In the category “Television,” for $200, who donated his winnings from the television program “Jeopardy!” to the Anti-Defamation League?
The answer is Jason Alexander, who plays George Costanza on the popular NBC Television comedy series “Seinfeld.”
Alexander, who won $11,800 last week on a special “Celebrity Jeopardy!,” made the announcement of his donation during the program.
All the celebrities on the show were expected to donate their winnings to charity.
ADL does “a very, very good job at identifying the demons in this world,” Alexander said. “They shine very bright lights on them. They hold up their words and they hold up their deeds in that light and they make everybody look at them, including the demons themselves.”
Abraham Foxman, ADL national director, said, “Jason Alexander is a real champion to ADL. We’re proud and gratified he’s donated his winnings to us. By making his announcement on `Jeopardy!’ he himself has shone a very bright light on the work we do fighting hatred.”
Alexander is a Jew fellow from New Jersey who burst onto the entertainment scene playing “Tevye” in a scene from “Fiddler On The Roof’ that was part of the Broadway production “Jerome Robbins.” Alexander won the Tony Award for that role.
In 1992, he accompanied that show’s producer, Emanuel Azenberg, on an ADL Theater Arts Mission to Israel.
Azenberg, who has produced most on Neil Simon’s plays and who has taken many of his Broadway shows to Israel, took a number of Broadway figures, Jews and non- Jews, on that trip. Other participants were Wendy Wasserstein, Jonathan Silverman and New York Times theater critic David Richards.
Alexander said the visit was “a life-changing experience,” particularly the stop at the children’s memorial at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
