BT In A New Key
A blog for people who seek alternative approaches to kiruv and the baal teshuvah experience.
Monday, October 19, 2026
Sunday, October 18, 2026
Saturday, October 17, 2026
Be like Ohio
Friday, October 16, 2026
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Jews without mitvzos - a pattern here?
Toni Curtis (Bernie Schwartz)
Jamie Lee Curtis’s father left her nothing. Not a dollar of his estimated $60 million.
It all went to his sixth wife. He was 73 when he married her. She was 28. He put it in writing: “I acknowledge the existence of my children, and have intentionally and with full knowledge chosen not to provide for them.” Five months before he died, Tony Curtis rewrote his will. All 5 of his surviving children were cut out. Every dollar went to Jill. His daughter Allegra said they were “blindsided” and that their father had been “influenced.” His eldest daughter Kelly took it to court. The court rejected the case. Jill’s answer: “Tony was very specific in his wishes.” She said he told the children himself. Keep this part. A will doesn’t care who you’re related to. It only cares whose name is on it.Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz at the Fifth Avenue Hospital corner of East 105th Street in East Harlem, Manhattan, the first of three boys born to Helen (née Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz.[1][2]
His parents were Jewish immigrants from Hungary
Jerry Lewis (Joseph Levitch) left an estimated $50 million estate. His will has one clause for his sons: "I have intentionally excluded Gary, Ronald, Anthony, Christopher, Scott and Joseph and their descendants as beneficiaries of my estate, it being my intention that they receive no benefits."
In the video below, you hear Jerry Lewis himself, and the daughter he never acknowledged. Everything went to his second wife, Sandy, and their daughter Danielle, adopted 25 years earlier. In one of his last interviews he was asked what he was most proud of in his life. "My daughter." The six sons he had with his first wife, Patti Palmer, got nothing. A family law attorney says he could do whatever he wanted. He was of sound mind, and he had his reasons. There was one more child. Susan Lewis, a daughter he never acknowledged, was found homeless on the streets of Philadelphia two weeks before the report aired. Asked if she was entitled to some of the $50 million, she said, "I think that I would deserve something, especially in my situation." Like her brothers, she is apparently getting nothing.
Lewis was born Joseph Levitch on March 16, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, to a Jewish family.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
jews without mitzvos
Two parts to this.
1. Was Barry Siegel her manager? Yes.
Barry Siegel was Lisa Marie Presley's longtime business/financial manager, running her affairs through his firm, Provident Financial Management, from 1993 onward. He was also co-trustee of the Promenade Trust (the Elvis estate trust) alongside Priscilla. That ended badly: in February 2018 Lisa Marie sued him for $100 million, claiming he turned her $100 million inheritance into $14,000 through "reckless and negligent mismanagement," and he countersued saying she was simply a spendthrift. She fired him and his firm. The 2016 trust amendment that removed both Priscilla and Siegel as co-trustees and substituted Riley and Benjamin Keough is the exact document at the center of the post-death legal fight.
2. Is he Jewish? Very likely, but not explicitly confirmed in press coverage.
Here's the evidence:
- Surname: Siegel is a classic Ashkenazi Jewish name (from the German/Yiddish for "seal").
- Career lineage: he came up at Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, then co-founded his own firm as Siegel & Feldstein — that entire world of LA business management was heavily Jewish.
- He sits on the board of governors of Cedars-Sinai, the LA hospital with deep Jewish roots.
- Born and raised in Pasadena, married to a woman named Pattie.
What you won't find is a mainstream source stating flatly "Siegel is Jewish" — no bar mitzvah mention, no quoted Jewish-press profile. So the honest answer is: almost certainly Jewish by background, based on name and milieu, but treat it as strong inference rather than confirmed fact.




