New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature
Camryn Manheim’s inspiring journey from ‘The Practice’ to the podium
At first blush, Camryn Manheim, the award-winning actor and author, might seem like a surprising selection to address more than 600 women at CHOICES. The United Jewish Appeal gathering is billed as the largest event of the year for the Women’s Department of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey.
Following her star turn as attorney Ellenor Frutt on the ABC legal drama The Practice, Manheim was better known as an advocate for plus-size women and human rights than as a champion of Jewish causes.
In an interview with NJ Jewish News, Manheim explained how she came to be a popular speaker at Jewish events.
“I had joined up with a speakers’ agency and they asked me to develop three different lectures. One was to young actors, one was [about] women and body image, and another was about philanthropic living. When they were looking for a female Jewish speaker to speak to the Bergen County federation last year, my agency suggested me. And they said, ‘Camryn? Is she Jewish?’” Assured that she was, they raised another concern: that she might be “too political.”
The agency put them in touch with Manheim, who told them, “I don’t believe philanthropy is a partisan issue.”
Her appearance was a huge success and an enjoyable experience, she said, and as a result, she’s been speaking at federation events at least once a month since then.
“I love it. I have learned so much,” she said. “I have welcomed Shabbat into my house. Every Friday night we have Shabbat…, which I had not done prior to being a speaker for the federations.”
She has an extra connection when it came to the MetroWest event, held at the Parsippany Hilton on May 18. She really is a landsman, born in Caldwell to Jerry, a math professor, and Sylvia, a schoolteacher, who moved to the midwest when she was four years old. They instilled in her “a strong feeling for social consciousness,” she said.
Manheim, who is about to start shooting Slipstream with Anthony Hopkins, took the opportunity to salute “so many powerful, proactive women.”
“I admire the countless contributions you have all made to the rest of the world, and your kindness and generosity has actually inspired me to poetry,” she said, reading her creation,
“The Ode to the UJA of MW-NJ.”
Among the verses:
“Your mission is clear, your banner unfurled:
‘Tikun olam,’ repairing the world.
“Your campaign called CHOICES will certainly hook us.
While you give generously, others sit on their tuches.
“It’s hard to believe with each battle won
That there’s still so much work left to be done.
“And one thing is clear, and how well I know it,
You make better Jews than I’ll ever make a poet.”
Manheim comes from a long line of social and political activists. One grandfather went to Poland with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to rescue children from the aftermath of pogroms and later organized millinery workers in the struggle for better labor conditions. One uncle was a union organizer. Manheim’s mother is involved in the National Coalition for Jewish Women, “and my father sends me every bad Jewish joke ever written.”
Because of such an upbringing, Manheim said, “I have always struggled with the idea of becoming an actor when I felt I should have been joining the Peace Corps. But I’ve come to realize that you can make a social contribution in Hollywood. For me it was dispelling the myth that big women weren’t beautiful and articulate and intelligent [and] offering another type of role model for young women who are struggling with their own self-worth and power.
“I believe if you want to repair the world, we have to repair ourselves first, and then the possibilities of generosity are endless.” To that end, she wrote the play/memoir Wake up, I’m Fat.
Manheim is involved in many causes. Her Web site offers a “Pay It Forward” page with links to a dozen organizations in which she is active.
Her parents’ legacy is one she carries with great pride. “To give all I can while I’m on this planet and try to leave it a little better place than when I came…. And I know if I stick around with the likes of you, my mission will be accomplished.”
It will also be continued through her five-year-old son, Milo. “I plan to teach [him] to get involved, to fight for what he believes in, to never take ‘no’ for an answer, to break the rules now and then. To do good in this world, not because you hope to get rewarded later, but because it simply feels good to do so. I hope to teach him about people like you, who have not forgotten those who need you.”
Manheim’s sentiments were expressed prior to the program by CHOICES cochairs Bunny Schwartz and Sloane Gillman, both of Livingston.
“It’s just a woman’s choice to live generously, to give back, to care for others less fortunate than she,” said Schwartz, who repeated her role from the first CHOICES program, held in 1994.
Gillman agreed. “It is exactly that, the power of women in our community coming together and making a choice to make a difference,” she said.
Paula Saginaw, outgoing chair of the Women’s Campaign of United Jewish Appeal of MetroWest NJ and a North Caldwell resident, exulted in “a very exciting night to bring together over 600 women to share in such a celebration of community and Jewish values.”
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