That time Patti LuPone played an iconic TV rabbi

“Remember That We Suffered” deserves to be, well, remembered.

Shalom, couch potato pancakes! (Yes, I will continue to try to make “couch potato pancakes” a thing.) Today on Jewish TV Club, let’s talk about Jewish rabbis on TV — specifically, one depiction that I still can’t get over seven (!!) years later.

I’m talking about Patti LuPone’s Rabbi Shari in the 2017 episode of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” titled "Will Scarsdale Like Josh's Shayna Punim?" (That’s Josh’s pretty face in Yiddish, which is indeed very pretty. Vincent Rodriguez III, where have you been?) 

This episode is from the show’s second season in which protagonist Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom) starts dating Josh (Rodriguez) — her summer camp crush, and the man she abandoned her fast-track lawyer career in New York to move to West Covina, California for. In this specific episode, Rebecca and Josh complete an important early dating milestone: the visit back home. Specifically, they go to Rebecca’s childhood home in Scarsdale, NY to attend Rebecca’s cousin Skyler’s bar mitzvah (showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna’s son had just had his bar mitzvah as they wrote the episode, so the material came to her with ease). 

It is a joyful occasion, but obviously, as in all Jewish events, no joy is complete without some sadness. And so, on the dance floor of her childhood synagogue, Rebecca’s childhood rabbi, played oh-so-perfectly by the one and only Patti LuPone, donning a kippah, a tallis and a very stylish but unobtrusive black dress (aka the rabbi’s special event uniform), sings a perfect encapsulation of the Jewish experience — a ditty titled “Remember That We Suffered.” 

The song, co-written by Bloom, Jack Dolgen and Adam Schlesinger, of blessed memory, was very obviously inspired by the track “Think About All the Dead Jews” from Bloom’s 2013 comedy album “Suck It, Christmas!!! (A Chanukah Album)”  The melody, in fact, is almost entirely identical. But that titular line got changed into the slightly more palatable and less morbid “Remember that We Suffered.” To make up for the removal of said morbidity, the song went from having zero mentions of Hitler to a total of three (“The sweet and the bitter/Streisand and Hitler” is a chef’s kiss lyric, to be fair). The same thing happens with the word Holocaust, which gets mentioned directly three times in “Remember That We Suffered,” all by the excellent Tovah Feldshuh who plays Rebecca’s Jewish mom, Naomi (more on her in a future installment of Jewish TV Club, because, of course). The Holocaust is also mentioned indirectly by the DJ, who somberly turns to the camera to share that his grandmother was a survivor.

The mention of the Holocaust, too, is so self-aware.

“I don’t want to bring up the Holocaust,” Feldshush sings, waving it off with, “I know, I know, the Holocaust,” but then, because she just can’t help it, adds, “but the Holocaust was a very big deal!” Who hasn’t had a moment when they tried to bite their tongue and stop themselves from mentioning the Holocaust in a conversation only for the dam to finally break a few moments later (I mean, I assume a lot of non-Jewish people haven’t had that experience, but I can’t relate).

In the original “Think About All the Dead Jews,” the lyrics explore how in every sweet moment of life’s small and big moments — a first kiss, perusing cat videos on the internet, a simcha of any sort — one is urged to think about all the dead Jews. Instead of mentions of Adam Sandler and three-ways, the “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” version has Rabbi Shari singing about Beastie Boys and Haim, and lamenting that they can’t sing about our people’s suffering, too.

There are so many delightful moments in this minute-and-a-half musical TV number (has any show ever done musical numbers better than “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend?!”). There’s Josh just smiling and going along as the non-Jewish guest while Rebecca suffers through being lifted up on a chair for the hora. There’s LuPone singing “wee!” There’s the DJ doing a callback of “when I say ‘we,’ you say ‘suffered.’” It’s just so great. 

All these years later, I’m still filled with profound gratitude for this show which gave us so much great representation of everything from mental illness to the pains of motherhood, but especially for this song which is truly the epitome of the Jewish experience.

Since this is Jewish TV Club, I think we have to take a moment to talk about Patti LuPone playing a rabbi, because, as we all know (OK, maybe we don’t all know, but NOW WE ALL KNOW) Patti LuPone isn’t Jewish. She’s Italian and Roman Catholic and I know to some that’s close enough, end of story, but that’s not universally true for everyone. Zach Shiffman once wrote that Patti LuPone shouldn’t get to play Jews when there are so many excellent Broadway Jews, which is funny because the first time I ever saw Patti LuPone in real life was on Broadway, playing a Jew, and not just any Jew but friggin Jewish cosmetics ICON Helena Rubinstein in “War Paint.” 

That was absolutely not a moment in which I thought about authentic casting because all I could think was WAH-WAH-WEE-WAH THOSE LUNGS (yes, I am Borat). The woman slayed the stage like a gladiator (is this the right simile/metaphor? Anyway she was INCREDIBLE). So yes, it’s hard for me to give a definitive opinion on this one because I just felt humbled to be in the same (very giant) room as her, and I kind of also felt that Rubinstein may have felt flattered to have LuPone play her. (I wasn’t able to secure an interview with the ghost of Helena Rubinstein for this newsletter. I would, by the way, love to have a TV show about Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, preferably one that is better than “War Paint,” which was ultimately OK but not great.) 

I do know that Bloom and LuPone are fans of each other’s work, and that according to Bloom, the Broadway star was a delight to work with and the most “chill” — the opposite of any stereotypical Jewish mother. LuPone has played quite a few Jewish characters, including a Jewish mother most recently in "Beau Is Afraid" (which I haven't watched because I don't watch horror films) and in Ryan Murphy’s “Hollywood.”

And I do know that her delivery of “Remember That We Suffered” deserves to be, well, remembered.

Did you watch “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend?” What was your favorite musical number you can’t stop thinking about? Should Patti LuPone keep playing Jewish roles? Should Patti LuPone be my rabbi? Let us know what you think in the comments.