- Paula
Abdul - Adbul was hottest from the mid-80s until about 1995.
Adbul was born in Los Angeles in 1962. She was an LA Lakers
cheerleader in the early '80s. Abdul first attracted major notice as
a dance choreographer for other acts and for choreographing a bunch
of hot music videos. She later broke out with dance hits of her own.
Her career cooled off after 1995, but she has made a comeback of
sorts as one of the celebrity judges on "American Idol".
There is a good one page biography of Abdul on the following site
that covers her major hits and career up to 2000. While Abdul has
never gone much into her background with the news media, it is clear
from various reliable sources that both of her parents are Jewish.
Her father (Harry Abdul) is of Sephardic Jewish background and is a
Syrian Jew. Her mother is also Jewish and was born in Canada. Her
parents have lived in Syria, Brazil, and Canada--and this varied
background has contributed to incredibly different stories in the
press about her nationality and/or religion. [Abdul did tell a rabbi
who formerly had an LA talk show that she "believes in
God" and that she was sad that her shortlived marriage to a
Jewish guy did not work out. This is about as wide-ranging an
interview about her personal life as she has given]. (We formerly
had a long digression about Abdul's background and the fact she is
often misdescribed as Arab or "half Arab"--and the irony
that virtually every prominent Arab American entertainer (perhaps 15
people) is often perceived or assumed to be Jewish by a wide section
of the general public. However, since this site no longer covers
politics--we have removed this digression because it is outside the
scope of this site. We will simply note that forty percent of the
Jews in Israel and over half the Jews in France are refugees from
Arab countries (or their children)--it's not surprising that the
groups overlap in many ways--from their "look" to their
foods to many other things. This is not a groundbreaking relevation.
It's just that a large number of people are ignorant of it.) By the
way, on the more popular searches--Paula Abdul is a fairly uncommon
name so you will get her by using the search engine without too many
other entries. Abdul
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