Weekly Kibbitz
Mila Kunis Tears Up in Multifaceted Talk
Ranging From Family to Films
Kutcher got married in 2015 and have two children.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February,
the couple has donated funds and helped raise
$35 million for Kunis’ native embattled country. In
fact, she got choked up when she told the audi-
ence that her daughter, who is now 8, expressed
pride in being half-Ukrainian when discussing the
ongoing war. Kunis said she returned to Ukraine
about fi ve years ago for a visit.

She famously starred with Natalie Portman
in “Black Swan” and said that fi lm, as well as
“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” proved that she could
make it in movies. People had advised her to stick
to television, but she didn’t listen.

Horowitz noted that Kutcher recently said his
movie with Portman, “No Strings Attached,” was
basically the same movie as “Friends With Benefi ts,”
which starred Kunis and Justin Timberlake.

“We were better, but it’s no big deal,” quipped
Kunis, drawing laughs.

With a screenplay by Jessica Knoll, whose best-sell-
ing book is the basis for the fi lm “Luckiest Girl Alive,”
Kunis stars as Ani FaNelli, who’s in position to become
a senior editor at The New York Times, though her
Mila Kunis at the 92nd Street Y on Manhattan’s
Upper East Side being interviewed on Sept. 29 about
her new fi lm, “Luckiest Girl Alive”
husband wants to move to London. As the movie goes
on, Ani struggles to deal with a past trauma as a
victim of sexual violence, and she is disturbed by
rumors about whether or not she had a connection
to a horrifi c high school attack that some did not
survive. The fi lm, which streams on Netfl ix, features
one of Kunis’ strongest performances.

She said the fi lm’s voice-over is particularly
important as the character relives her trauma. She
called Knoll’s voice “incredibly specifi c” and said
she chose to do the fi lm because it is in part based
on the writer’s real life.

As to whether she prefers comic or intense dra-
matic roles, Kunis said that she has no preference.

“There’s an ego that comes with fi lmmaking,”
she went on to explain. “If anyone tells you other-
wise, they’re lying."
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Michael Priest Photography
Jewish actress Mila Kunis has charmed millions of
fans around the world, but did she charm her way
into America?
After a screening of her new fi lm “Luckiest Girl
Alive” at the 92nd Street Y on Manhattan’s Upper
East Side on Sept. 29, the star, who rose to fame
playing Jackie Burkhart on “That ’70s Show,” told
the crowd that as a child she strolled into the
offi ce of the woman who was to decide if her fam-
ily would be allowed to go to the United States.

They’d been at the American embassy in Moscow
for about 16 hours, and she asked if she had any
candy. The woman had something better.

“Long story short, she was like, ‘Welcome to
America,’” recalled Kunis, saying she was about 7
when her family received a religious refugee visa.

Interviewed by Josh Horowitz, who has covered
fi lm for MTV, she said her parents initially lied
and told her that they were moving across the
street, but when they needed to take a train to the
Moscow embassy, she realized that wasn’t true.

Kunis had her fi rst on-screen kiss with Ashton
Kutcher, who played Michael Kelso on “That ’70s
Show.” The hit Fox program ended in 2006. Kunis and



local
Jewish Federation Leads Civil Rights
Mission Trip to Southern US
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
T hirty-one Philadelphia Jewish
leaders returned to the City
of Brotherly Love on Sept. 20
from the third annual Civil Rights
Mission. The trip, organized by the Jewish
Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s
Jewish Community Relations Council in
partnership with the Anti-Defamation
League Philadelphia and American
Jewish Committee Philadelphia/Southern
New Jersey, included visits to Atlanta and
Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham,
Alabama to tour civil rights-era land-
marks, museums and memorials.

The third of its kind, the mission
aimed to “change words into action”
and “continue the dialogue between
the Black and Jewish communities,”
according to a Jewish Federation blog
post about the trip.

“The current climate in our country
and the division in our country made
this mission even more relevant,” said
Dave Gold, Jewish Federation Civil
Rights Mission chair. “It opened my
eyes to how we can never forget our
history because if we do, it’s bound to
repeat itself.”
Over three days, the group visited
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta
— where Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. served as co-pastor — and heard
Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock preach
on a Sunday morning; they visited
Montgomery’s National Memorial
for Peace & Justice, the nation’s first
memorial for lynching victims; and
met with Joanne Bland, a participant
in the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” march
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for
voting rights for Black Americans;
among other activities.

AJC Philadelphia/SNJ Regional
Director Marcia Bronstein was most
struck by the conversation the group
had with Bland. Bland shared the hopes
she had to revitalize the impoverished
city of Selma as well as her involvement
in Bloody Sunday.

Only 13 in 1965, Bland was a child
when civil rights discourse heightened
in the 1960s. Not allowed to sit at
restaurant lunch counters, she remem-
bered crossing the Pettus Bridge in the
name of being able to eat ice cream at
the lunch counter like her white coun-
terparts. “She said she and her sister walked
across the bridge on Bloody Sunday
where they were met with hoses
and dogs and police beating them,”
Bronstein said. “She asked us to help
preserve history, help tell the story
to, I guess, amplify social justice and
activism.” Robin Schatz, Jewish Federation’s
director of government affairs, believed
the trip put into perspective the role of
Jews in the civil rights movement 50
years ago. She recollected the photo
of King with Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel in 1965, marching together
from Selma to Montgomery.

Despite previous solidarity between
Jewish and Black people in the past, Schatz
said, “Our role has been overstated.”
“This was an attempt to study these
issues, to hear from the perspective of
people who have suffered because of
racist policies, whether overt or more
hidden, and to see how we can come
together to create a better society for
everyone,” Schatz said.

White Jews in particular must reckon
with their role in both being the vic-
tims and perpetuators of discrimina-
tion and white supremacy, argued ADL
Philadelphia Director of Education
Randi Boyette.

She most grappled with those two
identities at the National Memorial
for Peace & Justice. The group learned
that in 1911, a white mob lynched
Zachariah Walker, a Black man from
Coatesville — about 39 miles from
Philadelphia — as well as about the
lynching of Leo Frank, a white Jew, in
Atlanta in 1913.

“The experience of Black people in the
United States is not the same experience
as the Holocaust experience,” Boyette
said. “But it packs an emotional punch
to think of the immense suffering in
both of those experiences that really
resonated with me, I think as a human,
but also as a Jewish person.”
Though the Civil Rights Mission
took on different iterations, one in 2020
Participants visited Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. was a co-pastor, and heard Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock speak .

 before the pandemic and one for Jewish
Federation Women’s Philanthropy in
May, the JCRC hopes to continue the
annual trip, making it more accessible
to the greater Philadelphia community.

As Jewish leaders return with a
renewed perspective, they are already
working on ways to increase Black-
Jewish relationships and address rac-
ism in the Jewish community.

AJC will host the first part of its
Courtesy of Amy Swiatek
anti-racism book club at Rodeph
Shalom on Nov. 2 with a moder-
ated discussion of “The Case for
Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; the
Jewish Federation is working with the
National Urban League and ADL on
increasing voter engagement, carrying
out a Get Out the Vote campaign for
the November election. JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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