Today, as you must know, is an important Australian national holiday: The birthday of Olivia Newton-John, OBE. But while everyone knows her for hits like “Physical,” and has seen her in the likes of Grease and Xanadu (bless her), did you also know that she has Jewish heritage?

She’s not Jewish by matrilineal descent, upbringing, or belief, though she is “Jewish enough” for Israel’s Law of Return. Not only does she have a Jewish grandparent, but he was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist! Max Born, Newton-John’s maternal grandfather, was a German Jew who lost his professorship when the Nazis came to power, despite the fact that he had converted to Lutheranism decades prior (Nazis don’t care about that sort of thing).

Born eventually settled in England (fun fact: ONJ was born there, and moved to Australia at age six), and was awarded the Nobel in 1954 for “fundamental research in Quantum Mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function” (whatever that means).

Born’s wife, Newton-John’s grandmother Hedwig (also known as Heidi) also had a prominent Jewish father, the jurist Victor Ehrenberg. So if you’re keeping score, that’s three Jewish great-grandparents for Sandy from Grease, all on her mother’s side.

And so, happy 69th birthday Ms. Newton-John. Who knows where you got your talent, since your Jewish and non-Jewish ancestors alike seem to primarily be academics, but we are very grateful that you did.

Obviously we need to conclude with this:

Image via Wikimedia

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https://twitter.com/ericandre/status/831627633309802496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Since he’s known for comedy shenanigans, (like freaking out in a McDonald’s dressed as Ronald the clown,) Andre has had to insist, multiple times, that this relationship is 100% real. Better safe than sorry— we wouldn’t want a repeat of the Jon Lovitz fiasco. Andre even had to tweet at Chance the Rapper, of all people, that it’s #notaprank.

Between this and her dyed-in-the-wool support for Bernie Sanders, Dawson may have a thing for Jewish guys (though she is a BDS supporter, so the couple may not be planning a trip to Israel any time soon).

If you want to see Andre’s latest comedy work, he’s been posting online a spinoff of sorts of his self-titled TV Show interviewing social media celebs on a super uncomfortable show he calls “Hot Babes of Instagram.” Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCaaUhdTXW8

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Listen, we all need good news. And that can be rather hard to come by these days, especially if you’re, oh, I don’t know, a journalist who covers Jewish topics, and for every hopeful story about Jewish-Muslim solidarity you have to read ten about the White House dabbling in softcore Holocaust denial.

It’s not that Jewcy hasn’t been posting political articles (like this one, and this one, and this one). But we needed a break today.

And, like usual, Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter has perfect timing with an important announcement. The Queen took to Instagram today to let us know that Blue Ivy is about to be a big sister— twice:

We would like to share our love and happiness. We have been blessed two times over. We are incredibly grateful that our family will be growing by two, and we thank you for your well wishes. – The Carters

Blessed, indeed. Just look at that photo. Beatific.

Of course, we already knew that Beyoncé is a matriarch of Biblical proportions, and this clinches it. To quote Genesis 25:23 (we admit somewhat out of context):

“Two nations are in thy womb.”

We do hope they get along better than Jacob and Esau, and that Beyoncé has an easier pregnancy than Rivkah did. But Rivkah is a fascinating figure— arguably the most proactive, badass of the Biblical matriarchs. If Bey were to emulate anyone in Genesis, it would be her. After all, both are devoted wives, mothers, women who know their own mind, holders of the record for most Grammy nominations by a female artist, etc.

Anyway, a tip for Jews wishing to congratulate Queen Bey— while few would take offense at being wished “Mazel Tov,” the proper response to news that someone is pregnant is “B’Sha’a Tovah.” It literally means, “At a good hour.” As in, let’s not tempt fate by congratulating good fortune preemptively, and may the baby (babies!!) come at the right time.

If this article still isn’t Jewish enough for you, we shall now express our feelings via gifs of Jewish actor Winona Ryder from her recent amazing facial expression experience:

B’Sha’a Tovah, Bey.

Image via Instagram. Gifs via Giphy and Buzzfeed.

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You can add Andrew Garfield to the list of Jews who are totally cool with Mel Gibson. Not only is he starring in Gibson’s new film Hacksaw Ridge, but he told Jimmy Kimmel that he had no issues with the director who has a history of anti-Semitism.

Kimmel got right to it:

“Were you worried about working with him?” He asked. “You’re Jewish, right?”

“I am, yeah. I’m proud,” replied Garfield, cementing several Jewish teenage girls’ decision to stick pictures of him on their bedroom walls.

Garfield insisted that he was nothing but excited to work with Gibson, explaining that he’s glad he was able to get to know him “without all the noise and the nonsense getting in the way.”

Hacksaw Ridge is a biopic about a conscientious objector in World War II who served in the Battle of Okinawa anyway, without a weapon, rescuing fellow soldiers. It’s really Christian, both explicitly with its Seventh Day Adventist hero, but also its themes of pacifism and redemption. Apparently, the Christian message laid on thick, though the film has garnered mostly positive reviews. We here at Jewcy reserve our judgment having not seen it, but let our skepticism be noted.

You can watch Garfield talk to Kimmel about Gibson (and then go on to make general small talk) below:

Image: Andrew Garfield in Hacksaw Ridge. Via IM GLOBAL.

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The Maroon 5 frontman, Voice judge, and Jewish heartthrob is now at age 37 also officially a Hot Dad. This week, on September 21st, his wife of two years, Behati Prinsloo, 27, gave birth to a baby girl. The little girl is named Dusty Rose Levine, which sounds like a great lipstick color, but is also a pretty good way to describe being born on the last official day of summer. Or, is it perhaps a lighter version of MAROON??

Levine was so ready. “You’re born to be a parent, that’s what we’re here for, really,”he told Entertainment Tonight in April. “All the other shit is great, but it’s not what we’re here for.”

Will young Dusty be raised Jewish? Likely not, given her father’s rejection of formal religious practice and her mother not being Jewish at all. Will her father sing her to sleep at night with “She Will Be Loved?” We can only assume so.

Mazel tov to the whole Levine clan on the bundle of joy.

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Barbra Streisand spoke to the New York Times this weekend, and while the whole piece is magic, it includes this important factoid:

“It’s Streisand, as in ‘sand on the beach,’ not ‘Strize-and,’ a mispronunciation that has plagued her at least since she first appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the early 1960s.”

WHAT? Oh God. I’ve been saying it wrong my entire life. So let’s take stock of some other Jewish celebrities, and see how we should pronounce their names:

Idina Menzel: Menzel actually changed the spelling of her last name (from Mentzel) so that people would pronounce it correctly (MenZEL), but the tricky part is her first name: EYE-deena? UH-deena? Well, in a clip with her ex-husband Taye Diggs, he seems to address her as “ID-deena,” backing up all of the intense fan message boards I found while researching this piece (and they say “UH-deena” is fine too).

(Also, insert Adele Dazeem joke here.)

Jeff Goldblum: I recall this clip:

But, for real, it’s pronounced “Goldbloom.”

Ralph Lauren: Sure, his birth name is actually Ralph Lifshitz, but all the same, it’s LOR-en. Not Lor-EN.

Jake (and Maggie!) Gyllenhaal: Dude, just give up with this one:

But really, the G is said softly, like a J.

Elie Wiesel: Elie is said “EL-ee.” Wiesel is said “Vee-ZEL” (But hey, if you want to pronounce the W the American way, just call it a transliteration. It’s a minor sin.)

Leonard Bernstein: The last syllable is said “Stine” (like Jewish horror-writer R. L.). Ditto for Oscar Hammerstein (I or II).

Gal Gadot: She’s not French, for HaShem’s sake, and even Wikipedia will tell you: the vowels in “Gal” and “Gad” are like the A in “father.” The O is in between an English short and long O: Listen to her say her own name here.

Most of all, pronounce the T. DO IT FOR WONDER WOMAN.

Noam Chomsky: Most Jews would say that Noam is two syllables: No-OM (second syllable rhymes with calm). Others (like Wikipedia) say it’s one, like “Gnome.” Chomsky himself says it thusly. Is it one syllable or two? Let’s try another example.

The jury may be out on this one. But he doesn’t seem to be correcting people either way.

(Finally, I’m no celebrity, but let me use this opportunity to publish online that the first A in Gabriela is like the A in “father,” and that Geselowitz is said like there’s an animal in it: “Gazelle-o-witz.”)

And now, go forth and be a pedant when someone mispronounces any of these names!

Image via Flickr

The post Have You Been Pronouncing These Jewish Celeb Names Wrong? appeared first on Jewcy.

Actor and SNL-alum Kristen Wiig has a new flame, and she’s displaying great taste by having a Jewish boyfriend.

The upcoming star of the Ghostbusters reboot was spotted in Hawaii with one Avi Rothman, and apparently they’ve been together for some months now.

What do we know about Avi Rothman? The mainstream media has reported precious little, but he is a comedian, like Wiig. Like her, he got his start with the famous comedy group the Groundlings, and he’s a writer, producer, director, you name it.

However, we here at Jewcy were unsatisfied with his IMDB page, and kept searching. Baruch HaShem, we found the most Jewish coverage of him possible from a few years back: A single’s profile.

Rothman’s friend and comedic partner Seth Menachem wrote a column for the LA Jewish Journal, entitled “My Single Peeps,” in which he introduced eligible friends. He wrote the stories; Rothman took photos of the subjects. For one piece, Menachem turned the tables, and interviewed Rothman.

“Avi’s a good-looking guy. He’s funny. He’s tall. He attracts women easily,” wrote Menachem. “Of course, he has some flaws. He’s shy, so if he sees a girl he’s interested in, he’s terrible at approaching her… most of us just want him to start dating more than usual, so whatever you write and whatever you look like, we’ll probably give him the green light.”

Menachem continued:

“Despite being a good-looking actor in Hollywood, Avi’s a loyal boyfriend. You wouldn’t have to worry about him fooling around with other women. He’s loyal, and he wants to commit to the right girl.

“He’s extremely sensitive — a double-edged character trait, which makes him both susceptible to getting his feelings hurt easily and also intuitive enough to pick up on the feelings of others.”

Although the column ends with a contact if Avi peaks your interest, apparently it didn’t work well enough that he wasn’t available for Wiig.  We wish them much mazel, and perhaps a boost in Rothman’s career.

Much of his old work can be found online, and we leave you with this old skit of Rothman and Menachem:

The post Kristen Wiig is Dating a Member of the Tribe! appeared first on Jewcy.

My Zeyde, may he rest in peace, always used to say, “There’s no such thing as a big tip, only a fair tip.”

In that case, Amy Schumer is an extremely fair tipper. The actor and comedian took a group of friends, including boyfriend Ben Hanisch, to see Hamilton on Broadway Saturday night, and like a Jenny from the Block, she remembered back to her bartending days as she struggled to make it in show business.

The bar tab ran $77 (which was literally four drinks because theater prices are ridiculous), but Schumer tipped a clean $1000, which bartender Sara Laursen (an aspiring actor herself) told reporters was “incredibly generous.”

One grand: That’s one hundred Hamiltons, and almost enough for one ticket to the hit show (alright, it’s not that expensive).

Could the Inside Amy Schumer star be fomenting a Socialist revolution? Laursen split her windfall with the other bartenders, so the distribution of wealth continues.

In response to the positive press, Schumer was perfect, and tweeted:

This is really embarrassing but I’ve fallen on hard times and I need that money back

— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) March 21, 2016

Image credit: Mario Santor for Wikimedia Commons

The post Amy Schumer Lives Out the Rich-Person-Tipping-Fantasy of Which We Only Dream appeared first on Jewcy.

Shia LaBeouf is engaged to his longtime girlfriend, actor and model Mia Goth, reports say.

Actor and performance artist LaBeouf, 29, first met Goth in 2012 when they performed together in the film Nymphomaniac: Vol. II. Though their relationship has been on and off, engagement rumors have been percolating for awhile.

Will the wedding be Jewish? Not likely. Goth isn’t Jewish, and while LaBeouf was raised Jewish in an interfaith family, in 2014 he told Interview Magazine that he “found God” and “became a Christian man” while filming the movie Fury.

Then again, anything LaBeouf does in the public eye should be taken with a grain of salt. His recent projects have included spending 24 hours in an elevator and chatting with whoever came in, inviting fans to sit with him Marina Abromović style where they could flatter or insult him, and sitting in a movie theater open to the public while all the films of his career played in a marathon. So he gets a kick out of blending his role as celebrity and weirdness, and there are no signs that professed religion or romantic relationships are off limits.

In any case, any Shia LeBeouf news should be an excuse to watch the greatest Shia media of all time, which he did not even create:

The post Shia LaBeouf is Engaged to Mia Goth, No Word If It’s Performance Art appeared first on Jewcy.

A big mazal tov to One Direction star Harry Styles, who turns 21 today. With 23.5 million Twitter followers, Taylor Swift’s most famous ex is bigger than Jesus, Pope Francis, McDonald’s, and the Beatles combined. He’s also an enthusiastic philo-Semite—which, I know, is a terribly old-fashioned word—but truly the only way to describe this boy-band goy who just really, really, really loves Jews.

Styles routinely tweets about Jewish holidays, and has his sister’s name tattooed on his arm (correctly!) in Hebrew. In 2013, dad Des had to step in and clarify that young Harry was, alas, “0% Jewish.” But that didn’t stop London’s Jewish Chronicle from naming Styles one of the 100 most influential figures shaping Jewish life in the U.K. in 2014. Scoff you may, but this is a bloke who can get 148,000 retweets for the statement, “I had gloves on all day.” (Look, nobody said it had to be a profound influence.)

And so! In honor of Styles reaching the legal drinking age in the U.S., we proudly present his nine most philo-Semitic Twitter moments of all time. Biz a hundert un tsvantsik yor, Harry!

It’s Yom Kippur tonight so just wanted to wish my Jewish followers well over their fast. Gemar Tov!!

— Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) October 7, 2011

Happy purim everybody! Enjoy your seudah today and boo loudly at hamann during the megillah!! .x — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) February 24, 2013

Looking forward to seder night. Always get a bit nervous when I have to sing ma'nish ta'na. But do love a shmorreh matzah. Happy pesach x

— Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) March 25, 2013

A special shout out for Jewish Brit Ben Winston, who directs One Direction’s music videos:

Congratulations to @benwinston for his VMA last night.. I’m filled with nachas. Mazeltov!

— Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) August 26, 2013

Love the Doughnuts and Latkes. Just never understood the point of a dreidel. — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) November 27, 2013

Shana Tova everyone celebrating .x — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) September 23, 2014

Better load up now. Yom Kippur just around the corner. — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) October 3, 2014

Polishing my dreidel and searching for oil. Chanukah sameach everybody. H — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) December 16, 2014

And finally the pièce de résistance, the tekiah gedolah, from a 2013 exchange with directors Winston and Gabe Turner:

@GabeTurner73 Wise up bocha, can’t you be more of a Talmud Chachum like @benwinston? He’s a tzadik, you’re a shnorer. — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) January 20, 2013

(Image: Christopher Polk/Getty)

Related: Pop Star Harry Styles Lands on List of Britain’s Most Influential Jews

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