Jill Soloway + Julie Hermelin have a great show/service they do in LA called Heaping Portion.
It’s a variety show based on the Torah portion that week. I’ve been a huge fan of Jill’s stuff for ages. While I was in law school in Chicago, she was putting on great shows like the Miss Vagina Pageant and The Real Live Brady Bunch with her sister Faith. I watched with my nose pressed to the glass, assuming it was a life I could only watch (though I did get one of my law school classmates to say pussy at the Madonna debat I put on at school). Julie I met playing kickball when I worked at New Line. In those days, the closest I thought I’d get to making stuff was learning how to predict the grosses accurately before they came out in The Reporter on Tuesday.
Life has changed since then, and I’ve been doing Shabbat Salons that turned into my own Jewish-y, soul-infused talk show. Jill will be my guest on July 21st. It will rock. Get your tickets now as the show will likely sell out.
To prep for my piece at Heaping Portion, I actually read a Torah portion in English for the first time since my Bat Mitzvah. It’s hard to believe this is what I’ve been listening to in shul all these years. Jill did a hilarious “real-time” Torah reading in which she explained all the crap in there about “spell” a husband can put on his wife if she’s committed adultery or if he’s just jealous. I subverted a big hunk of the portion which was about (no surprise) who gave exactly how much money to the communal meeting. This is one of my pet peeves about Jewish organizational meetings and family dynamics. I like the giving and dessert part best, so I gave out cake. I don’t like financial demands being a condition of belonging. I know that there are basic needs to run any group blah blah blah but I agree with one of the great Jewish drag ladies who hosted the show: “cake makes everything better.”
