Ethan Kaplan, 23, was raised in conservative Judaism, went to an Orthodox middle school and is well-versed in Jewish humor. He was, your grandmother might say, a real mensch — the epitome of a nice Jewish boy.
So when the chance came to wipe the “nice” right out of that sentence, he took it.
Hearing of a photographer seeking Jewish men for a sexy calendar, he agreed to pose, and did the most not-nice thing a Jewish boy could do: He posed for the shoot in the nude, with nothing but a tzedakah box — the box Jews use to collect contributions in temple — to cover his schmeckle.
“Jewish men are looked at as having no attractiveness,” says Kaplan, a senior at Hunter College who’s majoring in film.
“We’re seen as being very by-the-books. In Hollywood, Jewish women are starting to be seen as beautiful — with women like Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman — but you don’t hear about Jewish guys that are sexy.”
A battle to define male Jewish sexuality is playing out on two competing wall calendars — one filled with mensch after mensch, another that’s decidedly less kosher — and now, the battle’s gone legal.
In 2011, a television producer named Adam Cohen founded the “Nice Jewish Guys” wall calendar, featuring pictures of smiling, fully clothed young Jewish men that any Jewish mother would be proud to call mishpacha (family).
The calendar is now annual, and growing in popularity. The 2014 edition has sold more than 10,000 copies, and Cohen even secured a cross-promotional deal with the popular Jewish dating site JDate.
But not everyone is onboard with Cohen’s version of how nice Jewish men should be — or how they should be portrayed.
When Astoria playwright Duncan Pflaster placed a Craigslist ad in February for models for a “Naughty Jewish Boys” calendar, he called it an alternative to the “emasculating ‘Nice Jewish Boys’ [sic] calendar currently out,” claiming that his would “show the sexy side of Judaism.”
Pflaster soon received a letter from a lawyer representing the other calendar — actually called “Nice Jewish Guys” — claiming that “Naughty Jewish Boys” was close enough to their trademark to confuse consumers and requesting that Pflaster stop using the name.
But Pflaster sees the Nice Jewish Guys as the real naughty ones here.
“I don’t think there’s any way our calendars can be confused,” he says. “I’ve tried to make that clear on the Web site and on all of the materials.”
The calendars take a very different approach to Jewish men.
For “Nice Jewish Guys,” Cohen intended to feature the sort of guys Jewish mothers love, even using the slogan, “You can take them home to Mom!”
“There are a lot of calendars celebrating physicality, like chiseled firemen or models. Isn’t there a quality just as attractive without having to take off your shirt?” asks Cohen.
“I thought, what about the guy who’s just a nice guy? He’s average, he happens to be Jewish, and what’s great about him is, he’s trustworthy. Why can’t we celebrate that?”
Cohen, who is now married, admits that some of the inspiration for this came from his time in the dating world.
“As a Jewish guy, I was always overlooked in that way,” he says. “I always felt I had to work harder to prove myself to women. So it was like, someone should put me on a pedestal. I’m funny. I’m nice. I’m a good catch. If you just have regular, nice Jewish guys instead of the chiseled guy, celebrate that great smile or that great personality. That rocks.”
Word spread, and men were soon clamoring to pose.
“They were dropping out of trees,” he says. “There were guys who were like, ‘This will make my mom so happy.’ I think some guys felt like, ‘You get us. This is me. Please put me on this calendar.’ ”
“Nice Jewish Guys” works this image hard. The cover of the 2014 edition features a young man posing with balloon animals; the 2012 calendar, a guy cuddling a puppy.
To Pflaster, this milquetoast approach is anathema, and exactly what he was reacting against in creating “Naughty Jewish Boys,” which will have two versions — one where the men are just shirtless, and another showing them completely naked.
“They’ve had a ‘Nice Jewish Guys’ calendar for several years,” says Pflaster, “and I’ve been joking with friends that there should be some alternative that doesn’t involve sweaters and puppies and looking cute for mom.”
Pflaster, who included in his ad the lines, “Chubby/hairy OK. Yarmulkes and peyos a plus,” feels that outward sexuality is discouraged in Jewish men, and hopes that his calendar will make them more comfortable expressing that side of themselves.
“I think a lot of men chafe under that,” says Pflaster, who is openly gay and not Jewish, and wanted to do this calendar partly due to a longtime attraction to Jewish men.
“There is a kind of implied nice Jewish boyness about how Jewish men are portrayed in the media, and a lot of my friends feel like they’re not fully realized, [but only seen] as a stereotype.”
Pflaster, also the project’s photographer, conducted his first shoots — sans puppies — and the differences between the two calendars are clearly stark.
His models include Isaac, who is shown shirtless with his tefillin (boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah) positioned on his bald head like a mohawk; and Rob, a hairy man holding a Jewish prayer book, dressed in nothing but boxers and a yarmulke.
For Pflaster’s models, the project’s edge is what made it worthwhile.
“The ‘nice Jewish boy’ is a boring stereotype. It’s flavorless,” says tefillin mohawk guy Isaac Scranton, a performer at the Metropolitan Opera who posed under his Hebrew name, Bar Yehuda.
“I got a heavy dose of conservadox dogma in childhood, and it turned me off to my culture for a long time. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve found new ways to apply what I learned, and this was an opportunity to express that.”
Pflaster, who plans on releasing his calendar in late summer or fall, responded to the other team’s letter with one of his own, writing that while any confusion was unintended, he felt the case for trademark infringement was “weak,” and that he had no intention of stopping.
(Cohen would not discuss “Naughty Jewish Boys” or any legalities on the advice of counsel. His lawyer did tell The Post that they considered the matter ongoing, and that Pflaster would be receiving additional correspondence shortly.)
But Pflaster and his models believe that being anything but nice will make them the chosen ones in the suddenly contentious world of male Jewish wall calendars.
“I’m single,” says pinup Ethan Kaplan, “but I don’t plan on being so after this calendar.”