Dream casting: Jon Steward as Moses
Those of you who read my blog and follow my annoyingly frequent posts on facebook know that I am a fan of Sarah Lefton‘s G-dcast animated videos, which make learning about the weekly Torah portions and Jewish holidays not only engaging, but also very meaningful.
One of the highlights of my recent trip back to the homeland (I speak of Manhattan) was my having coffee and a good schmooze with G-dcast’s educational director Matthue Roth. If only I had been so cool and brilliant when I was his age (and I’m still not as cool and brilliant and probably never will be).
Of course, I enjoy hearing in the videos the voices of people like Dara Horn, Danny Raphael, Amichai Lau-Lavie, Jay Michaelson and Dahlia Lithwick. To me, they’re rock stars. But for the general population, their names don’t ring a bell.
So, that’s where Sarah Lefton’s brilliant new idea comes in. Today, she published on BettyConfidential.com (I’d never heard of this pop culture site before – but whatever) a post in which she names celebrities she would love to provide voices for G-dcast videos. Not only does she name them, but she casts them in specific biblical roles and cleverly explains her rationale. I say Sarah has a real eye for talent for wanting Jon Stewart for Moses, Natalie Portman for Miriam, Jerry Seinfeld for Pharaoh, Sarah Silverman for the Burning Bush (loved the explanation for that one!), and Sacha Baron Cohen for none other than God.
Sarah, as you know, I’m not a professional casting director. Nonetheless, I would recommend your trying to get George Clooney for Abraham. He’s a man of conviction, and we’ve seen pictures in the media of him making serious journeys in deserts. Most importantly, a guy that good looking would have no trouble convincing anyone to smash the idols and idolize him – I mean, follow his monotheistic lead.
Hey – I know he’s not Jewish like the other celebs you’ve thought of, but could we make an exception in this case? If not, then let’s sit down together and scroll through the list of Jewish celebs so kindly put together for us by the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. It gives us everything we need to know, except for their agents’ phone numbers. But I’m sure that as soon as we track down and convince one of them to join the G-dcast crew, the rest of them will be calling you.
© 2010 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.
Whoops! You know those Kim Jong-il “ashes” that Sacha Baron Cohen — in character as the Supreme Leader of Wadiya — spilled all over Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet at the Oscars? Well, it turns out that they were originally meant for George Clooney…and that the provocateur is contrite over the incident.
