Chutzpah Winfrey

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Oprah Winfrey has discovered her inner Jewishness.

Winfrey, who rarely does interviews, sat for a TV chat with a Hasidic rabbi on the day last fall she immersed herself in Brooklyns Hasidic neighborhoods.

The interview, produced by Oprahs OWN network and posted Wednesday only on chabad.org, the Web site of the Lubavitcher sect, was a rare scoop for a site that deals mainly in religious practices.

Theres more Hasidic Jew in me than I know, says Winfrey dressed in a modesty-preserving ankle-length skirt at the end of the interview with Rabbi Motti Seligson, the Web sites media liason.

George Burns

OCEANS 11: In Brooklyns Hasidic community, Oprah says she found kindred spirits.

She was very real and very warm and easy to connect with, Seligson told The Post yesterday. What I really think was nice about this was [Winfreys] willingness to experience Hasidic life as opposed to just going off stereotypes.

Last October, Oprah took cameras into Hasidic homes in Borough Park, Crown Heights and a mikvah, a ritual bathhouse, in Brooklyn Heights as a part of her Americas Hidden Culture segment on her weekly Oprahs Next Chapt! er show.

Seligson is briefly featured at the beginning of Sundays episode, in which Winfrey also visits the Ginsberg family.

In the interview, Winfrey says that her experience dispelled some of her misconceptions about Hasidic Jews.

I have been perhaps, like most people whove walked down the street and seen Hasidic Jewish men, in particular . . . oftentimes wearing the hats and long beards and always found it somewhat formidable or intimidating, she says.

This experience has really confirmed and affirmed what I truly believe as one of my deep spiritual principles that were all more alike than different.

Winfrey also says she was speechless that, when she visited the Ginsberg family and mentioned Mickey Mouse, Shrek, Beyonc and Jay-Z to their kids none of them recognized the references.

They said they didnt even care and werent even curious about it, she tells Seligson.

We live in a culture where seven-and-a-half hours a day are spent consumed by some electronic device . . . Its amazing to me that, right across from Manhattan, theres a whole world of children who arent doing that and who are happy, fulfilled and loved.

I had a few questions I wanted to ask her, Seligson said yesterday, explaining innocently how he got the interview.

I really wanted to hear about her experiences, he said.