There have always been cool Jews: Judah Maccabee, Bugsy Siegel, Lou Reed. But for one brief shining moment in the early Noughts, a curly-haired, comics-collecting, indie-listening ball of neuroses was the face postered on bedroom walls.

For fans of Marvel’s latest small screen offering, Runaways, it must have seemed like Chrismukkah came early when it was announced that showrunner Josh Schwartz would be one of the brains behind its leap from the comic pages. After all, who better to breathe life into smart, sarcastic, Jewish Gert (and her dinosaur sidekick, Old Lace) than the guy who created her spiritual ancestor Seth Cohen (and his toy horse sidekick, Captain Oats).

Seth Cohen was a different breed of teen idol, no less a romantic lead because he wasn’t muscled or athletic— or the fact that his childhood trauma stemmed from a friendless Bar Mitzvah party. But, of course, that was why The O.C. caught fire. Dipping into a genre that trends whitebread, Schwartz replaced the John Hughesian model of interchangeable suburbia and overspilling earnestness with his self-aware, highly located, unmistakably ethnic teen drama. The place, California’s wealthy and WASPy Newport Beach, would reign omnipresent and the people would be defined in relation to it. At the center of this world was a family who just didn’t quite fit in, the Cohens: exiled Bronx crusader Sandy and his blonde, blue-eyed wife Kirsten, their oddball son Seth (played, of course, by Adam Brody), and their adopted delinquent Ryan.

From the start, the Cohens’ difference to their neighbors was a source of comedic tension, and one of those many differences was that the Cohens were very, very Jewish. The show never tried to hide it and instead reveled in it as one of The O.C.’s trademarks. The first season introduced the concept of Chrismukkah, Seth’s attempt to wrangle nine nights of presents out of his blended family, to the show and to world at large, and each season would repeat the festival, escalating the drama exponentially— one Chrismukkah featured the invention of the “yamaclause”; another centered around Ryan learning a Torah portion for his Bar Mitzvah.

Unlike many Jewish characters, the Cohens didn’t simply become Jews on Christmas. Instead, their Jewishness saturated the show to the point of familiarity. One episode focuses on the visit of Sandy’s domineering matriarch, the Nana, as the Cohens scramble to put together a seder and Summer, Seth’s girlfriend, valiantly learns the Four Questions to impress his grandmother. A later storyline has Seth and Summer in a standoff over their engagement—Summer pursues conversion by grappling with a Torah scroll and learning to cook a brisket. And at a funeral, Seth, searching for the missing Summer, cracks “is she smoking the salmon herself?”

Of course, culturally, the Cohens were not the first gefilte fish out of water in the Golden State. Mark Harris, in his study of changing Hollywood in the 1960s, Pictures at a Revolution, highlights an epiphany reached by director Mike Nichols in the decades after he developed The Graduate. In Charles Webb’s book, Benjamin Braddock is another tall tanned sunburst of California WASP society.  The movie version?  Not quite.  Says Nichols:

“It took me years before I got what I had been doing all along — that I had been turning Benjamin into a Jew. I didn’t get it until I saw this hilarious issue of MAD magazine after the movie came out, in which the caricature of Dustin says to the caricature of Elizabeth Wilson, ‘Mom, how come I’m Jewish and you and Dad aren’t?’ And I asked myself the same question, and the answer was fairly embarrassing and fairly obvious: Who was the Jew among the goyim? And who was forever a visitor in a strange land?”

The casting, unconscious or not, strengthens the tone of discomfort of the movie, as Ben is paraded, handled, and manipulated like a curiosity by his family and friends. In revisiting the scenario forty years later, The O.C. flips the script—the Cohens still can’t quite assimilate in their coastal California town, but this time, their neighbors are the outsiders, and the Cohens, with the audience in tow, become insiders. For instance, in one episode, Summer starts dating another boy to make Seth jealous. The boy, Danny, is constantly cracking jokes that send everyone into exaggerated hysterics. Seth, and later Sandy, are the only characters left stone-faced. (Sandy: “Gentiles. I love your mother more than words, but – not funny.”) And because the Cohens aren’t laughing, neither are we. By attuning the Cohens’ brand of wit as the show’s usual humor, the audience sides with the Jews on this one.  

What the Cohens found cool, we found cool, and so The O.C. not only fashioned statements out of Seth’s love for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or Death Cab for Cutie, but also made the unglamorous—shuffleboard, bagels, showtunes, meatloaf—seem desirable. A Chrismukkah miracle, indeed.

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Sob. Adam Brody, my erstwhile television boyfriend, is married. IRL! To Leighton Meester!

In case you were living under a rock/in elementary school in the early 2000s, Adam Brody as Seth Cohen was the best thing on TV for years. YEARS. He was also my television boyfriend when I was far too old to have a television boyfriend, BUT NO MATTER. (Now that I’m thirty I have a television husband: Jon Stewart.)

Because the wedding was secret, I’ve no tidbits to share about dresses/vows/famous guests. In lieu of gifts—or anything that actually happened in real life—here are compilations of Seth and Blair’s finest moments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q8GPgn4lCg

Mazal tov, guys!

The post Seth Cohen and Blair Waldorf Are Married! appeared first on Jewcy.

In middle school, when the sweaty, dreamy boys on the JV basketball team made a list of the prettiest girls in the grade, there were only, like, five names listed on that college-ruled paper. When you learned that your name didn’t make the cut (it turns out seventh grade boys aren’t impressed by your weekend spent reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, whatever), tears and self-deprecation ensued, but, alas, you found other strengths (See: journaling, napping).

So when I saw BuzzFeed’s latest list, “The Official Ranking of the 51 Hottest Jewish Men in Hollywood,” the list-loser in me was borderline befuddled. 51? That seems way too large a set. Now, I know, I know, attraction is confusing, selective, and strange (I thought Jack Black was the ideal man for the majority of my pre-teens). But this list builder, Lauren Yapalater, essentially concocted a roster of every Jewish actor in Hollywood.

Scott Caan, Steven Weber: really? Mandy Patinkin on the same list as Adam (and, for that matter, Adrien) Brody? This Yapalater lady doth protest too much, methinks. She may as well have thrown Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofski—aka Krusty the Clown—into the mix.

BuzzFeed is silly. It’s mostly visited for its juvenile lists colored with GIFs and semi-witted 140 character blurbs easy to share with all your virtual friends. And I can get down with that business model. But, c’mon, have some backbone. As a website that creates and distributes lists, make actual lists. If not, the world of ranking loses all its credence. Narrow that list down, girl.

The Official Ranking Of The 51 Hottest Jewish Men In Hollywood [BuzzFeed]

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From the moment he first appeared on Showtime’s pot-centric comedy, Weeds, Andy Botwin (Justin Kirk) has loudly and proudly flaunted his Judaism. After arriving four episodes into the series as the brother of Judah, the recently deceased husband of shiksa-turned-pot-dealing mom Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker), Andy demanded to be the center of attention, letting his sexual impulses guide him from one disaster to the next.

While the show may be best known for breaking ground in the female-anti-hero genre, (Mary-Louise Parker’s drug dealer preceded Nurse Jackie and Damages,) in recent years, it has taken some odd geographical- and plot-based twists, which the new main-title sequence humorously depicts. And while the somewhat mixed series comes to a close this Sunday after eight seasons, throughout it all, it’s been hard not to love moocher Andy, the promiscuous playboy who keeps finding his way back to his Jewish roots.

What’s most wonderfully—and unexpectedly—refreshing about Andy is his very real relationship with Judaism. Even if a segment of the companion Web series University of Andy features a common TV concept—Christmukkah—most of Andy’s Jewish experiences are far less Seth Cohen than that. When Andy enrolled in rabbinical school during the show’s second season—to escape being called up for reserve duty and sent to Iraq, of course—he was seen listening to recorded prayers and participating in communal Israeli dancing.

But in this final season, a chance meeting with a rabbi at a hospital has enabled him to get his most stable job yet, as director of spiritual life in the synagogue’s Hebrew school. Though Andy may spend most of his life acting like an irresponsible clown, he’s capable of getting serious and teaching the next generation surprisingly accurate and detailed intricacies of the Jewish faith: It’s rare to find a TV character capable of captivating pre-pubescent boys equally with a rather graphic masturbation lesson and a lecture on why the Torah is not meant to be interpreted literally.

But even Andy’s biggest fan has to acknowledge that he most frequently invokes his Judaism as a get out of jail free card. Shirking military service by entering rabbinical school was hardly a great start, and Andy’s motivations for becoming an active Jew are never pure. Even his latest job resulted from an unplanned pregnancy out of wedlock. Yet on a show filled with liars and criminals—a pot dealer, a drug cartel, and a handful of other unscrupulous, corruption-prone people—Andy is the most endearing character. Though he spent most of his stint in rabbinical school trying to sleep with admissions director Yael Hoffman (Israeli actress Meital Dohan), he came away with a renewed sense of pride and peoplehood that shows in his new academic capacity.

That’s not to suggest that Andy’s charm can get him out of every situation. He doesn’t always see things through, and he is distracted by the presence of either women or pot. He tends to get caught up in his schemes and overly attached to temporary situations, in which he and his drug-dealing family often find themselves. Yet through it all, he’s genuine: The lies he tells and the stories he makes up don’t last because his conscience gets the best of him. As he eyes and beds new women, he expresses his affection and takes a deep interest in each and every one of them. His actions may not be explicitly guided by Jewish values, but, time after time, he keeps coming back to a Jewish way of life.

Andy doesn’t purport to be the most knowledgeable Jew out there: He is the ultimate example of imperfection, and it’s hard not to root for—or relate to—someone who has good intentions and isn’t always able to live up to them. As the show nears its end, he has been looking back at his life and his decisions, demonstrating exceptional growth after eight years of marijuana, women, and bad choices. Ultimately, for Andy the ends do justify the means, and the way he got somewhere is less important than what he’s achieved, building a truly unique legacy for himself as TV’s most knowledgeable Jewish slacker.

Previously on Network Jews:

Saul Berneson, the CIA Middle East division chief on Homeland

Cristina Yang, Grey’s Anatomy’s Atheist Jew

Ross Geller, the nerdy paleontologist on Friends

The post Network Jews: Andy Botwin from Showtime’s Pot Comedy ‘Weeds’ appeared first on Jewcy.

Seth Cohen was one of the first times I noticed “indie” being represented in the mainstream. Get in line Zooey Deschanel, because Seth invented adorkable, and the idea of taking something that seemed cool in its own right and packaging it for the masses. I guess if the show had stayed good past the first couple of seasons, and Adam Brody had gone on to bigger and better things, this wouldn’t seem so bad, but given how things turned out, I feel weird about it. I felt weird rewatching the pilot and realizing that Seth, who present-day me would place on the autism spectrum, was so specifically engineered to appeal to teenage me. But that’s Gen Y for you. Before the recession sidelined our economic prospects, we were the first tweens, a new market research category identified for the spending power we wielded. It was nice to matter.

So in the boom days of 2003, here was this 90210-esque redux designed to appeal to teenagers and their lowest-common-denominator taste, and yet like a Trojan horse Josh Schwartz snuck in Seth, talking about graphic novels and Magic: The Gathering and Death Cab for Cutie. The people who beat up Seth shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister, but someone like Seth got his clothes at PacSun (being as he was alternative, but not so alternative that he would have worn Hot Topic gothwear). That they were all stores found in every American mall escaped our notice.

A key aspect of Seth’s alternativeness was that, unlike his water polo-playing, debutante ball-curtseying classmates, he was Jewish. Even though, strictly speaking, he so wasn’t. His father Sandy (Peter Gallagher) was a member of the tribe, but his mother Kirsten (Kelly Rowan) was a WASP, and it’s the mother’s religion that determines the child’s. However, Seth did occasionally refer to his bar mitzvah, so until Talmudic scholars pass down a verdict, we’ll have to consider Seth one of those territorial half-Jews who not only sees himself as an heir to the Jewish comedic tradition of wise-cracking, but also wants it to be known that there are core differences between him and Mischa Barton’s Marissa Cooper. The Jewish dad factor was convenient in that it allowed other characters (namely, shiksa goddess Summer, played by Rachel Bilson) to refer to Seth by his last name, Cohen, a little reminder every time they spoke to him that he was a Jewy Jewersonfeld.

On TV when we have a half-Jew, we round up. We focus on the –ukkuh part of Chrismukkah, the hybrid holiday that Seth popularized (as Kirsten said, “We didn’t really know how to raise Seth”), and ignore the fact that Seth thought Moses was the hero of it. Whenever his adopted brother Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie) does something particularly at odds with his punch-first, ask-questions-later Chino roots, we smile at Seth’s implication that Ryan’s embracing a kinder, gentler, Jewish-er way: “You just got your butt kicked and you didn’t even fight back. Dude, you really are a Cohen.”

Of course, it’s only through teen soap opera magic, and forcing him to stand next to people like Chris Carmack, that Adam Brody would pass for a skinny, nebbishy geek (this same magic allowed textbook Black Irish Peter Gallagher to stand in for an all-purpose ethnic). Seth may have lacked the muscles that accessorized Ryan’s wife-beaters, but scrawny he wasn’t. The “Jewfro” he rocked was hardly as unruly as Timberlake’s in its prime. He was cute, undeniably so, and he got all the best lines on the show. Were teenage girls suddenly interested in the video games and indie bands Seth Cohen espoused? Sometimes, but mostly they were interested in Adam Brody. What if getting us all to fall in love with Seth was a subliminal message from B’nai B’rith International, a way to get a generation of Jewish girls to give their male Hebrew school classmates another look? It would have been a pretty successful campaign. Even girls who skipped Birthright still hold out the hope of finding their Seth Cohen.

Previously on Network Jews:

Hesh Rabkin, Jewish Loan Shark on The Sopranos

Eli Gold, The Good Wife’s Political Operator

Howard Wolowitz, the nerdy, sex-obsessed engineer on The Big Bang Theory

Heather Schwedel is a writer and editor who is still waiting for her super sweet bat mitzvah.

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