For Jews born in September and early October, birthdays and High Holidays go hand-in-hand. Checking the calendar to see if Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur falls your birthday becomes par for the course. Birthdays might be spent praying or eating apples dipped in honey—or fasting—and festivities are often postponed.

I’m a September baby myself, but Rosh Hashanah has only fallen on my birthday twice. The first occurrence—and I had to look this up—was in 1988, when I turned two. I can’t say I remember it, but I do remember being wished a happy birthday and Shana Tova the second time, in 1999, on my thirteenth birthday. It was a unique day at synagogue; a blend of birthday wishes and Rosh Hashanah ritual. I spent plenty of time with friends during services (we celebrated my bat mitzvah in October).

Philip Wolgin, who lives in Washington, D.C., will be celebrating his birthday as Rosh Hashanah begins on Wednesday. For him, this is nothing new. “My birthday is September 24, so it almost always falls during the chagim,” he wrote in an email. “I’ve never been the biggest birthday person, particularly since mine is so late in the year, pretty much everyone in my class had already had their birthday by the time mine rolled around. Honestly, I don’t mind it.”

Even though Wolgin’s used to having a High-Holy-Birth-Day, one year really stands out, and it was a big one: “My 21st birthday was erev Yom Kippur, so of course that put a bit of a damper in the plans!”

New Yorker Rebecca Eskreis has also had a birthday fall on Yom Kippur. In fact, she has had several. “I’ve been ‘blessed’ with having my birthday, October 9, fall on at least four or five Yom Kippurs (either erev, or the actual holiday),” she explained in an email.

Having experienced a birthday on both “days”of Yom Kippur (Jewish holidays run from sundown to sundown, spanning two days on the calendar), Eskreis, who lives in New York, has come down in favor of a birthday on the day of Yom Kippur, as opposed to the eve. “It’s actually better because after fasting the whole day you can really pig out and have lots of cake without feeling guilty!” she wrote.

While adulthood has led Eskreis to an appreciation of the birthday cake/break-fast correlation, as a kid, she used to view the day differently: “It meant I also got to have the day off from school,” she explained. It’s fair to say there are adults out there who approach the day with similar levels of excitement, even if it’s not their birthday.

A birthday on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur can also mean a chance to spend time with family and friends. Last year, Lindsey Schnitt was delighted when Rosh Hashanah fell unusually early, in the first week of September, coinciding with her birthday. “For me, I am such a big birthday person, but I love being with my family, and I also love this time of year being at Temple,” she said.

“I think I went into services being excited that it was my birthday, not really making the day about me, but it was very special to be alongside people who have known me my entire life,” she explained.

Not everyone likes sharing a birthday with the High Holidays. Tiffany Nassimi’s birthday falls during Rosh Hashanah this year. “You can never celebrate on your birthday,” she wrote in a Facebook message. As for the social media perks of a birthday, “no one ever ends up writing on your [Facebook] wall.” She pointed out that birthday or no birthday, the timing of the High Holidays has always been awkward, given that they fall at the very beginning of the school year. This year, her friends want to take her out after the holiday, “but we’ll see.”

In the end, how you feel about your birthday falling on a High Holiday is pretty much moot point—it’s part of the reality of being a fall baby. Eskreis summed up the experience well: “I don’t look forward to having my birthday fall on [a holiday], but I’ve also learned to make the best of it.” This year at least, she has a reprieve from a Yom Kippur birthday.

As for me: I’m looking forward to my next Rosh Hashanah birthday, but I just checked the calendar and I’ll have to wait until 2018. Until then, honey birthday cake for the other September babies.

(Image: Shutterstock)

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Harvey Milk, the gay activist and pioneering politician who was killed just 11 months into his term on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, would have turned 84 today. To honor his legacy, the United States Postal Service has released a 49 cent “Forever” stamp designed by Antonia Alcalá (you can buy it here).

Milk was born in Woodmere, New York, to a family of Lithuanian Jewish descent. (His grandfather Morris Milk helped found the first synagogue in their neighborhood.) He worked in finance in New York City for many years, and though he had romantic relationships and was at ease with his sexuality, he wasn’t publicly out or active in the gay community until he moved to San Francisco in his early 40s.

In the Castro, the gay neighborhood of the city, he opened a camera store with his partner Scott Smith and became a fixture in the local community—endearing himself to many, antagonizing others (he was seen as a political upstart), and ultimately becoming known as the unofficial “Mayor of Castro Street.” He was a naturally gifted organizer and politician, forming alliances and brokering deals with teamsters, firefighters, construction workers, and small business owners.

In 1978, Milk made history as the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, but he was tragically murdered on November 27 by political rival Dan White (Mayor George Moscone was also killed). His legacy, however, lives on: in film, opera, education, and through the work of the Harvey Milk Foundation.

Milk was a vociferous advocate of being publicly gay at a time when doing so often meant being socially ostracized. His chutzpah gave others the courage to come out, which in turn helped to break down the stigma associated with homosexuality. In 1978, he said:

“I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they’ll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects … I hope that every professional gay will say ‘enough’, come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help.”

Amen!

Celebrate Milk’s life by watching the terrific Oscar-winning documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk:

http://youtu.be/4HfrAyS65pI

Image: United States Postal Service

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The great writer, feminist, food-lover, and filmmaker Nora Ephron would have turned 74 today—and I can think of no better way to honor her legacy than by spending half an hour clicking through YouTube clips of her movies and interviews while eating cookies and avoiding paperwork. (Ephron was a self-confessed procrastinator, after all.)

There are so many gems worth watching (this, this, and of course, THIS), but her 1996 commencement address at Wellesley College is truly terrific. What’s impressive—and a little disheartening—is how timely the speech is almost 20 years later. Ephron’s vociferous condemnation of workplace sexism, pay disparity, and the sexualization of women in Hollywood could be delivered word-for-word today (minus the Elizabeth Dole/O.J. Simpson references):

What I’m saying is, don’t delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the earth. Don’t let the New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you—there’s still a glass ceiling. Don’t let the number of women in the work force trick you—there are still lots of magazines devoted almost exclusively to making perfect casseroles and turning various things into tents.

Don’t underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don’t take it personally, but listen hard to what’s going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Understand: Every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you. Underneath almost all those attacks are the words: Get back, get back to where you once belonged. When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn’t serious about her career, that is an attack on you. The acquittal of O.J. Simpson is an attack on you. Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you—whether or not you believe in abortion. The fact that Clarence Thomas is sitting on the Supreme Court today is an attack on you.

Bleak stuff, huh? But it’s also warm and witty and wise, and ends on an optimistic note: “Did I say it was hard? Yes, but let me say it again so that none of you can ever say the words, nobody said it was so hard. But it’s also incredibly interesting. You are so lucky to have that life as an option.”

Listen to the whole address here:

Image: s_bukley / Shutterstock.com

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Harry Houdini, the master of escape, had Jewish beginnings: he was born Erik Weisz on March 24, 1874, to Rabbi Mayer Sámuel Weisz and Cecília Weisz of Budapest. The family emigrated to the United States in 1878, when his father was hired as the rabbi of Appleton Zion Reform Jewish Congregation in Appleton, Wisconsin. After a few years, Rabbi Weisz lost his job and the family relocated to New York City.

Houdini had an entrepreneurial, athletic, daring spirit from a young age. He ran cross-country and pursued magic (quite unsuccessfully at first), and later escape artistry, rising to become America’s most famous and influential magician. But for someone who built a career on illusion, and who actively cultivated his own mythology (he once told a reporter “the greatest escape I ever made was when I left Appleton, Wisconsin”), he had a sharp, rational, no-nonsense intellect. As Rachel Shteir wrote in Tablet Magazine in 2010:

Houdini found a satisfying second act: demystifying Spiritualism, a cult many Americans turned to after losing their loved ones in World War I. From being an escape artist, Houdini became an exposer of psychics whom he considered charlatans because they used trickery to pretend to commune with the dead—as opposed to merely pretending to escape. This was not just Houdini’s competitive spirit. What he did was entertainment. Spiritualism was magic in supernatural clothing.

In 1922, Arthur Conan Doyle invited his old friend to a séance hosted by his second wife, who supposedly made contact with Houdini’s beloved late mother, Cecilia. While communicating with Cecilia, Lady Doyle drew a cross; then, she transcribed an emotional letter to Houdini. Instead of convincing Houdini, the séance outraged him. He would later point out in public the unlikeliness of his mother, a Jew and a rabbi’s wife, drawing a cross—or communicating in English since she never spoke it in real life. Conan Doyle explained that his wife drew a cross whenever she channeled any spirit and that in the beyond, “Hebrew” was translated into English. The fact that Houdini’s mother spoke not Hebrew but German ended the men’s friendship.

Houdini died tragically at the age of 52, after injuries sustained by an ill-timed blow to his abdomen. But his roster of achievements was extensive: illusionist, aviator, film star, producer, author of several books about magic. He was the proto-21st century celebrity, adept at cultivating his brand across multiple platforms. (Imagine what he would have done with Instagram!) In many ways, notes Jon Reiss, Houdini “represents an archetype not only of the hardworking immigrant, but of the hard working immigrant Jew. Houdini, like so many Jews who came after him and rose to fame, embodied the notion of the underdog, and dedicated himself to his craft.”

Here he is performing a rope escape in under 30 seconds. Almost 100 years later, it’s still mesmerizing:

(Image: Harry Houdini with his mother and his wife, Bess, in 1907. Credit: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections)

Related: Houdini Reappears At The Jewish Museum

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Carl Reiner—comedy legend, avid tweeter, and Hillary Clinton supporter—turns 92 today.

Reiner was born in the Bronx in 1922 to Irving and Bessie, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Austria, respectively. He stumbled into the entertainment industry by accident when his brother told him about a free drama workshop being put on by the Works Progress Administration. (Thank you, Roosevelt!) Originally Reiner aspired to become a serious dramatic actor, but he switched to comedy during WWII, when he worked as an entertainer in the U.S. army. And the rest, as we all know, is history—he went on to star in Your Show of Shows, create The Dick Van Dyke Show, and play the straight man, brilliantly, to Mel Brooks’ 2000 Year Old Man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGTPPrkgovw

In 1943, Reiner married Estelle Lebost, a visual artist (and later, cabaret singer). They had three children and were dedicated to each other until Estelle’s death in 2008. (Fun fact: director son Rob cast Estelle in When Harry Met Sally, where she famously delivered the “I’ll have what she’s having” line.)

Last year, in an interview with Moment Magazine, Reiner mused on the connection between Jews and comedy:

I think all people who are victims of prejudice, downtrodden people, have two things to do: They can moan or they can make fun, they can lift their spirits by finding the humor in the horror, and the Jews have been able to do it since Moses’ time. Some of the greatest comedians of all time were black: Burt Williams—he was a Broadway star in the Follies—Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby and, of course, Chris Rock.

On God, he had this to say:

I became an atheist after Hitler came. I said, what is this? If there was a God, would he not be hearing 18 million people, 16 million Jews, or 20 million other people, saying, “Please God, don’t do this, make him stop?” God was so busy doing what? Striping zebras or fixing the long necks of giraffes?

And, happily, his friendship with Mel Brooks endures. They have dinner together every night, where they kvetch about their physical ailments and talk about what’s good on TV (they’re both fans of  Downton Abbey). Says Reiner of Brooks, “I’m so in awe of his brain that I flatter him within an inch of his life. And I mean it. There’s nobody like him.”

Until 120, boys.

p.s. Bonus clip! Carl Reiner tells William Shatner about his father’s insane but ingenious do-it-yourself dentistry. Amazing anecdote.

Related: The Last Of The Old Jewish Comedians: An Interview With Drew Friedman
Watch the New Mel Brooks Documentary Online

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Grammy Award winner and South African civil rights activist Miriam Makeba, also known as “Mama Africa,” would have turned 82 today. Makeba’s passport was revoked in 1960 after she appeared in the anti-apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa, and she didn’t return to her home country until 1990, following Nelson Mandela’s release from Robben Island.

In honor of Makeba’s remarkable life, have a listen to her version of the Israeli classic “Erev Shel Shoshanim (Evening of Roses)” from her 1965 album, The Magic of Makeba:

Plus, bonus track! A fabulous jazzy cover of “Sunrise, Sunset”:

Magical indeed.

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