The comic and the rabbi prove they’re not so different after all
The Jewish Advocate
November 18, 2011
Sarah Silverman and sister Rabbi Susan Silverman at BU. PHOTO BY JUDY BOLTON-FASMAN Once upon a time there were two Jewish sisters. One of them grew up to be a Reform rabbi and the other to be one of America’s more profane comics. These two sisters – Rabbi Susan Silverman and Sarah Silverman – could not be more different or more alike. The sacred and profane mingle in their DNA, leading them to explore their genetic predisposition for “Jewiness.” Sarah says she’s “Jewy beyond my control,” while Susan says she is “attracted to the glamour of Jewiness.”And so it went for over an hour last week when the two women appeared together at the invitation of Boston University’s Center for Cultural Judaism and Department of Religion. The duo’s appearance was officially billed as “Sister Act: Growing up Jewish in New Hampshire and Making the Best of It.” The moderator, Virginia Sapiro, dean of Arts and Sciences at the university, knew firsthand about growing up as a Jew in the Granite State. Sapiro and her family were the only Jews in her central New Hampshire hometown. The Silvermans grew up in Manchester, where they claimed they were more in the minority as Democrats than they were as Jews. Sarah, who turns 41 next month, is the youngest of four sisters; Susan is eight years older.
Sarah Silverman tries (and eventually succeeds) to put lipstick on sister Susan’s face. PHOTO BY AMANDA SWINHART/BU DAILY FREE PRESS The three women began the evening sharing war stories about fending off anti-Semitic bullies during their childhoods. Sapiro remembers deicide insults hurled at her at school. When faced with the same harassment, Sarah said that she’d tell kids, “If I killed your G-d, think about what I could do to you.”The two sisters may have left New Hampshire for good more than 20 years ago, but the sense of “otherness” they felt during their childhood and young adulthood continues to inform their Jewish identities. Susan remembers her first days at Boston University, wide-eyed that “there were all these Jews. I felt something similar to what people say about going to Israel for the first time.”
In college she met her future husband, Yosef Abramowitz, a fellow activist and committed Jew, but her Jewish life began in earnest when she applied to rabbinical school without knowing how to read Hebrew.
“The first time I attended High Holiday services was when I led them as a student rabbi,” she said.
For the past five years Susan and her family have made their home in Jerusalem. Two of her five children were adopted from Ethiopia. Much of the discussion and audience questions focused on her family’s adjustment to Israel. While she doesn’t intend to live in Israel forever, she has always wanted “to be part of creating that state.” For Susan that means continuing her advocacy for a two-state solution and helping to cultivate deeper respect for progressive Judaism in Israeli society. “[Israel] is a very activist place and our family is involved,” she said.
Susan’s oldest child – a daughter – serves in the Israel Defense Forces. She adds that, “My kids have to think about the world in a very real way in Israel. My husband works on energy issues with Bedouins, and it’s customary for people to visit them and bring their kids. My kids had to weigh if they wanted to go Beersheba and risk being hit by a rocket.”
Susan is quick to describe Israel as the only place on earth where Judaism is truly alive for her children. They received Bibles in a ceremony at Timna in the south of Israel, where the Israelites spent part of their long sojourn in the desert. They have made seders in the Negev under the sky of their ancestors.
Sarah visited Israel for the first time this past fall. “I had no idea Israel was so cool,” she said. Borrowing a punch line from a comic friend, she added, “Who does their PR, the Arabs?” For all of her initial trepidation about going to Israel, she loved seeing her nieces and nephews riding their bikes until dark. “It’s not a fear-based life. But I didn’t like going to the Wailing Wall. That space filled me with rage when I saw how little of it was for women.”
Sarah told the audience that her Jewishness came out in earnest at the beginning of her career. “I liked the idea of being a Jewish person. I mean look at me, I’m really cool.” She lauded fellow Manchester, N.H. native, Adam Sandler for bringing Jewishness to her generation of comics and called him a “Jewish secular hero.”
Sarah shares her sister’s sense of social justice. She was recently in Austin, Texas headlining a show she organized called “Live From N*****head: Stripping The Paint Off Of Good Ol’ Fashioned Racism.” N*****head was the name of Governor Rick Perry’s family lodge – a fact that got its 15 minutes of media attention.
“Some people didn’t feel comfortable with a white person or a Jew putting the show together,” Sarah said. “But I don’t care to adhere to having to be a certain skin color. Any time some sort of hate is out there it’s important to point it out, so it isn’t some [invisible] gas in the air. It’s also important to point it out no matter your skin color or ethnicity.”
Susan characterized the racism she has experienced in Israel – particularly from the ultra- Orthodox – as “verbal idolatry.” She explained that any group that claims “to know what G-d wants is committing verbal idolatry. As progressive Jews, it’s our job to fight that idolatry.”
At the end of the program, Susan declared that Sarah was “a modern day prophet. She tells the truth as she sees it.” Sarah, in turn, proclaimed that “my sister is my hero. I pick her brain constantly so I seem smart.”
It was clear that there was little dividing the sacred from the profane in the Silverman sisters’ singular fairy tale.
