May 5, 2009, - 9:59 am
Star Trek Fever
By Debbie Schlussel
Stardate 2009.05.05.
Last Night, I saw “Star Trek,” the latest movie incarnation of the famed TV series, which ran from 1966-69. I can’t post my review until Friday–it’ll be up at Midnight, just as Thursday ends. Check out Zachary Quinto, the new Spock actor, and how amazingly close he looks to Nimoy’s Spock from the ’60s.
Until my review posts–even though I’m not a Trekkie–here’s a little of my own Star Trek trivia.
My mother was a teacher in New York City Public Schools in the late ’60s, as “Star Trek” was on the air, and she taught Leonard Nimoy’s son. Even though the Trekkie phenomenon grew after “Star Trek” was canceled and into the rerun phase, at the time, the school had to hold separate parent-teacher conferences for Nimoy, away from the other parents. The fan-dom was that big already. My mother swore there was something weird about Nimoy’s ears. They seemed a little “bent.”
The sign that Spock makes with his hand split, as he says “Live Long and Prosper” is ripped off from Judaism. It’s the sign the Cohen–the Jewish high priest–makes. When I was a little kid, and I didn’t know this, I made the sign with my hand after watching a “Star Trek” re-run on TV. My dad admonished me never to do it again. It’s considered a holy thing that only the Cohens are supposed to do.
And you know what? Even though “Star Trek” made a mockery of a holy thing in Judaism, we Jews didn’t riot all over the world, try to burn down Western embassies, and kill nuns in Africa. When they do something like that with a symbol or icon of Islam, well, you know what happens (which is why you’ll never see Star Trek or any show mock Islam like that).
And, hey, the fact that the two top guys helming the Starship Enterprise were both Jews–William Shatner and Nimoy–isn’t exactly a source of pride for me.
Leonard Nimoy has made something of a post-Trek career of mocking Judaism and unboldly going where no man should go before, now, or after. He is a photographer who publishes picture books of naked women–particularly his fetish of naked fat women–posing completely in the buff with Jewish religious paraphernalia. Again, imagine if he did that with Muslim religious paraphernalia–all the Vulcan know-how in the world wouldn’t protect him from not living long and prospering. But, here in the liberal-dominated Detroit Jewish community, they–a liberal schmuck named Hanan Lis, who married into a rich, leftist family–even invited Spock to show his disgusting nudie book at the Jewish Book Fair.
Yup, beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life in my community of fellow co-religionists, including Spock Nimoy.
Just a little off-the-beaten-path Trekkie trivia.
Again, stay tuned for my review at Midnight, Thursday Night/Friday Morning.
‘Til then, read (my site) long and Twitter (it).
DREK! (yiddish for rubbish, trash). As in those photos are drek!
sandy on May 5, 2009 at 10:42 am