Eli Roth & Harvey Levin Have A Jew-Off For Chanukah (Really)

Connoisseurs of Saturday Night Live will remember the classic sketch featuring then-host Tom Hanks featuring fake game show “Jew/Not A Jew” (“Sponsored by Feldman’s Kosher Pickles. You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy Feldman’s, but it helps.”) Connoisseurs of this blog will remember that I am slightly conflicted over horrormeister Eli Roth, who makes movies that I could not bear to watch but was pretty hot as the Bear Jew in my 2009 favorite movie, Inglorious Basterds, and has some interesting childhood art. And connoisseurs of unflinching celebrity coverage no doubt know what I’m writing about already because they’ve already been to TMZ.com.

So! All this brings me to “Jew/Not A Jew,” an impressive four-part showdown between Roth and TMZ founding editor Harvey Levin, also a Jew. TMZ originally caught Roth coming out of a private Inglorious Basterds screening held for rabbis (oh, to be a fly on that wall) and lobbed a few Jew-dentification questions at him: James Franco? Kate Hudson? Pink? Adam Lambert? Surprisingly, the answers were: Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew. Back in the home office, Levin was agonizing over the answers too — so they brought Roth in to go, in TMZ’s words, “Menorah-a-Menorah” for Chanukah. Roth came in straight from the gym (and a million Blueberries swoon) — and took off his workout gloves, but kept on his yarmulke. Levin, for his part, pulled out his own yarmulke, and it was on — complete with jokes like “I drink your matzo ball soup” (Daniel Day Lewis: Jew, Not A Jew?) and much kibbutzing.

The final video is of a menorah a menorah interview with Roth, who probably should have pointed out that Inglorious Basterds comes out on DVD tomorrow, but otherwise chats with Levin about his chainsaw bar mitzvah, growing up in Jewton, Massachusetts, Tiger Woods, and how his psychiatrist father argued to young Eli’s principal in favor of his healthy boyhood expression. (Recommended reading: “My Son Killed Adolf Hitler” in the Jewish Journal by Dr. Sheldon Roth.) BTW, those who have seen Basterds will be a little blown away to learn that Christoph Walz — aka the Jew-hunting Colonel Landa — had Yom Kippur with Eli’s family. Yipes. I hope there was milk.

Are you kvelling yet? Good. Now go put on a sweater. Videos below.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.