Let’s have a sweet Friday post. I love Once Upon A Time, and I thought it was so sweet that Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas, who play Snow White and Prince Charming, fell in love and married in real life. I think it’s even nicer now that I know Ginnifer rediscovered her Judaism.
“I was Jewish by birth,” Ginnifer Goodwin, star of such TV shows as HBO’s “Big Love” and ABC’s “Once Upon a Time,” told the congregation, which included her parents, grandparents, an aunt and uncle, and dozens of people she knew as a child.
“I was Super Jew, and then I up and left Judaism for a very long time. I flew from Memphis … I flew from Temple Israel … and I flew from my faith. I walked out of Judaism. I had broken my covenant. The only thing Jewish about me was that I felt guilty.”
I can relate. Even though I kept kosher from the time I moved into my own apartment, I was only a twice-a-year Jew for a very long time. It took my moving to Richmond to rediscover the religious side of my Judaism.
In recent months, Goodwin has been reclaiming old patches of ritual, tradition and community, and receiving new ones. She wants to live in a Jewish home with a mezuza in every doorway. She wants to raise her “completely hypothetical future children” to be Jewish. She hosted a Hanukkah party. She’s made brisket and matzo ball soup. She realized that a lot of her friends are Jewish.
“We’ve been shul shopping,” she said.
During Friday’s Shabbat service, a few days before her 35th birthday, Goodwin stood inside a “bright orangey-red synagogue” and announced that she had come home.
“I am a Jew,” she said, beaming on the bema. “It took me 10 years to come back around to that self-definition. I was a Jew by birth, and now I’m a Jew by choice.”
Well, I always knew I was a Jew, but I still get what she means. And check her out on Kimmel from Wednesday night, where she is sweet and funny and charming.
Via Israellycool.