Everybody's Jewish Mother

I was on the phone with a friend yesterday and she said, “Are you ready for the holidays?” And I said, “Omg Yes! December can’t get here soon enough. I already have my ornaments out of storage.” And she said, “No, the Jewish holidays.” And I said, “Oh. When are those?”  And she said, “Now.”  To be clear, I am Jewish, but my family has never observed.  I’ve only been to one Bar Mitzvah, and I thought the Torah was a bagpipe.  But, if you ask how many times I’ve been to The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, I’ve lost count.  I love my Christmas traditions, and I have a lot of them, but I’ve never really had any desire to partake in any Jewish traditions, except for lox and bagels on Sunday. That is my Temple.

That all changed one day in 2012.  I was working on “The Wendy Williams Show” and I was producing Joan Rivers, for probably the 11^th time. I was always Joan’s producer at “Wendy.”  We worked well together and bonded over important things. Like hating the Kardashian’s and loving hating the Kardashian’s.

To produce a celebrity on a talk show you start with a pre-interview. You do this over the phone, asking them all the questions you can to get some funny stories and interesting anecdotes. Unless you’re producing anyone from The Jersey Shore, who are neither funny nor interesting. But Joan Rivers was the GOAT. Whenever we would get on the phone the first question was always the same, and it always came from her. “What’s going on with your love life?” Joan was everybody’s Jewish mother.  

On this particular day we were on the phone doing a preinterview and she said, “What are you doing for Yom Kippur?” I said, “Eating a ham sandwich?” Joan said, “You’re coming to my apartment.” If you’ve ever seen Joan River’s documentary, “A Piece of Work,” and if you haven’t you should, you know that Joan had a reputation for making sure no one spent a holiday alone. Her belief was, “If you don’t have plans, come over.” So I went to Joan Rivers' house to “break-the-fast.” Her townhouse was like “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” if Mr. Magorium was Marie Antoionette. I was seated between Billy Stritch and Gilbert Gottfried. It was like being at the Friars Club with Challah. Joan stood and gave a toast about friends, history, and the importance of rituals. Rituals are what keep us together. Then she had us go around the table and each say something about our day. Suffice to say Gilbert Godfrey’s day was more interesting than mine. The night ended with me almost breaking her collection of antique porcelain figurines, but that’s a story for another time.

As I’m writing this it is the day after Yom Kippur. Yesterday I spoke to a few friends who were going to temple, or going to break-the-fast, and I was a little melancholy, and jealous. Maybe because I’m getting older, I’m 58, I’m craving community, and in community there are rituals. Rituals seem more and more important these days. So, I called my dad. He’s 94 and wise beyond his years. A few years ago we were talking about not being religious, but feeling the connection to being Jewish, and he said, “Even if you’re not religious, if you were in a coma you would know it was Yom Kippur.” I decided talking to my dad every Yom Kippur is my new ritual. I think Joan would like that. I’m gonna end with a Joan Rivers joke that seems fitting for the occasion:

“I’m a very strange Jew. I don’t think God is going to kill me if I have a nibble on Yom Kippur. If I get up to heaven, God is not going to worry that I ate at 3 o’clock, he’s going to worry if I threw a widow out of an apartment.”

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Liza Persky is a four-time Emmy Award winning talk show producer. She started her career at The Rosie O Donnell Show, and has continued her work in talk to this day. Liza grew up in West Hollywood, California to a new age hippie mother who believed sending her to alternative schools, where she learned to make things with carob, was more important than sending her to "normal" schools to learn History and Geography. No homework meant more time to watch television. She may not know where Wisconsin is on a map, but she can sing you the entire theme song to "Punky Brewster." Liza is a story teller, a friend, a sister, and a wife. And if you're ever looking for her she's probably watching every episode of "Sex and the City" for the thirty-second time.