SAG strike puts its brash Jewish president, Fran Drescher, squarely in the spotlight

(JTA) - In the second season of "The Nanny," the sitcom she wrote and starred in, Fran Drescher's character, Fran Fine, refuses to enter a hotel where the busboys are striking.

"I'm sorry, but the Fines don't cross picket lines," she tells her companion, the father of the family she works for. "It's against our religion."

The laugh line was one of many moments when Drescher served her signature mashup of brashness, Jewishness and liberal politics, throughout her early 1990s series and beyond.

Now, three decades later, Drescher is one of the most prominent advocates for organized labor - and it...