So I'm sorry if you're just putting it together now--that I am Jewish. It's just not fun to be reading and thoroughly enjoying a book and then you get close to the end and discover that the thing was written by a member of an ethnicity that disgusts you. I write this chapter somewhat begrudgingly. To be honest, I would like to go about my life exploiting the subject of Jewishness for comedy, and not be saddled with the responsibility to actually represent, defend, or advance the cause of the Jewish people. Nevertheless, my Jew editor convinced me to write a chapter on Jewiness by using one of our culture's greatest tools of persuasion: relentless nagging.
As religions go, I do think Judaism is one of the better ones. Jews don't ring my doorbell and shove pamphlets in my face. They aren't pushy. Let me clarify: Jews aren't pushy about their religion. That is what Jews are not pushy about. Their religion.
Another nice thing about the Jews is that their rabbis don't make a habit of sexually violating their youngest and most vulnerable congregants. Of course, there are obvious reasons for this. For one thing, Jewish clergy are allowed to fuck and masturbate and marry. The first two of these activities work amazingly well for relieving sexual tension. (See "Sarah Silverman's Secret Tips for Relieving Sexual Tension.") Oh, also, Jewish clergy are allowed to have vaginas. As a general rule for any large organization, if you're looking to reduce the rape-iness of it, try hiring more women. But most importantly, at least in the Orthodox world, Jewish children--and all members of the clan--are not exactly asking for it, clothing-wise. Orthodox Jewish men in my neighborhood wear large black hats with round brims, or if they don't have one of those on their heads, they wear what I can only describe as "furry tires"--white stockings that go all the way up their calves, and black culottes-type things that balloon from the end of their white stockings up to their waists, where they are often met by a stringy beard which one can only pray does not contain remnants of creamed herring. The women generally sport shawls or scarves around their heads, with long, black dresses dropping shapelessly to their ankles. I wouldn't even hump the thigh of someone in this kind of getup. Also, I live in Southern California. It's a desert and they're all covered literally from head to toe in black. There's not a lot in modern Muslim orthodoxy that I'm a fan of, but at least they know how to dress for their local climate.
So where is this coming from historically or scripturally? I don't recall Jesus, King of the Jews, wearing a furry hat and white stockings. He looked very climate-appropriate in his cotton tunic and sandals, just a Hacky Sack away from modern Cali garb. But he did die in unspeakable agony with nails in his hands as blood slowly trickled out of his body. It's hard to have it all, I guess.
Jews also don't seem to believe in Hell. That's a nifty feature for a faith. I mean, if there were a store where you could literally shop for a religion, and on the shelf you saw two basic choices: one in which, if you have an orgasm caused by anyone other than your opposite-sex spouse, you will spend eternity having to use fire as toilet paper; and another that allows you any kind of orgasm you want, with the only possible downside being the additional effort you might have to make on laundry day--you're going with option two. Of course, some people need Hell. If you're the type of guy who sees a hooker in an alleyway and instinctively thinks, Hey, now there's something I could rape and kill without any consequences, then the concept of Hell might really keep you out of trouble.
* * *
New Hampshire: Where Cows Are Well Done, and Jews Are Rare
* * *
I have no religion. I grew up in a non-observant household, in what I would guess to be the least Jewish of the contiguous forty-eight states. You might argue for something like Texas or Oklahoma, but both states have deserts and dry weather, and Texas has several major metropolitan centers--serious Jew bait. Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky are pretty damned un-Semitic, but New Hampshire has arctic weather, and both bears and moose, and if you know anything about Jews, you know they're not comfortable with large game.
Growing up, the only way I really sensed I was a Jew was by dint of the fact that everyone around me was not. My dark features and name both scream "Jew" like an air-raid siren. Most people in New Hampshire have names like Lisa Bedard (pronounced Beh-daahhd) or Cheryl Dubois (Doo-boyz). I was the only one with hairy arms and "gorilla legs." In third grade, Matt Italia threw pennies and nickels at my feet as I stepped onto the bus. (That wasn't as bad as it sounds. I ended up going out with Matt Italia. Plus, I made 52 cents!) But I don't think Matt or the other kids were expressing hate. I think they were just trying to wrap their heads around the differences between people. Matt didn't hate me when he threw change at my feet any more than he loved me when we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Recently Miley Cyrus got herself in trouble when a photograph was taken of her making "Chinese eyes," right next to one of her Asian friends (see photograph opposite). I have trouble believing that hate of the Asian people is what inspired her to do that. I think it was just young kids making levity of their differences. I'd go almost so far as to say that it was perfectly healthy. If there had not been an Asian kid in that picture, the "Chinese eyes" gesture would have seemed random and uncalled for. Also, in more practical terms, it's just so easy to tug slightly at the corners of your eyes. With black friends it's much more of a logistical challenge. You'd have to find some shoe polish or a giant sausage, and what teenage girl with two simultaneous show business careers has that kind of time? Miley was a girl with no options.
* * *
Seriously, Though, New Hampshire Was Not Especially Jewish
* * *
Until I moved to New York City after high school, the only Jews I really knew were related to me. After Saturday-night sleepovers I'd go to church on Sundays with my Christian friends and their families far more than I ever went to temple. But both places of worship seemed to be these bizarre forums where authority figures told fucked-up ghost stories between spurts of loving encouragement.
In case I haven't yet sufficiently illustrated for you just how un-Jewish New Hampshire was, let me put it this way: The only day care my mother could find for me was at a convent.
When I was seven years old, my parents did what was fashionable and got divorced. In addition to creating me, it's something they did for which I'm eternally grateful. Their divorce should be a model for us all; they both remarried happily, and all four spouses became good friends. I am entirely serious when I tell you that my stepmother, Janice, sends my father to my mother's house bimonthly to get his toenails clipped. (My father is apparently unable to do such tasks himself, and Janice is entirely grossed out by the idea.)
This is not to say that the divorce wasn't disruptive at the outset. My sisters moved in with my dad, and my mom went back to college--two scenarios that now strike me as perfectly acceptable templates for ABC sitcoms.
1980: Mom graduates college and I get a new hat.
From the end of the schoolday until my mother finished her classes in early evening, I was cared for at a local convent. Though "cared for" might be a slight misnomer. I've had some wonderful experiences with nuns in my life, but these weren't among them.
At naptime, we were instructed to lie down on floor mats, and expected to fall asleep immediately. Anyone caught with eyes open or, God forbid, talking, got smacked. Actually smacked. So I lay on my mat, eyes clenched shut, terrified that they would sense I was still awake. Trying to get kids to sleep by scaring the shit out of them seems so obviously paradoxical in hindsight. Still, I'm sympathetic to the nuns' violent impulses. I mean, if I'd given up sex to devote myself to a man who I had to just trust loved me, despite never being physically around to prove it, I'd probably be smacking little children too.
Every day the nuns would take us on a nature walk during which they would distribute peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches cut in four squares. They demanded that we eat every crumb or else--the "or else" being, you guessed it, violence. I reiterate that this constant threat of brutality was a new cultural
experience. Up to then, in my Jewy home, I'd only been exposed to passive aggression, or the threat of being viewed as a disappointment, max.
But my prolonged state of anxiety caused my tiny mind to play dark tricks on me. You know how your brain will fuck with you? Like when you are masturbating and it goes and throws an image of your mom or dad or nana into the mix? It was like I had this bully living in my mind that scared the shit out of me. It's like when you're walking and you tell yourself, "If I don't clear that crack in the pavement by the time this car passes me, I'll die." That same bully convinced me that the jelly in each square of PB&J the nuns gave me was, without a doubt, their period blood. I would take little bites and gag violently as I chewed and swallowed, only slightly more afraid of getting hit than of ingesting the sisters' monthly menses.
Lest you think I share this story as some sort of broad attack on the Catholic Church, I'll inform you that I spent the better part of six years sharing a bed with a God-fearing Roman Catholic. Though that last sentence does come off a little some-of-my-best-friends-are-black-ish, now that I'm rereading it.
* * *
Unlike Jesus Christ, I Am Embraced, Rather Than Murdered, by Jews, for Flapping My Yapper
* * *
Despite Donald and Beth Ann Silverman's relative indifference to their ancestral faith, Jewishness would become, in one way or another, a large theme for their children. My sister Susie not only became a rabbi, she married a man named Yosef Abramowitz, making her name Susan Silverman Abramowitz. When I was on SNL, I did a bit about this for "Weekend Update," in which I suggested that my sister and her husband just rename themselves "The Jews." Then they wrote a book called Jewish Family and Life: Traditions, Holidays and Values for Today's Parents and Children. At this point you might ask--maybe more rhetorically than out of genuine curiosity--How much more Jewish can a person get? Well, my answer to you, madam or sir, would be: Quite a bit more. Because Susie and her husband moved to Israel. To live on a kibbutz. Take that, secular New England upbringing!
Susie pursued her religion doggedly, but in my case, the faith has sort of pursued me. At the very least we met in the middle and developed a mutually beneficial relationship. I have been deemed "good for the Jews" and from that there seems to be no going back; the Jews have spoken. I could do anything now and I'd still be considered good for them. I could, for example, accept Jesus as my lord and savior. I could deny the Holocaust. I mean, when you think about it, the proof isn't exactly overwhelming--what, a couple trendy arm tattoos and some survivor testimonials filmed by Steven Spielberg? Um, Steven Spielberg? The guy who made E.T.?
I believe the reasons I'm beloved by Jews are twofold. First, I'm known for making graphic jokes about sex and scatological matters. Jews, by and large, are comfortable with sexuality--they are just as encouraging of recreational sex as they are of sex for procreation (though maybe a little more so of the latter, since that's how grandchildren are made). Also, many Jews cannot be stopped from discussing what goes on in their GI tracts--the GI tract of a Jew over age twenty-three is true melodrama reminiscent of the Old Testament: sudden mass exodus, long arduous journeys, floods, futility, agony, questioning God's wisdom, and lactose intolerance. So the things I talk about are not blasphemy to Jewish people.
Secondly, I became somewhat of a public figure--a visibly Jewish one. I look Jewish, I have a hard time containing my opinions, and I find it very difficult to get through the day without getting a stain of some kind on my shirt. Also, my last name combines a precious metal with the word "man." Jews love any Jewish public figure. "You know that serial killer, Son of Sam? Jewish!" When the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke, I wasn't happy that our president had an affair, but I was kind of tickled to bits that it was with this sassy, chubby Jewess. Even expressions of outright anti-Semitism can be good for the Jews. Bless Mel Gibson for his drunken rant about Jews this and Jews that; here was something you could point to as evidence that Jew-hating isn't just some abstract concept in the ether. It exists here and now, even right out in the open. Besides, in America, where Jews represent only 2.2 percent of the population, I guess any press is good press.
I talk about being Jewish in my act more than I'm really entitled to, considering that I'm an agnostic at best who has no background of participation in Jewish traditions other than nausea. I've, in fact, been making Jew jokes from an early age, and like most of the jokes I made as a kid, this was largely a defense mechanism. The smart fat kid will be the first to make a fat joke as protection from whatever insults the other kids might hurl at him, and, as a smart Jew, I did likewise. Joking about my differentness seemed to put the people around me at ease. Even though I actually knew almost nothing about being a Jew other than that I was one.
* * *
Nag-ative Campaigning
* * *
Besides warning the reader that this author is a Jew, the other thing that should have been printed on the cover of this book is that I, Sarah Silverman, saved the world. And it was with relatively little effort. I pretty much just sat on my couch and took care of the matter while a PA ran to pick up my lunch. I hope that doesn't sound cocky.
In the event you don't know what I'm talking about, let me explain: I gave you President Barack Obama. You're welcome. I don't know if his presidency will actually save the world, but at least now when you travel internationally and people ask, you can say, "I'm from the United States," while looking straight into their eyes instead of at the laces of your Pumas. And to be totally honest, it was a joint effort between George W. Bush and me. I'm not sure our country would have made the leap to elect a black president if we hadn't had two terms of a mentally handicapable white one.
I fell in love with Obama during the 2008 campaign. Actually, I started falling for him four years earlier, just after the 2004 election when I saw him on Letterman. Dave asked Obama where he thought Kerry went wrong, and he laughed, replying, "Oh I don't know. Maybe windsurfing wasn't the most accessible publicity sport? Maybe he could have played a little softball instead?"
I wanted to contribute to the campaign effort but didn't see an effective way to do it. I figured anyone who cared what I thought would most likely be planning to vote for Obama anyway.
But in September of 2008, I got a call from Mik Moore and Ari Wallach, a couple of activists who had formed an organization called JewsVote. They explained that the most reliable voting bloc in the electoral jackpot of Florida is elderly Jews. They're not the demographic majority, but they all vote. This gives them power way out of proportion to their numbers. And the elderly Jews of Florida, the guys said, were not planning to vote for Barack Hussein Obama, the disconcertingly young black man with the oddly, Muslim-ish background and murky level of commitment to Israel. BUT virtually all of their grandchildren were planning to vote for him.
So Mik and Ari hatched an idea for a campaign called "The Great Schlep." It was brilliant--optimistic and delightfully manipulative. Its core aim was to exploit the outsized fondness Jewish elders have for their grandchildren, and harness that power to win Florida for Obama. The Great Schlep would urge the grandchildren of Jewish geezers to get down to Florida, dispel their grandparents' misguided fears of the black man with the funny name, and convince them to vote for him.
Like everyone else working in the Obama movement, Mik and Ari saw digital media as a critical tool. And they thought of me after seeing the success of a video I made for my then-boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, called I'm Fucking Matt Damon. (Thank you, thank you so much. No, please, sit.) I loved the notion that I could help by encouraging the generation who was already planning to vote for Obama to persuade their elders to do the same. But I warned Mik and Ari that, as excited as I was to do it, they needed to lower their expectations. I reminded them that the enormous popularity of Fucking Matt Damon could be attributed mostly to (a) huge movie star Matt Damon, and (b) fucking. Neither of which had much to do with me. Also, that video really had no message or social purpose, nor did it have any great effect other th
an to make people honk their horns at me and yell, "Hey, are you still fucking Matt Damon?"
I wasn't sure that making a video for the Great Schlep's Web site would really be all that effective, but at least it was something I knew how to do. They gave me no restrictions, just factual bullet points to include, like the name of the Web site and how to get involved. Beyond that I could do whatever I wanted. So I enlisted Dan Sterling, head writer and EP on TSSP, and we banged out a script. Wayne McClammy (amazing director of I'm Fucking Matt Damon, as well as many episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program) came aboard to collaborate and direct.
There was one other stipulation made by Mik and Ari: At some point in the video, I had to direct viewers to the Web site JewsVote.com. I felt this was unwise and told them so. If they wanted this video to go "viral," as I assumed they did, the very name "JewsVote" threatened to shrink the playing field by associating itself with an organization that implied only Jews would be welcome there. Of course, the campaign was, on one level, a call specifically to Jews, but at its heart it was a call to everyone. I was not comfortable promoting something so exclusionary in its language.
With just enough money to cover costs, we shot The Great Schlep video in my apartment, in the space of one morning with a nearly all-volunteer crew. The video largely consisted of me sitting on my couch talking to the camera. Appearances by Alex Desert and Dorothy Guise, and Wayne's visual style gave the piece vibrancy.
Fancypants journalistic institutions like the New York Times speculated that The Great Schlep might have been a decisive factor in Obama's Florida victory. I find that hard to believe, though I have to admit that sometimes I cite said fancypants articles when I am trying to get laid and it's looking iffy. Thanks for the orgasms, Frank Rich! (KIDDING--guys aren't impressed with good press, though combine that with some sweet big naturals and you got something. Fine--not big, per se, but I'd confidently say I at least have naturals you wouldn't sneeze at.)