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Forum -> The Social Scene -> Entertainment
Who Knew? Stephen Hill
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 1:32 am
I used to watch Law and Order regularly and enjoyed Steve Hill's performance as the NY District Attorney but I had no idea he was uber frum

http://forward.com/culture/348.....riday

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mommy3b2c




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 1:38 am
I knew. My grandparents knew him way back. I can't remember how.
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studying_torah




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 1:47 am
Yes sure I knew . He was great on law and order. Bde
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Amelia Bedelia




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 1:47 am
I knew
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amother
White


 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 1:50 am
Same here. Used to joke with dh that he was running out to mincha anytime his character suddenly left the room
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amother
Natural


 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 4:59 am
studying_torah wrote:
Yes sure I knew . He was great on law and order. Bde


Yes, we knew too.
Was waiting for an obit to appear here on imamother....
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chanchy123




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 5:11 am
I knew. Years ago, (actually decades ago) the first season of Mission Impossible aired on METV a Lebanese based English speaking channel we used to get in Israel that would broadcast mostly American shows. Whenever it came on my parents would tell me the story of how the star became shomer shabbos during the filming of the show and that is why he didn't continue to the coming seasons.
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amother
Cyan


 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 6:25 am
Old family friend. I spent many shabbatot in his house. His children didn't know he was an actor till they were much older-- they didn't have a tv in their house. One time a kid came home from a friend's house and said she had seen someone who looked just like Tatty on tv!!
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amother
Goldenrod


 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 7:24 am
oh my. I never watched this stuff. and boy was that scary. I hate watching abuse and guns and crime.
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amother
Denim


 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 7:41 am
His daughter teaches in my BY and his SIL was my husband's Rebbi. He's got grandkids in some of the top Yeshivos in E"Y.
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PAMOM




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 7:53 am
Amarante, thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention. He was a good actor and a man of principles.
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mha3484




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 8:40 am
His son makes the rebbe hill kids CDs that are great.
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cnc




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 8:59 am
Yes. I knew.
I know his son Hilly Hill- a chassidish comedian. Another son is Rebbee Hill and makes childrens' tapes.
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Mama Bear




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 9:34 am
I think the behatted and bearded transformation happened only after he retired from acting ten years ago. But being frum and shomer shabbos happened decades ago.
His sons are so ttalented! The acting chops run in the genes Smile
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 9:56 am
😀😀😄 I should have titled the thread Who Didn't Know? 😄🤔🤔

But I was channeling my inner Bubbe as I could hear her asking Vas gevaust?

My inner Zeide channels America Goniff occasionally 😀😀 as I can hear him asking that rhetorically in my mind's ear (to paraphrase Shakespeare.) 😀😀🤗 Not with respect to Steven Hill of course.
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yo'ma




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 10:08 am
I knew, but I didn't know he was niftar. BD'E.
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 11:12 am
The Moment Steven Hill Knew He Had to Become Closer to His Jewish Faith
Hill, who died this week at the age of 94, once asked himself: ‘Was I born just to memorize lines?’

By Jonathan Zalman|August 25, 2016 4:58 PM

In the Feb. 7, 1969 edition of The Jewish Press, Irene Klass, the former publisher of the newspaper, wrote an article called “Steven Hill’s Million IMpossible.” The title, of course, was a nod to Hill’s lead role as Dan Briggs on TV’s Mission Impossible—a role he held onto for just one year, in part because of certain “difficulties,” including the actor’s refusal to work late on Shabbat . Hill died Tuesday in Monsey, New York, where he lived for decades. He was 94.

Hill, who was born Solomon Krakovsky, became Orthodox in the early 1960s. His friend Rabbi Mayer Schiller, who’s based in Monsey and called the actor a mentor, said he remembers the day they met in 1964, during a series of visits Hill took to the village of New Square, which coincided with Schiller’s own internal search for meaning. Also there was Skverer Rebbe Yaakov Yosef Twersky. “The very first time we met, he turned to me and said, ‘He’s the Rebbe, he’s a very holy man.'”

Hill’s devotion to his Jewish practice is rarely seen today in the life of a major Hollywood or Broadway actor. Klass’s interview with Hill in 1969 highlights the actor’s choice to become a practicing Orthodox Jew, or “his return to the Torah way of life—a life, he says, ‘of meaning and purpose.'”


Steven Hill as Dan Briggs on ‘Mission Impossible’ (1966). (Wikimedia )
[T]here’s really no mystery about it. I simply found myself, that’s all. For a long time I had been searching. I used to ask myself, “Was I born just to memorize lines?” I knew there had to be more to life than that. I was searching—trying to find the answers—to find myself—and I did.

What’s fantastic about Klass’s interview with Hill is how she got him to open up about the events leading up to his moment of clarity—that is, when he knew that becoming closer to Orthodoxy was a way toward fulfillment.

About 10 years ago, I went home to Seattle to visit my parents. I was feeling depressed because I seemed to be leading an aimless existence. Oh sure, I was a star with all the glamour and everything. But something was missing. My life seemed empty—meaningless.

So Hill went to shul with his father, where he used to go as a child. He went to a Reform synagogue, then a Conservative one, but neither stuck. Still, the spark of Judaism was there, it just needed to turn into a flame. Eventually, he traveled to New Square (once with a beard for a role as Sigmund Freud), and he began to study Torah with the Skverer Rebbe, who provided him with “deep insights.”

Once Steven had made up his mind that this was the life for him, nothing could change it. His movie contract, thereafter, stated that he would not work on Shabbas and Yom Tov; and that his clothes would be non-shatnes.

Hill’s acting career spanned decades—he took a 10-year leave of absence beginning in 1967—and it perhaps culminated with a role as Adam Schiff on Law & Order. d!ck Wolf, the show’s creator, once called Hill “the Talmudic influence on the entire zeitgeist of the series.”

“Steven always said to me that he enjoyed acting much more after he became religious,” said Schiller, who also worked with Hill on his autobiography, which never came to fruition. “Acting was his essence before he became religious, therefore he would agonize over it. After he became religious, acting was something which he did that he enjoyed. But it wasn’t his full definition.”

Find this story online: http://www.tabletmag.com/scrol.....x-jew
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amother
Amethyst


 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 11:19 am
I only knew of Steven Hill in the context of "the famous actor who became frum" I knew/know nothing about his acting career itself.
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greenfire




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 11:38 am
definitely interesting ...
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shabbatiscoming




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Aug 28 2016, 2:11 pm
If you ever watched law and order when he played in it, he never walked to many feet without a hat on his head. He was either leaving the room or outside. Interesting that, no?
I thought he was a wonderful actor.

It came up on my facebook feed that he died on the same day that Rebbetzin Esther Yungreis died.
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