Jewish Girl Talk With Joan Rivers and Shiri Appleby

By Anne Cohen January 16, 2014

Every week, Joan Rivers has a one night stand with the celebrity of her choice.

We’re talking, obviously, about “In Bed With Joan,” (what did you have in mind?) Rivers’ online talk show which shows her dishing with fellow entertainers between the sheets.

This week, Shiri Appleby (“Roswell,” “Girls,” Chicago Fire”) joined Joan for what we could only hope would be some Jewish girl talk.

Strangely, that’s exactly what happened.

Rivers opened the episode by commenting on how confused people must be by the spelling of Appleby’s first name (“So how many people have called you Sherry?”). Somehow, this led to a discussion about the Hebrew meaning of Joan — which according to River, means “whiner” — and Shiri, which means “my song.”

“My parents said I was like the song in their hearts,” Appleby explained. “Until I turned into a teenager.”

As it turns out, Appleby is quite the funny lady. Other gems include:

On not naming her child Ira: “You’re just not going to have sex with Ira Shook.”

On her fiancee: “We’re both Jews. He’s a very cute Jewish cook… One of our first meals, he came over to my house and taught my mom how to make latkes.”

For more on Shiri’s new baby, her Jewish background (her mom is a Hebrew teacher) and what Joan really thinks of Lena Dunham, check out the video below:

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO