Who Knows One? Top Ten Moments of 2020
As we come to the end of truly the most wretched year, certainly in my lifetime, I want to remember some of the good times we had amidst the anguish. Here are a smattering of my favorite moments, episodes, and people that flashed across the Who Knows One? sky in the last eight months:
10. Deborah Lipstadt gives the show its best catchphrase.
One of the things I find most hilarious and ironic about hosting this show is that until its birth, I was pretty uninvolved in the Jewish community in any meaningful way. I live in Atlanta where I have a lot of Jewish friends and family, and that has always been enough for me. So it has happened with some regularity that a person will be brought onto the show that the audience is very excited to see but about whom I am completely ignorant. Professor Lipstadt falls squarely into that category, and when Jay Moses (aka, RavJayMo) brought her on in his pursuit of an Emory graduate, I had no idea who she was.
Professor Lipstadt turns out to be one of the preeminent scholars in the world on the Holocaust, and she represented that well, signing off from the show by exclaiming the show was “better than reading about Nazis”. We still need to put that on a t-shirt.
9. Family hilariously protects celebrity’s privacy
Our biggest “get” as a Chosen One so far was the time we had Josh Brener, who most people know from his role as Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti on Silicon Valley. Josh was the Chosen One on one of our first Wednesday night shows back on August 5, which for me was the tensest episode we’ve ever had. All three contestants had beads on getting to him, yet none were ultimately able to make it happen — in part because Josh’s family got brought into the mix and they refused to play along, thinking (understandably) that because Josh is a celebrity they shouldn’t connect strangers to him willy nilly.
A lot of people thought it was a mistake on our part not to have him alert his family members that he was playing, and that’s a fair critique — but family members are infrequently the way we get to the finish line, so it didn’t seem like an issue at the time. Lesson learned, I suppose.
8. Rabbi Abraham makes a #$%@ing entrance
One of the fun things about this show is seeing the personalities of many of our clergy members around the country. I won’t speak for anyone else, but growing up I always looked at rabbis differently, much like I did teachers. They were special, they were mystical in some ways, and certainly revered. I imagine that isn’t uncommon, and I also imagine that can be a burden at times.
So it’s been refreshing to meet so many members of the clergy and see their personalities shine through without pretense or pretension (mostly!). No one illustrated that better than Rabbi Steven Abraham (Annual Chanukah Champion Rabbi Steven Abraham that is), who made his debut during the September 9th show when he was brought on by Ilana Weiss.
Perhaps to that point we hadn’t done a great job letting people know when they joined that they were in fact streaming live for all the world to see, information that came as quite a shock to Rabbi Steve after he dropped an f-bomb during his appearance, which prompted an avalanche of text messages letting him know this was the case.
I understand people’s opinions of profanity vary greatly, but in the middle of a pandemic, policing colorful language is as far down on my list of priorities as making sure fitted sheets are folded nicely before going into the closet. Needless to say, Rabbi Abraham announced his presence with authority and has been a welcome fixture on the show ever since.
7. Josh Hartuv goes bananas for getting someone on the zoom
The micro-moments of joy and elation are everything on this game, usually coming when the Chosen One joins the game to determine a winner. Sometimes it’s the moment before the moment though, as was the case when Josh Hartuv joined his sister Rina Goldberg’s team on Wednesday, October 28, and recommended a friend he thought could finish the task. His intuition proved correct, and he celebrated the impending connection with an impromptu 360-degree dance session, which he then reprised when the Chosen One made her appeareance.
6. Mom loses the game even though the Chosen One is in her house
This one snuck in just under the wire — for the last community game we did of 2020, a fundraiser in partnership with JumpSpark, we had all teen contestants looking for all teen Chosen Ones. During one of the rounds both teams were making progress, but it looked like the jig was up when the Chosen One’s mom got brought onto the call (starting around 58:10). Normally that would be a wrap, but in this particular instance mom was upstairs and the Chosen One was downstairs, and instead of yelling or moving to go get them, she opted to text the link instead…which allowed a teen from the other team to sneak in with the link to steal the victory. A truly stunning turn of events.
5. Debbie Frank’s heartwarming invitation
I’m not typically one for sentimentality, but when Debbie Frank (from Walnut Creek, CA) was the Chosen One on Wednesday, September 2, she was given the opportunity (as we do every episode) to say a few words at the end. She made the most of it, inviting people to find their place within the world of Judaism however they defined it and opening her heart to anyone in need of comfort. It was beautiful and worth watching if you’ve never seen it.
4. The Gift of Life episode ending
I don’t want to say too much about this one to be as sensitive as possible to a very personal moment, but I urge you to watch the closing moments from the Saturday, December 6th episode. It turned out the person who made the direct connection to the Chosen One had a very personal connection to the show’s sponsor. It was an incredibly touching and emotional moment (it starts at around 1:05.19). If I’m being honest, part of me tried to stay present in the moment and take in the experience, while at the same time wondering how I was going to pivot back to the inanity of a game show once it ended.
3. Ex marks the spot
Often during a show, someone will remark, “Oh I know who might know this person but I’m not going to reach out because it’s my ex.” We’re never going to make anyone do something they don’t feel comfortable doing (even though we’re secretly rooting for it very hard) so it was amazing when Todd Shotz (founder and CEO of show partner Hebrew Helpers) got brought on during the semifinals of the Ramah tournament to see if he could help find someone. His reaction (starting at about 1:42.52), “Oh, you mean my ex-boyfriend?” was priceless.
True to his status as a Hebrew Helper, Todd came through and helped Ramah Poconos get the win and advance.
2. Herschel’s mom has got it going on
If there are two things we love on Who Knows One?, it’s moms and babies. Both are adorable and, if we are can generalize a little, have a similar facility with the technology needed to participate on the show.
In the Billy Tiep-Roben Farzad battle from Saturday July 25, Billy’s team ended up with several members of the Bleefeld clan, and an incredible exchange took place as Herschel tried to walk his parents through what they needed to do to get to the Chosen One.
As they say, hilarity ensued.
1. Music makes the people come together
In our first-ever themed episode, acclaimed Jewish musicians Dan Nichols and Shira Kline went head to head on Saturday July 11, with the stipulation that they were only allowed to bring in other musicians in their quest to win the game.
The tone for how this episode would go down was set early on, as Dan (aka Nanny Dichols) pantomimed pants on the ground following his win in Hey Jew Know This Person. I realized pretty quickly any attempts to control the participants would be an exercise in futility, so I decided to steer into it. Boy am I glad I did, because the ensuing episode was the purest distillation of what this show is at its best — a rollercoaster of emotions, ping-ponging back and forth between hilarity, frustration, exhaustion, poignancy, and absurdity.
By the time we got to the end for an impromptu singalong with everyone on the zoom, I knew we’d created something magical. And though we’ve had some amazing episodes since, for my money that was the highest high note we hit in 2020.
