Joel Osteen and wife Victoria Osteen

I know this is a very strange question to pose: Is it ok to cheat on your primary religion in the name if seeking a little extra inspiration?

I was born and raised Jewish and for all intents and purposes, I still am. However, On many Sundays for the past five or six years I have been tuning into Joel Osteen and Victoria Osteen, and their Lakewood Church broadcast, for some Sunday morning inspiration. The funny thing is that when I attend temple services on the Jewish hi-holidays – Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – the Hebrew part of the service makes my eyes glaze over and my brain go to sleep, much the way your computer monitor goes to sleep when it is idle. Terrible, I know! It’s just that I really don’t remember much Hebrew at all from my childhood Hebrew School days, and anyway, English is my primary language afterall.

Suddenly, when the Rabbi emerges with his end-of-service English language sermon wrap up, I spring to life and hang on every word. I then walk out of temple with a little happy spring in my step. Well, I get that same spring in my step from listening to Joel Osteen each Sunday morning. So my question is: Is that so bad?

Ok, So Joel Osteen is a Christian and his sermons are being broadcast from a church, but is that a problem? I also follow and subscribe to some of the beliefs held by the Buddhist community, not to mention my belief in re-incarnation. Not sure what that makes me; spiritual perhaps?

Culturally I am Jewish, but I’ll take my inspiration and good advice where I can get it. Maybe more of us should be that way. Maybe we should all be open minded to receiving “the message,” no matter who is delivering it and what their religious label is. It’s worked for me.

And, as an aside, here is a little anecdote about my pursuit to interview Joel Osteen for PR.com. I had been in contact with the public relations representative for Joel Osteen and the Lakewood Church several years back, and I had expressed my sincere interest in booking an interview with Joel Osteen for PR.com. I had some back and forth exchange with Joel Osteen’s publicist about the interview and she loved a lot of my past interviews that I had conducted for PR.com. Then she got a gander at my Jenna Jameson interview and my Gene Simmons interview and became spooked. She wrote me explaining that while she loved my work, how could Joel appear on the same website publication as a crazy un-married rockstar and the world’s most famous porn star. I have to admit, she had a point. I graciously told her that I understood, and needless to say, the interview fell through and was cancelled. But hey, I remain a devoted Joel Osteen fan, albeit an unpure one.

Buddy Elias (cousin of Anne Frank) Interview by Allison Kugel

While most of my interviews are celebrity interviews or interviews with sensationalized political figures and talking heads, there are some interviews that I have pursued and published because of their profound historical and/or human value. My exclusive interview with Bernhard “Buddy” Elias – the first cousin of Anne Frank and her only living relative – was incredibly special to me. In fact, I am most proud of this article, out of the more than 100 interview feature stories I have written up and published since starting my journalism career in 2005.

Being Jewish, I grew up learning about Anne Frank and the entire Frank family, how they along with millions of other European Jews, were persecuted and bullied during the early reign of Adolf Hitler, how most of them eventually were cattled into brutal concentration camps and eventually murdered at the hands of the Nazi party. The Frank family, headed by father Otto Frank, were shrewd enough to hide out in a secret annex above Otto’s store for more than 2 years until they were eventually found out and captured, being shipped off to Auschwitz concentration camp. Ironically, they were caught right before Germany was liberated by American troups, ending World War II. Anne, her sister Margot, and their mother were all exterminated, leaving Otto Frank as the only surviving member of the immediate family. Otto later returned to the annex where the family hid out for two years, and he found Anne’s diary which she kept and faithfully wrote in every day for several years throughout the war. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was eventually published into a book and went on to become an international bestseller, selling more than 25 million copies worldwide and being translated into many languages.

Anne Frank is perhaps the Holocaust’s most famous casualty, and her book serves as a documented testimony about the horrors and the hope of the Jewish people during that dark time in human history.

Upon researching Anne Frank’s life I managed to find out that a Swiss actor by the name of Buddy Elias is Anne Frank’s first cousin (Elias’s mother and Anne Frank’s father Otto Frank were brother and sister), and Buddy Elias is Anne Frank’s only living direct relative. I knew that I had to speak with him to ask him about Anne’s life, their family and any personal anecdotes that he could share that perhaps had not been recorded in the media or history books.

When I Mr. Elias told me that his birthday was on June 2nd I just know our conversation and subsequent interview was providential. After I oublished my article on Mr. Elias, he sent me a beautiful email expressing to me that my article on him was the best article ever written about him and extending me an open invitation to come to Switzerland to stay at his home with him and his wife. I am still trying to figure out when I can make this trip and I have his email framed and sitting on a bookshelf in my livingroom. It is better than a Pulitzer Prize as far as I am concerned.

Here are some excerpts from my interview with Anne Frank’s first cousin, Buddy Elias:

PR.com: Do you remember what kind of bond Anne Frank shared with her father, Otto Frank, and what type of relationship she shared with your mother who was her aunt?

Buddy Elias: Anne was Otto’s child, while Margot took more to her mother. Anne was also very fond of my mother, her aunt.

PR.com: Before the war, what kind of work did your parents do and what kind of work did Otto Frank do?

Buddy Elias: My father became representative of a German firm in Switzerland before Hitler came to power. He moved in 1929, and my mother and me followed in 1931. That saved us. My father was a merchant, but worked also as a banker in Otto Frank’s father’s bank while he was still in Germany. Otto worked also at the bank of his father, but studied some time in Heidelberg, where he met Nathan Strauss of the famous American Strauss family [who owns] Macy’s. They became friends and Otto spent some time in New York working at Macy’s. When Otto had to leave Germany due to Hitler, my father arranged for him to become the representative in Holland of the same firm my father worked for, called Opekta.

PR.com: You have mentioned a joint family trip to the Swiss Alps as your last memory of Anne. Can you tell me a little bit about that trip, anything you remember Anne saying to you and any mention by Anne, or the rest of the family of the problems they were facing in Germany at the time?

Buddy Elias: We were in Sils-Maria at the Villa of distant relatives of our family. I cannot remember any details. We were just kids having a good time and enjoying the lovely scenery, and being spoiled by the owner of the Villa who was very rich. The Franks were already living in Holland and had no problems there at that time.

READ MY ENTIRE INTERVIEW WITH BUDDY ELIAS, FIRST COUSIN OF ANNE FRANK