Elvis the Jew

When we moved to Reut last summer, we inherited the previous tenants cable channels. Even though I have made some feble attempts to get her cable cancelled and do our own subscription of channels it really hasn’t been top priority. So whenever I flip through the selection I have to wade through a plethora of Arab channels, plus the two Turkish channels and assorted German, French and Spanish channels, in order to get to the Israeli or English Speaking channels. Try watching Third Rock from the Sun dubbed in Turkish. It is hilarious!

So last night I’m surfing channels for a few minutes before going to sleep and after listening to some Woman warble in Arabic about god knows what on some variety show I come across Channel 8. This channel is the Israeli science show and it shows a rather eclectic variety of documentaries.

What captured me was the word Elvis and Jew. Apparently, a couple of Jewish documentary film makers from Canada, a strange chain smoking Orthodox Rabbi, and the Hasidic Elvis impersonator by the name of Shmelvis were in Tupelo Mississippi searching for Elvis’ Jewish roots.

I caught the show just as it they were searching an old graveyard for Elvis’ maternal great grandmother’s grave. They didn’t find it. The rest of the documentary showed them visiting Graceland, saying Kaddish over Elvis’ grave and even traveling to Israel to plant a tree in his honor. In between they would get into these arguments over what it meant to reclaim Elvis’s Jewish soul.

Oh yeah, and as far as Shmelvis went- he didn’t even know the King’s songs. The last part of the documentary was traveling back to Memphis to enter him in a Elvis impersonator contest where they wanted to announce that Elvis was Jewish and to sing Jewish songs. They ended up canceling, after the organizer of the event insisted on no religion and no politics, just plain old Elvis songs as a tribute to Elvis. Hmmm. What else would you have at an Elvis impersonator event?

I love late night TV.