Haim Saban is getting a well-deserved star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If his name isn’t familiar, well, you knew that Power Rangers is totally Jewish, right?

Saban was born in Egypt, and moved to Israel as a child. He’s lived all around the world (though still heavily invested in the Jewish state), building an entertainment empire, but he was in American when he created the Power Rangers, with a stroke of genius that really feels like Israeli ingenuity.

Basically, he found an ongoing Japanese TV show, known as Super Sentai. He figured out that since the bulk of the action scenes involved actors wearing masks, he could dub them over without it seeming terribly out of place. Next, rewrite the plot, get some American kids to play the superheroes in scenes where they’re not fighting bad guys, and voila! One fresh children’s entertainment show, where buying the rights to use the foreign footage was loads cheaper than making monster costumes and creating explosions yourself.

The formula took off, and the rest is history, of course culminating in a new movie that comes out later this month (sans imported footage). The film also features Elizabeth Banks, who’s (sort of) Jewish, and Bryan Cranston, who’s of Jewish descent.

Plus, if all that still isn’t enough for you, know that an Israeli pop star recorded the famous “Go Go Power Rangers” theme.

The star ceremony will be next week, March 22nd.

Image via Flickr.

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After producing and costarring in the first Pitch Perfect, Jewish actress Elizabeth Banks has signed on to make her feature editorial debut in Pitch Perfect 2. This will be a new venture, among developing others, for her production company Brownstone Productions, which she co-owns with her husband.

Pitch Perfect is loosely based on the novel by Mickey Rapkin, Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory. No word yet on whether Rebel Wilson and Anna Kendrick will return, but I can’t imagine they won’t. Not all films can pull of a sequel–especially a musical comedy–but with this all-star act in tow, it’s hard to imagine it will be anything less than hilarious.

The movie isn’t slated till 2015, so we have some time before we see our fav a capella group perform again.

Don’t you forget about me!!! This is the best scene ever. Enjoy.

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Actress Elizabeth Banks, most recently seen in The Hunger Games and Pitch Perfect (which she produced with her husband), sat down with Marc Maron this week for his WTF Podcast, and their conversation was pretty interesting. Banks is sharp and funny and calls the Olsen twins elves. She also opens up about her working-class Catholic upbringing in Pittsfield, MA, and eventual conversion to Judaism.

“So you met a Jew at Penn,” Maron offers a little after the 30 minute (!) mark.

“Yeah, it’s real hard,” she quips. “It’s like, throw a dart.”

There were a few Jewish kids at her high school, she explains, but most of them lived on the other side of town and went to a different middle school, so she didn’t meet them until they got to high school—which meant no bar mitzvahs for her, sadly.

“So how’d you make the ship from Jesus to Jew?” Maron asks at minute 35.

The story is sweet. Banks met Max Handelman, her future husband, her first day at college. They kept running into each other, and one night she ended up at one of his AEPi frat parties. (She says the ZBT guys were douches from Long Island who all work on Wall Street now. Also I love her.) They went on a date to a jazz club in Philly—it was one of her first rides in a taxi—where they drank bourbon and didn’t get carded. She made the first move, “and then it just went from there.”

“Now was there pressure on you to be a Jew?” Maron asks, before calling Banks a “shiksa goddess Jew.” (“People love that when the shiksas come over,” she fires back.)

“No religion meant as much to me as Judaism meant to my husband,” Banks explains. There were also the in-laws. “We got married after 10 and a half years, and for the first five years I’m positive that his father did not learn my last name,” she says. “I’m positive that his dad was like, ‘This is Portnoy’s Complaint…my son will marry a Jewish girl.” (Of course, what they really cared about was the grandkids. “My kids are Jewish, so they’re happy,” she explains.)

She went through the conversion process, studying with different rabbis. “I did not have my mikveh, so technically I’m not converted,” she admits, but it’s only because she was never in L.A. long enough at one time to have done what she calls the 11-week “You’re a Jew now class.” And she’s been practicing Judaism for so long at this point, she explains, that finalizing the institutional process seems more like a needless formality than anything else.

“I’ve been essentially a Jew for like 15 years,” she says. “I haven’t had a Christmas tree in 15 years.”

“But are you like, officially a Jew?” Maron prods.

“I’m not officially stamped, but by all accounts yes,” she explains. “My kids go to Jewish pre-school, we only celebrate Jewish holidays, I love seder.”

“Frankly, because I’m already doing everything, I feel like I’m as Jewish as I’m ever going to be.”

It’s a very Jewish way of thinking, actually. Consider yourself at home, Banks.

Here are some other gems from the interview, which is really, really long, but totally worth it:

• She took Latin for six years: “I was a real nerdball,” she explains.

• She’s a TriDelt.

• She graduated Penn magna cum laude.

• She played Pontius Pilate in a high school performance of Jesus Christ Superstar.

• Her dream rom-com co-star? Channing Tatum: “I would work that.”

Listen to the full podcast here.

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