When Lewis Black was a child, he wanted to become a rabbi.
Yes, that Lewis Black. The acerbic, angry-with-all-forms-of-stupidity, fingers-flailing-in-the-air comedian Lewis Black wanted to be a rabbi.
Perhaps he should explain. “I was good in Hebrew and what else are you going to do if you’re good in Hebrew? I wasn’t moving to Israel. I had a really great rabbi when I was a kid, Balfour Brickner. He became the head of the [National Conference of] Christians and Jews. He was terrific. But by the time I was a bar mitzvah I was lucid.”
In a telephone interview, Black, 56, suggested that the greatest beneficiary of his change of heart may have been the Jewish people themselves.
“They should consider themselves lucky,” he said. “You can’t really have a rabbi wandering around yelling at his congregation, ‘What’s the matter with you people?'”
Black’s weekly rants on the popular “Daily Show With Jon Stewart” have propelled him to the top ranks of the comedy world. But this moment of historical introspection really comes courtesy of a newly published memoir-cum-screed, “Nothing’s Sacred.” He also has a new comedy CD, “Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues.”
Black was born and raised in Washington, D.C., in a family that celebrated the Jewish holidays and embraced typical liberal Jewish values. His mother, a substitute teacher, became active in the Women’s Strike for Peace. His father, who worked for the Defense Department designing sea mines, was slower to come around.
Black claims his dad actually read the Geneva Convention, decided the war was wrong, but didn’t do anything about it until the United States began to mine Haiphong Harbor. He’d rationalized his work by telling himself that sea mines were defensive weapons. But when the United States began to use them offensively, he decided to quit.
He retired at 55, 10 years earlier than he’d planned, with one child in college and another about to enter. As Black wrote in his new book: “It was truly an extraordinary event for a man with a family to give up his income in order to be able to live with his conscience.”
Black was not the class clown, but he was one of them, “the darker class clown, the prince of darkness class clown. I hung out with a really funny group of kids,” all of whom became successful in their own ways.
Black’s angry stage persona is a reflection of his real life personality, albeit one “blown way out of proportion. I used to be like that as a kid. Also I was a sarcastic kid. The fact that I got through junior high school and high school without someone breaking my arms still amazes me.”
He originally intended to become a playwright, but switched to comedy mostly because he was funny.
His Jewish upbringing, he says, informs his work. “The thing you gain by being Jewish is the sense of being an outsider. So you have an empathy, a natural empathy.”
He’s never censored himself because he’s Jewish. On the contrary, one of his most popular routines is about Christmas, which he gladly summarizes:
“Christmas is completely out of control. Every year it’s longer and longer. It used to be the 25 days of Christmas. Now it starts before Labor Day. How long does it take you guys to shop? At what point do you not learn that items are most expensive before Christmas. So why don’t you just put empty boxes underneath the tree this Christmas, with little notes attached, ‘I’m going to get you this coffee maker … if the price is right.'”
He has another routine, he says, about how the Christian right uses Old Testament quotations as an argument to prove that gay marriages are immoral:
“The Old Testament was written by my people, the Jewish people. But that book wasn’t good enough for you Christians. You guys said, ‘We got a better book and a great new character. You’re going to love it.’ And yet you are constantly interpreting our book. It’s not your book! A lot of the problems we have in the country is that you Christians interpret the Old Testament. You don’t see rabbis going on TV interpreting the New Testament.”
Routines like these keep him popular. He’s on the road 250 days a year playing to full houses and has no intention of cutting back. “When you finally find your audience, it’s kind of silly not to go out to see them. I was working that much before and I had no audience.”
He actually tours on a bus, like a Jewish country western singer, accompanied by his opening act, a tour manager and the man who sells Lewis Black doodads, such as T-shirts, CDs and now, presumably, copies of his book.
Success hasn’t mellowed him. Sure, he says: “The fact that I’ve reached a wider audience gives you a sense that you’ve accomplished something.” Huh? There aren’t people he wants to get even with?
“No,” he says, “you kind of almost lose interest in that.”
And Lewis isn’t the only one enjoying his success. When his mother was recently approached by a New York Times reporter working on a story about Lewis, she was glad to cooperate, he says, happy that she’s “finally getting the attention she deserves.”