Jmore Talks to Mandy Patinkin about his Career and Beth Tfiloh’s ‘Spotlight’ Event

April 28, 2022 Simone Ellin, Associate Editor

Mandy Patinkin: "This will be the most fun, lighthearted concert I will have done for quite some time. And I’ve been having a joyous time working on it." (PR Photos via JTA)

One morning not long ago, I received a call out of the blue. “Mandy Patinkin is available after 12 today. Can you interview him?”

Wait. What?

I started to feel nauseous, and my first thought was, “No, I need days, maybe weeks, to prepare for Mandy Patinkin, one of my show business idols.”

A star of the stage, screen and concert hall, Patinkin will headline “Spotlight 2022,” Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School’s annual scholarship event, on May 25. Also to be honored will be Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, who recently retired as Beth Tfiloh’s senior rabbi after more than four decades there.

The 69-year-old Chicago native is a Tony, Emmy and Grammy award winner best known for his roles in such Broadway musicals as “Evita” and “Sunday in the Park with George,” on television’s “Chicago Hope” and “Homeland,” for his portrayal of Basque fencer Inigo Montoya in the film “The Princess Bride” and confused yeshiva student Avigdor in “Yentl,” and as a vocalist for the album “Mamaloshen,” a critically acclaimed collection of Yiddish songs.

Can you really blame me for being starstruck?

Jmore: What can we expect to see at your Beth Tfiloh show?

Patinkin: During the pandemic, I couldn’t meet with my piano player [Adam Ben-David]. When we first started working together again, I said, ‘Adam, I don’t want to do what we did before COVID hit. I only want to do happy songs, the ones that are uplifting. I don’t want it to be sad. I don’t want it to be political. I don’t want it to be dark.’

So this will be the most fun, lighthearted concert I will have done for quite some time. And I’ve been having a joyous time working on it. And we’re giving birth to it for the first time on May 25th in a shul, which is perfect for my life, my background. That’s where I learned to sing and that’s the real home for me.

Speaking of your background, your cousin, Marvin Pinkert, is the former executive director of the Jewish Museum of Maryland.

He’s a beautiful human being, incredibly wise. We are the same age, we grew up together. A compliment from him about anything is as high a compliment as I could ever get anywhere in the world. He was always the smartest kid on the block, the smartest one in the family. And I was the opposite. I’m very fond of him.

Our fathers were close, and they were in business together. And their fathers were the immigrants who came over here and were welcomed by this country as refugees from conflicts in Eastern Europe, just like we’re trying to rescue people with the International Rescue Committee and HIAS and all kinds of wonderful organizations, to repeat the favor that was done for our parents’ generation.

How does Judaism inform your social justice work?

In every way imaginable. I’ll give you one example. In 2015, I was in Berlin shooting the first episode of the fifth season of ‘Homeland.’ The fictional tale of that first episode was taking place in a Syrian refugee camp at the exact same moment that 125,000 Syrian refugees were trying to make their way across the Balkan route for sanctuary in Germany.

The great irony of it all was that Germany was the most welcoming country in the European bloc. I looked at those photographs the day I arrived in Berlin and I saw my ancestors in every shot. I saw my children in those shots. I saw myself, my family, and I thought, ‘That’s who we are and always will be. I need to be with those people.’

So, I called [former American Jewish World Service president] Ruth Messinger, who’s a dear friend, and she turned me on to the International Rescue Committee. Since 2015, my entire family has been engaged in trying to bring awareness to the refugee crisis all over the world, in Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Africa, Ukraine, Mexico. … We have to open our arms and not look at the color of someone’s skin but the blood beating through their heart. That’s our job as human beings. And that is everything that Judaism means to me.

How did you and your wife, Kathryn Grody, start using social media to address important issues in a lighthearted way?

It was approximately two years ago. [New York state] was shut down March 13th by [former Gov. Andrew] Cuomo. Everyone’s lives shifted drastically. My son, Gideon, came home because he was worried about mom and dad.

We were walking down the country road where we live, in front of some forsythia bushes. He pulls out his phone to take what he refers to as ‘family archives.’ He said, ‘I have a couple of questions. What was yesterday?’ We said it was the anniversary of our first date. And then we said we had a fight and then we went on about the fight, and blah, blah, blah.

He comes up to us the next day and says, ‘You know, that little thing we did in front of the forsythia? It’s really sweet and I think people would really enjoy it and relate to it. Can I put it on your social media?’ So he puts this thing up there and it goes nuts. People just somehow relate to us answering Gideon’s questions.

And then it just became suddenly this thing. We all looked at each other and we said, ‘Wow, people are tuning in here.’ So we’re bringing eyeballs to the refugee crisis and we’re making people smile at a time when we’re all terrified. And then it blossomed out into all kinds of areas … bringing out the vote, supporting Black Lives Matter, stopping executions, social justice movements that need attention.

One video features you praying before you feed your dog, Becky. Is prayer an important part of your life?

[When praying] I need to, at the very least, move my lips to the words. I usually say it very quietly. [The prayer] takes about 15 or 20 minutes and includes Hebrew prayer, Shakespeare sayings.

I mention the name of every single person that was in my life that I was connected to who’s passed on. I got that idea because I wasn’t OK with one day of remembrance on Yom Kippur. I say everyone’s name every day at least once, and they are with me. They’re with me when I perform. They’re with me before I go onstage, before I go in front of a microphone or a camera, or before I begin my day all by myself.

When I got Becky, I thought, ‘Wow, I have to feed her at 7 a.m. and 5 p.m.’ I started saying “Mi Sheberach,” a [song] for healing written by my dearest friend Debbie Friedman; the Shema, a daily prayer; and the Motzi, the prayer for breaking bread, twice a day before I fed Becky. When she hears the prayers, she knows what time it is. And that way, Becky and I wish the world healing, and our world never has needed more healing.

You recently became a grandpa. What’s that been like?

When [my son and daughter-in-law] told me they were pregnant, I completely lost it. I was in such an emotional state. And we go over and the baby is put in my arms for the first time, and I couldn’t speak. I had no reference for what I was experiencing.

I’d been a father of two beautiful young men that have grown into glorious human beings, but it had nothing to do with being a father of my own two children. I think it’s coupled with [being] in the midst of living my 70th year. My children are grown. They’re having children of their own. And you want to have as many sunsets as you can.

I used to hear the old folks talk about simchas. I went, ‘Well, this is old people talk.’ Well, I’m exactly in that boat right now. Holding my grandson, I was in a completely other world that was better than anything I’d ever known and more wondrous than anything I’d ever felt. And I’ve had a pretty darn good life with my wife and children and friends, family and work. But I never had anything that compared to holding my grandson.

You’ve played so many famous roles. Which is your favorite?

Being alive and learning more about being alive from being alive. And it takes a long time for a guy named Mandy to learn how to be alive and not waste any time, which I’ve wasted a lot of in the past.

Any roles you’d still like to play?

You know, whatever comes next. I’m working on several things as we speak. I love that aspect of being an actor because you never know what’s going to happen in the next 10 seconds, who’s going to call with a thought or idea. And my plate is so wonderfully full. All I want to do is wake up in the morning. That’s my whole goal.

For information about Spotlight 2022, visit btspotlight.com .