Unlike the grizzled Captain Oveur in "Airplane!", we were never big fans of movies about gladiators.

Something about chiseled goyim in loincloths fighting each other to the death did not sit right in our Jewish hearts.

"Spartacus", however, was different. Sure, it had its chiseled hero. Sure, there were some loincloths. But there was something peculiar about that hero's Roman nose.

It wasn't Roman at all. Spartacus, Kirk Douglas, was as goyishe as kishkes with horseradish, kishkes that young Kirk's — make that young Issur's — mother Bryna must have served for dinner.

And Douglas, who strained from Judaism most of his adult life, has now returned with a vengeance reserved for fugitive Roman slaves.

Now, on the subject of Turkish prisons...