Amy Schumer’s Childhood Rabbi Enjoyed ‘Trainwreck’
Amy Schumer Image by Getty Images
Before she was America’s favorite comedian, Amy Schumer was just a nice(ish) Jewish girl from Long Island.
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin remembers that Amy, whom he knew when she was just a preteen in religious school.
Salkin was Schumer’s rabbi at Central Synagogue of Nassau County in Rockville Centre, New York where he worked from 1988 to 1995.
According to a on Amy Schumer, she grew up in Manhattan, but when she was 12, her father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her family went bankrupt, and her parents divorced. Schumer’s mother moved to Long Island, where they started attending Central Synagogue. (Incidentally, the shul has produced three other comedians, including Dave Attel, Rory Albanese and Schumer’s sister Kim Caramele.)
In a personal blog post for the Religious News Service, Salkin wrote, that the Schumers were very involved in Jewish life — Amy’s mother served on the temple board and chaired the education committee. Salkin officiated Amy’s older brother’s bar mitzvah.
He described Amy as, “a sweet, funny kid, who often asked probing and humorous questions in religious school.”
“Amy Schumer has catapulted to the very top of American popular consciousness,” he added. “It is rather remarkable. She has done so through her natural, quirky, blisteringly honest way of simply being herself. I enjoyed Trainwreck.”
In middle school, Amy realized her appreciation for humor, she told fellow Jewish comedian Michael Ian Black during his podcast of “How To Be Amazing.”
“I loved the jerky boys, and just wanted to make prank phone calls, and wanted to watch SNL,” she said. “I was drawn to all things funny, and none of my other girlfriends were into that at all. I found boys that liked that stuff and we were close.”
“The general consensus was it really was like, ‘just be quiet and try to be pretty, and everyone’s supposed to like you,’” Amy concluded.
Of course, Amy parodies that “shallow white girl” image as much as she can in her sketch show, “Inside Amy Schumer.”
“Amy Schumer was a religious school cutup,” Salkin wrote. “In this, she follows in a noble tradition. According to ancient legend, Abraham was a rebellious kid who asked impertinent questions. We can certainly imagine Baruch Spinoza, the heretic of Amsterdam, sitting in the back of his religious school classroom, cracking jokes.”
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