Arts & Entertainment

Fact-Inspired Film

Bad Jews chase illicit drug gelt in Holy Rollers.

Michael Fox

Special to the Jewish News

S

am Gold, the fuzz-cheeked
ecstasy smuggler in the period
drama Holy Rollers, is a pisher
next to Jewish criminals Bugsy Siegel and
Bernie Madoff. But the Brooklyn yeshivah
bocher's wages-of-sin saga evokes some
interesting parallels with those infamous
scoundrels.
Neither a big dreamer nor a smooth
talker when we meet him, 20-year-old
Sam turns out to have a talent for business
as well as a latent cocky streak. Initially
overjoyed to have survived and made
enough from his first illicit trip to replace
the beat-up family stove, in a few short
months he's aggressively challenging his
boss's authority. Bugsy also thought he was
smarter than his chiefs, and we all know
how his career panned out.
Kevin Asch's tense yet bloodless fea-
ture debut revisits a brief period in
1998 and 1999 when secular Jews used
Chasidic recruits to transport drugs from
Amsterdam to New York. The Chasids' rep-

utation for honesty, and their participation
in Manhattan's diamond trade (necessitat-
ing regular trips to Amsterdam), allowed
them to pass through customs without
provoking suspicion.
There's no pressing reason or relevance
to examine this sliver of true crime today,
especially as Asch has nothing fresh or
cogent to say about the age-old tugs-of-
war between spirituality and materialism,
tradition and modernity, and religion and
secularism. What is intriguing, though,
is that Sam's sense of invincibility — and
his willingness to exploit unwitting Jews
— foreshadow Bernie Madoff's pathologi-
cal behavior on a much smaller and less
damaging scale.
As Holy Rollers begins, Sam (an inno-
cent-looking Jesse Eisenberg, complete
with peyos) is a polite, unassuming scholar
on track to meet and marry an arranged
bride. His loving family is proud that he's
potential rabbi material, even though that
won't help their struggling finances.
A hitch in the plan freaks Sam out at the
prospect of joining his less-than-ambi-
tious father in his fabrics shop. Approached

at a vulnerable moment by his
bad-seed next-door neighbor
Yosef Zimmerman (1996 West
Bloomfield High School grad
Justin Bartha), Sam is susceptible
to a singularly vague job offer.
Yosef is the most street-smart
and entertaining character in the Jewish actors Justin Bartha and Jesse Eisenberg
picture, with his white Converses
portray Chasidic drug traffickers in Holy Rollers.
and ever-present cigarette pro-
viding a jarring contrast to his
contemporary audiences seemingly
Chasidic garb and beard. Given his rejec-
crave, although the director aspires to
tion of observant Judaism, however, one
avoid at least some cliches. In practice,
wonders why he doesn't shave and get a hip what he's done is populate his atypical
pad in Manhattan.
milieu with underdeveloped characters
Then again, nobody has a long-
whose motivations and goals are frus-
range plan. Yosef and Jackie (Danny A.
tratingly hazy.
Abeckaser), the Israeli-born head of the
Holy Rollers plays at first like a tale of
ecstasy ring, are simply shallow, fun-lov-
the corruption of an innocent, with red-
ing guys who've hit on a moneymaking
lit nightclubs and hallways underscoring
scheme. Consequently, when they meet
Sam's descent into hell. But he evinces so
suppliers wise to the advantages of car-
few moral qualms, and becomes so expert
rying automatic weapons and trafficking
at the racket so quickly, that our empathy
heroin, they look like tourists who've
evaporates. It certainly doesn't help that
stumbled into Alphabet City.
Sam veers from naive to clever to clueless
The story has a familiar arc, albeit
whenever it suits the script.
without the crime-movie violence that
The only constant is his desire for gelt

Music's New Star

Drake, a black Jew, makes a name on the hip-hop scene.

Danielle Berrin

Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

Los Angeles

I

n a culture of misfits and outsiders,
Aubrey "Drake" Graham is the ulti-
mate outsider — a big-time black
Jewish rapper.
His star is rising rapidly on the hip-hop
scene.
Though fans have followed the Jewish-
Canadian Drake since his days as basketball
star Jimmy Brooks on the Canadian soap
Degrassi: The Next Generation, a recent
spate of press has introduced the 23-year-
old artist to the broader public. The New
York Times declared the young, emotionally
vulnerable artist "the most important and
innovative new figure in hip-hop:'
Drake released his first album, Thank
Me Later, last month, though his mixtapes
have been widely circulating since 2006. In
fact, Drake earned the unusual distinction
of being nominated for a 2010 Grammy

36

July 8 • 2010

without the release of an album.
He's been traveling in the right compa-
ny: Rap star Lil Wayne was the first main-
stream act to incorporate Drake into his
touring routine and served as somewhat
of a mentor to the fledgling artist.
Drake was born to an African-American
father and a Jewish mother who divorced
when he was 5, according to an interview
in Heeb magazine, and he was raised by
his mother in Forest Hill, a heavily Jewish
neighborhood of Toronto. He attended a
Jewish day school and had a bar mitzvah,
which featured the Backstreet Boys tune "I
Want It That Way."
His father was primarily absent and,
according to the Times, struggled with drug
addiction and spent time in prison. His
mother suffered from rheumatoid arthritis,
which precluded her from working and
forced Drake to grow up fast. In interviews,
he often portrays himself as a loner.
"I went to a Jewish school, where
nobody understood what it was like to be
black and Jewish:' he told Heeb. "When

kids are young, it's hard for them
to understand the make-up of
religion and race."
Drake told the magazine that
he was often called a shvartze, a
derogatory term for blacks.
"But the same kids that made
fun of me are super proud [of me] now," he
said. "And they act as if nothing happened."
Drake displays signs of Jewish pride;
Heeb says he wears a diamond-studded
Chai. He also wants to travel to Israel, the
magazine reports.
With his complex identity, Drake is
using the internalized experience of his
childhood to infuse hip-hop with a rare
emotionality. The Times gave his album
an encouraging review, calling it "moody,
entrancing and emotionally articulate,' and
adding that he "manages to balance vulner-
ability and arrogance in equal measure."
Thank Me Latex- sold 447,000 copies in
the United States in its first Week, accord-
ing to Nielsen SoundScara was the fourth
bigest opening week of the year, after

"The same
kids that
made fun of
me are super
proud [of me]
now.
- Drake

Eminem. (741,000), Sack (502,000) and
Lady Antebellum (481,000).
After struggling through childhood,
Drake seems to be enjoying the current
payoff — the Heeb interview chronicles
him driving around Manhattan in a
Bentley. Already, however, there have been
reports of overspending and financial
mismanagement.
Even so, with his career ascending, Drake
doesn't seem to be worried about finances.
He told the Times that he's more concerned
about the insularity caused by fame.
"Did I sacrifice something?" he won-
dered."Have I not realized what it is yet
because I'm enjoying this too much?"

❑

From www.jewishjournal.com/hollywoodjew