Let the fans rejoice

Love is real, folks. Sue Bird, the four-time WNBA title winner, is engaged to soccer star Megan Rapinoe. Bird announced the news with a teaser photo on Instagram of Rapinoe slipping a ring on her finger, and the two later confirmed the news. Both athletes are Olympic gold medalists in their sports, fan favorites and strong advocates for gender and racial equity in sports.

 

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A post shared by Sue Bird (@sbird10) on Oct 30, 2020 at 4:20pm PDT

On the subject of women in pro sports, one-time Oakland A’s coach Justine Siegal — the first woman coach in Major League Baseball — knows how to help athletes. But it was a whole new ballgame when she ran a three-day camp to train Abbi Jacobson and other actors for Amazon Studios’ reboot of “A League of Their Own,” the iconic film about women’s pro baseball. “Coaching actors was a lot of fun. I loved it,” she told Jewish Insider. “The actors were very coachable and eager to learn as much as they could as quickly as possible.”

Scarlett on wheels

Also married? Actor Scarlett Johansson and “SNL” writer Colin Jost, who rather mysteriously made it public not through the normal celebrity PR channels but through the Meals on Wheels Instagram account. But there’s a reason: The celebrity couple are strong supporters of the charity and urged their fans and well-wishers to donate to support home-bound older people during the pandemic.

 

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We’re thrilled to break the news that Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost were married over the weekend in an intimate ceremony with their immediate family and loved ones, following COVID-19 safety precautions as directed by the CDC. Their wedding wish is to help make a difference for vulnerable older adults during this difficult time by supporting @mealsonwheelsamerica. Please consider donating to celebrate the happy couple by clicking the link in our bio.

A post shared by Meals on Wheels America (@mealsonwheelsamerica) on Oct 29, 2020 at 11:52am PDT

Sibling rivalry

Harvey Keitel and Shira Haas are part of the ensemble cast of a new Israeli film. “Esau” is, much like the biblical story, a dramatic tale of sibling rivalry. Lior Ashkenazi stars as a man who returns home from abroad to take care of his father (Keitel) but must also face his brother, who has married the woman both brothers love.

You can keep a man off Broadway, but …

Lots of Jewish celebs tweeted on Election Day, or headed to Instagram to tell their fans to vote, from Barbra Streisand to Billy Crystal to Karlie Kloss to Zoe Kravitz. But Mandy Patinkin was the only one (that we’ve heard of) who boosted morale by serenading phone-bank volunteers — in Yiddish! During a Zoom call with volunteers for the group Swing Left, he burst out into a rendition of “God Bless America,” or rather “Got bentsh Amerike, land vosikh lib.”

Dylan on antisemitism

Bob Dylan may have distanced himself from his Jewish roots, but in letters recently put up for auction, there are glimpses of the songwriter’s feelings about antisemitism, something he — born Robert Zimmerman — said he’d encountered when young. “A lot of people are under the impression that Jews are just money lenders and merchants,” Dylan writes in one letter. “A lot of people think that all Jews are like that. Well, they used to be cause that’s all that was open to them.”

Bernie’s crystal ball

An October interview with Bernie Sanders has gotten new life. In “The Tonight Show” clip, recorded weeks before the election, Sanders predicts what ended up happening on election night: “It could well be that at 10 o’clock on election night, Trump is winning in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, he’s winning in Wisconsin and he gets on television and he goes, ‘Thank you, Americans, for re-electing me — it’s all over, have a good day,’” the 79-year-old senator said. “But then the next day and the day following, all those mail-in ballots start getting counted and it turns out that Biden has won those states, at which Trump says, ‘See? I told you the whole thing was fraudulent. I told you that those mail-in ballots were crooked. So now we’re not going to leave office.’”