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Arts & Entertainment

The Maccabees from page C15

most loving. Where is your faith-
fulness?"
"Little sister, enough of your
nonsense!" they answered. "Let
us go and enjoy our feast, and
stop pestering us with your
whining! Go dress for the feast!
Buy yourself a new outfit!"
But Dinah couldn't forget.
Nothing could distract her from
the troubles of her people, her
land, her holy city and its Temple.
But how could she arouse her
brothers? How could she per-
suade them to rise up and fight?
She was, after all, only a girl.
That night the great feast
began. The whole town gathered
in the square to eat and drink
and dance in joyful celebration.
Music filled the air, along with
the sounds of song and laughter.
Late in the evening, in the

midst of the celebration, a mys-
terious woman came up onto the
stage where the musicians played.
She was swathed in beautiful veils,
only her eyes revealed. She beck-
oned the musicians to play, and
she began an alluring dance.
All the town stopped to watch
her. And everyone gasped when,
with one graceful flick of the
wrist, she removed a veil and
revealed a trace of skin. Now
everyone was watching intently.
Another flick of the wrist and
another veil disappeared. The
music played faster and faster; the
dancer whirled.
Another flick and another veil
melted away — and another and
yet another. The crowd cheered
and screamed. The dancer's face
was still covered, but not much
else, as each veil floated off the

body of the beautiful dancer.
"Who is she?" people whis-
pered."Who is this mysterious
dancer?"
As the music came to its wild
climax, the dancer whirled about,
covered only by one translucent
veil. The music stopped, and she
flung back her long hair. The veil
on her face dropped away, and
everyone could see — it was
Dinah.
Her five brothers bolted toward
the stage. They grabbed her,
wrapped her in a blanket and
began to pull her away.
"No!" Dinah screamed. "Don't
touch me!"
"But you are nearly naked!" the
brothers shouted. "Here, in front
of our neighbors and friends,
you stand with almost nothing
on! Have you no shame? Are you

not embarrassed? What have you
done to our family's honor?"
Dinah straightened up and
looked directly into the eyes of
her big brother Judah. "Am I
embarrassed, dear brother? Am
I shamed because I stand in the
square of our town before our
neighbors with no clothes, with
nothing to protect me?
"Tonight our Holy Temple
stands naked in the world with
no one to protect her, with no
one to rise up and defend her
honor. Tonight our holy city
stands shamed and deified, and
no one runs to her side. Tonight
the living God is taken from the
people Israel, and no one rises to
stand with God.
"No, brother, I am not
ashamed. But you? Have you
no shame? Are you not embar-

rassed? What has happened to
the honor of Israel?"
Judah and his brothers looked
at their sister, and then they
looked at one another. Each man
knew that his sister was right.
The time had come to defend the
honor of Israel and the Presence
of God.
Judah drew his sword and
proclaimed, "Whoever is for God,
come with me!"
And thus began the miracle
of Chanukah that we all know.
Mattathias, Judah, Eliezer, Simon,
Yochanan, and Yonatan were all
heroes. But the hero who inspired
them to fight for God and Israel
was their sister, Dinah. E]

Behrman House; used by per-
mission. www.behrmanhouse.

COM.

e■ At s

Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

MTP Moderator

CI)

C16

NBC's chief White House cor-
respondent, David Gregory, 38,
has been named the permanent
new moderator of
Sunday morning's
most popular news
program, Meet the
Press. Nicknamed
"stretch" for his
6-foot-5-inch
frame by President
George W. Bush,
David Gregory
Gregory is the son
of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish
mother. He was raised Jewish but
fell away from practice until recently.
Encouraged by his non-Jewish wife,
he has become more observant over
the last year, studying Jewish texts
with a rabbi and not working on Yom
Kippur.
He told the Washington Jewish
Week: "What I decided was [that]
what mattered [to me] was not just a
sense of actual knowledge or attend-
ing High Holiday services, it was to
understand how to live Jewishly
[and] find daily meaning in Judaism.
Shabbat has become a lot more
important to me as a way to stop
and think about what matters most
to me ... what kind of father and hus-

December 18 . 2003

band I want to be. A bedtime Shema
with [my] children is a way to model
Judaism for them and create a
Jewish narrative in their lives that's
not just obligatory.... I was born into
a tradition. Who am I to let it slip
through my fingers?"
Other Jewish journalists who've
moderated Meet the Press include
the late Lawrence E. Spivak, Marvin
Kalb and Chris Wallace. Spivak co-
created the show in 1945 and was its
producer until 1975. He was the host
from 1966-1975.
Kalb, 78, and Wallace, 61, had brief
stints as Meet the Press permanent
moderators in the 1980s.

E - Mail Follies

I've received the same erroneous
chain e-mail many times in the
last few weeks. It
claims that the fol-
lowing incoming
high-ranking Obama
administration fig-
ures are Jewish:
Chief of Staff

Rahm Emanuel;

Larry

Summers

National Economic
Council head

Larry Summers,

Senior Adviser David Axelrod, Vice
Presidential Chief of Staff Ronald
Klain, Budget Director Peter Orszag,
Economic Recovery Advisory Board

Chairman Paul Volcker and Treasury
Secretary Tim Geithner.
Such community e-mails usually
are full of errors, and this one has its
share. Volcker and Geithner are not
Jewish. Geithner is of non-Jewish
German and WASP background.
Volcker is of Protestant background.
His non-Jewish background was
noted in many articles in the late
'90s, when he headed up what
came to be known as the Volcker
Commission, a blue ribbon panel
investigating the Swiss banks' han-
dling of the accounts of Holocaust
victims. Volcker's work as commis-
sion head was praised by just about
all sectors of the Jewish community.

Jew Crew?

It seems like we'll eventually find out
that everyone who has appeared in
a Judd Apatow film
comedy is Jewish.
A few weeks ago,

Christopher Mintz-
Plasse, 19, revealed
that his mother is
Jewish. The young
actor identifies as
Jewish (his father is
Christopher
not), even though he
Miztz-Plasse
has no formal reli-
gious background. Mintz-Plasse was
a complete unknown and still in high
school when Apatow cast him as the

deliciously nerdy
character "McLovin"
in the 2007 comedy
smash Superbad.
Mintz-Plasse's rev-
elation was quickly
followed by actor
Danny McBride, 31.
Danny
A Web site linked
McBride
to GO magazine
asked McBride if he was "part of
the Apatow Jew crew" and named
Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Paul
Rudd as members. McBride replied
in the affirmative, noting that he is
"half-Jewish" and that his mother is
Jewish.
McBride appeared in Superbad
and had a major supporting role in
Apatow's Pineapple Express. A small-
budget indie comedy film McBride
wrote and starred in, 2006's The Fist
Foot Way, has acquired an almost cult
following on DVD.
Errata: In previous columns I have
noted that Saturday Night Live head
writer Seth Meyers is Jewish. But
Meyers' NBC publicity person just
contacted a number of media sourc-
es to tell us that Meyers is in fact
not Jewish. The confusion stems
from a Boston Globe interview of
a couple of years ago with Meyers'
younger brother, comic Josh Meyers,
which seemed to imply the family
was Jewish. O