THE REPORTER
Fall 1999

Sandra Bernhard

Finding Spiritual Judaism and Herself

Comic Relief 2000

You might know Sandra Bernhard as the stand-up performer who played a crazed star-stalker in 1983's "King of Comedy." Or maybe you know her for her one-woman show "Without You, I'm Nothing," her stint on "Roseanne," or her famous relationship with Madonna. But what you don't know about Sandra Bernhard is the quest for spirituality that has led her back to Judaism -- and herself.

By Carl Swanson

Sandra Bernhard has shot off her share of one-liners, but don't call her a comedian. Her ambition, her passion, is larger than that. In her 1988 book, "May I Kiss You on the Lips, Miss Sandra?", Bernhard writes about the time she shouted down a heckler at one of her stage shows: "What do you want, Billy Crystal shtick?" she demanded of the irritating audience member. "I'm sharing my whole life with you." Bernhard's life is one fraught with identity issues. What does it mean to be Jewish? What does it mean to be a lesbian? What does it mean to be Sandra?

Surrounded by pillows and lanterns on the Moroccan-style set of her most recent one-woman show, "I'm Still Here Damn It!," which played on Broadway last winter and then toured the country through the summer, she told stories full of displeasure and longing in a bratty deadpan, trying somehow to heal the world by pointing out its hypocrisies. Having rigorously dieted and exercised, Bernhard wore an impractical but fashionable see-through dress. She spoke of Madonna, Courtney Love and Manolo Blahnik shoes. Her celebrity-filled world might seem an odd place to search out a moral universe. But in the end, when she sings a conflicted and passionate "Midnight Train to Georgia," you forgive her for thinking that anybody would find it shocking that, say, a famous model like Naomi Campbell (whom Bernhard lashes relentlessly) is a bit self-involved. After all, Bernhard's sharing her life with us, and her life just happens to consist of famous people, as does her Judaism.

For the last few years, Sandra Bernhard has been one of the leading celebrity proponents of Kabbalah, the increasingly popular mystic tradition developed from the Zohar, an esoteric 13th-century work written by Spanish Jew Moses de Leon. Jewish tradition has taught that only those who are thoroughly grounded in basic Jewish texts should attempt to study Kabbalah. But seven hundred years later, Bernhard has gotten Madonna and Roseanne Barr into it.

Bernhard's Brazilian personal trainer introduced her to Kabbalah about four years ago through the Kabbalah Learning Center in Los Angeles, and she now believes in it passionately. "There is no real understanding for why you're Jewish without Kabbalah," says Bernhard. "There just isn't."

In her hometown of Scottsdale, Ariz. -- where she became a bat mitzvah -- Sandra Bernhard was raised in the Conservative tradition. "But my family didn't really adhere," she says in her hotel room before performing her show in Minneapolis. "We didn't keep kosher. It was more cultural. Although I did go to Hebrew school. I was more into it than my parents were."

Bernhard blames her parents' minimal observance in part on the "small towns" in which she was raised, which lacked coherent Jewish communities. "It just wasn't where they were at," she says. After she moved to Los Angeles and started performing, she continued to celebrate the High Holy Days and Passover, often with her family.

Bernhard launched her career playing Jerry Lewis's maniacal stalker in "The King of Comedy" (1983). The neediness, passion and desire for fame in that character remains a part of her on-stage persona today. It is a persona that she honed in clubs. Her act slowly became a hybrid of storytelling, one-liners and singing. Funny just wasn't enough for her.

In 1990, she released "Without You, I'm Nothing," a film based on her stage show. In the movie, while cheesy "patriotic" drum-and-fife music plays, Bernhard talks about "the romance of being Gentile," of being named "Happy" and having a brother named "Chip." A multiracial group of Christmas carolers appears wearing Freddy Kreuger knife-gloves, then the camera cuts to an outdoor scene of a black girl reading a book about Kabbalah in front of a kosher butcher. It is an incoherent scene that doesn't really add up to much, but her Jewish identity is clearly evident.

While "Without You, I'm Nothing" can be confusing at times, Bernhard makes one thing very clear: "Because I've been exposed to so many different kinds of people, I don't ever think of myself as a cliche Jewish performer," she says. "I grew up around non-Jews, and all my friends were non-Jews. I've traveled extensively and, in many ways, I think that influences my work as much as anything else. What doesn't inform my work is Jewish neuroses, the dark, angry, self-deprecating, neurotic side of being Jewish. That was not present in the way I was raised. What does [inform my work] are the better, more positive aspects of Judaism Ñ the warmth and the exposure to certain intellectual levels and a certain confidence in myself."

It's interesting to compare the swirl of personae present in "Without You" to how she sticks to playing herself in "I'm Still Here." In the new show, there's a lot of talk of renewal and healing; it doesn't leave the kind of loose ends that the earlier one did. She clearly has a better sense of where she stands now. And that's in part because of Kabbalah.

"I was always very committed to being Jewish," Bernhard says. "I never got into alternative forms of spirituality or philosophies, but I always felt like there was something lacking spiritually in my Judaism. That's why I was so fulfilled and happy to find the availability of Kabbalah. It's where spirituality begins. It makes all the practices and traditions of day-to-day life make sense. There's a spiritual basis for everything. Traditions are not just rules and robotic behavior although many people get fooled into thinking that."

But Bernhard is careful to distinguish between her strenuous Kabbalah studies and becoming more religiously observant. "That's where the mistake is often made," she said. "Kabbalah is not about religiosity. It's about spirituality. The religious traditions are all tools to change consciousness. The Torah is the road map. The Zohar is the deeper meaning and the explanation." Religiosity alone, she thinks, "means being completely numb and detached from spirituality."

The Zohar is the 24-volume text of Kabbalah, and adherents are encouraged to carry a volume around with them in the original Aramaic, even if they can't actually read it. The tradition's supposed magical aspects, along with the expensive self-help-style seminars it has engendered, have caused some people to criticize the Kabbalah movement.

Some Jews have expressed concern for different reasons: "The new popularity of Kabbalah shows that people are searching for deeper meaning," said Dovid Brownstein, a Hasidic Jew who was raised on practical Kabbalistic wisdom. "And this is wonderful, as long as the 'fad' aspect of it doesn't dilute the tradition's real meaning."

Still, what may appear to the cynic to be an incredibly complex mystical tradition boiled down to easily-digestible portions for the spiritually troubled on the go, seems to have had a profound impact on Bernhard and other famous adherents including Barbra Streisand, Courtney Love, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Donna Karan, Sandy Galin and Isaac Mizrahi.

Thousands have newly embraced Kabbalah Jews and non-Jews are packing the more than 29 new Kabbalah meeting places that opened around the country in the last year. But there are many more who haven't bought in.

To Bernhard, those who dismiss the tradition are afraid , "afraid of making changes and letting go of bad behavior," she says. "Once people know they can't be hateful anymore, they're going to have to let go of it. And that hatefulness is protecting a lot of people."

Letting go is what Sandra Bernhard has done. Though she still steps on stage to slay the stupid and the banal, it's with a new self-containment. "It's not about blame anymore," she says. "It's part of my connection with the light. Letting go is something you have to go through to learn, to evolve. When you start to understand the tikkun [repairing] process, making your corrections, everything falls into place.

"Even something as boring as going to get your passport renewed. You suddenly realize that everything's connected; wherever you are, you need to be there, and wherever you aren't, you don't need to be there. It's all very connected, and it's very deep. When you realize that, you start to shed all the insecurities and fears, anger and hatred."

Before Kabbalah, she said, "I would never have had a kid." Bernhard, who gave birth last year, has refused to say who the father is, and has been raising the girl with the help of a nanny, who has a separate apartment on the floor below hers in Manhattan. Cecily and the nanny are with her in Minneapolis during our interview, and they live together in her house in Los Angeles when they're not in New York City.

Cecily is being raised with her mother's beliefs. "During my pregnancy, she heard the Torah reading," Bernhard said. "She felt it. It's all part of her DNA. We go to Shabbat every weekend. She'll probably go to nursery school [at the Kabbalah Learning Center]."

Bernhard says the Kabbalah Learning Center in Los Angeles has been tolerant of her lesbianism. "They do believe you meet your soul mate," she said. "Every relationship you have is really with the light."

Which doesn't mean it's easy. "They've been forced to accept alternative lifestyles," she said of the predominately heterosexual population of the Center. "This is part of their tikkun. They've had to change as well."

With all her newfound inner peace, it seems strange for Bernhard to continue her carping and skewering on stage. But to her, it makes perfect sense. "Being passionate about something is often mistaken for having anger," she explains. "I think it's important to call people on their hypocrisy and dishonesty- it's part of spirituality." So she's not going to let the tranquil aspects of Kabbalah stand in the way of her criticizing supermodels. They're connected.

"It's really about changing the consciousness of the world, you know," she says. "That's what all the prayers and meditations are about, changing the consciousness of people." Or at the very least, changing the consciousness of one person -- herself.

Carl Swanson is a writer in New York City.

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