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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/29085/full/29085/palo-alto-grad-student-gets-a-lesson-in-texas-life-1860s-style/ <br /><br /> <b>Palo Alto grad student gets a lesson in Texas life, 1860s style</b> <br /> Friday, April 28, 2006 | by <p>alexandra j. wall </p> <br /><br /><p>The question “What’s a nice Jewish girl doing in a place like this?” could certainly be applied to Maura Finkelstein’s participation in “Texas Ranch House,” a reality television show airing on PBS next week.<br /><br /> The Palo Alto resident took a three-month break from her life to experience what life was like on a ranch in Texas in 1867, working as a maid for the Cooke family, who left their comfortable lives in Dublin to do the same.<br /><br /> The show will air on KQED May 1 through May 4.<br /><br /> As can be expected, a reality TV show on PBS is nothing like those on network television. While not everyone lasted the summer, there was no rule that one person was kicked off per episode. The idea is to take modern-day people and require them to live as they would have in that era, in period dress, to show viewers what things were really like back then.<br /><br /> The cast was first taken to a kind of boot camp to receive training.<br /><br /> “We had classes in Texas history, and learned how to sew, how to cook, and how to take care of goats,” said Finkelstein, who spent last summer filming the show before beginning a Ph.D. program in anthropology at Stanford. “We had mini-introductions to things we might be doing.”<br /><br /> While tensions flared up on the set, they were not between the Cooke family, who are observant Baptists, and Finkelstein, who had no problem sitting in for their church services every Sunday.<br /><br /> While the 26-year-old Finkelstein speculates she was chosen for the show because she might have clashed with the Cookes, that wasn’t the case.<br /><br /> “I was living in a very Christian household, and that was fine,” she said. “Being Baptist is a huge part of their life, and I learned a lot about what it means to them.”<br /><br /> At the same time, they showed an interest in what Judaism means to her, and they talked about religion a lot.<br /><br /> While the camera crews weren’t there that night, Maura held a Shabbat dinner with the Cookes once, leading them in the blessings and making a kind of bread she learned could have been made by Conversos, the “secret Jews” exiled from Spain.<br /><br /> “We had candles, and I led them through the prayers,” she said. “It was fun, but the bread didn’t turn out very well.”<br /><br /> In filming the show, the cast had to put up with scorching temperatures, harsh terrain, living on camera and endless work, in the form of cooking — using a cast-iron skillet over an open fire rather than a stove — and sewing.<br /><br /> But the hardest part was the clash between the Cooke family, who ran the ranch, and the ranch hands, or cowboys. That extended to Finkelstein as well.<br /><br /> “I did not get along with most of the guys, and that was really hard,” she said. “As much as I loved the Cookes, if you only have five people you interact with and then six that absolutely hate you, it’s very difficult.”<br /><br /> Finkelstein has ridden horses since she was young. But when she offered to help the cowboys, most of whom had much less experience with horses than she did, the attitudes of 1867 prevailed.<br /><br /> “The Cookes and I came to the conclusion that unless we disappeared, there was no way the guys would get along with us,” she said. “They wanted to be heroes who were supported by women who baked them cookies or whatever. Maybe that’s totally false, but it was very hard to communicate out there because everyone was so serious and lost their sense of humor.”<br /><br /> <br><br /><br /> <b>“Texas Ranch House”</b> will air on KQED from 8-10 p.m., May 1 to May 4. Information: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/texasranchhouse">www.pbs.org/texasranchhouse</a>.</p> <p> </p>

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