Weekly Kibbitz
In ‘You People,’ Jonah Hill’s a Jewish
Guy Who Finds Love With a Farrakhan
Follower’s Daughter
Were Jews the “OG slaves”? Can
American slavery be compared to the
Holocaust? And who gets the last word
on Louis Farrakhan?
These questions have spurred very
serious debates over time — and now
will be getting a raunchier take in the
new Netfl ix comedy “You People” that
begins streaming on Jan. 27.

Starring Jewish funnyman Jonah
Hill, who also co-wrote the script with
“Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, the
fi lm stars a visibly tattooed Hill as Ezra,
a young Jewish man who falls in love
with Amira, a Black woman played
by “Without Remorse” actress Lauren
London. In a new trailer for the movie that
opens with a scene shot at the Skirball
Cultural Center, a Jewish institution
in Los Angeles, Hill’s Jewish parents,
played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and
David Duchovny, seem to immediately
bless the union after some awkward
comments about hair and rappers.

It’s Amira’s parents, Akbar and
Fatima (played by Eddie Murphy and
Nia Long), who prove a tougher sell —
particularly once Akbar, who says he
identifi es as “Muslim,” tells them he
is a follower of Nation of Islam leader
Louis Farrakhan, whose antisemitism
is longstanding and well known. If
Murphy’s character is following in the
long tradition of adopting zany antics
to try to prevent a marriage, it’s not
clear in the trailer, where he tells Ezra’s
mother that his hat was a gift from
Farrakhan. “Are you familiar with the minister’s
work?” Murphy asks Louis-Dreyfus.

“I’m familiar with what he said about
the Jews!” she replies.

Other awkward moments abound
in the trailer, including a dinner-table
argument about comparing slavery
David Duchovny as Arnold, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Shelley, Jonah Hill (writer/
producer) as Ezra, Lauren London as Amira, Eddie Murphy as Akbar and Nia
Long as Fatima in the new Netfl ix comedy “You People”
to the Holocaust. (“Our people came
here with nothing like everybody
else,” says Louis-Dreyfus’s character,
to cringes.) It’s all in a day’s work for
Barris, whose series of sitcoms are
known for prompting uncomfortable
conversations about race and culture,
and who — in the recent aftermath of
antisemitism controversies involving
Kanye West, Kyrie Irving and Dave
Chappelle — has found quite the
moment for a “Guess Who’s Coming
to Dinner”-style comedy about Black-
Jewish relations.

An earlier trailer for “You People,”
featuring only Hill and Murphy, had
made no references to the fi lm’s
Jewish content. The new trailer’s
density of Jewish jokes is sure to fuel
an ongoing debate over the “Jewface”
controversy and whether it’s appropriate
for non-Jewish actors to be cast as
Jewish characters.

And while Hill himself is Jewish
(the star recently petitioned to
drop his legal last name, Feldstein,
because he has never used it
professionally), his on-screen parents
are not. But Duchovny and Louis-
Dreyfus do have Jewish fathers, as
does London.

— Andrew Lapin
The zoo in Cologne, Germany, has
gotten its fi rst check from the $26
million gift promised by the widow of
a Holocaust survivor who credited the
city’s residents for saving him during
the war.

Marlar and baby Moma,
born in 2017
4 JANUARY 12, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Elizabeth Reichert willed the funds
to the Cologne Zoological Garden in
2017 in honor of her husband Arnulf,
who died in 1998. Both Reicherts were
born in Cologne and met during World
War II, when Elizabeth was part of the
local anti-Nazi resistance network and
Arnulf, a German Jew, was in hiding
with the network’s help.

“They only survived the war in
Germany thanks to the help of
courageous people from Cologne, who
off ered hiding places to the Jew Arnulf
Reichert,” the zoo said in a statement in
German last week.

Though they moved to Israel and,
after fi ve years, America after the
war, Arnulf and Elizabeth maintained
aff ection to the city for the rest of their
lives. “We were born in Cologne, and we
remember forever Cologne,” Reichert
said in 2017.

In the United States, they settled in
New Jersey, where the couple started
and ran a successful pet wholesale
business. They never had children.

Reichert chose the zoo out of all
institutions in Cologne because of her
and Arnulf’s love of animals.

“Arnulf wanted to give the money
someplace where it would do good,”
Elizabeth Reichert said in 2017 when
she announced the planned gift.

“When you think about leaving money,
memories play a major role.”
Reichert died in February 2021 at the
age of 96, and it was not until recently
that her estate was settled and funds
could be disbursed. The zoo reported
that it had received the fi rst payment
from the trust, of more than $700,000
dollars, and said it expected annual
disbursals to top $1 million in the future.

The gift, a zoo offi cial said in 2017,
was unusual in Germany where large
philanthropic gifts are rare and would
be used to improve the zoo for animals
and visitors alike.

The zoo said it is planning to name
its South American section after Arnulf
Reichert. Reichert had been giving a monthly
donation of more than $7,000 since
announcing the gift. But her giving
to the zoo goes all the way back to
1954, when she and Arnulf donated a
soft-shelled turtle they brought from
the Jordan River to Germany by boat
on a nine-day journey, feeding it cold
cuts of meat along the way.

Cologne’s zoo is not the fi rst
in Europe to be associated with
Holocaust survivors. Zookeepers in
Warsaw sheltered 300 Jews from the
Nazis inside the zoo, in a dramatic
story that was the subject of a novel
and then a 2017 movie adaptation
called “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” starring
Jessica Chastain.

— David I. Klein
'You People': Parrish Lewis/Netfl ix; Zoo: Michael Kramer via Wikimedia Commons
German Zoo Gets $26 Million From Widow of Animal-Loving Holocaust Survivor



local
Kaiserman JCC Gets $500K
From State for Upgrades
Jarrad Saff ren | Staff Writer
Photos by Jarrad Saff ren
A quick lap around the Kaiserman
JCC campus in Wynnewood
will leave you with an unmis-
takable impression.

Inside the facility, you will see a worn
basketball court and faded gymnastics
equipment, along with dimmed lights
overhead. And outside, as CEO Alan
Scher himself describes, you will see
“dilapidated fi elds” fi lled with weeds
and bare patches.

The place needs an upgrade, and
now it may be getting one. Or at least
the start of one, according to Scher.

In December, at the JCC’s 50th-an-
niversary party, state Sen. Amanda
Cappelletti, who
represents Kaiserman’s Main Line territory,
presented Scher with a $500,000
check from the state’s Redevelopment
Assistance Capital Program. The grant
program from the Pennsylvania Offi ce
of the Budget goes toward “the acqui-
sition and construction of regional
economic, cultural, civic, recreational
and historical improvement projects,”
according to pa.gov. All grants must
be matched by the institutions that
receive them.

Scher and his board raised money
from donors to match the $500,000,
giving the JCC $1 million for renova-
tions. A state-compiled list of grant
recipients identifi es possible JCC
projects as “boiler replacement, roof
repairs and lighting upgrades.” Bigger
renovations to the gymnasium and
preschool also were listed. Between
those last two, Scher said the Robert
J. Wilf Preschool will likely come fi rst
since it has a waiting list of more than
40 families. Specifi cally, the CEO wants
to start by renovating the preschool
lobby. “It’s an aging infrastructure and facil-
ity,” he said of the early childhood
center. “We want an infrastructure
that’s beautiful and state of the art.”
With the school, Scher believes it’s
vital to have a facility that meets the
quality of the program itself. And he
feels the same way about the JCC
in general. Camp Kef, Kaiserman’s
summer camp, has been full in recent
years, with more than 400 kids. And
the JCC’s gym sees action seven days
a week.

But those who use the JCC can
clearly see its fl aws.

Adam Sherman, a past JCC president
and a resident of Lower Merion for 30
years, described Kaiserman as “a 1995
facility in a 2023 world.” Sherman has
used the JCC for as long as he’s lived
in Lower Merion, and while he now
lives in Florida for half the year, he
still goes to Kaiserman “sporadically”
when he’s on the Main Line. Sherman
plays basketball, and he says the fl oor
is “playable but not great.”
“It needs a refi nishing,” he added.

But Sherman still views the JCC as
“a great location and a great gym.”
And he believes the key to its future
is not so much appealing to evening
and weekend jump shooters and board
crashers, like himself, but to parents
who will send their kids to the preschool,
camp and youth athletic programs.

“If you’re sending your little
5-year-old there, you want to make
sure they can swim in a nice pool, have
a nice fi eld, proper lighting — all that
kind of stuff ,” he said.

Cappelletti also sees the JCC playing
that role. That was a big reason why
she advocated for it even though she’s
not Jewish and doesn’t use it.

“The JCC does a lot of incredible
work in my community,” she said.

“They reach all across Montgomery
County into Delaware County and
Philadelphia County and Southeastern
Pennsylvania.” As evidenced by the additional
$500,000 that Kaiserman raised, it has
people who want to help. Therefore, it
may be best to use the state money for
practical upgrades, like the boiler, the
The preschool lobby inside the Kaiserman JCC in Wynnewood
The gymnasium inside the Kaiserman JCC in Wynnewood
roof and the lights, that will keep the
building open and running, according
to Scher.

As he put it, “Nobody wants to put
their name on a boiler.” Once those
projects are checked off , Scher and his
team can “invest in our strengths,” like
the preschool, he said.

A full-scale upgrade is necessary and
will likely take several years, according
to Scher. The JCC’s goal is to raise an
additional $500,000 in the new fi scal
year, which started in the fall, and it is
already more than halfway there.

“It’s not going to be here tomorrow
but will be in time if we continue to
bring in this kind of investment,” Scher
said of the vision. ■
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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