Controversial Jewish comedienne Sarah Silverman has entered negotiations for a new Seth MacFarlane production of a comedy-western titled “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Silverman would play a Bible-thumping lady of the night, who tries to keep her  job and her fiancée (played by Giovanni Ribisi).

The Inquisitr, where I found this item, was sure to mention Sarah’s give and take with our own Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt last fall, as well as her father’s unabashed talkback entry.

“Sarah Silverman and religion have proven a potent cocktail in recent history, so it’s no surprise that she would take a part like this,” argues The Inquisitr.

Makes perfect sense to me.

The new movie shoot is starting this spring. MacFarlane’s last movie, Ted, about a foul mouthed Teddy bear, grossed more than $545 million at the box office.

Happy Bible thumping.

Police have agreed to allow the niece of American comedian Sarah Silverman will be allowed to attend a women’s Megillah reading at the Western Wall despite being banned from the site.

Hallel Abramowitz Silverman, 17, was one of 10 female worshipers arrested for wearing prayer shawls during a women’s Rosh Chodesh prayer service at the Western Wall earlier this month. Her mother, Rabbi Susan Abramowitz Silverman, also was arrested.

The women were released on condition that they not visit the site for 15 days and were required by police to sign a document agreeing to the condition.

After realizing she would not be able to attend the Women of the Wall organization’s women’s Megillah reading at the Kotel because of the restriction, the younger Silverman went to the Old City of Jerusalem police station and presented a letter to request an exception to the ban. She arrived with her lawyer and her father.

Police agreed to allow her to visit the Western Wall on Shushan Purim in Jerusalem  Sunday night and Monday, one day after the Purim holiday is celebrated in most other places.

“I wasn’t going to sign, but my mom had a flight leaving in a few hours, and we were afraid there would be complications and she would miss her flight,” she told Haaretz. “Plus, I was nervous. After all, I am 17 years old and I was being held in a police station.

“I was feeling so pressured, I didn’t realize it would mean missing the Megillah,” she told the newspaper. “If I had really understood this, I don’t know if I would have signed.”

Among the 10 Women of the Wall detained by police on Monday in Israel for praying in the open air women’s section at the Western Wall while wearing prayer shawls was Susan Silverman—sister of the controversial comic Sarah Silverman. Susan is a Reform rabbi in Jerusalem, and she was arrested along with her teenage daughter.

Sarah Silverman tweeted: “SO proud of my amazing sister @rabbisusan & niece@purplelettuce95 for their [genital reference] civil disobedience. Ur the [mamary reference]!#womenofthewall”

According to Ha’aretz, the comic’s niece, Hallel, twitted back: “@SarahKSilverman hey auntie, want a copy of my mugshot?”

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AP the women were detained due to regulations that ban women from wearing prayer shawls while worshiping at the Western Wall, which could offend Orthodox Jewish visitors. Several hours later, they were released.

Shira Pruce, WOW’s Director of Public Relations, emailed The Jewish Press:

“At 7 AM hundreds of men and women flocked to the Western Wall to pray with Women of the Wall, including several Israeli paratroopers who liberated Jerusalem and the Western Wall in 1967 at the end of the Six Day War.

“The women prayed, 200 strong, with at least fifty men in attendance for support. The prayer lasted over an hour and the women were allowed to dance, sing and wear prayer shawls (tallitot), despite the police surrounding them on all sides.”

According to Pruce, a few Haredi women made insulting comments, but were instructed by police to move on.

One of the paratroopers told the passing women that, after they had liberated the Kotel, everyone was welcome to pray there.

Michah Eshet, past Battalion Commander of the paratroopers’ Battalion 66, said he became involved with Women of the Wall because they are “the brave paratroopers in the hope that they will succeed in their struggle to liberate the Kotel from grip of the ultra-Orthodox, for all of the Jewish nation.”

Well, that’s harsh, even for a big, brave paratrooper. For one thing, according to Pruce, when she spoke to The Jewish Press, on Monday there was no reaction from the Haredi men by the Kotel, who let the hour plus prayer service proceed with no interruption whatsoever. The only entity doing the gripping at this point is the High Court, which took on itself to decide whose prayer leads up to the heavens and whose ends up in the Russian Compound, Jerusalem’s detention center.

Pruce said the cops were “sneaky,” waiting for paratroopers and most of the media to disappear, and only then, as the group of women was filing out of the Western Wall plaza at the conclusion of the prayer service, did the cops “descend upon the women, in what seemed like a planned blitz arrest of as many women wearing tallitot as possible.”

Personally, I’m proud of my fellow Orthodox guys at the Kotel, who just turned their back on the tumult and the raucous on the other side of the mechitza and just did their thing. After all, it’d just once a month (thank God nobody told them Adar had two Roshei Chodashim, or maybe they only keep one because it makes sense—it’s beyond my rabbinic sensibilities).

Here’s another observation: in my own shul in Netanya we barely had a minyan for shacharit this morning, and when it came time for Hallel we mostly mumbled along with one eye on the wall clock. We only sang the part from “Pitchu li shaarey tzedek” on, and since there were barely a dozen of us – you get the picture. So I can’t resist admiring a bunch of ladies who make Rosh Chodesh special in the extreme and even bring paratroopers.

This is a great idea, come to think of it – there are so many shuls who suffer from low attendance, especially in these frosty winter mornings – why not invite a couple of paratroopers?

Just tell them they must come help release you from the grip of the Ultra Orthodox. It seems to work.

Now that U.S. politics are over, Sarah Silverman has found a new target – Israel.

In a tweet sent on Wednesday, Silverman writes,

“My Israeli bros & sissies: Do yourselves a fave & Vote Meretz OR the Green Movement for Kenesset sweeet”.

According to the Israeli site Nana, Meretz party chief, MK Zahava Galon (of “Jew-boy” fame) thanked Silverman for her support and congratulated her on Obama’s victory.

Now what would Rabbi Rosenblatt have to say?

A video in support of President Obama produced by the sister of comedian Sarah Silverman will begin airing in Florida.

The video by Rabbi Susan Silverman, a Reform rabbi who lives in Jerusalem, posted last week on Facebook shows Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in an interview and Israelis throughout the country praising Obama’s support for Israel’s security.

A 30-second version is scheduled to run in Florida television markets on Monday during the foreign policy debate between Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Susan Silverman, who lives in Israel with her husband, Arava Power CEO Yosef Abramowitz, and their five children, became involved in making the video after asking her famous sister to make a video about Israelis’ support for Obama.

Sarah Silverman made “The Great Schlep” video in support of Obama four years ago to convince her grandparents and other grandparents to vote for Obama. Earlier this year she made a video asking casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to switch his support to Obama.

The video comes on the heels of an Op-Ed published in the Jewish Press in which Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt criticizes Sarah Silverman for being “crude” and “vulgar.” He suggested that she channel her energy into marrying and having children. The Silvermans’ father, Donald, responded with a vulgar statement of his own.

To be perfectly honest, until yesterday, I had never heard of Sarah Silverman. I never saw a photo or a video of her; I never heard her jokes, nothing.  While a great deal of junk American culture seeps into the Land of Israel, still we are sheltered from much of it, thank G-d, and I never heard her name mentioned in Israel at all. Until yesterday, when to my surprise and chagrin, I saw the immodest photo of her on the homepage of The Jewish Press, in her sleeveless top and her butt sticking into the air. Gevalt!

Reading on about the silly fuss, I was further chagrined. Rachmonis on rabbis in America if this is where their heads are at. First of all, looking at photos and videos of young ladies like Sarah is the Torah transgression of straying after one’s heart and one’s eyes. From the description of her comedy routines, listening to her is a violation of taking part in a gathering of mockers and scorners. So what is a rabbi doing in a place he doesn’t belong?

Furthermore, is he now going to set out on a campaign to rebuke every Jewish comedian in Hollywood, and every Jewish actor, director, playwright, musician, politician, Facebook inventor, and Jewish Federation president who married a gentile? Why single out Sarah? Pick on Simon and Garfunkel instead.

But I want to say something much deeper than this. Why blame Sarah? She’s the product of the culture she grew up in. Why should she believe in the Torah? Why should she follow the Torah when the rabbis in America don’t follow the Torah either? If they did, they’d all live in Israel.

Sure, they do more mitzvahs than Sarah. She honors her parents, and gives charity, and don’t worship idols, or murder; and they observe all these commandments and more, but as long as they’re not living in Israel, they’re picking and choosing the mitzvahs they do, just like Sarah, so what’s the big squawk? Why point a finger at Sarah?

For the last two thousand years, three times a day, religious Jews have been beseeching God to bring us back to the Land of Israel, and now that God has opened the doors of aliyah and miraculously rebuilt the Jewish Homeland into one of the leading nations in the world, as He promised He would, why linger and languor in Dallas of all places? Where is Dallas, Texas mentioned in the Torah? If rabbis in America don’t want Jewish children growing up with their heads filled with trashy American culture and slang, then let them move to Israel and set an example for others, just like our forefather Abraham did.

If the rabbis of America want the young Jews in America to respect and love the Torah, then let them champion a true version of Torah and move to Israel, just like it says in the Torah over and over and over again.

Of course Sarah Silverman thinks the Torah is phony. That’s what she sees all around her – Orthodox Jews keeping the Torah in a place the Torah isn’t meant to be kept; Orthodox Jews who prefer living in the impure land of the gentiles rather than living in the Holy Land of the Jews; Orthodox Jews who tell their kids that they are Americans with wonderful American futures waiting for them, when the Torah and all of the Prophets of Israel call to us from the Torah to come home, come home, come home – and now that the Almighty has given us our own Jewish State, with a solid Israeli economy, more Torah learning and Torah giants in Israel than in any other place in the world, and a free airplane ride with Nefesh B’Nefesh, what are the Orthodox Jews waiting for? Of course, Sarah thinks that the Torah and its Orthodox practitioners in America are phony. But why attack Sarah? Physician heal thyself!

Apparently nothing is more important in the world than Sarah Silverman and her uterus. As the entire world, and her father, have decided to visit (and revisit) the website to read and comment on Rabbi Rosenblatt’s article.
Unfortunately, our server is having trouble keeping up with this unbelievable volume of traffic.

We apologize if you’re among those who haven’t been able to access the site (but then how are you reading this?), and congratulations, if you’ve made it to this point.

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For the record, I’m a huge fan of Sarah Silverman and have been following her career forever, watched her Jesus movie on Netflix, followed two seasons of her sitcom on Comedy Central, absolutely loved her bit on the Aristocrats movie, and caught her act whenever possible. Unlike, say, Jon Stewart, or Adam Sandler, whose entire Jewish thing is about making funny cheh sounds, and Jerry Seinfeld, whose Jewish thing is, basically, Presbyterian, I believe Silverman is on a par with the serious Jewish-American comics of the day, Larry David and Richard Lewis.

This is because all three comics have pain in their comedy, and they use it to make us laugh so hard, our kishkes get shpilkes in our shkolniks.

Jewish Author Shalom Aleichem was funny because he took the repression and poverty of life in the pale of settlement in Czarist Russia and turned them into hilarious scenes. We laugh because it’s so sad. That’s Jewish comedy.

When Larry David’s dad doesn’t invite him to his mom’s funeral because he didn’t want to bother him, he’s so busy – that’s Jewish pain. When Richard Lewis, clad in black, is fearful of life itself for the mean things it has in store for him – that’s Jewish pain. When Sarah Silverman depicts herself as a mega-narcissistic LA girl, bereft of empathy or even an awareness of others – that’s Jewish pain.

And so, to start, I believe Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt missed the point when he was attempting to counsel Sarah Silverman on how to become happy and fulfilled as a woman. Because if our comics had any idea at all, or the inclination, really, to be happy and fulfilled, they wouldn’t be exposing themselves on a bare stage with nothing but a mike and a cutting tongue to protect them from drunken hecklers at two in the morning.

I tried it one summer in New York, I have no idea if the good rabbi ever did. Believe me, I have good reasons to admire Sarah Silverman, but to expect her to be a happy mother is like expecting (insert funny noun) to be happy (insert inappropriate verb).

And although I agree that the You Tube clip attempting to seduce Billionaire Sheldon Adelson was offensive, it was also funny and angry and a legitimate political attack. What folks on the right should do is come up with equally funny and effective clips — may I suggest a certain aging Hollywood star who enjoys talking to empty chairs.

Having said that, let’s talk about motherhood and babies, because, soon enough, the 170 comments on Rabbi Rosenblatt’s article veered away from dealing with the gifted comic and settled on the idea of compulsory child bearing for modern American women.

Or at least that’s what you’d think Rosenblatt was advocating, to judge by those comments. Which, of course, he didn’t. He only suggested (I’m paraphrasing because it’s more fun that way) that women by nature are hard-wired to be married and bear children, which is why some young girls start planning their weddings at age 7 and have the albums to show for it.

Put aside sentiment and politics, let’s talk economics. Here are a few of the leading countries in the world in terms of real Gross Domestic Product growth annually.

There’s Argentina, with 8.8 real GDP growth rate, and 17.34 births per 1000, as opposed to 7.36 deaths per 1000.

I propose that Argentina’s astonishing growth economically has everything to do with the fact that it has three times more people being born than dying.

In Turkey, there’s 8.5 real GDP growth rate, with 17.58 births per 1000, with only 6.1 Deaths per 1000.

India is another great example: 7.8 real GDP growth rate, births per 1000: 20.6 Deaths: 7.43

Even Israel, with a very good 4.8 real GDP growth rate, shows the same healthy trend: with 18.97 births per 1000 and only 5.5 deaths. In fact, Israel’s situation is even better than most because of its excellent medical services. Also, Israel isn’t showing the same stunning growth rate as, say, India, because our economy here has been pretty fabulous for some time, and so we are higher up the bell curve.

Now check out some liberal Western democracies, with self-fulfilled, emancipated women who have better things to do than get married and pregnant: