedding song, “Hava Nagila,” for which she earned worldwide recognition in the Jewish community.

I have no idea who wrote this—Raisman, her mother, or some ABC intern—but I was taken aback to see one really long sentence (or short paragraph) devoted to her Jewishness. Is this a call to the Jewish community to support her bid to win the mirror ball trophy? And if we Jews are expected to vote for her, we need to know—where does she stand on Israel? AIPAC is asking.

Will the producers milk the Jewish angle and find some jazzed up version of “Hava Nagila” for Raisman to do the quickstep to? It wouldn’t be entirely out of line, given both DWTS and the song’s own reputation for cheesiness. I’m both hoping for and dreading this sort of pandering. (But it would work. It would so work.)

For Raisman’s sake, I hope that this is just an anecdote in her bio and nothing more, a nod to this summer’s frenzied response to her Jewishness, music selection, and gold medals. I wouldn’t want to see her try to incorporate “Hatikvah” or the score from Schindler’s List in her performances.

Her bigger concern, after all, is not the approval of the Jewish community, but of the “gymternet,” which has long maligned (and that’s putting it euphemistically) her for her artistic abilities, something she is aware of. “People would always complain that I wasn’t expressive enough in my floor routine and I want to show people that I can do that,” she told reporters this weekend.

Now’s your chance.

(Art by Margarita Korol)

Previous columns: Time Machines Don’t Work for Women
A Jewish Childhood After Divorce

The post The BallaBuster: Aly Raisman’s New ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Moves appeared first on Jewcy.

2012 was quite a year for viral videos. From the wacky to the touching to the downright graphic, here are the most memorable Jewish contributions:

1. The Meme-Ender

Olympic gold medalist and Jewish golden girl Aly Raisman went Gangnam Style, and it was a little confusing.

2. The School of Rock Remix

Israeli kids cover Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and it is all sorts of awesome.

3. The Dancing Jews

“Is it the look in your eyes, or is it these dancing Jews?” Isaac Lamb asked girlfriend Amy Frankel in this elaborate song-and-dance proposal. Yes, a million times yes.

4. The JDate Proposal

Not to be outdone, Eric LaBarre tangoed his way through an even more elaborate musical proposal for girlfriend Nina Sturtz, who he met on JDate. The highlights:

He’s filmed taking the train to her parents house in White Plains to ask for permission—while she’s in Israel on a Birthright trip. Then he tells his mom and brother, two of her friends, and even her ex-boyfriend, and dances in the street with some of his friends.

5. The Sarah Silverman Proposition

The Jewish comedian got graphic—for a cause. She memorably offered to scissor gazillionaire Sheldon Adelson if he donated the $100 million he pledged to Romney to Obama instead. We all know how that turned out.

(Art by Margarita Korol)

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This summer, the gold medal winning, Hava Nagila prancing Aly Raisman was the most famous Jewish Olympian at the London Games. After a few offhand comments about the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre and support for a moment of silence during the Opening Ceremonies (mind you, Raisman wouldn’t have been in attendance at that event—the gymnastics competition begins the day after the Opening Ceremonies and the gymnasts never attend since it entails standing for hours on end), she was heralded as some sort of tumbling Jewish ambassador who would win over the Semitic masses on the strength of her acrobatics. Or something like that.

But it turns out that Raisman wasn’t the only gymnast on the team with a Jewish affiliation. Gabby Douglas, if not a Jew, seems to be a serious philo-Semite. In Grace, Gold, and Glory: My Leap of Faith, her just-released memoir (co-written by O founding editor Michelle Burford), the 16-year-old gold medalist spends four digital pages (I read it on a Kindle and have no idea how many “real” pages that amounts to) delving into her family’s semi-serious flirtation with Judaism.

That religion was a major theme throughout this short memoir (as it should be, given the age of the subject) is hardly surprising. It was published by Harper Collins’ Christian imprint, Zondervan. And it is certainly not at all shocking to read an exploration of faith from Douglas, who, upon winning the gold in the all-around, sweetly said this to an NBC reporter: “I give all the glory to God. It’s kind of a win-win situation. The glory goes up to Him and the blessings fall down on me.” Douglas and her mother have spoken of their faith in interviews and it’s one of the things that bonded the gymnast to her host family in Iowa.

But the appearance of Judaism comes seemingly out of left field. (Actually, left field is perhaps not far enough. That’s still part of the same stadium, right? I know so little about baseball or any sport involving projectiles.) After an earnest discussion of learning how to press from the floor up into a handstand, a move that becomes significantly more difficult once you develop hips, and with no attempt at transition, Douglas writes, “I used to be Jewish.” The connection between Judaism and handstands eludes even me.

Douglas, however, immediately backs down from that bold claim and states, “Well not exactly Jewish—but my family practiced some of the Jewish traditions.” One can imagine her giggling and flashing that trademark grin as she told this to her biographer. In fact, to suggest both Douglas’ mirth and youth, Burford punctuates several sentences throughout the book with “LOL,” an incongruous fit with the rest of the prose, which suggests a more mature writing style—i.e. the co-author’s.

But teenage-speak aside, what follows is a fully sincere account of Douglas’ family’s practice of Judaism, which began with her mother, Natalie Hawkins, and maternal grandmother, who were both drawn to the religion. Douglas’ grandmother occasionally prepared kosher meals for the family and Hawkins studied Hebrew.

Unlike a New York Times trend story about faux mitzvahs, Douglas’ participation in Judaism does not seem to have been rooted in materialism and consumption. Nor was it just about Jewish culture and matzoh ball soup, though that is certainly part of the appeal. Like a lot of Jewish kids, Douglas rhapsodizes about her mother’s version of Jewish penicillin, stating that it was doled out as a prize for good grades—and, in her case, good scores in competition. However, she also recounts the year she spent going to synagogue, at Temple Israel in Norfolk, VA, and observing the Sabbath, if not strictly because she had gymnastics practice on Saturdays. (Gyms tend to be closed on Sundays.)

The Jewish exploration, however earnest, ends as abruptly as it begins and never resurfaces again. But the discussion of faith ramps up thereafter, especially as the Olympics near and the young gymnast faces competitive pressure and homesickness while training far from her family. Hawkins, Douglas’ siblings, and her host mother dispense with New Testament quotes that inspire the athlete as she trains for the biggest contest in gymnastics.

In the short section about Judaism there is far less discussion of belief, which is due, at least in part, to the fact that she remains Christian and never expresses any desire to convert. And perhaps it’s because Jews don’t speak about God and beliefs in the same way that some Christians do. (Jews often don’t know what other Jews believe. During college, a frum friend of mine told me that you didn’t have to believe in God to be Orthodox, though it certainly helps make all of the rules seem less onerous if you do.) Though Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith appear in most Jewish siddurim at the end of shacharit, they are often treated as an afterthought, not the main event, after the long slog of davening. Unlike her spiritual expression of her Christianity, Douglas’ exploration of Judaism is mostly ritual and action-based.

It’s notably different from our Jewish gymnastics ambassador, Raisman (still sad that this title doesn’t apply to me), whose religion is expressed in political, cultural and ethnic terms, but not ritual ones. (Though maybe it’s because she’s never been asked. I have no way of knowing about the particular Jewish practices of the Raisman family.)

In fact, when interviewed during Hanukkah in 2010 by International Gymnast Magazine, Raisman admitted that she couldn’t embrace all Jewish traditions and rituals as a result of her gymnastics practice:

Raisman said her training schedule means she is unable to share in the traditional family dinner together each night to celebrate Hanukkah…Raisman said she has been sticking to her own healthy meal after evening practice, forgoing any traditional holiday food like potato latkes.

I sincerely hope that she is able to partake this year since she is not currently training for any competitions and because latkes are delicious.

As for Douglas—I wish her many more bowls of her beloved matzo ball soup and hope that she dabbles in Judaism again with the same sincerity she expressed in the book. And as her celebrity increases, perhaps she will. After all, that’s what all the famous folks do.

Previously: Leave Aly Raisman Alone
Olympic Gold Medalist Gabby Douglas’ Favorite Meal is Matzoh Ball Soup
Gold Medalist Aly Raisman Commemorates 1972 Munich Games

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Fresh off their meme-tastic visit to the White House, the fierce five are back with a Gangnam parody video of their own: Gymnam Style

Jewish golden girl Aly Raisman joins fellow U.S. gymnasts Gabby Douglas and Jordyn Wieber in the video, which takes place at the Levine Cancer Institute in North Carolina as well as inside the N.C. State gymnasium, where the cheerleaders got in on the Gangnam action too.

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• Jared Kushner’s little bro (and Ivanka Trump’s brother-in-law) is reportedly dating model Karlie Kloss. [The Cut]

• You know what’s bad for the Jews? That emphasis on education. [Slate]

• Gwyneth Paltrow, the writer. [Telegraph]

• The Forward 50 is out, featuring gymnast Aly Raisman. [Forward]

• “I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence,” said the late, great writer Maurice Sendak. [Believer]

• Slate’s June Thomas brings our attention to the great Homeland riff on Suburgatory. [Slate]

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• An Estonian newspaper ran a mock advertisement for a weight loss pill with images of prisoners in a concentration camp. Fail.

• Google glasses, coming at you from…the DVF fashion show?

• Aly Raisman fell during a gymnastics tour, but she’s okay!

THANK YOU so much for all the kind words & support. I’m so thankful that I am OK, just some bruising on my knees and the rest of my legs!

— Alexandra Raisman (@Aly_Raisman) September 10, 2012

• The Red Hot Chili Peppers rocked Tel Aviv, with a shout out to the band’s original guitarist, the Haifa-born Hillel Slovak.

• Joan Nathan wants you to make better brisket.

• Lea Michele, aka Glee’s Rachel Berry, does not like being compared to Screech:

The post Daily Jewce: Lea Michele is No Screech, Red Hot Chili Peppers Jam in Tel Aviv appeared first on Jewcy.

• Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman totally wants to go on a date with Joe Jonas.

• It really is never a dull moment on Madonna’s world tour: the Material Girl is being sued for supporting gay rights at her concert in Russia.

• Mike D. of the Beastie Boys now designs Brooklyn-based toile wallpaper.

• Jerry Seinfeld has some pretty strong thoughts on lipstick.

• Shia LaBeouf has signed on to have real sex in Lars Von Trier’s new movie, Nymphomaniac.

• Yikes: Jason Alexander stars in Nickelback’s new music video.

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