It Ain’t Easy Being
(Lewis) Black:

by Amelia Cohen-Levy

Lewis Black has a lot on his mind—and he isn’t afraid to rant about it.
While best known for his satire of politics and current events as a commentator
on The Daily Show, he is also the author of numerous scathing books
including the upcoming I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas.  Black talks with
Moment Magazine about his red-hot fury, organized hoo-ha, and how he
copes with being a single Jew on Christmas.

What has being Jewish brought to your comedy?

The most important thing that Judaism did for me was to make me empathetic. You’re removed from the community twice a week [for Hebrew school] when you’re young. You’re separated from the rest of society and you get a sense of what it’s like to be an outsider. So, when things are happening to groups who are outside you get more of their point of view.

You are known for your angry rants. Where does the anger come from?

People seem to find me funny when I’m angry. The key to my humor has been my anger.  It comes from a frustration with people who seem to make it impossible for other people to really get things done.

So, mostly the people getting in the way of progress?

Yeah, and I don’t think they’re necessarily mean-spirited. I prefer to see them as dumb.

Is it a dumb that comes from ignorance or from stubbornness?

Here’s the thing: you can feed people or not feed people. You have all the food that a country could ever want to feed all of its people, and somehow, we can’t seem to even get that done. You know, fourteen percent of America is in poverty, and we who have more money than God can’t figure out how to correct the situation. It just seems to elude us, year after year after year, so I think there’s a certain amount of dumb going on.

What made a nice Jewish boy want to write a book about Christmas?

My editor, who I like and sort of trust, or trust as much as you can trust an editor, came to me and said, “You know, you really ought to write a Christmas book.” And I said, “Well, you’re out of your mind. I don’t think I have that much to say.” And when I thought about it, no one has written the book about what it is like to be single and Jewish at Christmas.

In the book, you talk about how the holidays make you miss not having more of a traditional family; can you tell me more about that?

It’s the time of year that is all about family. All the Christmas movies are about family. Even Hanukkah stuff starts to go into the family thing and if you’re single, you’re sitting there going, “Look at this, I’ve done nothing with my life. Nothing. I don’t have a family. This is what’s really important. I’ve let it pass me by. What is the matter with me?”

Did you ever experience Christmas envy as a kid?

No, just get me the gifts. I’d go see what my friends got, look at all the stuff they got while I didn’t get <bleep>. I wanted the Supermarket Sweep, let me run down the aisles of Toys R Us, let me grab stuff.

So what do you do?

The impetus for the book was that I spend every Christmas kind of the same. I wake up, I have lunch with a friend of mine with his wife and kids and their immediate family, and then I have dinner with another couple and a bunch of friends. That’s how my Christmas has been for ten years.

Well, I know you’re leaving something out, because I read that you sit at your table and cut checks to non-profits. Tell me what inspires that for you.

It just makes me feel that I’m involved with the day in some fashion and also it seems like the day you should do it. I just think it’s important.

What are your favorite non-profits and what moves you to get involved with them?

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, The 52nd Street Project, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, The Children’s Health Fund—I think they all do important and vital work and they do it well.

What’s your Hanukkah tradition?

None. I bailed on the Jewish traditions a while ago.

Why?

I get why people do it. I have friends who have returned to it [Judaism] and they’ve kind of given me an understanding. I think if I had the rabbi I originally had, Balfour Brickner. If he were the rabbi for a longer time in my youth, things might be different.

Did you ever enjoy Jewish study?

I was really good at Hebrew, I had a huge vocabulary when I was studying for my Bar Mitzvah. But, there was nowhere to practice it. It wasn’t like I could really wander around using my Hebrew. It only had meaning at Temple. And then Israel didn’t help, to be honest. I mean, I know you’re not supposed to say these things and it’s irritating to me that you can’t, but it didn’t help that Israel said, “Oh, you were born…[the same year]…that Israel was born and we’re going to have a Bar Mitzvah for Israel too.” Don’t include me in a group without asking me first. “Do you want to be Bar Mitzvahed with Israel?” It’s my Bar Mitzvah, not theirs.

It sounds like you had a fairly traditional Reform upbringing.

My father did something that I thought was smart. He said, when you go to Sunday school, I’m going to go to Temple so I’ll be doing stuff while you’re doing stuff and at the end of your time there, we’ll figure out if we want to stay.

And at the end of your time there, you decided “eh, not so much”?

Well, partly that and partly, you know, entering high school, you’re trying to fit in. and then the sixties sweep you up. Along the way I tried to return. When I was up at the Yale School of Drama ‘76-‘77 on Yom Kippur, me and a friend went to the temple out in New Haven and they used it as a time to pitch money for Israel War Bonds. And I thought No. No. You don’t do it, not on Yom Kippur. Pick another Saturday to do your telethon. You don’t do it on the Day of Atonement, that’s psychotic. And it’s that kind of stuff every time I went in. It wasn’t working.

You write “we are spawning a generation that feels that the world around them exists only
for the sake of their own egos.” Isn’t that kind of a gutsy statement for someone who
doesn’t have kids?

Sure. It’s a very gutsy statement. But, that’s what I see as an impartial observer.

Ideally, college shakes that out of you.

It should shake it out of you. Me is important, but it’s no more important than we. All major religions are based on that. By the time I was 23, I realized that Ayn Rand is a little bit silly and worshiping her is the equivalent of the blind worship of a religion. It’s silly. Organized hoo-ha.

Looks like you’ve got your next segment for the Daily Show right there.

I’m trying to do it in terms of my generation. The act is now basically criticizing my generation in a lot of ways. We’re coming to an end and we said we were going to change the world and we did. We certainly did. We<bleep> it up.

If you were given a chance to “cull the herd”—who would get to stay?

Everyone gets to stay, but some people have to go back for remedial classes.

Remedial classes in what?

Whatever gets them thinking outside themselves.