Natalie Portman may be a glamorous, Oscar-winning movie star, but to a certain group of people, she represents a different ideal. I’m referring of course to Jewish men, for whom Portman is the Holy Grail (an imperfect analogy, I know): a Jewish woman beautiful enough to put the Scandinavian shiksas of their dreams to shame; smart enough to challenge the prodigious intelligence their mothers have always told them they possess; and seemingly accessible despite all of this, at least until recently.
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| Edward Hopper, Wallace Berman, 1964 |
News has surfaced from no less reliable a source than “reports from Israel” that Portman has named her newborn son Aleph. The name, which is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and has vaguely mystical overtones, is just about what we have come to expect from celebrity parents. I have always been confounded by the arrogance—or perhaps it’s insecurity—that compels famous people to saddle their children with names that will garner them more attention than they can already expect to attract. Nevertheless, it has never really bothered me. Until now.
I’m not a Jewish man, but Portman is letting me down. First, “No Strings Attached,” now this. In an effort to reconcile my idealized version of Natalie Portman with the conventional celebrity she is turning out to be, I have decided to treat her gesture as an homage to the late, great California assemblage artist Wallace Berman, who wore a motorcycle helmet emblazoned with an aleph, as captured by Dennis Hopper. Berman, who didn’t necessarily understand Hebrew but was drawn to the Kabbalah, included Hebrew letters, especially the aleph, in much of his work.
Hats off to Natalie Portman for being as cool as Jewish men the world over have always known her to be.
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| Wallace Berman, Untitled, 1964 |
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