Myers-Briggs is too broad. Astrology is bunk. The only valid way of discretely sorting all people is into the houses of Harry Potter’s alma mater: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin. And who hasn’t tried to sort not only all of their real-life acquaintances, but also fictional and/or literary characters outside of the Harry Potter franchise? So, why not folks from Jewish religious lore?

Here are some Biblical male characters, and you can read Part 2 about the women here. To keep us from going totally overboard, we’ll limit it to the Torah for now, and get to the rest of the Bible another time. (Update: Another time has occurred. Men. Women.)

Here we go:

Noah had to organize his family to spend ages working on a structure to God’s exact specifications, and to gather two of each animal. He had to stay laser-focused as the world around raced towards destruction. He had to employ lots of Ravenclaw skills there.

Abraham is a bit more complicated, even if you ignore Midrash and go strictly with stories that appear in the Torah. Here you have a man who can at times be cautious, or not protect those he loves (like when he pretends Sarah’s not his wife, or almost sacrifices his son). But, ultimately, Abraham is a man of clear vision and purpose, who sticks it through tough times because of a balance of a strong sense of self and, ultimately, a strong moral compass.

It’s a tough call, and maybe you can make an argument for Slytherin, but 1) Abraham’s argument with God on behalf of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and 2) His bold actions led purely by blind faith make him a Gryffindor.

Isaac is the patriarch who seems the least proactive, but that’s not why he’s a Hufflepuff. He’s a simple man whose main concern is his family (playing favorites notwithstanding). He’s kind, trusting, dedicated to his father’s legacy and, well, nice. Which is more than you can say about a lot of men in the Bible.

Jacob is such a Slytherin. We could sit here coming up with examples all day: Getting Esau’s birthright, his personal and professional dealings with Laban, how even his bold move of wrestling with an angel ends with him using his upper-hand as negotiating leverage. For good or for bad, there’s only one house for him.

Joseph always managed to rise to the top based on his own wits and the relationships to powerful men around him, from his father to the Pharaoh. Sometimes this meant alienating those around him and getting into trouble, but he always got out again. The kid’s obviously a Slytherin.

Moses is the big one! It’s tempting to just stick him into Gryffindor because he radiates “protagonist,” and he does belong there, but it’s more complex than that. He goes through a lot (down to fear of public speaking) to gain the courage to become the leader he was destined to be. But he also shows early signs of boldness and, frankly, disregarding of consequences due to his passion for justice. Killing the Egyptian taskmaster, even though it eventually means exile? Such a Gryffindor thing to do.

Even once he was leader of the people, Moses often lost his temper, and was shockingly outspoken to both the masses and God despite his position also being highly political. Between his occasional lapses in judgment based on his temper coupled with a strong sense of right-and-wrong and his overcoming his fears Neville-Longbottom-style, yes. Moshe Rabbeinu is a Gryff.

Aaron was also a leader of the people, but not as brash as his brother. As the High Priest, he was focused on ritual, on organization, on logistics. Aaron had to be a stickler for detail (failure in this regard cost two of his sons their lives).

No doubt about it; the man’s a Ravenclaw.

Joshua is also pretty clear cut. Even before he was Moses’s successor, Joshua makes a name for himself in the Torah by being the vocal minority among the spies. He had some of the same qualities as Moses, most importantly, a strong sense of right and wrong.

Plus, it’s post-Torah, but tearing down walls? Quintessential Gryffindor.

Think that we’re wrong about any of these? WANT TO HAVE A FIGHT? Tweet us your own arguments.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the Biblical ladies!

Source Images for this SPECTACULAR Photoshop job via Vimeo, Pottermore, and EBay

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Scarlett Johansson’s controversial SodaStream ad made its official debut, and—politics aside—it was kind of… uninspiring. Here’s the uncensored version with a shout-out to Coke and Pepsi:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxq4ziu-wrI

The hotly anticipated Seinfeld reunion turned out to be an ad for Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Others thought it was meh; I thought it was kind of cute. (The subversive master-bathroom sneak is a particular pleasure of mine. (TMI?))

The main takeaway here? Seinfeld is rich beyond compare if he can afford a Super Bowl ad slot. (But I guess we already knew that.) Also, Wayne Knight and Jason Alexander look exactly like they did in 1998, minus a bit of hair. What is their fountain of youth?

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

The Coke ad was culturally diverse and surprisingly lovely, and featured two guys wearing kippot (at 0:34). It goes without saying, but don’t read the (racist) comments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8iM73E6JP8

Our favorite? The trailer for Noah, which looks awesome and thrilling and a little bit ridiculous and unlike anything we learned in Hebrew school:

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“The great flood is coming!” Darren Aronofsky’s new highly anticipated film, “Noah,” comes out March 28th and a film preview has just been released that will air on Superbowl Sunday.

The biblical film, staring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, and Emma Watson, is described as an “apocalpytic action-fantasy.”

Paramount Pictures released a new poster for the Biblical epic exclusively to Yahoo Movies, featuring Russell Crowe in the rain clutching an axe with wrist-wraps. Burly, dude.

The trailer looks like it will be quite the ride, with great visuals:

(Photo by Getty)

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Imagine: you’re sitting at a Le Pain Quotidien, enjoying an overpriced croissant, jittering from your cold brew buzz. All seems well and fine, until… your glass shakes, your laptop loses power, your waiter gives you a nasty look (oh, wait, he’d do that anyway), and then the highly populated island of Manhattan breaks loose and sails away through the Atlantic Ocean. Well, this nightmare is coming to a theater near you. Directed by Shawn Levy and starring Will Smith, City That Sailed is a go. Eek. Deadline reports:

Shawn Levy has been tapped to develop and direct City That Sailed, the 20th Century Fox adventure pic that now officially has Will Smith aboard to star. Audrey Wells is penning the script for the tentpole and Smith and James Lassiter’s Overbrook Entertainment will produce. The story centers on a father and daughter on the island of Manhattan as it breaks loose and sails across the Atlantic Ocean.

Before you go and see this movie, which has been in production since 2008—so it may take a while—you should watch the trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. It looks pretty awesome, in an “are all of the biblical stories going to be turned into feature films” kind of way. If this goes down, Chumash teachers, like English teachers, would have to start writing questions for their quizzes that will elucidate who actually read the work and who watched Demi Moore and Gary Oldman go at it on screen, but with the story of King David and Bathsheba instead of The Scarlet Letter.

So in the meantime, watch the trailer for Noah, it is, as Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg put it, “the Most Anticipated Jewish Movie of the Year.”

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Upon hearing the biblical casting news out of Hollywood this summer that Russell Crowe was cast as the title character in Darren Aronofsky’s epic film Noah, I immediately thought that Crowe was a great choice. His skill set and experience—both in B.C. and A.D.—qualify him to build the ark on the big screen. However, after seeing a picture of Crowe in character, I started to question whether he was the right choice visually.

I’m skeptical because Aronofsky’s vision of Noah doesn’t really match with my vision of Noah, shaped over years of hearing and reading the story of the biblical ark builder. The first images of Crowe in character reveal a middle-aged Noah: a man of thick stock who’s a bit muscular and rugged, with a beard that’s not quite biblical length. (I define biblical length as a very long beard. I know that’s vague, but it makes sense to me.) My vision of Noah is a much older man, lean with a long white flowing beard, dressed in a white tunic or a cloak-like outfit (I think it may have been more of a brown color when I was younger.)

In Aronofsky’s defense, it’s possible that as the film progresses, Crowe ages and develops into the Noah I’ve always imagined. Another possibility is that my vision is just that: my own conception of a biblical figure. Better yet, maybe Aronofsky’s characterization will ultimately change how I picture Noah. But for now, something just seems off.

If Aronofsky and I have such a major difference in our visions of Noah, what does it say about the personalization of Biblical figures on a wider scale? What roles do our Jewish upbringings and imaginations, as well as outside forces, have in developing and influencing these images? My biblical visuals are rooted in a combination of Hebrew School lessons, d’var Torah passages, and good old-fashioned daydreaming. I remember being a kid listening to the stories told from the bimah and the front of the Hebrew School classroom. As the details of the story were read aloud, I would begin to visualize everything: I would picture the people, in varying degrees of detail, and the settings.

I distinctly remember envisioning Abraham when I was younger. I remember picturing him breaking his father’s idols as a skinny, average-height boy. Older Abraham has the ultimate biblical beard, though I’m not sure whether it’s salt-and-peppered or completely white. I think I usually give him a white beard, but I can’t remember for sure. He wears long tribal garb, and as of press time I still can’t picture his face. He’s more of a figure seen from behind or the side.

When it comes to Moses, there’s no need for imagination. Hollywood gave me Moses in the form of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. There is no other Moses. When I hear the name Moses, I see Heston. His face, beard, build, garb, even his voice are as they should be. But are they as they should be because I have fully accepted and internalized director Cecil B. DeMille’s image of Moses? Or is there a chance that his vision supports a preexisting notion of Moses in my head? It’s so ingrained in my consciousness at this point that I can’t know for sure.

Since Hollywood has clearly had a profound impact on my conception of Moses, I wonder if Aronofsky’s blockbuster will have a similar effect with Noah. Will this Hollywood depiction reinforce aspects of my Noah or completely replace him? Moses was offered to me when I was young–DeMille’s film, released in 1956, had already become a classic by the time I was born—but I’ve had twenty-plus years of picturing some form of a Noah without any big screen influence. If anything, Hollywood only confirmed that vision with Steve Carrell’s Noah-esque character in 2007’s less-than-stellar Evan Almighty.

I’ll have to wait until Noah is released in 2014 to see if Aronofsky can replace my vision of this particular biblical figure. Perhaps when I see Crowe, staff in hand, leading the animals two by two into the ark, everything will change. There’s a chance that Crowe could even become my Noah. But I’m pretty sure that Crowe won’t ever be my Noah the way Heston is my Moses.

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• Two of Amy Winehouse’s dresses—including her wedding dress, which was going to be auctioned for charity—were stolen from her home in London, alleges the Amy Winehouse Foundation. [Access Hollywood]

• Mensches are in short supply in the family depicted off-Broadway in Bad Jews. [NY Observer]

• We’re not sure how we should feel about this, but the ark replica from the upcoming Russell Crowe film Noah was damaged during Hurricane Sandy. [NY Daily News]

• Meet the Jews of Cuyahoga County, OH. [NYT]

• Elijah Wood is starring in a horror film … called Cooties. [Hollywood Reporter]

• What happened when Israeli photographer Noam Galai discovered one of his photographs was being used, without credit or reimbursement, all over the place.

The post Daily Jewce: Amy Winehouse’s Wedding Dress Stolen, Elijah Wood’s ‘Cooties’ appeared first on Jewcy.

• Rachel Shukert pays tribute to the late Marvin Hamlisch.

• Check out Russell Crowe as Noah in Darren Aranofsky’s new biblicly-inspired movie.

• NPR’s Ira Glass will take your ticket and sell you concessions if you go see his new movie.

The Beastie Boys are suing Monster Energy Drink for using their likenesses and songs in advertising campaigns.

• Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s daughter, Arabella Rose, is really cute.

• Careful, Zake! Gyllenhaal shot live ammo for his new movie, End of Watch.

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