Celebrity jews

Ready for some football?

The following is a list of Jewish players on an NFL team roster as of Sept. 13. All have at least one Jewish parent and were raised Jewish or secular. This list was prepared with the aid of Jewish Sports Review magazine, and next to players who don’t have two Jewish parents, I have placed an (m) or (f) to indicate which parent is Jewish:

Greg Camarillo, 29, (m), wide receiver; Minnesota Vikings; Brian De La Puente, 26, (m), guard, New Orleans Saints; Antonio Garay, 31, (m), nose tackle, San Diego Chargers; Kyle Kosier, 32, (m), guard, Dallas Cowboys; Former Stanford player Erik Lorig (f), 24, tight end/fullback, Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Taylor Mays, 23, (m), safety, Cincinnati Bengals; Adam Podlesh, 28, punter, Chicago Bears; Sage Rosenfels, 33, (f), backup quarterback, New York Giants. Geoff Schwartz, 25, offensive tackle, Carolina Panthers.

Taylor Mays

Mays, the son of a black father and a white Jewish mother, was the 49ers’ second-round draft pick in 2010. However, after a less-than-stellar rookie season, the 49ers traded him to the Cincinnati Bengals for a seventh-round 2013 draft pick.

This season’s only Jewish rookie is Gabe Carimi, 23, right tackle, Chicago Bears. A practicing Jew and a great college player at Wisconsin, he was the Bears’ first-round draft pick. His Jewish father took the last name of his Italian stepfather. Gabe’s mother is a Jew by choice.

Igor Olshansky was cut by the Dallas Cowboys during training camp, but he recently signed with the Miami Dolphins. Raised in San Francisco, the 6-foot-6, 315-pound Olshanksy had a down year last year and was released Sept. 3, a move that saved the Cowboys millions of dollars. Veteran David Binn (San Diego Chargers) was cut.

‘Moneyball’ on the silver screen

Jonah Hill

Opening Friday, Sept. 23, is “Moneyball,” about how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane craftily put together winning teams, on a modest budget, between 1998 and 2006.

Directed by Bennett Miller, 44 (“Capote”), the film stars Brad Pitt as Beane, with Jonah Hill, 27, as Beane’s right-hand man, former assistant general manager Paul Podesta (who is called “Peter Brand” in the movie). The film is based on the 2003 best-seller by Berkeley resident Michael Lewis.

 

Television notes

On the sitcom “Whitney,” which started this week and stars comedian Whitney Cummings, one of the characters is played by Zoe Lister-Jones, 29. Lister-Jones, who was raised in her mother’s Jewish faith, also sings and writes plays. In 2007, she played an Orthodox Jewish woman who becomes friends with a Muslim woman in the indie film “Arranged.”

Rachel Bilson

The Fox sci-fi action series “Terra Nova” begins Monday, Sept. 26 at 8 p.m. The premise: In 2149, the Earth is dying and a group of people go through a time portal to establish a colony and help save the human race from extinction. The paramilitary leader of the colony is played by Stephen Lang, 59. An amazingly fit guy, Lang played the hard-nosed Marine commander in “Avatar.”

The CW network drama “Hart of Dixie,” starting Monday, Sept. 26 at 9 p.m., stars Rachel Bilson, 30, (“The O.C.”) as a new doctor from New York who gets her first job practicing in a small Alabama Gulf Coast town. The series is produced by Josh Schwartz, who created “The O.C.”

 

Columnist  Nate Bloo , an Oaklander, can be reached at [email protected].

Nate Bloom

Nate Bloom writes the "Celebrity Jews" column for J.