Caryn About Whoopi?

The purpose of this blog is to call a spade a spade at the Shabbat table....try printing and sharing...

How does a Jewish person make it in show business?

Clearly it helps to drop your Jewish name:

Asa Yoelson became Al Jolson
Bette Perske became Lauren Bacall
Allan Konigsberg became Woody Allen
Bobby Zimmerman became Bob Dylan
Issur Danielovich became Kirk Douglas
Benny Kubelsky became Jack Benny
Joseph Levitch became Jerry Lewis
Charles Bushinsky became Charles Bronson
Winona Horowitz became Winona Ryder
Natalie Herschlag became Natalie Portman
Jonah Feldstein became Jonah Hill
Adam Spiegel became Spike Jonze  

The message is clear: if you're an -ich or an -itz or a -stein or a -berg, you ain't going nowhere.

(I mean, can you imagine them inviting someone named Bobby Zimmerman to headline at Woodstock?)

So how does it make any sense that a Gentile person would go the other direction and adopt a Jewish name?

I refer, of course, to Caryn Johnson. 

Per her Wikipedia page:

"My mother did not name me Whoopi, but Goldberg is my name — it's part of my family, part of my heritage, just like being black", and "I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don't go to temple, but I do remember the holidays." She has stated that "people would say 'Come on, are you Jewish?' And I always say 'Would you ask me that if I was white? I bet not.'" One account recalls that her mother, Emma Johnson, thought the family's original surname was "not Jewish enough" for her daughter to become a star. Researcher Henry Louis Gates Jr. found that all of Johnson's traceable ancestors were African Americans, that she had no known German or Jewish ancestry, and that none of her ancestors were named Goldberg. Results of a DNA test, revealed in the 2006 PBS documentary African American Lives traced part of her ancestry to the Pape and Bayote people of modern-day Guinea-Bissau. Her admixture test indicates that she is of 92 percent sub-Saharan African origin and of 8 percent European origin.

(In case you doubt the veracity of Wikipedia - someone with a net worth of $60 million probably can afford a publicist to clean up her image; it's reliable. But if you want to read the original Jewish Chronicle source of the above quotes, it's archived here.)

Of course she doesn't get the Holocaust! Just because she calls herself Goldberg and once upon a time planted a tree in Israel might qualify her as a philo-Semite if it didn't appear so opportunistic.  

What do you think? Did she go too far? Isn't it enough to become a Goldberg? Do the unwritten rules of show business require her to lie and say that she's actually Jewish?

Here's what I think is going on:

Either: She truly wants to become Jewish, in which case we need to reject her three times.

Or: Perhaps Ms. Johnson is quite perceptive. She sees that just because some Jews in show business wear Gentile "clothes" on the outside, that doesn't stop them from being Jewish on the inside (not to mention the many Hollywood Jews who kept their Jewish names). So when a Gentile wants to fit in, it isn't enough to get a Jewish façade; she has to virtue-signal that she's an MOT on the inside too.

I'm guessing that was her motive....what do you think?

Either way, she did (and perhaps continues to) try to fake it. 

So here's the last question for the table: is that something that a person can fake?

(That linked article above also mentions her tree-planting visit to Israel and her comment, "I feel a real connection there, but also with Palestine as well. We are one people, we really are.")


Shabbat Shalom

PS - Ms. Goldberg/Johnson, in case you are reading this - you could defend yourself by pointing out that at the time you made your infamous comment, the Anti-Defamation League's official definition of racism was "the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people." But thanks to you, they have hastily updated their definition. Here's a link to their now-abandoned definition at the time you made your comment and here's their new definition.

PPS -  This week's 5-minute podcast is called "It's a Mitzvah" and there are 10 ways to hear it:

iTunes/iPhone … YidPod … Spotify … Google Podcasts … Pocketcasts … Stitcher … Podbean … Amazon Podcasts … RSS … or just on the web.

(Also - I send out a separate email on Sunday night when the new podcast episode is available - if you'd like to be added to that list, let me know.)
 

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