For all of us whose Jewish grandmothers have been poo-pooing how much we spend on clothing, stuffing dinner rolls in their purses to compensate for our supposed lack of fiscal responsibility - Zac Posen has come to the rescue, providing fashion-loving Jews and gentiles alike with his Zac Posen for Target line. If you've never heard of Posen, here's some Jewish geography for you, or as I like to call it, the Jewish version of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon": Natalie Portman is Zac's close friend and muse - enough said.

Posen, one of fashion's few haute Jewish fashion designers next to Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, is officially the next top fashion designer to create a collection for the discount house. Posen will follow in the footsteps of his non-Jewish but incredibly talented peers Proenza Schouler, Benhaz Serafpour, Libertine, Erin Fetherston, Temperley and Rodarte - just to name a few. Rodarte for Target, the most recent designer installment to hit the racks of the discount Mecca, will be followed by John Paul Gaultier for Target, who will officially be the first couturier to grace the racks of Targée on March 7th. For those of you unclear on the difference between high fashion and couture: a fashion house must be appointed a couture house by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris. Few design houses have been awarded such status and no American, let alone an American Jew, has ever been awarded couture status by the Chambre. The others, who most deem couture but are actually just high fashion, are undoubtedly fantastic but are not considered couturiers.

Zac Posen will arrive in Targets right after Gaultier's collection has been rummaged through and sadly misunderstood by flocks of suburban soccer moms across the country. Posen's line channels hints of the mod 60's and 80's and while peppered with swimsuits and not necessarily appropriate for shul, its low price point seems off-putting in comparison to how expensive it looks. Zac Posen for Target will arrive in late April, making his Bubby proud and getting our Bubbys off our backs.

Check out the Zac Posen for Target Lookbook online courtesy of fashionista.com

For the second time in the past year, I tracked down Natalie Portman at a public appearance in New York City and asked her about connections between her Jewish faith and her vegan diet. After the world's most famous Jewish vegan took the topic in a different direction in April, I asked her a much more direct question as part of The New York Times' Arts & Leisure Weekend on Saturday night.

While performing my journalistic duty as a Jewish-vegan blogger, I learned several fascinating things. First, Natalie loves the name "heebnvegan." (I somehow managed to maintain my composure when she said this.) Second, she apparently remembers our initial encounter. Third, she sees her decision not to take animals' lives for food as the core of her Judaism. Finally, she thinks vegetarian food in Israel and California is excellent, but unlike the world's second-most famous Jewish vegan, she finds New York vegetarian food disappointing.

Below is a transcript of our conversation during the Q&A portion of the event.

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Actress Natalie Portman is known for her mostly good taste in roles (although the less said about Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, the better), especially compared when other starlets in her peer group. So, how does she decide what kind of parts she wants to play? She told the Daily Mail:

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do comedy. It’s just that I would only get offered girlfriend parts in guy comedies, which aren’t exciting to me, or those offensive roles in romantic comedies where the woman has to have a job in fashion so that she can have nice clothes, and her goal is always marriage. I’m more interested in finding characters that make me laugh.

Well, she's open to doing comedies, so that's great. However, as the most notable Jewish actress in her generation (and possibly in all of Hollywood), what does she think about playing Jewish characters? In New York, I Love You she played a Hasidic bride. But that role is the exception, not the rule:

I’ve always tried to stay away from playing Jews. I get like 20 Holocaust scripts a month, but I hate the genre.

Is the problem here that Natalie doesn't like Holocaust movies, or that the only Jewish characters in most mainstream films are connected to the Holocaust? Something to ponder.

Also, this must mean Natalie's dislike of playing Jews must not extend to being Anne Frank on Broadway.

Yidcore played their final show on December 17 in their hometown of Melbourne, Australia. The genre-defining Jewish punk band went from just covering classic Jewish songs a decade ago to recording gems like "Punk Rock Chanukah Song" and "They Tried to Kill Us. They Failed. Let's Eat!" Their 2005 cover of the entire Fiddler on the Roof score is a masterpiece of cultural expression. Untold amounts of hummus, falafel, latkes, bagels, and Manischewitz have been lost along the way.

Yidcore rocks the houseI give credit to Yidcore for introducing me to the very notion of Jewish punk in the first place. They made me want to dig deeper and find out everything I could in terms of other bands, books, and films. They helped me better understand my own Jewish identity and realize that I could be Jewish on my own terms. I will always cherish the memories from when I covered their 2006 U.S. tour for the Forward and got to spend quality time with the band's members. Whether it was the discussions we had when I put my clipboard down or the time that Bram, Myki, Rory, and I squeezed into the back seat of a car, I'll never forget my Almost Famous experience.

One last time, here is Yidcore singer (and vegetarian) Bram Presser in his own words.

Why is Yidcore calling it quits?
It's been ten years of something that was supposed to be a stupid one-night joke. We've had an awesome time, met tons of amazing people, toured with most of our heroes and sampled all the best falafel the world has to offer. Plus, when I was young and thin, getting naked and smearing hummus over myself on stage was funny. Now it scares even me. And I can't afford the amount of hummus it now [takes] these days. The death of our [rubber chicken] mascot, Scrambles, didn't really help things either.

Things are coming together for Jewish punk in the U.S. A few movies connecting Judaism and punk are in production. As far as bands go, Moshiach Oi! released an album of "Torah hardcore" in August, CAN!!CAN and The Shondes are working on new albums, and Di Nigunim is a delightful punk band with a klezmer slant rather than the other way around. What's your take on these developments?
Yeah, it's really cool. I've always said that punk and Judaism is a natural fit on so many levels, so let's hope it continues to grow. As for us, I hope we played a part in paving the way, perhaps providing a path between the early bands like Gefilte F*ck and the new breed. It was never commercially successful, but maybe that's the next step in the evolution of Jewish punk from which those bands can benefit. If not actual commercial success, then at least sustainable in the long term.

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I am a huge fan of all things Bravo, but as a diehard foodie I cannot resist Top Chef. For its first couple of seasons, I sat on the couch in my parents' Kosher home and imagined how buttery scallops probably tasted and how decadent a slice of kobe beef must be for one who gets to savor each bite alongside a creamy risotto. I pretended to understand the slimy texture of an oyster and fabricated a childhood Hawaiian vacation to relate to Padma's insistence that the back of her throat itched due to uncooked taro in Season Two. I blindly chose chefs to root for and never took the judges' words with a grain of salt. Not knowing what most of the ingredients tasted like with an upbringing of cholent and bagel brunches, I watched in awe as none of the contestants acted like using monkfish, alligator, or bull's testicles in their cuisine was an oddity. In fact, Padma proudly admitted to having tried bull's testicles a couple of episodes ago - nobody was surprised.

Talk at the dining table turned to nether regions once again this past Wednesday night when Natalie Portman joined the cast as a guest judge for this week's elimination challenge. The chefs were told that they would be cooking for an elite table of eaters at Chef Tom Collichio's Craft Steak. Then, Tom dropped the inevitable twist - the chefs would be cooking for Natalie and her friends with her dietary restrictions in mind, parameters which the chefs treated like a gastronomical catastrophe. No she is not lactose-intolerant nor is she a celiac - Natalie Portman is a vegetarian. Yes, kosher Jews - Natalie is just like you, my parents and almost thirty million other Americans; when she goes out to eat she spends more time searching the menu for an item she can eat rather than enjoying her meal. As a viewer, I thoroughly enjoyed the judges and Natalie's herbivore-inspired dinner complete with phallic references, common ingredients and downrightgirl talk. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the majority of the Top Chef contestants had never encountered vegetarianism before as most of them struggled to cook sans meat. In fact, the chef who claimed he knew the most about vegetarian dining was the one sent home for his insistence that a leek could imitate the consistency of a scallop.

Some, like kosher-keeping JDub Records CEO Aaron Bisman, questioned why the chefs chose to focus mostly on vegetables rather than utilizing more hearty grains and soy proteins like seitan and tempeh in their dishes. I assumed there was more to this than the fact that the first elimination this season was due to the use of seitan in a dish. I consulted food blogger and Top Chef connoisseur Erin Phraner of FoodnFemininity.blogspot.com to understand the episode's lack of tofu. She explained that part of the challenge was to cook using only what was in the Craft Steak kitchen; in other words, what would soy be doing in a steakhouse?! This may also be the reason behind why contestant Eli, the show's resident Jew, was the only one to get close to using meaty veggies in his use of lentils. Erin was dead on - the Craft Steak menu features a variety of vegetables but barely any grain dishes and no soy products, Eli may have been the first to find and finish the lentils which left the challenge loser, Mike Isabella, and runner-up Jennifer some leeks and baby eggplants to work with.

Natalie's visit to the Top Chef kitchen may have been a feat in honor of veggies across the nation, but it definitely was for kosher viewers who could identify every ingredient and imagine the taste of every plate for the first time in the show's history. Being Jewish herself, Natalie Portman was the first to succeed in getting the chefs to compete in a challenge analogous to the Project Runway unconventional material challenges. Thanks, Natalie - while designers on Project Runway have forever been constructing dresses out of car parts and cornhusks, we needed you to get acclaimed chefs to leave their shellfish in the kitchen and serve up some dishes that any mashgiach would deem parve.

"I'm quite spiritual. I'm very good at visualisation. I was talking to Gordon Ramsay and David about this and they're the same. Gordon visualises a meal, then prepares it. David visualises the goal. I'll lie in bed and think, what kind of look do I want tomorrow? Then find pieces in my mind to create it." - Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham in The Daily Mirror

"I've been contemplating taking a college course in religion. I love religion. I remember whenever the book 'The Da Vinci Code' came out, the Discovery Channel did this three-night piece on it that I TiVoed and then watched eight times." - Jessica Simpson in Marie Claire

"I came [to Israel] when I was in high school as part of a student exchange program with the Jewish Community Center in New Jersey, to Ramat Eliyahu. You come and volunteer for five weeks at a day camp. I was a teenager - I couldn't really appreciate it as much, and now I come back as an adult and I can really get the flavor of the city, and I love it. What I really wanted to do is live in the city and feel like a Tel Avivian. As an American Jew it's an amazing feeling to come to a place where you feel you belong." - Zach Braff in Ha'aretz

"Go light a bowl of incense." - Elisabeth Hasselbeck, while criticizing Dr. Deepak Chopra, whom she referred to as "Glitterglasses Whatshisface," on The View

"Natalie Portman couldn't play Amy Adams's young-nun role in the new movie of Doubt because 'she didn't understand celibacy.' " - The New York Intelligencer

"We kept the Mormon side down to a dull roar growing up, because we realized how ridiculous and intolerant that religion is. My mom was never really a typical devout Mormon. After my brother passed away when he was 21 years old, my mom turned to religion, as many people do, but she was very tolerant of other religions. It was a melding of religions in our household, which worked out well because we're all open to anything—and, as a final result, not religious at all. Organized religion, more than anything else, is completely inappropriate." - Chelsea Handler in The Advocate

"Chet is not the typical punk rock party boy. Despite his tight jeans and affinity for neon clothing, this University of Utah frat boy is one of ten children in a devoted Mormon family. Recently single, Chet's flamboyant style and energetic personality always make him the life of the party. However, this doesn't mean that he will compromise his firm beliefs no alcohol and no premarital sex. Chet may not chug beer with his fraternity brothers, but he will take care of them when they get drunk and sometimes play a prank or two. A strong conservative Republican, he is not one to shy away from voicing his opinions or standing up for what he believes. Chet's goal is to become a television host." - description of one of the Real World: Brooklyn housemates, from an MTV press release [true story: Chet hit on one of my boyfriend's friends - a girl, just in case you needed clarification - at a bar in Williamsburg a few months ago during taping. And he sure didn't seem to care about premarital sex.]

No Zhang Zi-yi here: The poster for 'My Blueberry Nights' What's wrong with these people?

The question has lingered for some weeks now in the organic popcorned air of the nation's art houses, rather like Wong Kar-Wai’s own trademark cigarette-smoke curlicues, ever since the director’s My Blueberry Nights finally opened stateside, almost a year after premiering at Cannes.

Indeed what's with these interchangeable sloe-eyed zombies—Norah Jones, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and (symptomatic cameo alert!) Chan "Cat Power" Marshall—slinking around strangely inert urban backdrops, apparently motivated by nothing so much as the will to power of their own extravagant cheekbones? What's with Jude Law, meant here to evince some sort of alternative soulful masculinity, regarding his unrequited's postcards from the road less as texts than textiles? And what, for that matter, about that road trip, the doughnut-hole in a pastry-soft plot, or the stutter-step slow-mo takes of nothing much in particular, or the sound that often trails the lips, in the service of characters who speak almost exclusively in ellipses?

What's wrong, of course, is that this is a Wong Kar-Wai flick, filled with the inspired Wong Kar-Wai flourishes—random-access memory, cuisine and couture as coitus—that have made Chunking Express, In the Mood for Love, 2046, et al. probably the most admired and altogether geisty cinematic corpus since the end of the cold war. If, as most every responsible reviewer has concluded, Blueberry trades in the sensuous sublimity of those films for an air of profound silliness, it's not really a matter of the craftsman becoming a hack. No, upon some reflection, it's obvious what ruins the latest Wong Kar-Wai movie, so superficially like all the others: The swoony knuckleheads on the screen are white, and speaking English.

Which is to say, what's wrong with me? Why do Asian matinee idols doing narratively inexplicable things for my fetishist–aesthete's delight scream “genius” when Caucasians doing the same barrel head-first over the cliff of camp?

Natalie Portman, with awful blonde wig and indeterminate drawl, gamely chews up the set as card-shark vamp Leslie, but her remarkably corporeal performance—all coquettish flirts, petite curves, and impossibly symmetrical features —only underscores how rice-paper thin her character, and really all the characters here, turn out to be. Zhang Ziyi—Portman's Chinese doppelganger, if you think about it—had to resort to all the same stunts in 2046, but her role somehow felt both brilliant and fully-formed. In the same film, Su Li, played by the veteran vixen Gong Li, smoldered with unresolved mystery; Blueberry's similarly named Sue Lynn, played by the similarly fiery Rachel Weisz, devolves into flat tramp without a cause.

Impossibly symmetrical: Portman in ridiculous wig, with Jones Then, of course, there's Wong's male muse Tony Leung, with his sublimated longing and impassive stoicism. Jude Law's rendition of the same comes off vaguely constipated.

Some observers, in registering the letdown of My Blueberry Nights, have explicitly disclaimed anything lost in translation; "The disappointment here," explains the Village Voice's Michelle Orange, "doesn't have much to do with Wong doing America--he's been doing America for years, even in Chinese." Far be it for me to deny anyone their critical aphorisms, but Orange's universalist—or rather, Hollywoodist—take strikes me as a bit of liberal naïveté. I'm not one for linguistic determinism, but perhaps the reading of subtitles potentiates the suspension of disbelief necessary to appreciate an auteur as dreamily insouciant to plot and pacing as Wong. Then again, I have a pretty complete working understanding of Mandarin, and even I never found Happy Together or In the Mood for Love anywhere near as maddening as Blueberry.

The source of Wong Kar-Wai's American failure might better be glimpsed in a stray passage from the New York Times review of the Cannes cut. "And the characters," wrote A.O. Scott, "are correspondingly relaxed, even in their moments of distress. Whereas their Asian counterparts in other Wong Kar-wai movies — Gong Li, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung — show emotion through masks of mystery and reserve, Ms. Jones and her co-stars invite and promise easy empathy."

Scott, of course, gets it completely wrong and exactly right; the characters in My Blueberry Nights are in fact pure mystery and reserve, which is precisely why the movie seems so underbaked and faintly ridiculous to American audiences. Why this wasn't the reaction to Wong's earlier work gets into all sort of nasty unmentionables—Oriental exoticism and unknowability, the "natural" blankness and indiscernability of the Asian face—but I don't really mean to suggest any insidious bigotry on the part of his Western fan base, least of all myself.

Still, it's a thought worth pondering, and one that (almost) makes My Blueberry Nights worth watching: Like Korean horror or Japanese anime or Chinese wuxia, is it possible that Wong Kar-Wai's international ascendance reveals, above all else, a silent longing for the inscrutable—Hong Kong neon, femme fatales bound in cheongsams—in a shrinking world all too obvious with meaning? If so, are we still allowed to watch?

This picture of Natalie Portman on set pretty much lends itself perfectly to a game of Spot the Inaccuracies. I'll go first: Shouldn't she be wearing a wig? From Jezebel.

Scarlett Johansson: following in the footsteps of other do-gooder masked crusaders Actress Scarlett Johansson announced a plan today that will combine two of everyone’s favorite things: tzedakah and big swanky Hollywood parties. ScarJo will purportedly auction off two tickets to the premiere of her upcoming movie, He’s Just Not That Into You, on eBay. All proceeds from the sale will go to international social justice coalition, Oxfam.

Two winners will not only get to chill with the celebrity Jewess at the premiere, but will also be treated as stars for the day, getting glammed out with a Hollywood makeover, and arriving in style by chauffeured car service. Tikkun Olam has never looked so good!

Johansson is full of surprises lately: A few weeks ago, she told us she was planning on being the next Tom Waits, and now she's venturing into the world of charity. Might she be trying to keep up with her socially conscious co-star, The Other Boleyn Girl Natalie Portman? Maybe, but at least it’s for a good cause.

Related: Walk A Mile In Natalie Portman's Shoes

Letters Of Creation: handmade in israel by netaOnce you're strutting your stuff in a pair of Natalie Portman-designed shoes, you'll want to add a little bling to the outfit. Might we suggest a piece of jewelry from Israeli designer Neta Yehiely? A graduate of the Omanit Art Academy, Yehiely does everything from engagement rings and sets to casual, "spiritual" pieces.

I'm especially fond of her handmade, sterling silver "Letters of Creation" necklace, which you can pick up at Modern Tribe for $72. From MT: "This sterling silver necklace pendant has the 10 Hebrew letters of creation. In the tradition of Kabbalah, G-d is said to have created the world with the Hebrew alphabet."

Check out Neta's entire gallery here.

Pick up a pair of shoes from the 2008 Spring Natalie Portman Collection here.

Have a tip on a great product? Let us know!

Irrfan Khan: thinking about natalieWord on the streets of Bombay is that Natalie Portman and Irrfan Khan are teaming up for a new Mira Nair flick titled Kosher Vegetarian, a love story between a strictly vegetarian Gujarati man and a Jewish woman.

Nair is the director behind films such as Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake, which was Khan's first project with her. He's called the lauded Indian director a "majestic multi-tasker," and said, "I love her spirit. It's contagious. After The Namesake, I was sure we would do something special again."

It's a fitting role for Portman, a longtime vegetarian who recently launched her own line of vegan footwear. Despite her compassion for animals, she was thrown from the back of an aggravated horse on a recent vacation in Kenya while showing off the equestrian skills she picked up on the set of The Other Boleyn Girl.

Related: Walk A Mile in Natalie Portman's Shoes

Natalie Portman: has a shoe fetishNatalie Portman is known for being as socially conscious as she is gorgeous, so it's no surprise that the Israeli-born actress has launched her own line of vegan shoes. In an entertaining interview with the London Times, Portman recently talked about what drove her into the business of footwear. "I’ve been getting stuff from Target, which is de facto vegan because it’s so cheap. But I did need some shoes that weren’t made of canvas or plastic." High maintenance!

Portman apparently designed the line of limited edition shoes herself, and according to various reports, anywhere from 5% to all profits are going to the Nature Conservancy. The cruelty-free kicks are being sold through New York boutique te casan for around $250 a pair.

Portman's latest film, The Other Boleyn Girl, hits theaters this Friday and stars fellow-Jew Scarlett Johannson.

 

 

 

Natalie Portman is considering directing and starring in a film adaptation of the Amos Oz autobiography, "A Tale of Love And Darkness." The Israeli-born actress has met with Jerusalem Capital Studios to discuss the possibility and seems to be pretty much on board. Portman, who is all of 25, would like to play the role of Oz' mother who committed suicide when he was young.

Natalie Portman: Bad girl?In a story one would expect to be about a Lindsay Lohan or a Paris Hilton, The Mirror reports that Natalie Portman (wha?) was recently caught being difficult across the Atlantic. From 3AM:

Filming The Other Boleyn Girl with Scarlett Johansson, Nat, 25, asked the hotel to shut the bar at 10pm, then disturbed other guests with 5am yoga sessions. She persuaded staff to prepare a lavish party for her, Scarlett and crew but couldn't attend at the last minute. One of the staff told us: "We were relieved when she left."

Say it ain't so, Natalie. Well, if it is true, I will say this--Natalie's been pretty damn well-behaved for quite some time, so I guess a "bad girl phase" isn't too terrible--as long as it's a phase. Just don't get all JLO on us, girl.

STORMY PORT IS ON THE DARK SIDE [3AM | The Mirror]