On the 19th night of Hanukkah last Friday night. a couple of Jews stood on the Birchmere stage and opened their live performance with the following lyrics:

“I’ve got two pubic hairs and a three-piece suit, today I am a man.”

This song about a boy’s Bar Mitzvah was a harbinger of things to come for Good for the Jews, a music/comedy duo who last Friday night shocked and entertained a concert hall of Sabbath-ditching Jews by riffing on the Holocaust, joking about Jewish stereotypes, and singing about how Members of the Tribe spend Christmas.

“Did anyone come here expecting to see Horah dancing?” warned Rob Tannenbaum, who along with friend David Fagin makes up the group Good for the Jews. “Or did you come to hear funny and sometimes disgusting music?”

I heard about Good for the Jews after reading an artcile about them in the . Intrigued, I listened to their hilariously written songs on their and asked Tannenbaum if I could come see their show.

He left me two tickets at will call.

Good for the Jews is a part music, part comedy act that spent the last weekend before Christmas on the penultimate stop of their 13-city “Putting the Ha! in Hanukkah” tour.

A few minutes before the show started, The Princess and I met Tannenbaum at our table as I ate the Jewiest food I could order from the Birchmere menu: the Toasted Smoked Corned Beef Reuben. Tannebaum and I talked about me having a shiksa girlfriend, how “Jewy” we perceived the audience was, and about the lone Nazi who “protested” at their show in San Francisco earlier this month.

I asked him about the origins of his band’s name. Tannenabum leaned in and admitted what felt like a private confession: “I’m not even sure that we are good for the Jews.”

This is the paradox of Good for the Jews’ comedy: they ridicule stereotypes non-Jews have of us while also mocking our culture themselves. For example, they perform songs titled “They Tried to Kill Us”, a purposefully disjointed history lesson set to catchy pop-rock music, but also satirical songs like “Ruben the Hook-Nosed Reindeer”.

The idea of a “Jewish sense of humor” as being a shared experience borne out of struggle is a well-known, albeit potentially spurious, idea. In the classic “anti-Dentite” Seinfeld episode, newly converted Jew Tim Watley tells Jerry, “It’s our sense of humor that has sustained us as a people for 4,000 years.”

“Five thousand…” Seinfeld replies.

“Five thousand! Even better!”

This self-deprecating absurdity is prevalant in the tongue-in-cheek manner Tannenbaum and Fagin (a gifted professional musician who performs all the guitar work) sing their songs and interact with the crowd. Tannenbaum unites the audience early by finding a combined experience — none of us mostly Reform Jews are home on this Friday night observing the Jewish Sabbath.

“We’re not Shomer Shabbos,” Tannebaum admits. “Obviously, neither are you guys.”

Tannenbaum carries himself on a stage much like a rabbinical master of ceremonies. Presiding over his “synagogue”, he wears a burgundy blazer over a powder-blue ruffled tuxedo shirt and sips delicately from a glass of red wine.

He spends much of his time making scoffing at himself and Fagin, the audience, and his own religion. Though he is confident with his material, it sometimes seems that even he is not sure whether his comedy will hit the right chord.

For example, while discussing possible alternatives for band names he and Fagin considered before settling on Good for the Jews, he mentions the option Start Spreading the Jews. But, he said, “it sounded too much like a brand of Nazi peanut butter.”

The audience groans.

“It was 60 years ago,” he reminds us, “too soon?”

“Yes,” shouts one brave soul.

Yes, Good for the Jews’ songs are rife with lyrics that would make Sarah Silverman proud (“They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat, they tried to kill us, we were faster on our feet, and we knew how to resist ’cause we rented Schindler’s List…”.

But they also feel like inside jokes that we are in on because of our shared culture.

The song “Jews for Jesus” is an amusing tirade aimed at the heavily reviled Christian sect. The song serves as a reminder of the religious hieracrhy as Tannenbaum reminds the audience: “Orthodox Jews look down on Conservative Jews for not being observant enough. Conservative Jews look down on Reform Jews for not being pious enough. And Reform Jews look down on Orthodox Jews, for not showering enough.”

But we all look down on Jews for Jesus, the incorrectly named, pamphlet-distributing cult. Tannenbaum and Fagin eviscerate them in the song’s chorus:

“Jews for Jesus, Jews for Jesus…It’s time for you to learn about the Holocaust, I’d really like to nail you to the cross.”

On Friday night, this line stunned the audience — a mixture of families, couples, older Jews, and ever children — which cheered some of the song’s tamer lines. But this is what makes Good for the Jews brilliant. They push the discomfort level while simultaneously empowering the audience. They deride Jewish stereotypes yet feel free to mock them themselves.

Before singing “JDate”, for example, Tannebaum uses the stage to discuss his problems with women. He tells us that his family got him a membership to the online Jewish dating web site and met a nice Jewish girl.

“I knew she was Jewish,” he announces, “because she licked my balls right to left.”

The subversive Good for the Jews’ tour is, sadly, done. That doesn’t mean you are farkakt. To hear four of their more popular songs on MySpace, click . For more information, visit their Web site. And to follow their tour diary on Jewcy.com, click HERE.