Meet Michael Ginsberg: On ‘Mad Men,’ Sterling Cooper gets a Jewish copywriter

“Mad Men” is like the Jews — it gets a lot of attention for a show watched by less than 2 percent of the population.

To kick off its fifth season, the 1960s period program, winner of four straight Emmys for best drama, has a new Jewish character. To be more precise, the advertising firm at the center of the AMC show has its first Jewish employee: Michael Ginsberg (played by Ben Feldman).
And he’s, well, too Jewish.

At least he was in his first appearance, the two-episode season premiere earlier this month. It was like watching Eugene in a high school performance of “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”

You know you have a problem when Roger Sterling and the WASPs at the advertising firm formerly known as Sterling Cooper seem less offensive than the show’s creator, Matt Weiner, and the writing crew (actually, Jon “Don Draper” Hamm directed the episode, so maybe he bears some of the blame).
The whining: Think Woody Allen on steroids. And the father … oy, with the Yiddish accent. It was like watching one of the well-meaning gentiles from “Waiting for Guffman” take a stab at the father from “Shine" (Armin Mueller-Stahl: No one will love you like I do).

If that weren’t enough, the episode ended with Ginsberg telling his father that he got the copywriter’s job and dad breaking out the priestly blessing generally recited by parents over their children at the Shabbos table.
Things took a turn for the better last weekend in the season’s third episode.
Whether Ginsberg was feeling more comfortable at work or the show’s writers had gotten some shtick out of their system, the character felt less forced. (OK, he staged a holier-than-thou walkout and had a talk-too-much moment that could have had him fired, but that just tells you how bad things were the previous episode.)

Ginsberg even gave us a line worth chewing on. After Don — that’s Don Draper, the firm’s creative director and the show’s sexy, charming and womanizing protagonist — makes a crack about Ginsberg’s voice, Ginsberg responds without missing a beat: "It’s a regional accent — you have one, too."

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Converting to Judaism: Can a Conversion ever be Revoked?

Conversion to Judaism is not a simple and easy process/ For a person who spends many years learning in order to convert to Judaism and then changing one's life, even moving to a new community and finally finishing the conversion process and becoming a full-fledged Jew, much time and effort is expended. Could that conversion be overturned? And if so, was the conversion valid in the first place? These are just a few of the questions which hang over the potential conversion candidate as they go through the conversion process. What can cause the conversion process to be overturned?

Once a conversion candidate interviews with a rabbinical court and they agree to work with them, the candidate is then beginning his/her process of becoming a Jew. Most rabbinical court's will give the candidate books to read with a syllabus and hopefully set them up with a mentor who will be able to guide them.

The conversion candidate will be expected to follow the syllabus and learn the material and start implementing those aspects of Jewish law that they learn in the areas of Shabbat and Yom Tov, Prayer and Blessings, and Kashrut. After living in the community for at least a year and depending on the candidates level of learning and implementation, if the rabbinical court feels the conversion candidate is ready then the rabbinical court will convert them. If the rabbinical court does not feel the candidate is ready, then it will take longer.

The day finally comes and the candidate is informed by the rabbinical court that the process is finished and the candidate is ready for the dip in the mikveh to finalize the process and thereby completing the long task to becoming a full-fledged Jew.

|After the conversion is done, this new Jew will continue learning and growing spiritually as was done before the conversion. If everything is done according to Jewish law, then there should be no problems afterward the conversion, right?

While one is in the conversion process, one of the most important things is to make sure that the rabbinical court you will go to will be recognized around the world. How does a convert candidate find out about these rabbinical courts? They will either find out through their friends who have converted, their mentor or their sponsoring rabbi.

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I Married an Atheist

Weeks before I met my husband, I went to Israel on a Birthright trip and pranced down twisting streets belting out Hebrew songs, swept up in the fervor of the group. I shared my feelings in drum circles and slipped a note into the Western Wall expressing the hope that I’d find love that year.

When my wish came true, the trip was so fresh in my mind that I could recount to Josh in detail the spectacle we’d made of ourselves, dancing through the desert in some proto-flash mob. When he joined me in rolling his eyes, I loved him even more.

But when I confided my belief that my prayer wedged into the Kotel had brought us together, he snapped: “I don’t buy that.” It was a J-Date algorithm, not mysticism, that resulted in our brief courtship and prompt engagement. It was the first instance of my faith colliding with his skepticism. But he wasn’t just skeptical; he was a staunch atheist.

Granted, I’d never dated someone unabashedly religious. My ex-boyfriends had all partaken of the “boys will be Jewish boys” tradition: hiding in bathroom stalls to avoid Hebrew school, listening to the World Series on headsets hidden under their yarmulkes at Yom Kippur. But they drew the line at renouncing their faith, and their behavior seemed more rooted in mischief or even ambivalence than flat out non-belief.

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From church choir to Jerusalem, a couple’s interfaith journey

EFRAT, West Bank (JTA) -- One Christmas eve, as Jews across the country headed for Chinese restaurants, I found myself in a church choir.

The church, on the outskirts of Boston and straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, had hired me to sing for their service. As the clock struck 11, I entered the sanctuary with the choir, our robes and music illuminated only by the candles each of us held.

“Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed,” we intoned in a near-whisper as the organ weaved its way under our voices. “Where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed.” The congregation gradually joined in as we made our way to the choir loft. “Mary, loving mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.”

The hymn concluded, and in a moment never to be replicated in any synagogue, the entire congregation sat down in unison, uttering not a word.

And so began my search to live a deeply meaningful Jewish life.

I was born and raised as a Jew. I had my bar mitzvah at the local Reform temple. After college, I fell in love with the woman who was to become my wife. She wasn’t Jewish; she was the minister of music in a Texas megachurch. But at the time, I couldn’t imagine why that should be an issue, and I was upset when the local rabbi wouldn’t marry us alongside her minister.

That Christmas Eve was hardly the first time I had sung in a church. But this time was different. We had recently decided to adopt a child. My Christian wife, who was busy directing the choir for a church service across town, had concluded that, given our circumstances, it would be easiest to raise him as a Jew. We had even joined a temple that was very welcoming to interfaith families.

As I stood in that church choir loft, with talk of mangers and virgin births swirling around me, a little voice in my head began to protest. The voice reminded me that, in addition to Christmas Eve, it was Friday night. The voice asked what I was doing there. I didn’t have a good answer. The voice asked me why Shabbat wasn’t as important to me as Christmas Eve was to them. I struggled for a response.

By the end of the service, the voice had thoroughly interrogated me. “OK, OK,” I thought. “You’re right. I need to get serious about Judaism.”

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