feature story
"Now that [antisemitism is] a headline,
it actually helps me to do what I need to do,
which is just be extra out and
loud and proud"
helps me to do what I need to do, which is just be
extra out and loud and proud,” said Dinah Leff ert, a
comic based in Los Angeles. “I was hiding who I am
just so I can survive in this environment. But this
environment is not worth it if I have to hide.”
Scheer said that “people who are Jewish with an
emphasis on the ‘Jew’ are having a moment.”
“[Th e] ‘Jew-ish’ world I wouldn’t say is dead, but
I don’t think the ‘Jew-ish’ world is producing that
much,” he said.

By “Jew-ish,” Scheer clarifi ed that he means com-
ics like Seinfeld and Larry David, who oft en infuse
secular, culturally Jewish material into their comedy.

Th eir apex of fame came during a time when Jewish
comedy was not nearly as mainstreamed — the
“Seinfeld” sitcom team was famously told that their
idea was “too New York, too Jewish.”
Some of Seinfeld and David’s Jewish comedic suc-
cessors, such as Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen, sprin-
kled in more explicitly Jewish jokes before 2010. But
today, “you see more Alex Edelmans coming out,”
Scheer said, referencing the increase in visibility for
comedians with more observant upbringings.

Th ings have progressed to the level of “Jews doing com-
edy for other Jews about Jewish things,” Scheer added.

In August, the fi rst-ever Chosen Comedy Festival
at the Coney Island Amphitheater in Brooklyn fea-
tured a lineup of mostly Jewish comics whose reper-
toires ranged from impressions of old Jewish women
(who sound like bees) to breakdowns of the diff er-
ences between how Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews say
“Shabbat shalom.” Leah Forster, who also performed
at the festival, uses her Chasidic upbringing as source
material for her standup routines, creating characters
and using accents and impressions. (In her early days
as a comedian, Forster performed for women-only
audiences while she was a teacher at a Bais Yaakov
Orthodox school in Brooklyn.)
Th e festival, which was hosted by Stand Up NY (an
Upper West Side club that Scheer says is known for
being “the Jewish one”), welcomed a packed audience
of about 4,000 guests, many of whom were Orthodox.

A second Chosen Comedy Festival will take place in
downtown Miami in December.

18 DECEMBER 8, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Th e festival’s co-hosts, Modi Rosenfeld and Elon
Gold, who frequently collaborate, both grew their
audiences in the early days of the pandemic: Rosenfeld
with his camera-facing comedic characters, like the
esoteric Yoely who delivers news updates with a
Hasidic Yiddish twist; and Gold with his Instagram
Live show “My Funny Quarantine,” which featured
guest appearances from other comedians. Both Gold
and Rosenfeld work antisemitism into their material.

Some are fi nding the moment diffi cult to navigate.

In late October, at the standup show she runs in Los
Angeles, the comic two slots ahead of Dinah Leff ert
asked the room, “Is anyone still even supporting Kanye
at this point?” Th e crowd responded with resounding
whoops, claps and cheers, leading Leff ert to feel like they
did support Kanye West, the rapper who spent much of
last month in the news for his multiple antisemitic rants.

Just a few jokes into her own 10-minute set, Leff ert
walked off stage.

“My body wouldn’t let me keep being inauthentic
about what I was really feeling,” she said. “I don’t
want to give laughter to people who are anti-Jewish.”
Leff ert, who is openly Zionist, said she also observes
a level of anti-Zionism in comedy clubs these days
that feels to her like antisemitism.

“Th ey’re not criticizing Israel,” she said. “It slips
into antisemitism very quickly. And it’s just a really
hostile environment.”
During the last large-scale military fl are-up of the
Israeli-Palestinian confl ict in May 2021, she felt inun-
dated with Palestinian fl ag comments on posts about
Jewish holidays, not Israel.

“You just get Palestinian fl ags underneath your
Chanukah posts,” she said.

In October, at a club in Omaha, comedian Sam
Morril was heckled by an audience member as he told
a joke about how he hopes Jeff rey Epstein won’t be
honored during Jewish Awareness Month.

“Can I ask why you chose to yell out ‘free Palestine’
aft er a Jeff rey Epstein joke?” he responded. When the
heckler said she was making a “public statement” and
was looking for “justice,” Morril answered: “A public
statement? At the Omaha Funny Bone?”
Eitan Levine, a New York-based comedian known
for his TikTok show “Jewish or Antisemitic” — on
which he asks people to vote on whether objects like
ketchup and mayonnaise, for example, are Jewish or
antisemitic (in a loose comic version of the word) —
said he receives similar comments online.

“Th is is a TikTok video about bagels,” Levine said.

“What do you mean, you want me to take a stance?”
Th ough the response to his show has been largely
positive and he has gone viral several times, Levine
still receives all kinds of white supremacist comments
on his videos — with a backward swastika, money bag
or mustachioed man emojis evocative of Hitler, along
with comments that say “jas the gews” as a spoonerism
for “gas the Jews,” as a way to avoid TikTok censorship.

Levine said he manually deletes these kinds of com-
ments, but sometimes that’s not enough; one of the
guests on his show had to cancel an in-person show
due to online threats made against her.

“Th is stuff is clearly happening and it is dangerous
and it is scary,” Levine said.

Writer and comedian Jon Savitt, whose writing has
been featured on College Humor and Funny or Die,
and says he has oft en been “the fi rst Jew that people
have ever met,” recently launched an experimental
web page called Meet A Jew, where users can connect
with a Jewish person, much like a pen pal. His 2016-
2018 standup show “Carrot Cake & Other Th ings
Th at Don’t Make Sense” largely dealt with antisemi-
tism — and its audience, he was surprised to see, was
largely non-Jewish.

“Not only did I have people come up to me aft er
the show, but I had non-Jews come up to me months
later when they saw me and say 'tikkun olam' to me,
or recite Hebrew,” Savitt said. “And to me that was the
coolest use case because not only were they there, but
they kind of retained something.”
Savitt says he isn’t trying to change any extremists’
minds with Meet A Jew, but he sees it as one step that
could engage people who may be ignorant or unaware
and give them a place to ask questions.

“Although it shouldn’t be on us to educate everyone
or to have to constantly be standing up for ourselves,
I think there are ways that we can bring other people
into the conversation as well,” he said. JE
Stock Vector One / AdobeStock
- Dinah Leff ert



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