"Somehow, the
formula keeps
pulling 'em in."

On The Tube

Fire And Brimstone

-Sylvia Rector, Detroit Free Press

Archaeologist submerges into the Dead. Sea
in search of biblical cities of sin.

MICHAEL ELKIN

Special to the Jewish News

T

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& PMI'S
DETROIT
3/3.832/616

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he salt-encrusted caverns of the
Dead Sea aren't the only reason
viewers with high blood pres-
sure should beware of NBC's engrossing
Biblical Mysteries: Sodom & Gomorrah.
This archaeological attempt to locate
the cities of sin is chillingly told as a
two-man minisub, the Delta, delves into
the cold waters that straddle the over-
heated divide between Israel and Jordan.
With biblical scholar Mike Sanders as
a captain on a mission impacted with
political tension, the documentary airs 7
p.m. Sunday, March 11, on NBC.
Sanders and company attempt to
establish whether irregularities captured
by NASA satellites snapping photos of
the depths of the Dead Sea could indeed

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Michael Elkin is entertainment editor
of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.

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'our Classified-Section

be Sodom and Gomorrah, whose randy
residents legendarily fleshed out their
lives with sex in the city.
Sanders has been to the Bible's begin-
ning; his series of specials reached a spe-
cial arc of triumph in last week's Ark of
the Covenant, in which he traversed the
Palestinian-controlled village of
Djaharya in search of the two tablets
procured by Moses. And when the
Palestinians threw stones at Sanders and
his party, including two armed guards?
Occupational hazard, he opines.
There were more to come in search of
Sodom and Gomorrah. It was Sanders'
lot to explore the salt cakes of the deep
encased in a claustrophobic container.
"I didn't like doing it, didn't want to
do it, but had to do it," he explains of
submerging into what he hoped would-
n't be the appropriately named Dead
Sea without guarantee of surfacing suc-
cessfully. He and his colleague were
quite a pair, scoping out the lifeless bot-
tom of the liquid graveyard where

"Kate Brasher" is an inspirational
drama about helping others.

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN

Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

S

tephen Tolkin was sitting at
his desk, surrounded by
Bibles, recounting how Rabbi
Mark Borovitz became the inspira-
tion for the leading male character
on his spiritually themed CBS series,
Kate Brasher.
About six years ago, he met Borovitz
at the Shabbat dinner table at the Los
Angeles home of his brother, the writer-
director Michael Tolkin (The Player, The
Rapture). He was immediately taken
with the charismatic spiritual leader of
Gateways Beit T'Shuvah, a residential
treatment center for Jews in recovery
from alcohol and drua b addiction.
A few years later, he turned to Borovitz
for counseling after a friend descended
into substance abuse. "He was like a sage,
a tzaddik," Tolkin recalled. "But his
advice was very practical."
When the writer-director created

Kate Brasher, about a struggling single

mother (Mary Stuart Masterson) who
goes to work for a community advoca-
cy center, he used Borovitz as the
model for the center's founder, Joe
Almeida (Hector Elizondo).
In the series, we learn that Almeida
created the organization while rebuild-
ing his life after his teenaged daughter
was killed in gang crossfire. Borovitz,
an ex-convict and alcoholic, also van-
quished his demons and co-founded a
center to help others conquer over-
whelming odds in their lives.
"Both Joe and Mark founded a
tabernacle," said Tolkin, 47. "They
made a temple of light in the dark-
ness. And they both did it out of
their own suffering."
Unlike Borovitz, the fictional Almeida
refuses to believe in God, insisting that
the senseless acts of violence he has wit-
nessed are the products of "a random
universe ... balls at the billiard table, hit-
ting and missing."