Sassy Silverman

Rabbi recounts life as comedian Sarah Silverman’s sister.

May 8, 2009

Rabbi Susan Silverman
j. the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California

Question: Who is your favorite female comedian and why?

”Bitch, bastard, damn, shit.”

The crowd roared with laughter. The performer was 2-year-old Sarah. The stage was our living room. The set was our father’s lap on one of our 1970s artsy chairs, in orange and beige stripes upon the bright green carpet of our living room. The “crowd” was our house full of volunteers for the 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign, home at the end of a long day before the general election.

Sarah’s ear-length, jet-black hair and pale skin emphasized her big brown eyes, and she smiled so that every tiny tooth sparkled. Who wouldn’t laugh when this beautiful toddler—all eyes and smiles—swore like a longshoreman?

We had her perform for everyone. At family gatherings our Nana would say, “Don’t make her say that,” but stood transfixed and smiling like the rest of us. Nana didn’t always love what came out of Sarah’s mouth and knew exactly who to lay into when she went too far—her son, our father, who trained Sarah in this particular art.

One Saturday afternoon Sarah sat in the family room, her elbows leaning on the yellow plastic coffee table. Nana stood in the doorway and said, “Sarah, what are you coloring?”

Sarah (focused on her work): “A house.”

Nana: “Guess what? I brought some brownies for you.”

Sarah (still focused on her work): “Expletive.”

Nana: “DONALD!”

Our mother rolled her eyes in mock disapproval as our father beamed. And we, her big sisters, couldn’t believe our luck—in Sarah we had found the perfect juxtaposition of adorable and crude. It was genius. We couldn’t get enough of it.

Her fans today can’t either. Watching a beautiful, wide-eyed, 37-year-old Sarah Silverman joke—deadpan—about rape, racism and genocide, audiences burst out laughing in the same self-conscious way our guests did decades ago.

Sarah keeps her fans painfully enthralled, whether it’s her TV series, “The Sarah Silverman Program,” her concert film, “Jesus Is Magic,” or her stand-up act.

Throughout the years, my sisters Laura and Jodyne and I loved to make Sarah perform. Even when she was a preteen she was the size of a 9-year-old, so the juxtaposition of cute and inappropriate still worked. Once, when I was 19 and Sarah was 12, I took her to the beach for spring break. She sat on the sand and nonchalantly smoked a cigar.

A longtime sisterly favorite was to do “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” songs and dances. One night the four of us performed it as a sister act at the local White Horse Tavern. The audience—rural New Hampshire diners out for an evening—stared in, well, horror.

We didn’t care. Then, like now, our favorite audience is ourselves.

As kids we were more likely to sing at the White Horse Tavern than in synagogue. We did not have a religious upbringing, and my parents and sisters still marvel at my having become a rabbi. We sisters associated being Jewish with being liberal. That’s how the lines were drawn in our New Hampshire culture: Christians celebrate Christmas and vote Republican. Jews celebrate Chanukah and vote Democratic.

For each of us, being Jewish has come to have a more mature meaning in our lives. For Sarah, it’s an identity of naming, loudly, what she sees in society that disturbs her.

As children, liberal values and arts replaced synagogue life. (Most years we joined the Reform temple, but very rarely went, except when my father was social action chair.)

The soundtracks of our ranch house—on a quiet street in the middle- and upper-middle class “North End” of Manchester, N.H.—were the records “Purlie,” “Godspell” and “Hair.” Our father, a retailer, was a social worker by training and would one day return to it. Our mother, McGovern’s personal campaign photographer, later founded New Thalian Players, a theater company in Manchester. They divorced and each remarried.

We daughters truly had four loving and devoted parents—a great gift to all of us, and an even bigger captive audience for Sarah’s antics.

Sarah brought these antics national with “Saturday Night Live” when she was 21. (She’d been doing stand-up in New York clubs when someone told Lorne Michaels that Sarah was going to be the next Gilda Radner.)

Her big debut was a report on “Weekend Update” in which she recounted the news of her life. This included the now-classic joke about me: “My sister Susie got married and they took each other’s names, you know? So now she’s Susan Silverman-Abramowitz. But they’re thinking of shortening it to just ‘Jews.’” Silence, then a strong but evidently uneasy laughter followed.

When my sister was performing her live show “Jesus Is Magic” off-Broadway, I went to New York to see it. I arrived the afternoon of the show and went straight to Sarah’s hotel room. She and I were both exhausted and went into the bedroom to rest. We lay on the big bed and she tickled my back and arms until I fell asleep.

When we woke up, I had to leave because I was meeting a friend for dinner in the East Village before the show. I put on the summer dress I had brought, and Sarah walked me to the door. As I was leaving, Sarah said, “Oh, you’re wearing a sleeveless dress?”

“Yeah,” I said, “so?”

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “Oh, nothing.”

I took the subway and walked to the restaurant. I sat down at the table, and my friend Shoshi looked at me quizzically. Then she asked, “Why do you have ‘JEW’ written on your arm?”

People often ask if I am disturbed by my sister’s humor. I squirm at times, yes. But I love it. She makes me laugh and she highlights in one joke what I struggle to say in a decade of High Holy Day sermons.

When all four sisters are together, we lie on our mother’s bed with our mother and stepmother and talk and laugh. The fathers, Donald and our stepfather, John, wander in and out, impatient for us to come into the living room, but we want girl time. We want to laugh in the way we only laugh with each other.

Now my older daughters, Aliza and Hallel, pile on as well. It makes us all happy that a third generation is growing to laugh with us.

It is to Sarah’s credit that she makes it to so many family events. She is a hesitant traveler—to the point where she flies my family to the United States each summer so she doesn’t have to come to Israel in order to see us.

Sarah’s life is very different from mine here on Kibbutz Ketura. She encounters celebrities and fans. She is adored by all—and I love witnessing it and experiencing it when I am with her. And I am deeply proud of the social change she effects.

Rabbi Susan Silverman lives with her family on Kibbutz Ketura in Israel. She is the co-author, with her husband, Yosef Abramowitz, of “Jewish Family and Life, Traditions, Holidays, and Values for Today’s Parents and Children” (Golden Books).

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