Male pop stars current and former have been flocking to Israel recently—because of course they have. Last week, Justin Bieber and his Jewish manager Scooter Braun were in the Holy Land while former *NSYNCer Lance Bass is there now (as of this publishing).
Let’s start with Biebs and Braun. On Instagram (where else?) Braun posted photos of himself praying at the Western Wall and paying his respects to Holocaust victims at a Jerusalem memorial, as well as more sanguine snapshots of helicopter rides, soccer matches, and Dead Sea swims with Bieber, the latter of which sounds like an album title to me. He also met Doulan Abu Saleh, the mayor of Majdal Shams, a Druze town, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign media spox David Keyes. Meanwhile, the Biebs’s concert at Yarkon Park made headlines when a woman in attendance went into labor. I repeat: a woman went into labor at a Bieber concert. Can’t make this s*it up.
And whether you love, hate, or love to hate the *NSYNC “It’s gonna be May” meme, you’ll probably be charmed to learn that Lance Bass and his husband, Michael Turchin, are in Israel this week. The Times of Israel reported that Bass, one of the boy band’s former members whose trip was sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, was spotted on vacation in Tel Aviv with Turchin.
Although Bass comes from a Southern Baptist background, he married Turchin, who is Jewish, underneath a chuppah in 2014. Their interfaith nuptials, an extravagant L.A. affair, scored them a fantastically titled E! TV special called “Lance Loves Michael: The Lance Bass Wedding.” During a promotional HuffPost Live event, Bass and Turchin revealed that they would take a “spiritual but not religious” approach to parenting. Do you, Bass-Turchins.
The couple’s Israel vacay marks their first trip to the Jewish homeland. Bass―whose Instagram feed includes enviable highlights like touring a winery, relaxing at the beach in Tel Aviv, and noshing at the nearby Carmel Market―wrote on social media, “Neither of us have visited the mother land before. Can’t wait to see the places I’ve read so much about.”
Bon voyage.
Zoe Miller is Tablet’s editorial intern. Follow her on Twitter here.