More TV season news
“Kingdom” starts on DirecTV on Wednesday, Oct. 8 (9 p.m.). Frank Grillo plays a gym owner and former top mixed martial arts fighter. His two sons are also fighters. Playing one son is Jonathan Tucker, 32. Starting on Sunday, Oct. 5 is “Mulaney” (Fox, 9:30 p.m.). Stand-up comic John Mulaney plays a comedian who lives in New York. Zack Pearlman, 26, plays his friend Andre, and Elliott Gould, 76, plays often-annoying neighbor Oscar.
The fourth season of “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” began on Sept. 28. It may be the best show on CNN, winning the prestigious Peabody Award for its genre-bending combination of insightful looks into the culture, politics and cuisine of the countries Bourdain visits. The episode that airs Sunday, Oct. 5 is the only one set in the United States this season — the subject is the Bronx borough of New York City.
Bourdain, 58, a former top chef and restaurant owner, surprised many, including myself, when he disclosed in September 2013 (while doing an episode in Jerusalem) that his mother, a former New York Times staff editor, is Jewish. He added that his father’s family was historically Catholic and that he was raised in no religion and isn’t religious.
Joan Rivers’ hardest Yom Kippur
Recently, a Jewish Journal of Los Angeles columnist wrote about her interview with the late Joan Rivers. Always candid, Rivers told the columnist that when she first announced that she wanted to become an actress, her father, a doctor, actually threatened to have her committed to a mental institution. She left home, and the next Yom Kippur found her completely estranged from her family, broke and forced to attend a little Bronx synagogue that would let her in without a ticket. She said she would always be grateful to this shul’s congregants.
Intrigued about this story, I discovered that Rivers gave a much fuller account of this Yom Kippur memory in a 1998 essay she authored titled “Please Forgive Me.” Yom Kippur, she wrote, came only a couple of weeks after she left home. She described the Bronx Orthodox shul and the service, and then turned inward, recalling her emotions as she sat in her seat:
“I had been taught since childhood that your family is your secure foundation and to be away from my family on Yom Kippur was the sin of sins … I was flayed with guilt. [I] was a brat … What if my parents died this year? … Yom Kippur was the one precious night of the year when we all came hurrying home … and all four of us walked to the temple together … It was our one night of solidarity … To me, personally, in my head, God that night was deciding what I deserved in the coming year … I prayed and prayed, ‘Please forgive me.’ ”
I was struck by Rivers’ sincere religious faith. Then I thought about the fact that Rivers berated herself, and not her parents, for causing the break that found her alone on Yom Kippur. Whoever was most at fault, Rivers wisely recognized that the fight had, at least temporarily, broken Jewish family bonds that were important to her throughout her life. I also wondered if her father, attending later Yom Kippur services, asked for forgiveness for belittling the ambition of a daughter whose talent ultimately could not be denied.
I also thought about the Bronx shul that took in a poor young woman and how Rivers returned that kindness. After her death, ABC News ran a special that touched on her extraordinary generosity. First, they ran a clip from a documentary in which she is seen signing a raft of checks — to charities and to pay for the private school fees of staff members.
Then they showed her in 2009, winning a round on “Celebrity Apprentice.” She gave her $500,000 winnings to God’s Love We Deliver, a nonsectarian organization that delivers thousands of meals to the seriously ill. The GLWD website notes that she was a supporter for 25 years, an active hands-on volunteer and a board member. Her “Celebrity” winnings helped GLWD stay afloat during the recession.
Columnist Nate Bloom, an Oaklander, can be reached at [email protected].