With his trademark ‘nah,’ Larry David shills crypto in Super Bowl LVI ad

By Philissa Cramer

(JTA) — “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” in many ways the most Jewish show on TV, is no longer airing on Sunday nights. But fans of its creator and star, Larry David, got a surprise appearance from him this Sunday — during a Super Bowl ad for a cryptocurrency company.

The ad, from a company called FTX, shows David scoffing at various landmark inventions in history, deploying his trademark “nah” and shouting angrily multiple times, including at John Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Over the course of 60 seconds, David dismisses the wheel, the fork, the toilet, universal suffrage for white men in the inchoate United States, the light bulb, moon travel and the Walkman.

In the last shot, David turns down a pitch for using FTX’s services to get into crypto, digital currency that is exchanged online, rather than through a banking system. “Nah, I don’t think so,” he says. “And I’m never wrong about this stuff. Never.”

The implication is that anyone who sits out FTX’s app will ultimately be on the the losing side of history, like the Larry Davids over time. (In an extended cut that the company made available after the ad aired, David also rebuffs coffee and the dishwasher.)

The ad was David’s first-ever TV commercial appearance, according to Variety. It was directed by Jeff Schaffer, who also directed several episodes of “Seinfeld” and worked closely with David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” (Schaffer told Jewish Insider last year that he and David are “the Impossible Burger of Jews” because they look and sound Jewish but take a different approach to religion from more observant Jews.)

The ad was filmed in a frenetic and costly shoot last month, according to a detailed account published by The New York Times as the spot aired near the end of the first half of the game.

Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s 29-year-old founder and the youngest person on Forbes’ list of richest people, told the Times he wanted to make an ad that stood above even the Super Bowl’s famously high standards.

“Obviously, we think it’s pretty good,” said Bankman-Fried, who says he plans to give all of his wealth away, including to Democratic causes.

As ‘My Unorthodox Life’ Season 2 films, real divorce and drama hit the Haart family

(JTA) — In the first season of Netflix’s “My Unorthodox Life,” Julia Haart had a loving husband, a thriving career and a family that seemed to deftly navigate varying levels of Jewish observance.

Season 2 will tell a different story.

Over the last week, Haart was fired from Elite World Group, the fashion company where she became co-CEO in 2019; filed for divorce from her husband of two years, co-CEO Silvio Scaglia Haart; and, alleging abuse, sought a restraining order against him, according to multiple celebrity news outlets. In the petition for a restraining order, according to Page Six, Haart said that Scaglia Haart, who took her chosen last name when they married, had demonstrated “increasingly volatile, abusive and unhinged” behavior in recent weeks and also prevented her four children from having access to their shared home. Haart has homes in Manhattan and eastern Long Island.

Her children, who range from 15 to 28, were born while Haart lived in an Orthodox Jewish community. One of them, teenager Aron, attends a Jewish day school and maintains a social media profile dedicated to Jewish observance and Torah study.

“I hate Shabbos [the Sabbath] and I don’t want it in my house,” Scaglia Haart said, according to Haart’s petition.

Haart’s departure from the Orthodox community where she was raised, which she characterized as tightly controlling, and her rapid ascent in the world of fashion were the focus of the first season of “My Unorthodox Life,” which aired last July. The second season began taping last week, according to Haart’s Instagram account. 

Also not appearing in the second season: Ben Weinstein, who had been married to Haart’s oldest daughter Batsheva. The couple announced their split in November. Weinstein told his social media followers recently that he had decided against participating in the show.

Haart’s younger daughter, Miriam, appears to be luckier in love. A senior at Stanford University, she revealed last July that she was in a relationship with a Swedish woman named Nathalie Ulander.

Whoopi Goldberg returns to ‘The View’ 

(JTA) — Whoopi Goldberg returned to her hosting chair on “The View” Monday, Feb. 14, after a two-week suspension for her much-criticized comments about the Holocaust, pledging to “keep having tough conversations.” “I listened to everything everybody had to say, and I was very grateful,” Goldberg told her viewers in a brief address at the top of the talk show as her co-hosts told her they missed her.

“It is an honor to sit at this table and be able to have these conversations, because they are important,” Goldberg said, without offering another direct apology or mentioning the Holocaust or Jews at all. 

Goldberg’s suspension had followed her Jan. 31 remarks on the program that “the Holocaust is not about race,” but rather about “man’s inhumanity to man.” Many groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, objected, saying that Hitler saw his planned extermination of the Jews as a racial project. Goldberg apologized, but further comments she made on the subject continued to add fuel to the fire, leading to ABC News President Kim Godwin announcing her suspension the following day.

Jewish figures across the political spectrum, even those who were angered by Goldberg’s comments, objected to her suspension, saying the network’s decision destroyed what could have been a learning opportunity.