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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/40136/full/40136/celebrity-jews3/ <br /><br /> <b>going on a ‘retreat’, glee clubs and vampires, high holy day doings</b> <br /> Thursday, October 8, 2009 | by nate bloom <br /><br /><h2>Going on a ‘Retreat’</h2> <p>Opening in theaters Friday, Oct. 9, is “Couples Retreat,” a comedy about four couples who vacation at a tropical island resort. The resort specializes in couples therapy, but only one couple is there for the therapy. They quickly learn, however, that their group vacation rate requires all the couples to go into therapy. The cast includes <strong>Jon Favreau</strong>, his real-life buddy Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman and Kristen Davis (Charlotte on “Sex and the City”).</p> <p>Fun fact: Peter Billingsley, the director of “Couples,” was a very cute child actor whom most people will remember as Ralphie, the star of the holiday comedy classic “A Christmas Story.” Billingsley isn’t Jewish — but he is a very good friend of Favreau. In recent years, he’s co-produced the movies that Favreau has directed, including “Iron Man” and the upcoming “Iron Man 2.”</p> <p> </p> <h2>Glee clubs and vampires</h2> <p>“Glee,” a Fox series that centers on a high school choir, has turned out to be a huge critical and ratings hit. As I recently reported, the lead character, Rachel Berry, is played by actress <strong>Lea Michelle</strong>, who has a Sephardi father and an Italian Catholic mother. Her co-stars include <strong>Dianna Agron</strong>, who was raised in Burlingame. In the episode that aired Sept. 23, Rachel was “revealed” as being Jewish.</p> <p>The new CW series “The Vampire Diaries” also appears to be doing well in the ratings. The show, which airs Thursdays at 8 p.m., takes place in a small Virginia town, where two vampire brothers, one good and one evil, fight for the souls of the townsfolk.</p> <p>Co-starring as Bonnie Bennett, a teen with psychic powers, is pretty actress and singer <strong>Katerina Graham</strong>, 20. Graham recently talked about her unusual background — she was born in Switzerland to a black Liberian journalist father who worked for the United Nations and a white, American Jewish mother. She speaks fluent French and Spanish — and some Hebrew that, she says, she learned in Hebrew school. She was raised in Los Angeles by her mother and has been acting for 10 years.</p> <p> </p> <h2>High Holy Day doings</h2> <p>Celebrity Web sites have been reporting on Yom Kippur “tweets” posted on Twitter by Jewish celebs. Actress <strong>Soleil Moon Frye</strong> wrote this: “My 4-year-old keeps calling Yom Kippur ‘uncle poor.’ Oh how kids come up with the wonderful things they say.”</p> <p>Frye, 33, who grew up to be a strikingly attractive woman, is best known as the child star of the TV series, “Punky Brewster.” Her mother is Jewish and, in 1998, Frye married her husband, producer <strong>Jason Goldberg</strong>, 37, in a Jewish wedding (he’s Ashton Kutcher’s business partner). The couple has two daughters, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old.</p> <p><strong>Bob Sham</strong>, 60, is known as “the voice of the Dallas Cowboys” football team, having broadcasted their games since 1977. He’s been the team’s lead play-by-play radio sportscaster since 1984 and he’s never missed a scheduled broadcast.</p> <p>A few years ago, Sham began what he calls a “spiritual journey” into his Jewish roots and became an active participant at his Dallas synagogue. Last year, his rabbi asked him to read, before the congregation, the Yom Kippur portion from the book of Jonah.</p> <p>The honor was repeated this year, but Sham had a problem: A Cowboys’ Monday night game was starting not long after the end of Yom Kippur. Sham was able to do the reading and make it to the stadium — with the help of a friend’s private plane and a police escort from the airport to the Dallas suburb where the Cowboys’ stadium is located.</p> <p>When asked why he made his predicament public, Sham said: “I think a lot of people of our faith try to hide what we are. Maybe [now] some people who hide what they are won’t do that and be proud of what they are. I know I am.”</p>

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