Comedian Sarah Silverman has been known to make an edgy joke or two about religion (“I was raped by a doctor … which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl”) — so it may come as a surprise that her older sister is a rabbi with a very serious mission: raising awareness about the importance of international adoption.
Susan Silverman lives in Jerusalem with her husband and their five children: Aliza, 23; Hallel, 21; Adar, 17; Zamir, 14; and Ashira, 12. She’s written a book about her family, including the process of adopting her two sons, Adar and Zamir, from Ethiopia.
In “Casting Lots: Creating a Family in a Beautiful, Broken World” (Da Capo), out Tuesday, Silverman makes the case that international adoption, which has dropped off dramatically in recent years — from 45,000 in 2004 to 7,200 in 2013 — needs to be more feasible.
“The State Department is interested in having smooth relationships,” she says. “You have thousands of healthy adoptions, but one goes wrong and all of a sudden we’re willing to sacrifice millions of children for political reasons.”
She and her husband, Yosef, would not have been able to afford to adopt in today’s system, she says. “It’s obscene that we have made it so expensive,” she says. “People think it’s better that countries send money to feed and clothe a child who is suffering in an institution than to allow for low-cost adoptions.”
But Silverman, 52, also writes about the joys of parenting and about her own childhood, growing up alongside her three sisters. She’s the only one with kids, and her siblings “are all madly in love with their nieces and nephews.”
Does she mind that her little sister jokes about Judaism? “Oh my God, no,” she says. “I love it. I feel really strongly that we can’t take ourselves too seriously.” Also, cursing runs in the family. “I swear like a sailor,” she admits. “And for my dad, ‘f - - k’ is like every other word. ‘How you f - - kin’ doin’, honey?’ ‘Where are my f - - kin’ grandchildren?’”
Sarah, now 45, got her start at an early age: “When she was 2, my dad taught her to say, ‘Bitch, bastard, damn, s–t.’ She would perform that [line] for anybody who would come over. They were all utterly delighted and horrified.”
But Silverman says the difference a loving family can make is no laughing matter. “We’re responsible for all the kids in the world, not just the ones we might encounter in our everyday lives,” she says. “We need to use our imaginations to see the faces of all the children in the world.”