Michaela Watkins at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Jan. 23, 2017. (Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb)
(JTA) — A former cast member of “Saturday Night Live” has joined 30 top female Jewish bloggers on a visit to Israel.
Michaela Watkins, 45, stars in the Hulu series “Casual.” Her long resume also includes a stint on the 2008-2009 season of “SNL.”
Watkins arrived in Israel on Monday as part of the Media Magnets mission of the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project — known colloquially as “Birthright for Moms.”
The women will travel to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Safed and the Dead Sea. Also on the itinerary is a cocktail party with WMN — a co-working space and ecosystem for women-led ventures in Tel Aviv — and a commemoration of Women’s Entrepreneurship Day. They will also meet with Israeli media professionals, artists, entrepreneurs and government officials.
Among the other participants are Erica Ehm, founder of Canada’s Yummy Mummy Club; Cailli and Sam Beckerman, twin fashion bloggers who are brand ambassadors for Chanel; Ilana Wiles, the creator of the parenting blog Mommy Shorts; Sarah Maizes, vice president of Children’s Entertainment at The Jim Henson Company; Amber Katz, founder of rouge18.com, a pop culture-infused beauty blog; and Amy Kritzer, founder of the cooking blog ”What Jew Wanna Eat” and author of the cookbook “Sweet Noshings.”
Watkins — who is married to Fred Kramer, former executive director of Jewish World Watch, an organization that fights genocide — is not a mother. On “Casual,” she plays divorced psychologist Valerie, mom to a teenage daughter, Laura (Tara Lynne Barr).
