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Dec. 2, 2008

Melanie Phillips: The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared world

Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Strategic Motivations for the Mumbai Attack

Dec. 1, 2008

Max Freidlander, as told to Jacklyn C. Wadler: India Inkings

Mark Steyn: Whodunit!?

Nov. 28, 2008

Rabbi Ahron Rapps: An evil seed that didn't have to be

Melanie Phillips: Carpe diem --- or can we all relax now?

Nov. 26, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet the Orthodox Jew who laid groundwork for scientific development of ordnance that undergirds America's current world leadership

Andrea Simantov: Shades of life

Nov. 25, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Getting Emotional For Influence

The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman : Thanksiving feast!

Nov. 24, 2008

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: 'I just Became a grandchild!'

Barry Rubin: Don't flatter your enemies, protect your friends

Nov. 21, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?

Caroline B. Glick: Civilization walks the plank

Nov. 20, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto

Nov, 19, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality

Elliot B. Gertel: 'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?

Nov, 18, 2008

Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason

Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?

Nov, 17, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason

Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?

Nov, 14, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia

Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead

Nov, 13, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic

The Kosher Gourmet by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla

Nov, 12, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers

Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks

Nov, 11, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?

Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate

Nov, 10, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?

Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist

Nov, 7, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality

Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy

Nov, 6, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism

The Kosher Gourmet By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes

Nov, 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors

Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie

Nov, 4, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law

Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East

Nov, 3, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?

Jonathan Tobin: Was He Wrong About Everything?

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 31, 2004 / 9 Nisan, 5764

Along Came ‘Toxic Jewish Women’

By Elliot Gertel


Introducing the post-Jewish American Princesses



http://www.jewishworldreview.com | It was, I suppose, inevitable that a film like "Along Came Polly" would actually come along.


Jewish women began to be mercilessly mocked in films during the Sixties and Seventies. In the Eighties and Nineties, they were, by and large, ignored in films by Jewish men. So was it not to be expected that they would be depicted, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as toxic to Jewish men?

Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston

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When upper thirty-something Reuben Feffer (played by Ben Stiller) marries the Jewish woman of his dreams, and in a traditional Jewish ceremony, he is delighted. This woman, portrayed by Debra Messing in short snippets while moonlighting from Will and Grace, is not only Jewish and beautiful, but an ace real estate agent. But is trouble not foreshadowed when Reuben quips during his wedding remarks that his beloved has gouged him on the rent?


While the couple vacations on an island of paradise, a nude scuba diving instructor (Hank Azaria) invites the honeymooners on a voyage of diving lessons. Reuben decides that he does not want to scuba dive, and sends his bride for the lessons. When he goes to pick her up, he discovers that she has sought other kinds of lessons from the instructor; he catches them in bed together along with the diving gear.


Depressed, ashamed, Reuben returns to his office to discover that everyone knows about his humiliating honeymoon. When he asks how his co-workers have found out so quickly, we learn that his mother (Michelle Lee) announced it to everyone. Indeed, Mother does not stop blurting out the story to all whom she sees.


At a party to which he is dragged by his zany former-child-star best friend (Philip Seymour Hoffman, in the film's best performance), Reuben is spotted by Polly Prince (Jennifer Aniston, on hiatus from Friends), a former classmate in seventh grade, now an alluring if adventure-craving woman. Her quirks are those of impulsiveness; his, obsessive and neurotic. After all, Reuben's profession is risk analysis for an insurance company, and he is most frustrated of all that he could not predict the risk factors in his ill-fated marriage.


Reuben is attracted to Polly and pursues her awkwardly. With her help, he catches her, and gets caught up in her colorful hobbies and activities. Though his stomach tells him that he should avoid this romance, his heart keeps thrusting him forward. Neither the mezuzah on his door nor the dress pillows left behind by his wife can daunt Reuben from an affair with a woman very much unlike the Jewish women depicted in the film, a woman who is nice.


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Just as the romance seems to progress despite difficult beginnings, Reuben's bride turns up, intent on resuming the marriage after her fling with the scuba instructor proves disappointing. Somehow, the impression is given that the instructor is relieved. All that we really know about the wife is that during her "passionate" affair she was selling real estate like crazy on the island. (A stereotype of the "trophy" businesswoman wife?) Polly happens to be with Reuben when he returns to find his regretful new wife in the apartment, and she quickly and thoughtfully takes leave in order to enable the couple to talk.


In a weak moment Reuben invites his wife to his friend's new play. The ex child star wreaks havoc with the production to the point that the audience is swept into the dispute, including Reuben's father. Dad soliloquizes that this friend has to learn how to go on with his life and to take his own future in his hands. Everyone is impressed with Dad's words of wisdom, especially since Mom never before let him get a word in edgewise. Dad's advice inspires Reuben to send his wife packing and to pursue Polly, the woman of his dreams. The plot even allows for the best friend to find possible career rewards at Reuben's business.


While Reuben and Polly are forging their relationship, he asserts: "I had a mother who made me afraid of everything." She confesses, "My dad had a whole second family." The Jewish men are no more impressive than the Jewish women or the Gentile men (including a daredevil to whom Reuben is assigned). Reuben is lacking in sense and in character. His Jewish boss (Alec Baldwin), who calls Reuben the "best expert in the whole meshugass [craziness] we call the insurance business," casually mentions that his schedule is determined by a pending trip to Barbados with his mistress.


"Along Came Polly" adopts an anti-marriage position. Or was that the proposition all along? Early on, Reuben tells Polly: "I don't want to get married. I just want to take you to dinner some time this week."


. The film ends with an interesting flourish. In an obvious ploy to test Polly, a "wiser" Reuben brings her to the same island and exposes her to the same exhibitionist scuba instructor. One is reminded, for the moment, of Maimonides' teaching that true repentance is achieved when one is faced with the same temptation and does not succumb to it a second time. Polly passes with flying colors, and Reuben is elated to the point of exhibitionism.


Yet these closing scenes only point to Reuben's foolishness in throwing his wife at temptation and then doing the same with Polly. It is Reuben who finds himself in the same situation and who commits the same sin. Actually, it is John Hamburg, the writer and director, who repeats his nasty depictions of Jewish women and whose Jewish men are not impressive, either.

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Contributing writer Elliot B. Gertel, JWR's resident media maven, is a Conservative rabbi based in Chicago. His latest book is "Over the Top Judaism: Precedents and Trends in the Depiction of Jewish Beliefs and Observances in Film and Television". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.

© 2004, Elliot Gertel