Volkswagen Taps Jewish Star Trek Stars
Image by getty images
(JTA) — Last year Volkswagen donated more than a million dollars to an international youth center at Auschwitz.
In 2011 it donated $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League.
And in 2009 it was reported that the Beetle — that iconic VW creation — was actually designed by a Jew.
But the German automaker — which, like other industries in the Third Reich, cooperated with the Nazis and has been boycotted by many Jews as a result — may have finally figured out a strategy to put the stigma of its past behind it. It has recruited both the stars of the original “Star Trek” series to plug its new car, the e-Golf, in the United States.
According to Auto Evolution, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy — both Jewish — will star in the marketing campaign for VW’s first electric car.
The two were apparently tapped because the “Vulcan salute and the Volkswagen logo have so much in common,” the auto industry publication reported.
That salute, as any Jewish Trekkie worth his salt will know, is similar to a Jewish blessing sign – two hands forming the Hebrew letter Shin — that frequently appears on Jewish gravestones.
Could the twin appearance of Spock and Kirk convince diehard boycotters of German cars (who, as journalist Jeffrey Goldberg noted in a recent Atlantic column, rarely boycott any other German products) to drop their grudge and buy the wagon of der Volk?
Bimah me up, Scottie!
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
