This afternoon I was watching Chicago's "ME TV," Channel 23; it's schedule is dominated by TV reruns from the 1960s and '70s. Station programmers will occasionally put some episodes aside for specific holidays, Halloween, Christmas especially. I mean, wouldn't you rather watch The Simpsons' Thanksgiving episode in late November?
Perhaps it was a coincidence, but this afternoon ME TV ran a rare dramatic episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Morey Amsterdam portrayed a Jewish character on the show, which was a rarity for the 1960s. Amsterdam's fifty-ish Sorrell, we learn his first name is really Moshe, surreptitiously studies for his Bar Mitzvah in that episode, aptly named "Buddy Sorrell--Man and Boy."
Was "Man and Boy" purposely aired today? If so, no observant Jew should have been watching it on this holiest of days.
But the show did give non-Jews the opportunity to learn a little bit about Judaism.
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