You’re flipping the TV dial, and you come across something so incongruous that you’re riveted: Bob Dylan and Jon Voight enthusiastically dancing the dervish-like kazatzka with Chassidic Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin.
It could only be the Chabad telethon, where religious fervor mingles with Hollywood marketing savvy; where stars don yarmulkes and dance the night away with kapote-clad Chassids. The latest celebrity-studded show takes place Sunday, Aug. 29, 5 p.m. to midnight on KCOP-TV Channel 13, when millions of viewers in some 20 markets will help raise more than last year’s tally of $4.3 million. Anthony Hopkins will show up, via a prerecorded segment, to support the Chabad Drug Rehabilitation Center, which, he says, is non-sectarian and boasts one of the highest success rates in the country. “You’ve seen me play [various roles] such as Hannibal Lecter,” he says, “but today I’m playing Anthony Hopkins and I’m here to ask you to help Chabad.”
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