make ’em laugh (and cry) in Berlin – part I
As a good omen for the other resolutions I made this year I’ve finally sat down to share with you one of the real impetuses for getting this blog up – a 3 day visit I made to Berlin this August.
While I traveled essentially for a comedy performance I also had a chance to stay with a friend in the center of Berlin. Both components of the trip had rather profound effects on me so as to give them their fair due I will spread them out over two installments. Here goes with part one…
Stand up in Germany.... how did it all happen?
Two months ago out of the blue I got a phone call from a Sochnut shaliach in Frankfurt asking me to perform stand up comedy at the European Union for Jewish Students’ Summer University. After clarifying that the performance would be in English, that it wasn’t solely for Germans and that my act was only half an hour (1.5 hours is a stretch even for Jerry Seinfeld) we had a deal.
Thus followed a month of excitement (for a trip abroad), relief (that I had news to share at a family event in September that would put them off the “how’s your social life?” line of questioning) and total trepidation (about performing in front of an audience who neither shared my mother tongue or country of residence). To clarify, the “university” (which is really like a summer camp for young adults) is all in English and the majority of the participants speak English far superior to my French, Italian or even Hebrew. That said there's much more to language than vocabulary. It essentially meant that I had to remove all subtle word play, any pop culture references and pokes at the linguistic challenges of the Anglo Saxon aliya experience (laughing about the impossibility of learning the Hebrew language doesn’t quite resonate with an audience who speak an average of 4 languages fluently each!)
I was to appear as part of the Israel experience day within the week long program. Due to the reality of my own Israel experience I had limited days to take off from my “real” job so I left Israel 3am on Thursday morning, arrived in Berlin and performed 11:00 pm that evening. I arrived at the campus just outside Berlin after being driven from Schonefield airport by Eduard a Russian/German driver together with the popular Carlebach band Reva L’Sheva and ALL their equipment. Thanks to a roof rack, a kline yiddush and poor Eduard’s willingness to drive at the embarrassing speed of 80 km/ph (there is no speed limit on the autobahn) we got there in one piece albeit with ear drums slightly challenged by Eduard’s passionate taste for Russian klezmer jazz.
I had about ten hours to observe the audience and really panic about whether I’d pitched my act ok. As part of this I attended one of the sessions - a panel of Israeli and EU representatives chaired by a Swiss girl who told the audience that she was the daughter of an Israeli who’d married out in Switzerland. The discussion was something about relationships between Israel and the EU and while not being the most riveting of sessions it definitely gave me food for thought.
I particularly enjoyed it when one person got up and spoke about Europe being one of the world’s powers and thus potentially highly influential in affecting Israel’s position in the world. Agree or not, I’ve been living in an U.S. obsessed Israel for nearly a decade and working for a very patriotic American organization for the last year – so the mere suggestion that the world could exist without the good old United States was refreshing at the very least.
I was both encouraged by the intelligent and positive attitudes expressed by the participants and disgusted by the typical primitive Israeli response to questions of any caliber – all variations of the wildly out of date "Why don't you come and live in Israel and make the difference?” answer. It especially saddened me to hear that response following a comment from Daniel from Sweden who I later found out had lived in Israel for a number of years. Daniel suggested that Israel should not need to be sold to young Jewish professionals like himself but rather should be aspiring towards quality on all levels (as Sweden apparently) and thus sell itself through attraction not promotion.
I couldn’t agree more. Just think what that would do for Israelis themselves, never mind Jews in the Diaspora, if we could feel part of a state that aspired to be a true “Or La Goyim, light unto the nations” striving towards the highest standards for its citizens rather than relying on Anti-Semitism to spur immigration and security issues as a shield against ever doing any kind of forward planning.
Ho hum…
Well anyway, zipping past the annoying Israelis, after some well deserved catch up sleep and nutrition, the comedy itself went really well. True it started later than planned, the keynote speaker before me stole much of the audience’s attention span and some jokes went down differently than normal but I still managed to keep them pretty entertained for even longer than I thought. Seeing as the overwhelming reason for most people to be at Summer-U in the first place was to find a Jewish partner for life (or at least the night to start with) it was of no surprise that my dating and singles jokes went down spectacularly well. It seems it doesn’t matter if you’ve grown up religious, secular or barely knowing you’re Jewish at all, everyone can identify with picky vertically- challenged Jewish men, the perils of internet love and the Jewish obsession with Russian roulette type matchmaking.
If I was unsure at first (us comic artistes are incredibly self critical), the comments I got from people afterwards made me feel a lot more certain. They really were a nice bunch of people who while being slightly apathetic when it came to workshops partied hard at night including singing bonfire type songs 4:30 in the morning once the DJ had shut up shop. There were people from almost every European country you could name including two guys from Saloniky, Greece (brimming with Olympic pride), nearly 100 Italians and a guy called Ready from Albania. (Yes that was his name. The conversation actually went something like this – “What’s your name?”, “Ready”, “Yes, what is it?” “No that’s it… Ready” “Oh I see, oops”)
Of course I did get negative feedback from one quarter. An Israeli student (who later revealed himself to be a French Oleh of two years… ) took issue with a quip I made about economic difficulties in Israel and its connections to rates of yerida. (It was an improvised play on something Avraham Infield, the keynote speaker had said). He said it was irresponsible of me to suggest that life in Israel was so hard!!! Oh my God… the thought police had done a good job on him!
In his blind-sighted zealousness he failed to see that a) the fact that I still live in Israel ... out of choice… is pretty significant to the overall message and b) in practical terms if the majority of people leave Israel for economic reasons rather than ideological reasons maybe just maybe its something we need to acknowledge! Not sure i convinced him but whatever….
Go fight city hall!
Anyway in short the experience was v good and as far as my development as a comedienne it made me evaluate the kind of stereotypes and assumptions I use in my comedy. How do I, a British Israeli (I'm rude on the outside.... and on the inside) write Jewish humour? It raised new questions for me -- is there really such thing as shared Jewish comedy or is it just an extension of local culture? How comfortable am I with the stereotypes that I perpetuate? Have I got room to make new observations and change these or is the modern Jewish experience too splintered?
Watch this space…
While I traveled essentially for a comedy performance I also had a chance to stay with a friend in the center of Berlin. Both components of the trip had rather profound effects on me so as to give them their fair due I will spread them out over two installments. Here goes with part one…
Stand up in Germany.... how did it all happen?
Two months ago out of the blue I got a phone call from a Sochnut shaliach in Frankfurt asking me to perform stand up comedy at the European Union for Jewish Students’ Summer University. After clarifying that the performance would be in English, that it wasn’t solely for Germans and that my act was only half an hour (1.5 hours is a stretch even for Jerry Seinfeld) we had a deal.
Thus followed a month of excitement (for a trip abroad), relief (that I had news to share at a family event in September that would put them off the “how’s your social life?” line of questioning) and total trepidation (about performing in front of an audience who neither shared my mother tongue or country of residence). To clarify, the “university” (which is really like a summer camp for young adults) is all in English and the majority of the participants speak English far superior to my French, Italian or even Hebrew. That said there's much more to language than vocabulary. It essentially meant that I had to remove all subtle word play, any pop culture references and pokes at the linguistic challenges of the Anglo Saxon aliya experience (laughing about the impossibility of learning the Hebrew language doesn’t quite resonate with an audience who speak an average of 4 languages fluently each!)
I was to appear as part of the Israel experience day within the week long program. Due to the reality of my own Israel experience I had limited days to take off from my “real” job so I left Israel 3am on Thursday morning, arrived in Berlin and performed 11:00 pm that evening. I arrived at the campus just outside Berlin after being driven from Schonefield airport by Eduard a Russian/German driver together with the popular Carlebach band Reva L’Sheva and ALL their equipment. Thanks to a roof rack, a kline yiddush and poor Eduard’s willingness to drive at the embarrassing speed of 80 km/ph (there is no speed limit on the autobahn) we got there in one piece albeit with ear drums slightly challenged by Eduard’s passionate taste for Russian klezmer jazz.
I had about ten hours to observe the audience and really panic about whether I’d pitched my act ok. As part of this I attended one of the sessions - a panel of Israeli and EU representatives chaired by a Swiss girl who told the audience that she was the daughter of an Israeli who’d married out in Switzerland. The discussion was something about relationships between Israel and the EU and while not being the most riveting of sessions it definitely gave me food for thought.
I particularly enjoyed it when one person got up and spoke about Europe being one of the world’s powers and thus potentially highly influential in affecting Israel’s position in the world. Agree or not, I’ve been living in an U.S. obsessed Israel for nearly a decade and working for a very patriotic American organization for the last year – so the mere suggestion that the world could exist without the good old United States was refreshing at the very least.
I was both encouraged by the intelligent and positive attitudes expressed by the participants and disgusted by the typical primitive Israeli response to questions of any caliber – all variations of the wildly out of date "Why don't you come and live in Israel and make the difference?” answer. It especially saddened me to hear that response following a comment from Daniel from Sweden who I later found out had lived in Israel for a number of years. Daniel suggested that Israel should not need to be sold to young Jewish professionals like himself but rather should be aspiring towards quality on all levels (as Sweden apparently) and thus sell itself through attraction not promotion.
I couldn’t agree more. Just think what that would do for Israelis themselves, never mind Jews in the Diaspora, if we could feel part of a state that aspired to be a true “Or La Goyim, light unto the nations” striving towards the highest standards for its citizens rather than relying on Anti-Semitism to spur immigration and security issues as a shield against ever doing any kind of forward planning.
Ho hum…
Well anyway, zipping past the annoying Israelis, after some well deserved catch up sleep and nutrition, the comedy itself went really well. True it started later than planned, the keynote speaker before me stole much of the audience’s attention span and some jokes went down differently than normal but I still managed to keep them pretty entertained for even longer than I thought. Seeing as the overwhelming reason for most people to be at Summer-U in the first place was to find a Jewish partner for life (or at least the night to start with) it was of no surprise that my dating and singles jokes went down spectacularly well. It seems it doesn’t matter if you’ve grown up religious, secular or barely knowing you’re Jewish at all, everyone can identify with picky vertically- challenged Jewish men, the perils of internet love and the Jewish obsession with Russian roulette type matchmaking.
If I was unsure at first (us comic artistes are incredibly self critical), the comments I got from people afterwards made me feel a lot more certain. They really were a nice bunch of people who while being slightly apathetic when it came to workshops partied hard at night including singing bonfire type songs 4:30 in the morning once the DJ had shut up shop. There were people from almost every European country you could name including two guys from Saloniky, Greece (brimming with Olympic pride), nearly 100 Italians and a guy called Ready from Albania. (Yes that was his name. The conversation actually went something like this – “What’s your name?”, “Ready”, “Yes, what is it?” “No that’s it… Ready” “Oh I see, oops”)
Of course I did get negative feedback from one quarter. An Israeli student (who later revealed himself to be a French Oleh of two years… ) took issue with a quip I made about economic difficulties in Israel and its connections to rates of yerida. (It was an improvised play on something Avraham Infield, the keynote speaker had said). He said it was irresponsible of me to suggest that life in Israel was so hard!!! Oh my God… the thought police had done a good job on him!
In his blind-sighted zealousness he failed to see that a) the fact that I still live in Israel ... out of choice… is pretty significant to the overall message and b) in practical terms if the majority of people leave Israel for economic reasons rather than ideological reasons maybe just maybe its something we need to acknowledge! Not sure i convinced him but whatever….
Go fight city hall!
Anyway in short the experience was v good and as far as my development as a comedienne it made me evaluate the kind of stereotypes and assumptions I use in my comedy. How do I, a British Israeli (I'm rude on the outside.... and on the inside) write Jewish humour? It raised new questions for me -- is there really such thing as shared Jewish comedy or is it just an extension of local culture? How comfortable am I with the stereotypes that I perpetuate? Have I got room to make new observations and change these or is the modern Jewish experience too splintered?
Watch this space…
posted by LG at 11:51 PM
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