The life of a Jewish comedian: A Guest Blog Post

I met Jared Stern late last year while attending the Good for the Jews show at the Birchmere, where Jared was the opening comedy act. I spoke with him after the show and, as it turns out, we both knew a mutual friend (my South American Jewish counterpart, Flavio, who hails from Brazil). I loved Jared’s set and asked him to write a guest blog about what it’s like to be a Jewish comedian.

First of all, in DC, it’s awful lonely.

There’s a dearth of Jewish comics in DC. Including me, the Jewish DC comedy community barely makes a minyan. Maybe there’s more out there than I’ve seen but, to borrow a line from one of us proud few, whose attic are they hiding in? Well, the fewer of us there are, the more of a niche act that makes me…and that’s where the money is these days…I just need to find the Semitic equivalent Git-R-Done. I digress.

There’s a rich nebbishy history of Jewish comedy, from Woody Allen and Jackie Mason to Lewis Black and Jerry Seinfeld. You’d think their footsteps would be easy to follow, since they mostly paced back and forth.

I’m in a bit of a quandary, though. I am Jewish and I am a comedian, but I don’t really consider myself a Jewish comedian. I have one joke about JDate and I dusted off another one about inventing the Nicotine Yarmulke (instead of attacking your addiction directly, it’s passive aggressive) for the Birchmere show, but I don’t really strap on the miner’s helmet and dig for gold(berg).

If I did, my cup of Maneschevitz runneth over. Aside from the easy jokes that come from the classic familial disappointment of not going to law or med school, my sister recently got her black belt in Judaism and became ultra-Orthodox. What keeps me from going there? Well, for me it’s about making the material relatable to an audience of people who don’t know me. Brevity is the soul of wit, and the time it would take to set up why an Orthodox Seder takes only slightly longer than it did for the Jews to cross the desert in the first place, is like…well, do I even need to complete the simile? The other reason I don’t use my family for material is because they keep expecting me to. At every family function, every innocuous little episode is followed by, “You’re not going to use that in your act are you?”

Stylistically, I’m not a storyteller. My jokes are short…set-up, punchline, pause for awkward silence, move on. Plus, my comedy isn’t necessarily rooted in truth (I feel like I should be lying on a couch as I type this). I should pause here in case you guys think I take myself too seriously, yammering about “my comedy” and lofty nonsense like that. It’s a testament to the stereotypical Jewish low self-esteem that I felt the need to apologize.

So, what have we learned about being a Jewish comedian? Let’s sum up. Comedy is cheaper than therapy. That’s not something that’s specific to Jewish comedians, though. All comedians suffer from a very basic form of Attention Deficit Disorder. We all have an attention deficit, and thus, we constantly crave attention. Thanks for helping me fill the void, for now.