{"id":3167,"date":"2009-10-22T13:55:51","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T13:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2009\/10\/pucks-simchas-torah-inspiratio.html"},"modified":"2009-10-22T13:55:51","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T13:55:51","slug":"pucks-simchas-torah-inspiratio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/10\/pucks-simchas-torah-inspiratio.html","title":{"rendered":"Puck&#8217;s Simchas Torah Inspiration on &#8216;Glee&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/assets_c\/2009\/10\/glee-logo-8755.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/10\/glee-logo-thumb-150x148-8755.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"148\" alt=\"glee-logo.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span>After last night&#8217;s &#8220;Glee,&#8221; I think we all have to admit two things: 1) Will rapping &#8211; whether it&#8217;s old-school Young MC or the embarrassingly classic &#8220;Thong Song,&#8221; is a little bit bizarre, and 2) there might be something funny about the Jewish holiday of Simchas Torah. Yes, I&#8217;ll explain.<br \/>\nI was at a conference in Santa Monica when I started seeing the Tweets from my Jewish friends who were watching last night&#8217;s episode on the east coast. &#8220;The Jewiness of tonight&#8217;s #GLEE is a little overwhelming. I&#8217;m loving it!&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/susqhb\">susqhb<\/a>)  and &#8220;I can&#8217;t believe this is happening on national TV. Love it&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/lizfilm\" target=\"_blank\">lizfilm<\/a>).<br \/>\nWhen I got home, I watched, and even though I&#8217;d had an inkling from <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2009\/10\/glees-puck-sings-to-honor-jewi.html\" target=\"_blank\">yesterday&#8217;s tip about &#8220;Sweet Caroline<\/a>,&#8221;  it was the Jewiest episode of &#8220;Glee&#8221; &#8211; and maybe of a TV show &#8211; ever. Of course, my TV has been showing a lot of Jewish content lately (see &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/estherkustanowitz.typepad.com\/myurbankvetch2005\/2009\/10\/my-tv-is-jewish.html\" target=\"_blank\">My TV is Jewish: Kabbalah on &#8216;FlashForward'&#8221; here<\/a>).<br \/>\nStarting at 12:53 into the show, Noah Puckerman starts delving into the inner workings of his Jewish identity, telling us (spoilers, if you haven&#8217;t seen it) in voiceover that during their annual Simchas Torah screening of &#8220;Schindler&#8217;s List,&#8221; over Chinese food, his mother told him he should date a Jewish girl. Enter Rachel, in a dream, with a Star of David necklace shining at him and encouraging him to hook up with her. The exact line? &#8220;It was a message from God &#8211; Rachel was a hot Jew, and the good Lord wanted me to get into her pants.&#8221; Not exactly the most altruistic of dream revelations, but who is to question divine inspiration?<br \/>\nSo, Simchas Torah &#8211; the annual holiday on which Jews celebrate the completion of the cycle of reading the Torah and beginning it anew &#8211; serves as inspiration to date within the faith, at least momentarily. But the use of Simchas Torah as punchline also hearkens back to a classic 1984 comedy called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0088286\/\" target=\"_blank\">Top Secret<\/a>!&#8221; and written by the creators of &#8220;Airplane!&#8221; Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer), hearing of a German attack that&#8217;s to launch Sunday, says &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/simchastorah.ytmnd.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sunday? That&#8217;s Simchas Torah<\/a>.&#8221;<br \/>\nYou can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hulu.com\/watch\/103839\/glee-mash-up\">watch last night&#8217;s episode of Glee, &#8220;Mash-Up,&#8221; <\/a>on Hulu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On &#8220;Glee,&#8221; Puck finds dating inspiration in the Jewish holiday of Simchas Torah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-television"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Puck&#039;s Simchas Torah Inspiration on &#039;Glee&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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