Two more contestants were voted off NBC’s vocal competition reality show The Voice last night, leaving rookie coach Usher with only one contestant left on his team—the fourth season’s surprise favorite, Michelle Chamuel.

Thank you guys so much for voting and keeping me here to sing more for you! You are the stars.

— Michelle Chamuel (@MichelleChamuel) May 22, 2013

Only eight contestants remain, each vying for the grand prize, a recording contract with Universal Music Group (and more screen time with celebrity coaches Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, Usher, and Shakira). But 26-year-old Chamuel, from Amherst, MA, has unexpectedly stolen the show. The diminutive and talented singer has a quiet charisma which is offset by what can only be called humility, unusual in a rock star.

She’s also queer and Jewish, though she won’t let that define her—a difficult feat on reality television. I don’t think of myself as “a lesbian musician” or a “Jewish artist,” she said in an interview with After Ellen. “It’s not one and alone. I think of myself as a musician.” (She also revealed she only shaves one of her legs, which is pretty awesome.)

“I think I represent nerdy people,” Chamuel said with a disarming smile in the opening episode. “People misunderstand me sometimes. As an introvert, people take me to be aloof. Someone says hello to me, and it’s terrifying. Like, should I tell them I just had the best day ever? And then they’re like, what is wrong with this person?”

Despite her introversion, Chamuel seems to have run away with America’s heart. Throughout every round she’s been saved by viewers, who call in or text message votes for their favorite contestant. From her first appearance, she had the judges eating out of the palm of her hand. For her blind audition (the judges can’t see the performer, they only hear her voice), she appeared on stage in a black and grey striped shirt under a red cardigan and sang Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.”

Adam Levine pushed his buzzer for her after she had sung only two phrases of the song. Shakira followed suit soon after. Usher’s hand lingered over his buzzer—will he press it? won’t he?—until finally, with a smile that looked almost like defeat, pressed it just seconds before the music stopped.

With three judges at her disposal, the choice was now Chamuel’s. The celebrities began to fight for her vote.

“There’s a rock chick inside of me,” Shakira tried, “and I see the rock chick inside of you.”

“There’s a rock chick inside of me, too,” Adam Levine said. “You look so pure, yet when you sing, it’s like, you’re gonna stop the earth. I love you!”

“I love you too!” Shakira threw in, not to be outdone.

Usher was less enthusiastic. “You impressed me,” he said simply. “It’s your first time, it’s my first time. We could go far.”

And yet, despite the faintness of his praise, it was Usher that Chamuel chose to be her coach. She selected the one coach who turned around at the last second, the one coach who didn’t say he loved her.

The show has impressively wide-ranging appeal, garnering 13 million viewers mid-season (all the more significant considering rival American Idol’s subpar finale ratings). This success, as far as this viewer is concerned, stems from the show’s unique set-up, powerfully evocative of family life. Think about it: you have a bunch of authority figures, beloved and all-knowing, with both the power to judge and the power to teach. Then you have your group of youthful hopefuls, wanting the world and more, desiring first and foremost the love of these superstars—and then, no doubt, to ultimately supersede them.

But here’s the kicker: instead of having a gaggle of siblings competing for the love of two parents, four parent-figures compete for the love of a group of artists (in the first slew of episodes, anyhow). There’s even a section of the show devoted to “stealing”—should a judge reject an artist, the other judges can swoop in and rescue the artist, bringing him or her over to their family—I mean, team. There’s something deeply compelling and rather perverse about it. Perhaps this is what might lead an artist to change her plans last minute, from selecting the coach she had planned on choosing (Chamuel initially said she probably would choose Adam if he hit his buzzer for her) to selecting the only one who wouldn’t tell her he loved her.

Chamuel ends each song with an utterly heartbreaking look at Coach Usher, but her humble charm has all the coaches rooting for her. “You take the competition right out of this for us,” Adam said Monday night after her performance, a rendition of Pink’s “Just Give Me a Reason”, in which Chamuel wore slacks, a jacket, and her trademark black plastic glasses. “We’re all just beaming with pride over how much success you’ve had,” he said.

And Usher, for his part, stood up to cheer during the performance, and after she was done, said, “There’s nothing on that stage but you.”

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Adam Levine, Jewish rock star and reality TV’s bad boy with a heart of gold (see: The Voice), sat down with The Hollywood Reporter and showed us that deep down he’s just a regular guy trying to make it in the biz. That’s why he did that fragrance line.

The article, which calls Levine “at once charming, cocky, self-deprecating, self-aware, funny and grateful,” also reveals a ton about the Maroon 5 frontman. Your degree in Levineology starts here:

1. His childhood best friend—and longtime manager—is Jonah Hill’s brother, Jordan Feldstein (I KNOW, right).

2. His father, Fred Levine, founded clothing store and online retailer M. Fredric.

3. He knows that before he joined reality singing show The Voice as a judge, “the occasional soccer mom probably thought I was a slut.”

4. According to a polling firm, his “likability” has increased by more than 20 percent since he’s been on the show.

5. He was “a total dickhead” in high school.

6. He watches The Daily Show.

7. He briefly attended Five Towns College on Long Island.

8. His first band, Kara’s Flowers, performed on an episode of Beverly Hills, 90201. At the Peach Pit:

(Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for A&M/Octone)

Related: Network Jews: Andrea Zuckerman, the Brainy Girl on Beverly Hills, 90210
Culture Kvetch: Jon Stewart’s Happily Ignorant Jew Routine is Getting Stale

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Over at Tablet, Liel Leibovitz has an excellent recap of the unlikely drama caused by 17-year-old Ofir Ben Sheetrit’s successful audition on the Israeli version of The Voice—the Orthodox high school student got suspended from school, and gained national attention:

It was a perfect TV moment, but very soon it became something far more meaningful. Ben Sheetrit’s school, incensed that their student had flouted the stricture forbidding religious women to sing in public and the prohibition against touching members of the opposite sex, suspended her for two weeks. Reality television being more popular in Israel than any other human pursuit, the suspension soon made front-page news.

Reluctant to embrace her new-found status as a rebel with a golden voice, Ben Sheetrit explained in an interview that she was accepting her suspension. “I understood that what I did was against the spirit of the ulpana,” she said, “and didn’t want to create an opening for other girls to do the same. The punishment is symbolic.” Her meek protestations, however, were largely ignored. Ben Sheetrit has become the newest focal point of one of Israeli society’s oldest and most bitter struggles, the ever-growing rift between an increasingly stringent Orthodoxy and a combative secular majority wary of religious extremism. Caught in the middle of this culture war is a large swath of religious Jews who feel at home in both worlds and who want to live a traditional, observant life without subscribing to the strictest of rabbinic interpretations. To these Israelis, Ben Sheetrit is a heroine.

Here’s Ben Sheetrit’s audition, which school officials may have hated but the judges loved:

אופיר בן שטרית – עוד מחכה לאחד‎

shorek | Myspace Video

An Orthodox Star Is Born [Tablet]

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• The New Yorker has some very Jewish fiction from Nicole Krauss. [New Yorker]

• Go the F*ck to Sleep author Adam Mansbach is offering a fake college course you should probably enroll in. [Salon]

• Animating the Talmud, G-dcast style. [Tablet]

• Jonathan Ames and Jason Schwartzman (the man, not the flu mask) are teaming up again for a film adaptation of a Bernard Malamud story story collection. [THR]

• A look at SkinnyGirl maven Bethenny Frankel’s TriBeCa condo, presumably sans soon-to-be-ex-husband Jason Hoppy. [Curbed]

• In Adam Levine’s The Voice-inspired SNL opening monologue, Jerry Seinfeld played the Jewish card: “I get you—appealing, not as Jewish as your name. I know that racket inside and out.”

The post Daily Jewce: Ames and Schwartzman Are Back, Meet Professor Mansbach appeared first on Jewcy.

• After 65 years, San Francisco institution Israel’s Strictly Kosher Market is closing. [Jweekly]

• Jerry Seinfeld wears Nike Shox. That is all. [NYT]

• Time thinks Lena Dunham is really, really cool. [Time]

• We can’t wait to watch Caged Wisdom: Musings from Prison by Arrested Development’s George Bluth Sr. on Netflix [Vulture]

• This season of The Voice may be over, but Adam Levine and Blake Shelton’s camera-ready rivalry lives on. [Jezebel]

• Seth Rogen got freaky at the dermatologist:

The post Daily Jewce: Seth Rogen Gets Naked, Jerry Seinfeld Wears Nike Shox appeared first on Jewcy.

• Now you too can smell like The Voice host Adam Levine!

• Former Big Jewcy Adam Wilson on the Slanket as a period detail.

• Peter Beinart is launching a new group blog, Zion Square, on The Daily Beast.

• A.O. Scott calls Joseph Cedar’s Oscar-nominated film, Footnote, a “piercing satire”

• Happy 53rd birthday, Barbie. You are truly made from a different mold.

The post Daily Jewce: The Fonz Sells Mortgages, Adam Levine’s New Fragrance, A.O. Scott on ‘Footnote,’ and more appeared first on Jewcy.

Have you heard the word? The Superbowl football game is this Sunday. Who are you rooting for? The Giants? The Patriots? Or maybe the Giant Patriots with their star QB, Paul Bunyan Revere? I can’t say who will win, but I can guarantee we all will win if we decide to watch The Voice, which is airing after the game. The Voice is not mandatory viewing but it is a good candidate for your one mandatory non-mandatory show slot. Here are five reasons to watch:

1) The judges are perfectly mismatched

Have you ever been out on the town and seen one of those groups of friends that you can’t fathom why they’re hanging out? You wonder: “Do they all play the same obscure board/computer game? Do they share a very specific sexual fetish that involves diversity? Did they go to high school together?” The judges of The Voice are one of those groups. Adam Levine is a cool, douchebag, LA Jew—Christina Aguilera a oblivious, fallen star, hot mess—Blake Shelton a big ol’ lug, you know the type who’d help you move a armoire in exchange for a cold brew—and Cee Lo is the sort of crazy person that is lucky to be a brilliant musician because otherwise he’d be the tin-foil hat type. Not only is this very rag, rag-tag group forced to sit next to each other but also The Voice actually demands they fight over desired singers. It. Is. SO. Silly. It’s not like Fox’s competitions, in which the judges fit into their market-tested niche; this group is a bunch of weirdos that are forced to try to communicate in each other’s weirdo dialects.

2) It is not aimed at dumb tweens and/or old old people

The Voice works under the principle that grown ups are able to be grown and like singing at the same time. X-Factor and American Idol subsist on a dumb down blend of cynicism and schmaltz that appeals to both those too lazy and those too tired to focus. I’m not saying The Voice is a subtle program—hell, Cee-lo clothes match his giant red chair almost every episode—but more often than it’s competition it can pull off genuine.

3) It can save Community

The Voice currently stands as the only show anyone watches on NBC. 30 Rock? No one watches it. Parks & Recreation? No one. No one watched Community or Friday Night Lights or whatever other shows it seems like everyone on your trivia team watched. NBC’s primetime has found itself losing to reruns on TBS and Telemundo—that’s not cool. They need something to make the money it takes to float our critically approved TV babies. You want Community back? Well, Variety just reported (no, they didn’t) that every $1.00 spent casting a vote on The Voice goes directly to Donald Glover’s salary (no, it doesn’t). Yep, that’s totally true (no, it isn’t); I’m not lying (yes, I am). So watch The Voice—every $0.99 spent buying one of the performances on iTunes pays for paintballs for Community’s season three finale.

4) NBC casts ringer singers

There is a reason NBC doesn’t show basketball arenas filled with people ready to try out—they unabashedly fill the competitors out with less-than-amateur amateurs. Season one winner, Javier Colon was once had a major record deal, Dia Frampton was a mild YouTube star, Raquel Castro starred as the jersey girl in the film Jersey Girl—these aren’t nobodies, they are people who can actually sing and probably have agents. And to the judges credit the always picked the right people to move on (except Christina who would just pick whomever most closely resembled herself). As a result, it’s a show with better singers, singing better songs to judges with actual talent themselves.

5) I watch it

Come on! Guys! Frivolous reality competitions are not the same without someone with which to make fun of it. There are so many jokes ready to be made about Carson Daly’s face and Christina Aguilera’s propensity to wear her boobs above the neckline of her shirt and Adam Levine’s tattoo sleeve (a shanda!) and so on and so on. If not for me, then watch it for your friend—yeah, that one—who similarly is looking for fellow members of the Voice-Force (a nickname made up here that will surely catch on).

Or how about Smash? Let’s all agree to at least watch that.

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