Ron Silver is an actor with a lot of causes.
"I am very offended at the way Hollywood and TV have treated Jews," says Ron Silver, about a subject on which he can clearly be reckoned as something of an expert. The 46-year old actor first achieved recognition during the late 1970s, playing the whiny boyfriend of Rhoda Morgenstern's sister in the television sit-com "Rhoda." He went on to star on the stage three years ago as film producer Bobby Gould in David Mamet's "Speed The Plow"; as Holocaust survivor Herman Broder in the 1989 screen version of Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Enemies: A Love Story"; and most recently as lawyer Alan Dershowitz in last year's "Reversal of Fortune." And currently, Silver is considering an offer to star in a television movie about a murder in Brooklyn's hasidic community. "It's involuntary," says Silver - over breakfast at Los Angeles's Four Seasons Hotel - about his tendency to be typecast in overtly Jewish roles. "People think of me for these parts, so I'm offered them more than others." But he adds: "There is tremendous fear in Hollywood - albeit unspoken or discussed in code - about presenting Jews, either as regular people or as heroes whose Jewishness is incidental. Partly producers fear the accusation that Jews run Hollywood. Partly, though - and Alan (Dershowitz) addressed this well in (his book) Chutzpah' - it comes from self-abnegation and fear. These people live the American Dream. They wear suede loafers. To remind themselves they are part of only six million people in a country with 260 million - who could turn like that - simply isn't a comfortable prospect."
Silver was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side to parents of German and Russian heritage; though they went to synagogue from time to time and he had a bar mitzvah, he describes them nonetheless as "assimiliated and irreligious." As a young adult the culture that primarily interested him was that of the Far East, and he spent several years living and studying in Hong Kong and Taiwan. "By the time I began performing," he says, "I realized that I knew more about Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism than I did about the Jewish tradition. I started to do some reading, and took some courses at UCLA." By then Silver was married and raising two children (his son is now 12 and his daughter eight). "When I had children," he says, "I wanted to provide a little more Yiddishkeit. I was not going to become observant, but that should not be an impediment to supplying the tradition." Silver's acting career got underway after stints as a social worker, high-school teacher and receptionist at a belly-dancing school. In addition to his acting laurels, he is also known today as one of the entertainment industry's leading liberal activists. For him, however, few menaces can compare to an uninformed Hollywood celebrity with a cause. "In the entertainment community," he says "there's a surplus of passion that's usually inversely proportionate to the amount of knowledge that people have about the issues. But if you're going to do Donahue'- or Geraldo'- (two popular TV talk shows), you should know what you're talking about." To afford entertainers a firmer grasp of the issues, Silver three years ago founded a non-profit, non-partisan organization called the Creative Coalition. Based in New York, it sponsors monthly seminars and debates on current affairs, and boasts 300 members, notably actors Susan Sarandon, Kathleen Turner and Robin Williams. Silver, also the organization's elected president, estimates that between a third and half its membership is Jewish. Earlier this month, he launched the Creative Coalition's long-awaited Los Angeles chapter, with seminars on health-care issues and abortion. These are easy issues to address, he says, because of a generally pro-choice, pro-social welfare and generally liberal consensus within the community. The group, however, has yet to address the Arab-Israeli conflict. Silver acknowledges that for most members of his organization, open debate of Israeli policies or the peace process remains a tinderbox. But by spring he anticipates opening the lid on it as well. "With the Arab-Israeli thing," he admits, "we're on very thin ice. Many liberal Jews don't know where they are in the firmament when it comes to Israel. We had to confront this during the Gulf War. Some members felt that the war was not dealt with because of our strong ties to Israel. Actually, it was because there was so much information, so many other groups discussing it. I felt our resources were strained as they were." Silver's views on the Arab-Israeli conflict are fairly hawkish in their support of Israel - he asks, for example, why Jordan should not be considered Palestine - compared to the more dovish public stands adapted by such friends and colleagues as Richard Dreyfuss and Woody Allen. "I like and respect them both," says Silver. "I have no doubt they are acting on behalf of what they think are Israel's best interests. But I think it's unfortunate that theirs is the viewpoint most widely disseminated in this country."