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Where no show has gone
before Jerusalem
Post
Joshua Ellison
March 29, 2004
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When Charlotte fell for Harry - the uptown debutante and the
unpolished lawyer - on HBO's hit series Sex and the City, their
relationship had strange chemistry.
It was a shock of opposites: socialite and everyman; au courant and
outre'; liberal and conservative; gentile and Jew.
Then she went somewhere unprecedented for a television heroine: the
mikve.
Charlotte's conversion to Judaism was a unique cultural moment in
television history. Popular shows with Jewish characters usually reflect
the integrationist desires of American Jews.
On other sitcoms, Jewish characters live undifferentiated lives with
non-Jewish spouses and friends. Besides the comic fodder of Christmas
with the in-laws, the nuances of living in a blended family go
unexamined.
Certainly, no other non-Jewish partner has traversed the difficult
path to joining the Jewish fold. But then again, Sex and the City is not
known for its conventional approach to issues of love and sex.
Evan Handler, the Jewish actor who played Harry Goldblatt, doesn't
think the show is a referendum on intermarriage: "They wanted the
[character] with the firmest preconceived notions to fall in love with
someone who's spirit and values were opposite," the 43-year-old
actor said in a recent interview.
"Religion is just one aspect," noted Handler. "Besides
the physical incompatibility, household habits, they have different
senses of personal freedom."
Charlotte's conversion on the show was shorthand, a metaphor, for the
emotional distance that her character needed to travel: "Religion
is a huge cultural marker. Crossing that line is a major step and [the
writers] wanted to see Charlotte make a grand step to have love in her
life."
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The racy series, which is set to end on Israeli TV screens this
evening, detailed many of the challenges of becoming a Jew with sly
candor. In particular, the contradictions in Harry's religious beliefs
strike an honest chord.
After all, Harry told Charlotte about his aversion to intermarriage
over a pork dinner.
"It's the inconsistency of comic license," said the actor,
whose film credits include Ransom and Natural Born Killers, as well as
TV comedies It's Like You Know and more recently, The Osbournes.
"But a lot of it is based in truth."
Handler said he understands his character's motivation: "Harry
has his own strong religious beliefs, even if they aren't always
consistent. He wanted a unified household in terms of faith. Plus, he
made a promise to his mother."
Charlotte, however, shows true zeal for Jewish life. Her appetite for
ritual quickly eclipses Harry's modest spirituality. When Harry leaves
the Shabbat dinner table to watch baseball, Charlotte cries: "I
gave up Christ for you, and you can't give up the Mets?"
Harry and Charlotte's unlikely romance helped invigorate the show's
last season, Handler believes. The response to his character and
Charlotte's conversion has been very embracing: "Harry is a mensch.
There hadn't really been a mensch on the show."
Several weeks after Harry and Charlotte, played in the series by
Kristin Davis, walked down the aisle, Handler found himself at the altar
again.
This time, he married a "non-Jewish, non-American, non-show
biz" biochemist from Bologna, Italy. Handler said he did not feel
any of the conflict or conviction that Harry felt about intermarriage:
"That's not been an issue for us."
Handler does, however, hope his children will have a sense of Jewish
identity: "It's a heritage; in a cultural, not a religious way.
That means knowing the history, knowing the general ideas and why they
mean so much to people."
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