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Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts

Is Stephen Bannon Jewish?

Stephen Bannon is not Jewish. Steve Bannon is an American businessman and media executive. He is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a politically conservative American news, opinion and commentary website noted for its connection to the alt-right. He became chief executive officer of the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump in August 2016. Bannon will be chief strategist and Senior Counselor for the Presidency of Donald Trump.

Is Jay Glazer Jewish?

Jay Glazer is Jewish. Glazer was born December 26, 1969 in New York. He was born and raised in New York. He did his college years there as well. He graduated from Pace University in 1993. His parents are Irene and Ed Glazer, who are members of Israel Congregation of Manchester in Manchester Center, Vermont. He married Michelle Graci, a model, in June 2006. They have one son together, Samuel.


Glazer made his first acting appearance in the film The Longest Yard alongside Adam Sandler. Glazer is a senior writer at Fox Sports’ website Foxsports.com and the NFL insider for NFL on Fox network since the year 2004. He is also an entrepreneur; he has co-founded a NFL athlete martial arts training center in Las Vegas and Los Angeles named MMA ‘(MMAthletics’)

Glazer started his career in the mid 90s. He covered New York Giants and Jets for the local station of New York then. As his writings got more strong and effective and he started making connections with players and agents, he rose up.

His network got him a great break at CBS’ The NFL Today, where he worked off-camera.
Apart from his professional life as a writer and reporter, he is in martial arts. He is 4-3 in submission fighting and mixed martial arts and won a gold medal for his win at the World Championships of Submission Fighting.

The senior writer for FoxSports.com has been the NFL Insider for NFL on Fox since 2004. Glazer is also a business partner with Randy Couture in MMAthletics based in Las Vegas, Nevada at Xtreme Couture Training Center. Glazer trains NFL players in Mixed Martial Arts at their Los Angeles location during the off-season and hosts UFC shows for FOX Sports and Fuel TV, including weigh-ins and pre/post coverage.

Glazer has appeared in such movies as The Game Plan, The Longest Yard and The League.

In an interview with the congregation's rabbi emeritus, Rabbi Michael Cohen, Jay Glazer discussed his first Jewish memory. Glazer says, "I was very A.D.D. growing up. Actually, I was more-than-A.D.D. I was more like L, M, N, O, P. As a result, my brain never slowed down so I didn't sleep much. Many of us with A.D.D. also suffer from insomnia. And of course I worry a lot... because I’m Jewish. I also stress a lot, again... because I’m Jewish. I'd lay in my bed at night hours upon hours often bored out of my mind wishing I had someone I could talk to. One night when I was about 10 I realized there was someone I could talk to: God. I'd talk to GOD about everything. For hours I'd talk about my day, ask GOD how his day is and really just talk like anyone would talk to one's best friend. It became the foundation of my relationship with God."

Regarding Shabbat, Glazer has explained, "The Fourth Commandment. Observe my Sabbath. GOD actually demands that we chill out, take a break, hang with the family. Well gee, that's not a hard commandment to follow. GOD is insisting, "Dude, chilllllllll." God isn't commanding us to give away our money or not have a good time or sacrifice Isaac. God is simply saying, "Dude, chill out. Hang out with your family. Relax!"

"I started doing this in 1989 and I didn't get a full-time paying job that didn't go Chapter 11 until 1999. That is 10 years of rejection and heart-break, 10 years of using the Sabbath to renew my spirit to fight on each week. I'd go sit in shule, let the songs I grew up with breeze through me and let the week go. Clean slate!"

Jay Glazer said his favorite Jewish holiday is Yom Kippur: "I wait until I am at my hungriest point of the fast and I go out and find homeless, walk up to them and ask,” If you could eat anything you could right now what would you like? I’m talking a feast, what do you REALLLY want?” Often they ask for something simple like a simple slice of pizza. But instead of just a slice of pizza I add some baked ziti, calzone, soda, etc. I try to give these homeless people a feast. In those three minutes we change roles. For those few minutes I am absolutely starving, actually wishing I could have what this homeless person is feasting on. I’m starving, waiting for the second I too could have that piece of pizza! That homeless person is eating like a king feeling like I normally do while I feel like this poor soul normally does. Talk about perspective. No matter how crappy at times I may feel like my life might be, how pissed off I might be about something in life that isn't going my way, it really puts things in perspective."

"This year it was really hard because we walked, my girlfriend and I walked, into a Cheesecake Factory right before neilah and we got eight meals of filet minion, chicken fingers, mashed potatoes, french fries, bread, bottle of water. When I tell you I was dying, oh my God, and we went and gave these feasts out to different homeless people. That puts it in such wonderful perspective. I’ve gotten other people now to start doing this as well and they love it. I just heard someone who told me, “It’s now our family tradition were doing it now on the Pacific Coast Highway every Yom Kippur when we’re hungry.” It’s great and they do it with their kids."

The rest of Rabbi Cohen's interview with Jay Glazer is below:

So if a kid were to ask you, “How do you define God?’ what would you say to them?

How do you define God? What do you always want in a friend? Someone who’s always going to be there for you, someone who’s going to be loyal to you, and someone you can really open up to and listens to you. That’s what you want in a friend and they’re right there. That’s how I would define God.

Does it really hurt to have faith? I feel people often try to outsmart themselves. If I could say anything it is this: give a shot, it can’t hurt. If you have someone who’s so loving like a grandparent looking over you, or a best friend it may just make your life and journey a little bit easier, a little bit better. I believe that’s all that God wants.

So you see lots of football games and often at the end of a football game in the interviews a player will thank God that they won. I’m curious in their theology do they think that God is actually watching and cares whether the Green Bay Packers or the Patriots win?

I think when you have this belief that God is with you, you really believe that God is with you and you only. The thing is as an athlete you’re going to look for any edge in confidence that you can find. This relationship with God provides internal strength. I have this extra internal strength that gets me to feel like I can overcome anything that’s thrown my way.

Faith is the greatest weapon you can wield.

Is there a right way and a wrong way in having faith?
The right way is to use faith to love, overcome and make life better. It's wrong when people use faith in such a way as to say, "OK I’m going to be friends with God so good things will happen for me and if they don’t well I’m done with you." It doesn’t work that way folks.

If only good things happen then how does God really know who loves GOD? You know what I mean? Sometimes I think perhaps bad things happen because God’s gotta know if I’m still loyal. Doesn't it give us such joy and pride when we stick by a loved one through difficult times? The soul rises up and your heart leaps when you know you've stuck by someone getting through a really, really difficult time.

Do you have a favorite Jewish memory?

The beauty of Judaism and religion gave me my final and perhaps greatest memory of my grandmother, who I referred to as Nanny. We were at my cousin Sydney's Bat Mitzvah and my beloved Nanny was on her last few months of life. She was pretty much incoherent, didn't really remember who any of us was anymore. She was wheelchair bound and like I said, in her own incoherent world. But when the rabbi and cantor began chanting some of the prayers, she was suddenly Nanny again, singing along right next to me. I held her hand the whole time and we sang together and for the last time in our lives I was able to have a connection with my grandmother. We sang the Sh’ma, we sang the Ve’ahvta, the B’rechoo, the Avot and we sang it all together. It gave me my last coherent moment with my grandmother. That’s pretty darn good.

I have a friend of mine who’s a cantor and she’s beginning to get involved with the situation like your grandmother where they connect to these tunes and they open up and they suddenly have these relationships with their family members that they would not have had because it sometimes can go beyond the song and it opens up that real part of them.
That’s God. That’s why I have this picture of this beautiful God. That’s so far above what we can do as people. That’s why there’s gotta be a God ‘cause something like that is well above our pay grade. We can’t produce connections in the soul like that, we can’t. As much as those in the field of science often set out to try to disprove faith, science could never produce connections in the soul like that. There's nothing better.

Is Helen Thomas Jewish

Helen Thomas was not Jewish. The American author and news service reporter was a member of the White House press corps and an opinion columnist.

Born in Winchester, Kentucky, Helen Thomas was the seventh of the ten children of George and Mary (Rowady) Thomas, immigrants from Tripoli, Lebanon. Thomas was raised mainly in Detroit, Michigan, where her family moved when she was four years old, and where her father ran a grocery store. She was raised as a Christian in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Helen Thomas worked for the United Press and United Press International (UPI) for 57 years, first as a correspondent, and later as White House bureau manager. She was a columnist for Hearst Newspapers from 2000 to 2010, writing on national affairs and the White House.

A rabbi on the White House grounds with his son and a teenage friend for a May 27, 2010 American Jewish Heritage Celebration Day, questioned Thomas as she was leaving the White House via the North Lawn driveway. When asked for comments on Israel, she replied: "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine." and "Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland..." When asked where Israeli Jews should go, she replied they could "go home" to Poland or Germany or "America and everywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries?"

On June 4, Thomas posted the following response on her web site:
"I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

Thomas died on July 20, 2013, at her home in Washington, D.C. at the age of 92, just two weeks short of her 93rd birthday.

Is Matt Nosanchuk Jewish?

Matt Nosanchuk is Jewish. Nosanchuk was named the White House's Jewish Liaison by President Barack Obama in July 2013. His official title is associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement for Jewish Outreach.

He grew up in the Detroit area. His cousin is a Reform rabbi in Cleveland. He was previously the Justice Department's Gay Liaison.

Nosanchuk received his undergraduate and law degree from Stanford University and joined the Obama administration in 2009 as a senior counselor in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, where, according to JTA, he “helped shape the Obama administration’s response to a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act.” He was awarded the inaugural Stonewall Award by the American Bar Association in February.

He’s also a longtime member of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Maryland, which seems as good a place for liaising as any.

Is Pauline Phillips Jewish?


Pauline Phillips, who wrote the Dear Abby column, was Jewish. "Dear Abby" was the name of the advice column Phillips founded in 1956 under the pen name Abigail Van Buren. It has been continued by her daughter, Jeanne Phillips, who now owns the legal rights to the pen name. Pauline Phillips died on January 17, 2013.


Pauline Esther Friedman, nicknamed "Popo", was born in Sioux City, Iowa to Russian Jewish immigrants, Rebecca (née Rushall) and Abraham B. Friedman, owner of a chain of movie theaters. She was the youngest of four sisters and grew up in Sioux City. One sister was an identical twin, Esther Pauline Friedman, who later became the columnist Ann Landers.

In 1939, she and her identical twin sister Esther (Ann Landers) were married in a double-wedding ceremony on their birthday.[5] She married Morton Phillips of Minneapolis, and had two children, a son, Edward Jay Phillips, and a daughter, Jeanne Phillips.

According to Pauline Phillips, she came up with the pen name Abigail Van Buren by combining the name of Biblical figure Abigail in the Book of I Samuel, with the last name of former U.S. President Martin Van Buren.

The column was syndicated by McNaught Syndicate from 1956 until 1966, when it moved to Universal Press Syndicate. Dear Abby's current syndication company claims the column is known for its "uncommon common sense and youthful perspective". A similar column, Ask Ann Landers, was written from 1955 to 2002 by Phillips' twin sister Eppie Lederer.

Is Richard Engel Jewish?

Richard Engel is Jewish. The American television journalist and author is best known as NBC News's chief foreign correspondent. Engel was assigned to that position after being the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut Bureau chief. Before joining NBC News, he covered the start of the 2003 war in Iraq from Baghdad for ABC News as a freelance journalist.


Richard Engel grew up in a Jewish family on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. He was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child. He has an older brother who is a cardiologist. His father is a former Goldman Sachs financier. His mother Nina used to run an antiques store.

Engel reads and speaks Arabic fluently and is also fluent in Italian and Spanish. He has published two books.  "A Fist in the Hornet's Nest" is about his experience covering the Iraq War from Baghdad and his most recent book "War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq" is a sequel to the first publication.

Richard Engel was been missing in Syria for a week along with Turkish correspondent for NBC, Aziz Akyavas when the two were taken hostage. The hostages were subsequently released on December 18, 2012. 

Is Howard Stern Jewish?

Howard Stern is a Jew. Howard Stern was born on January 12, 1954 to a Jewish family in Jackson Heights, Queens. His father Ben and mother Ray Schiffman are of Austro-Hungarian immigrants.


The supermodel Elle MacPherson recently called Howard Stern "absolutely Jewish" on his Sirius Radio talk show.

Is Dick Clark Jewish?

Dick Clark was not Jewish. Dick Clark was born in Mount Vernon, New York. He died on April 18, 2012. Dick Clark was the son of Julia Fuller (née Barnard) Clark and Richard Augustus Clark.

Is Mike Wallace Jewish?

Mike Wallace was Jewish. The journalist Mike Wallace died Saturday, April 7, 2012 at 93 in New Haven, Connecticut.

Mike Wallace was born Myron Leon Wallace in Brookline, Massachusetts, to Russian Jewish parents Frank and Zina (Sharfman) Wallace. His father was a grocer and insurance broker. The family shortened their family name from Wallechinsky to Wallik and eventually to Wallace. Wallace earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, where he worked for the Michigan Daily student newspaper and was a member of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity.


Mike Wallace retired from his anchor desk on "60 Minutes" in 2006 after spending 38 seasons with the program. Wallace interviewed PLO leader Yasser Arafat and was accused of allowing Arafat to declare anti-Israel propaganda without rebuke.

Mike Wallace's son Chris is the host of Fox News Sunday for the Fox News network.

Is Regis Philbin Jewish?

Regis Philbin is not a Jew. Philbin was raised Roman Catholic.


Regis Philbin was born in New York City to an Irish father and an Arbëreshë  mother. His parents Francis "Frank" Philbin, a U.S. Marine who served in the Pacific and Filomena "Florence" Boscia raised Philbin in The Bronx, New York.

Is Andrew Breitbart Jewish?

Was Andrew Breitbart Jewish? Yes Andrew Breitbart was Jewish, but it is more complicated than a simple answer. The writer and political commentator was adopted by Gerald and Arlene Breitbart. Andrew Breitbart died on March 1, 2012. Breitbart's father is a restaurant owner and his mother is a banker. Andrew Breitbart was raised Jewish because his adoptive mother had converted to Judaism before she married Breitbart's adoptive father.


There is no published information on whether Breitbart ever converted to Judaism after he was adopted by his Jewish parents Gerald and Arlene Breitbart. Just because his adopted parents were Jewish (his mother through conversion) doesn't mean that Andrew Breitbart was automatically Jewish when he was adopted according to traditional Jewish interpretation. Breitbart's biological father was a folk singer. Breitbart was ethnically Irish by birth, and his adopted sister is Hispanic.

Breitbart was also involved in the 2009 ACORN video controversy. Breitbart found himself enmeshed in controversy within the conservative movement relating to the participation of gay group GOProud in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual conference held in Washington, D.C. by the American Conservative Union. Breitbart also helped launch the NY Rep. Anthony Weiner sexting scandal when he showed a sexually graphic photo of Anthony Weiner naked (from Weiner's Twitter feed) in a radio interview with hosts Opie and Anthony. He also developed a reputation for

Breitbart died unexpectedly on March 1, 2012. A man saw him collapse while walking in Brentwood, California shortly after midnight and called paramedics, who rushed him to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center where he was declared dead.

In an article announcing his sudden death, the Jewish Journal wrote:

Breitbart, who once proudly called himself a "biased journalist" worked at the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post before starting his own family of conservative web-based media outlets. He is best known for publishing the damning photographs in 2011 that forced Anthony Weiner, then a Democratic congressman from New York, to resign. Breitbart was adopted as a child and raised as a Jew, and he enjoyed needling the Jewish community for what he saw as its liberal leanings. At a Republican Jewish Coalition event in June 2011, Breitbart gleefully regaled the audience with the story of his being kicked out of Hebrew school at University Synagogue as a child. "That’s where the battle started with the liberal Jewish community," he said. Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition event in 2011, Breitbart said journalistic objectivity, when covering Israel, was misplaced. "You cannot be objective when it comes to right and wrong,” Breitbart said. “And Israel is in the right. So I’m a biased journalist, and I’m having a great time doing it."