{"id":2288,"date":"2011-06-22T08:41:25","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T05:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=2288"},"modified":"2011-06-23T10:09:01","modified_gmt":"2011-06-23T07:09:01","slug":"a-celebrity-at-the-school-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2011\/06\/a-celebrity-at-the-school-play\/","title":{"rendered":"A Celebrity at the School Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a good week for comedy in Israel. First, the twice-a-year Comedy for Koby show has been traveling around the country to great acclaim \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I blogged about it earlier this week on Israelity<\/a>. And yesterday afternoon, raunchy (and embarrassingly funny) U.S. comedian Sarah Silverman improbably appeared on a panel at Shimon Peres\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Israeli Presidential Conference<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d entitled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Recipe for a Better Future\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Silverman is also performing two nights of standup next week in Tel Aviv).<\/p>\n

But Silverman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s introduction to Israel was in a much less glamorous setting. Last night, she attended that most mundane of Israeli activities: the school play, in which her niece was on stage. I was there too: Silverman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sister, Susan, lives around the corner from us<\/a>, and our kids go to school together at Jerusalem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sudbury Democratic School<\/a>. (Here’s a nearly 20-year-old clip of Silverman riffing on her sister’s recent marriage:)<\/p>\n

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Part time paparazzi that I am, I was feeling pretty confident as I sauntered over to Silverman and introduced myself to the controversial comic superstar. Silverman was nearly incognito in sweats and a baseball cap \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but it didn’t much matter: most of the Israeli kids there probably never even heard of her. I gave her some tips on where to eat the best falafel in Israel and wished her a good trip \u00e2\u20ac\u201c her first ever to Israel.<\/p>\n

Silverman then noticed the cargo pants I was wearing and bemoaned the fact that she couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get similar pants for women. She then turned to her sister and made some racy comment \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which I unfortunately couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t completely hear \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that compared my pants with a woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body part. Either Silverman was already in performance mode, or she just naturally wisecracks.<\/p>\n

I mentioned that I already blogged about her on Israelity<\/a> and I told her about my personal blog, This Normal Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This Normal Life,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she mused. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard<\/em> of that. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been on your site.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sure, Sarah, nice small talk. But she continued. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So…where did you come up with the name?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you really want to hear?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I asked. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sad story.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What, did someone die<\/em>?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Actually, yes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I replied.<\/p>\n

I proceeded to explain how I started the blog in 2002 after a cousin, Marla Bennett, was killed in the terrorist attack at Hebrew University and how I wanted to demonstrate to the world that, despite all the murderous atrocities in those difficult years, Israel was still a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d place and we were going about our normal activities, not cowering in our homes waiting for the next bomb to go off.<\/p>\n

I then changed the subject and asked if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s picked up any good material yet for her act.<\/p>\n

As the Democratic kids left the stage to thunderous parental pride, I was struck by how I had shared with the famous Sarah Silverman that inherently Jewish reality, the one that is so part and parcel of everything we do in Israel, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s even included in the Jewish wedding ceremony: that, even in our greatest joy (meeting a celebrity, shlepping nachas <\/em>from our talented kids), we must always remember our sadness and suffering. At the wedding, the groom breaks a glass. Some of us blog. Ah, the vagaries of modern life in our beleaguered state.<\/p>\n

Welcome to the real Israel, Sarah. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re pretty normal here. Most of the time.<\/p>\n

This post appeared on Israelity<\/a> yesterday.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a good week for comedy in Israel. First, the twice-a-year Comedy for Koby show has been traveling around the country to great acclaim \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I blogged about it earlier this week on Israelity. And yesterday afternoon, raunchy (and embarrassingly funny) U.S. comedian Sarah Silverman improbably appeared on a panel at Shimon Peres\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Israeli […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,9,4],"tags":[39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2291,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions\/2291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}