Thumbing through the latest celebrity-strewn Gap ad, part of the company’s new “t-shirt shop” campaign, I found the usual melange of supermodels, iconic rockers, film legends, and rising stars. All looking enigmatic, gazing into the camera, straight at you, saying–what?

Then I turned the page and found “Entourage” star Jeremy Piven, flaunting his Star of David pendant.

The advertising masterminds behind this campaign want us to equate shopping at the Gap with individuality, personal style, and self-expression–so says the p.r. Isn’t that why you shop at the Gap? I hope so, because you can hardly see the t-shirts in the artsy photos.

If that’s the case, consider what we learn about Piven, or ourselves, from his pose. He’s contorted into a pretzel-like arrangement, with arms entwined, one hand over his face. Clenched between his lips, in one version of the ad, is a chain, and from it dangles a large metal Mogen David. (In another version, right, the chain is around his neck, the Mogen David resting on his chest.)

Maybe Piven–who plays the ruthless, trash-talking, wife-dissing Hollywood agent Ari Gold on “Entourage” and starred in the movie “Keeping Up with the Steins,” about a driven Hollywood agent competing with other Hollywood Jews to throw the most expensive, extravagant Bar Mitzvah party in history–is all tied up in knots about the fact that it’s 2006 and he’s helping to perpetuate hoary media stereotypes of Jews.

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