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An all-Jewish, all-queer lineup of comedians takes the stage at New York Comedy Festival
(New York Jewish Week) — Growing up in an Orthodox community in Queens, Raye Schiller had no idea it was possible to combine her love of her Jewish community, her queer identity and her dreams of being a comedian.
This week, all three of those identities will come together for the 28-year-old, who is hosting “Big Yenta Energy,” a stand-up show featuring a line up of queer Jewish comedians as part of the New York Comedy Festival on Wednesday night. It’s the only show out of 100 being produced as part of the festival this year that is entirely queer and entirely Jewish — Schiller thinks it may be the first of its kind in the festival’s history.
“As a young, Orthodox person I was really scared and really unsure of myself, I thought I couldn’t be both. I thought I had to pick one. I can’t even describe what it would have meant for me to see a celebration of both of those identities,” Schiller told the New York Jewish Week.
In addition to Schiller, the show will feature sets from Leah Forster — a popular comedian among the Orthodox set — along with Clara Olshansky, Dylan Adler and Sami Schwaeber.
Taking place at Club Cumming in the East Village, the show is based on Schiller’s podcast “Yenta!”, which she started earlier this spring, on which guests are invited to share secrets and gossip from their lives. “It’s sometimes about Judaism, sometimes about being queer, but always about gossip,” Schiller said.
As part of her podcast, Schiller herself brings a secret from her life to every episode, which she says has helped her heal from the harsher parts of her upbringing, when she didn’t know if she could ever come out as queer.
At the show, audience members will be encouraged to anonymously write down their secrets — workplace crushes, high school romances and more — on notecards that will be collected and read aloud by Schiller.
“There’s something really healing about sharing your secrets and what you might be ashamed of and then seeing that actually all these other people also feel that way,” she said. “It’s the best feeling when people tell me that they are able to see themselves in my comedy and be more proud of who they are because of it.”
Schiller grew up in a strictly observant community in Queens, attended an all-girls yeshiva and studied at a seminary in Israel after high school. She said she was able to come out as queer in her 20s and be herself while maintaining relationships with her family and holding on to Judaism.
She started performing stand up comedy at the end of 2020, after a long year of quarantine, a cross-country move from New York to Los Angeles and a period of “intense inner growth.” She works during the day as a software engineer and splits her time between Los Angeles and New York City.
Schiller said she hopes that her show can also be a place where New York Jews can come together to laugh during a dark time, five weeks into the Israel-Hamas war.
“It is a very difficult situation for the world right now. It’s important to unite and find joy and love and laughter, and I think Jews are also really good at laughing through our pain,” she said.
“We’re going to come together, we’re gonna laugh and love and that will be, I hope, a meaningful experience for everyone that comes. I love to make people laugh, but I also want to bring people and community and touch people’s hearts while they laugh,” Schiller said.
Catch Big Yenta Energy with Raye Schiller at Club Cumming on Nov. 8 at 9:30 p.m. Tickets start at $12.
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The post An all-Jewish, all-queer lineup of comedians takes the stage at New York Comedy Festival appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says
An Israeli flag flies in Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, as seen from Metula, northern Israel, Dec. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
Israel said on Tuesday it had agreed to hold talks to demarcate its border with Lebanon, adding it would release five Lebanese detainees held by the Israeli military in what it called a “gesture to the Lebanese president.”
A statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had agreed with Lebanon, the US, and France to establish working groups to discuss the demarcation line between the two countries.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from southern Lebanon under a ceasefire deal agreed in November, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area with airstrikes in southern Lebanon citing what it described as Hezbollah activity.
The ceasefire deal ended more than a year of conflict between Israel‘s military and the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah that was playing out in parallel with the Gaza war.
The fighting peaked in a major Israeli air and ground campaign in southern Lebanon that left Hezbollah badly weakened, with most of its military command killed in Israeli strikes.
The post Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The United Nations Security Council will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday over Iran’s expansion of its stock of uranium close to weapons grade, diplomats said on Monday.
The meeting was requested by six of the council’s 15 members – France, Greece, Panama, South Korea, Britain, and the US.
They also want the council to discuss Iran’s obligation to provide the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency – with “the information necessary to clarify outstanding issues related to undeclared nuclear material detected at multiple locations in Iran,” diplomats said.
Iran’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the planned meeting.
Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the IAEA has warned.
Western states say there is no need to enrich uranium to such a high level under any civilian program and that no other country has done so without producing nuclear bombs. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran reached a deal in 2015 with Britain, Germany, France, the US, Russia, and China – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Washington quit the agreement in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first term as US president, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments.
Britain, France, and Germany have told the UN Security Council that they are ready – if needed – to trigger a so-called snap back of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 this year when the 2015 UN resolution on the deal expires. US President Donald Trump has directed his UN envoy to work with allies to snap back international sanctions and restrictions on Iran.
The post UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN Says
A man inspects a damaged car in Latakia, after hundreds were reportedly killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers, Syria, March 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Haidar Mustafa
Entire families including women and children were killed in Syria’s coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Bashar al-Assad loyalists, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population were members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
“In a number of extremely disturbing instances, entire families – including women, children, and individuals hors de combat – were killed, with predominantly Alawite cities and villages targeted in particular,” UN human rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said, using a French term for those incapable of fighting.
So far, the UN human rights office has documented the killing of 111 civilians and expects the real toll to be significantly higher, Al-Kheetan told a Geneva press briefing. Of those, 90 were men; 18 were women; and three were children, he added.
“Many of the cases documented were of summary executions. They appear to have been carried out on a sectarian basis,” Al-Kheetan told reporters. In some cases, men were shot dead in front of their families, he said, citing testimonies from survivors.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk welcomed an announcement by Syria’s Islamist-led government to create an accountability committee and called for those investigations to be prompt, thorough, independent, and impartial, the spokesperson added.
The post Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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