Oif a meisseh fregt men kain kasheh nit: Don’t ask questions about fairy tales.

PISCES (FEBRUARY 21-MARCH 20): Pisces, symbolized by two fish swimming in opposite directions, exemplifies the dual nature of this mutable water sign. One fish swims toward the spiritual—the world of the dream, the unconscious mind—while the other fish swims toward the material world.

Fish-themed Judaic tales include Jonah and the whale and the Leviathan. In 6 B.C., a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Pisces even gave Jewish astrologers hope for a messiah.
 
Perhaps the most romantic and certainly the most intuitive of all the signs of the zodiac, you can be weak-willed in matters of the heart. Wise, sage givers of good advice, you are sensitive to beauty and can be overwhelmed by the feelings of others. Your heightened psychic awareness gives you a keen ability to suffer with others—this combined with your patience and listening skills makes you an excellent therapist and friend, but can have the ill effect of distancing you from your own life and feelings. With an innate receptiveness to everything that’s going on around you, it can be hard to see where others end and you begin.

While Passover begins on the day of the first full moon after the vernal equinox (the cusp between Pisces and Aries), Purim (February 23-24) is in many ways associated with Pisces—the Hebrew month of Adar corresponds with Pisces, and Purim itself has many fish themes.

The new moon on March 11 will be in Pisces; on this day there will be six heavenly bodies in your sign: Mercury, Mars, Venus, your ruling planet, Neptune, and the moon as well as the sun. With so many planets in Pisces, you’ll have the world at your feet (Pisces rules the feet)—lucky you!

Famous Pisces Jews: Gilbert Gottfried, Samm Levine, Bugsy Siegel, Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner, Ron Jeremy, Albert Einstein, Lou Reed, Billy Crystal, David Cronenberg, Jerry Lewis, Philip Roth, Yitzhak Rabin, Shalom Alecheim, Rashi, Renee Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor (converted), Joe Lieberman, Zeppo Marx, Kurt Weill, Ira Glass, Harry Winston, Diane Arbus, Rashida Jones, Judith Butler, Chelsea Handler.

ARIES (MARCH 21-APRIL 20): “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” was once the catchall phrase to explain the eternal debate—but hey, the 1990s called, and they want their dichotomy back: Mars and Venus are two faces of the same coin. Your ruling planet Mars returns to your sign on March 11, where it will stay until April 20, while Venus enters your sign on the spring equinox, balancing out aggressive Mars with its lovely light and helping you roll with the punches.

TAURUS (APRIL 21-MAY 20): Your ruling planet Venus will be in compassionate Pisces from February 25 to March 21, inspiring you with dreams of a grand romance. But don’t tempt the gods—zindik nit—focus what you need to do for yourself first before succumbing to the gantseh tsimmes (big confusion) that love can bring. Only you can take control of your life, and outside forces often serve as distractions from doing what you need to do.

GEMINI (MAY 21-JUNE 20): Gemini shiksa goddess Marilyn Monroe said, “it is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not,” and you should take her message to heart. Effusive Geminis are rarely unlovable, but your mazik (troublemaker) tendencies may make you seem like a stranger in a strange land if you fight against them. With your ruling planet Mercury in retrograde until March 17 and in dreamy Pisces until April 13, you will be compelled to confront your spiritual side—which you may have been willfully ignoring for fear of losing yourself. 

CANCER (JUNE 21-JULY 20): Gossiping is the worst habit and the biggest calumny—Loshen horeh iz di ergsteh mideh un gresteh tsoreh—and if anyone’s guilty of it, it’s you. We all know that old habits die hard, but with Mercury in retrograde you may want to watch what you say a bit more carefully. The new moon in your fellow water sign—creative, free-wheeling Pisces—on March 11 pit the two sides of your nature against each other. Loose lips may sink ships, but loosening yourself up won’t do anyone any harm.

LEO (JULY 21-AUGUST 20): No matter how hard you try to be inscrutable, the hitsik (hothead) wildcat within you betrays your true nature every time. Temper, temper you imperious beasts! With so many planets in even-keeled Pisces, you just may get the balm you need to keep moving forward. Remember, if you can’t do as you wish, do as you can—Az me ken nit vi me vil, tut men vi me ken.

VIRGO (AUGUST 21-SEPTEMBER 20): All eyes will be on you with the full moon in your sign on February 25. This is a great time to allow yourself a moment in the spotlight for once; after all, too much modesty is half conceit—tsu fil anives iz a halber shtolts. However, with Mercury in retrograde (and in your polar opposite sign, Pisces), you’ll still do well to conduct yourself with the reticence and charm you know best. That does mean you can’t get all farpitzed and let the world bask in your glow.

LIBRA (SEPTEMBER 21-OCTOBER 20): Venus is drifting through languorous Pisces through March 21, encouraging you to patteren tseit (lounge around, waste time) more than usual. This combined with your capacity for dissimulation conceals your true intentions and desires. Libras may have the reputation for being lighthearted lovers, but the mask you wear may be doing you more harm than you think. While it’s great that you can keep a positive mental attitude, suppressing your darker side keeps you from letting others into your heart.

SCORPIO (OCTOBER 21-NOVEMBER 20): Your reputation precedes you, saucy Scorpio—you’ll get what you want by hook or by crook. Oi, a shkandal! (Oh, what a scandal!). While you may not be as thoroughly unscrupulous as your sign suggests, with so many planets in Pisces, another water sign immersed in the waters of the unconscious, your hulyen (hellraiser) impulses could get the better of you. Reign in the danger, but never deny your true nature.

SAGITTARIUS (NOVEMBER 21–DECEMBER 20): With your ruling planet Jupiter still in mischievous Gemini and so many planets in dreamy Pisces, you’d be wise to guard your saykhel (common sense) closely. Surrounding yourself with mamoshes (people of substance) may help you avoid finding yourself at the wrong place at the wrong time. However, if you have a tendency to lead others on, at least have the decency to operate with transparency: if you’re all talk, make sure your partners-in-crime know it. No one likes a con artist!

CAPRICORN (DECEMBER 21–JANUARY 20): Your mantra has been Me krechts, me geht veyter—I complain and I keep going—for longer than you’d care to admit. Saturn’s retrograde through July 7 forces you to confront, and hopefully resolve, issues that have been plaguing you. If you can face your demons head on, you may find that the wild card’s been up your sleeve all along, and the fact that you can keep surprising yourself should be more than enough to get yourself going again, you alter bok (old goat).

AQUARIUS (JANUARY 21-FEBRUARY 20): If you’ve been feeling more kalamutneh (dreary, gloomy, troubled) than usual, you may worry that you’ve reached an impasse in your love life. Fear not, this deadlock may resolve itself at the eleventh hour. Until then, you may just have to grit your teeth and accept that to leiden (suffer) is your fate right now. Focus on all the great things you’ve got going on rather than the bad hand life seems to have dealt you. After all, as Ru Paul says, “If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

What’s Your Sign?
Aquarius, Sign of Contradictions
Capricorn, the Cardinal Earth Sign
Sagittarius, the Adventurous Archer
Stinging Scorpio
Lovely, Lawful Libra
Virgo, the Anxious Maiden
Leo, King of the Jungle

(Art by Margarita Korol)

The post Jewcy Horoscopes: Pisces, the Dual-Natured Water Sign (Feb. 21-March 20) appeared first on Jewcy.

Almost every character on Freaks & Geeks could have been Jewish. After all, it was a Judd Apatow show. Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini), all dark hair and trigonometry prowess, and her scrawny little brother, Sam (John Francis Daley), totally could have been Jews. Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) also had a Jewish way about him, so nerdy and hairy was he. James Franco and Jason Segel are Jews in real life. And Ken, as played by Seth Rogen? Forget about it. So Jewish.

But this was network television. Though our beloved Freaks & Geeks ultimately (and cruelly) lasted only one season, the Weirs were probably conceived as a spin on the market-tested, relatable every-family, the kind at the center of a long line of family sitcoms. That means not Jewish. For all of Judd Apatow’s Jewish influence, the other creative force behind the show was Midwesterner Paul Feig, whose Michigan upbringing provided the basis for many a Freaks & Geeks (but mostly Geeks) plotline. So it makes sense that the Weirs were goyim. But it also entirely amazing that Neal was so Jewish.

Neal Schweiber, arrogant but mostly loyal friend to Sam and Bill, played by Samm Levine (why the double m, Samm?), probably wasn’t the only Jew in his school or town. But he was enough of an outlier that the class bully singled him out with cracks about his circumcision and, as Neal once confided to a fellow William McKinley High minority, a black kid, “Last year I was elected school treasurer. I didn’t even run!” The show went out of its way to point out Neal’s Jewishness at every opportunity. When the geeks needed to buy nonalcoholic beer to neutralize the potential danger of a kegger, it was Neal’s bar mitzvah money that provided the funds. When the geeks considered whether ninth grade was too old for trick-or-treating, Neal declared that when he hit 13, he became a man. As a part of the show’s ensemble, Neal helped flesh out the different shades of geek that appear in the wild: as opposed to sub-100-lb. Sam or nut-allergy-prone Bill, Neal’s geekdom was expressed in the form of … well, annoying, crotchety Jewiness. It’s almost surprising that to call someone a Schweiber doesn’t carry the same cultural weight as calling someone a Shylock. It’s kind of like being a Jewish Eddie Haskell.

Like Seth Cohen would a few years later, Neal took a special pride in his own comedic stylings, dressing up as Groucho Marx for Halloween and confidently but haplessly advising his fellow geeks that the way to land a woman is through one’s sense of humor. The three geeks were all obsessed with comedy—Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Saturday Night Live—a detail easily attributed to Mr. Apatow’s own youthful interest in funny business. Neal took it a step further, though. See, Samm Levine didn’t play Neal like he was playing of a Jewish high school freshman; instead, Neal was more of an elderly Jewish man, perhaps a veteran of the Catskills comedy circuit, trapped in the body of a 14-year-old boy. Witness his penchant for sweater vests, the throwaway detail that he chose to write his book report on an autobiography of Sammy Davis, Jr., and even the small but perfect way Neal posed during the show’s credits sequence, a picture day montage set to Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation”: other characters smiled awkwardly, embarrassed, but Neal plastered on his best Lounge Lizard grin, as if to say “Who loves ya, baby?” Neal was so confident about his own wit that when the position of school mascot became available, he was convinced he could revolutionize the job with his use of props and physical comedy. And of course, when he had problems at home, his mode of acting out was to take up ventriloquism, performing cringe-inducing routines with a dummy he called Morty.

The show’s portrayal of Jewishness wasn’t all shtick. Freaks & Geeks drew class distinctions between the freaks that we were to understand came from the wrong side of the tracks and the nicer, middle class Weir family, in which Mr. Weir owned a sporting goods store and Mrs. Weir was a homemaker. But then we can compare the Weirs to the Schweibers, headed by dentist Dr. Schweiber (who had vanity plates reading “I Flossem”) and the kind of mother who took tennis lessons and ordered in for dinner, which is to say, one with more disposable income. Their house was slightly nicer, and Neal was slightly more spoiled—remember, he was the first to get an Atari. And can we pause here to appreciate the immaculate casting of Amy Aquino as Neal’s mother and David Krumholtz, in one episode, as Neal’s older brother home from college? Rarely have two Jewier Jews Jewed (well, Googling doesn’t confirm that Amy Aquino is Jewish, but her hair on the show was so flawless). If the show had gone on to a second season, surely Lisa Edelstein would have appeared as an aunt or Hebrew High teacher.

As strange as it is that Neal’s most notable character trait was his Jewishness, and that this was often portrayed as a punch line in and of itself, knowing that he was created by Judd Apatow & co. makes it seem like a loving, rather than offensive, portrayal. Neal feels like a special Easter Egg—or perhaps hidden Passover matzo?—for all the Jews who were watching. I like to think that he paved the way for all the Network Jews that came after him, all of whom he schmoozes with on the high holidays at the big TV Temple in Jewcy’s imagination.

Previously on Network Jews:

George Bluth Sr., the erstwhile Jew and patriarch of Arrested Development

Fran Fine, the nasal-voiced star of The Nanny


Noah Puckerman, the coolest Jew in school on Glee

The post Network Jews: Neal Schweiber From Freaks & Geeks appeared first on Jewcy.