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Deeply Jewish comedy is having a moment, even as antisemitism rocks pop culture
(JTA) — Two weeks after a Trump-supporting heckler threw a beer can at Ariel Elias at a club in New Jersey over her politics, the Jewish comedian’s fortunes took a turn for the better. A video of the incident went viral and she made her network television debut on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show.
She spent most of her five-minute set talking about her Jewish identity and how it clashed with parts of her upbringing in Kentucky.
“I’m Jewish from Kentucky, which is insane, it’s an insane origin story,” she said last month before getting to jokes about how Southerners mispronounce her name and how badly her parents want her to date Jews.
Even though the crowd found it funny, Elias’ tight five wasn’t particularly groundbreaking. In the world of standup comedy, discussing one’s Jewish identity in a deep way has become increasingly common on the mainstream stage over the past several years. Jewish comedians are going beyond the bagel and anxiety jokes, discussing everything from religiosity and traditions (and breaking with those traditions) to how their Jewishness has left them prone to awkward situations and even antisemitism.
Ari Shaffir calls his most recent special, which was released earlier this month and titled “Jew” — and racked up close to four million views on YouTube in two weeks — “a love letter to the culture and religion that raised [him].” In his recent one man show “Just For Us” — which drew widespread acclaim and a slew of celebrity audience members, from Jerry Seinfeld to Stephen Colbert to Drew Barrymore — Alex Edelman discussed the details of growing up Modern Orthodox (and infiltrating a group of white nationalists). In 2019, Tiffany Haddish released a Netflix special called “Black Mitzvah,” in which she talks about learning about her Jewish heritage.
At the same time, the current uptick in public displays of antisemitism — punctuated by a series of celebrity antisemitism scandals and comedian Dave Chappelle’s controversial response to them — is complicating the moment for comedians who get into Jewish topics. Jewish comics are even debating what kinds of jokes about Jews are acceptable and which cross a line.
“I find it ironic that at a time where more Jewish comedians feel comfortable expressing their Judaism (i.e. wearing a yarmulke, making Jewish-oriented content) and not hiding it (by changing their name for example), we also see an up-swelling of outright antisemitism,” said Jacob Scheer, a New York-based comedian. “I don’t think — and hope — those two things are not related, but I find it really interesting and sad.”
The two phenomena could be related. Antisemitic incidents nationwide reached an all-time high in 2021, with a total of 2,717 incidents, according to an April 2022 audit from the Anti-Defamation League. Those incidents range from vandalism of buildings to harassment and assault against individuals.
“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,” said Dinah Leffert, 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.”
“[The] ‘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 clarified that he means comics like Seinfeld and Larry David, who often infuse secular, culturally Jewish material into their comedy. Their 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 successors, such as Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen, sprinkled 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.
Things have progressed to the level of “Jews doing comedy for other Jews about Jewish things,” Scheer added. In August, the first-ever Chosen Comedy Festival at the Coney Island Amphitheater in Brooklyn featured a lineup of mostly Jewish comics whose repertoires ranged from impressions of old Jewish women (who sound like bees) to breakdowns of the differences between how Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews say “Shabbat shalom.” Leah Forster, who also performed at the festival, uses her Hasidic 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.)
The 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.
(The New York Jewish Week, a 70 Faces Media brand, was the media partner for the Chosen Comedy Festival but had no say in its lineup.)
The 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 finding the moment difficult to navigate. In late October, at the standup show she runs in Los Angeles, the comic two slots ahead of Dinah Leffert asked the room, “Is anyone still even supporting Kanye at this point?” The crowd responded with resounding whoops, claps and cheers, leading Leffert 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, Leffert walked offstage.
“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.”
Leffert, who is openly Zionist, said she also observes a level of anti-Zionism in comedy clubs these days that feels to her like antisemitism.
“They’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 flare-up of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in May 2021, she felt inundated with Palestinian flag comments on posts about Jewish holidays, not Israel.
“You just get Palestinian flags underneath your Hanukkah posts,” she said.
In October, at a club in Omaha, comedian Sam Morril told a joke about how he hopes Jeffrey Epstein won’t be honored during Jewish Awareness Month.
“Can I ask why you chose to yell out ‘free Palestine’ after a Jeffrey 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.
“This is a TikTok video about bagels,” Levine said. “What do you mean, you want me to take a stance?”
Though 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 backwards 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 comments, 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.
“This stuff is clearly happening and it is dangerous and it is scary,” Levine told JTA.
Writer and comedian Jon Savitt, whose writing has been featured on College Humor and Funny or Die, and says he has often been “the first 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 Things That Don’t Make Sense” largely dealt with antisemitism — and its audience, he was surprised to see, was largely non-Jewish.
“Not only did I have people come up to me after the show, but I had non-Jews come up to me months later when they saw me and say ‘tikkun olam‘ [Hebrew for the Jewish principle of repairing the world] 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.
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Here Are Some Positive Local Developments in Support of Israel You Haven’t Heard About
Tennessee State Capitol Building in Nashville. Photo: Andre Porter/Wikimedia Commons.
On April 27, 2026, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed legislation requiring state agencies to use the geographic name “Judea and Samaria” instead of “West Bank” in official state materials. Known as the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” the law asserts that these terms are historically and Biblically accurate.
Just the week before, the members of the Arizona House passed a nonbinding resolution saying the same thing, after the Arizona Senate approved the legislation in February.
These pro-Israel bills earned little press in the Jewish community and even less in the general media outside of Tennessee and Arizona. Americans of all faiths who support Israel should applaud the lawmakers in both Arizona and Tennessee for their leadership and commitment to historical truth. At a time of increasing misinformation and the targeting of Israel, this bill sends a clear message about the significance of recognizing the Jewish people’s deep ties — dating back to Biblical times — to the Land of Israel.
The city of Hebron is in Judea and is the ancient resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. There are so many other links and ties proving the deep and continuous Jewish presence in the land, and these bills acknowledge that.
What’s more, this is a defeat for anti-Israel radicals in Tennessee who fought against the bill. The New York Times reported about those efforts: “The day of lobbying this month in the State Capitol in Nashville, coordinated by the American Muslim Advisory Council, attracted more than 100 Muslim students and community leaders.”
One year ago, Arkansas state legislators passed their “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” following a 2023 Arkansas General Assembly resolution urging the use of the term “Judea and Samaria” instead of “the West Bank” in official state language.
While it can be argued that Arkansas, Tennessee, and Arizona are right leaning states, they often have Democratic or moderate trends and representatives. For example, from December 2020 through the beginning of 2023 neither of Arizona’s two senators were Republican. While Arizona Republicans control the state legislature, the margin is far from wide with just a handful of seats separating the parties.
Given the unprecedented levels of anti-Israel activity in both parties and the fact that anti-Zionists radicals are winning the anti-Israel legislation fight in far too many parts of the country, the question of how these seemingly symbolic wins matter is a legitimate one to ask.
Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987, is remembered for coining the saying that “all politics is local.” From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, how many politicians serve early in their careers in their state legislatures? What’s more, these efforts force anti-Israel activists to play defense and occupy their time with things other than BDS, as was the case in Tennessee.
These are the kinds of innovative, accessible, and positive initiatives that the pro-Israel community should pursue much more frequently. Our confidence has been shaken by the harsh criticism of Israel from far too many on Capitol Hill, and these local efforts have been missing from our playbook for much longer than may have been reasonable. If only a handful more states enact such legislation, it will still be well worth it. Correcting false narratives and fighting for a cause you believe in is always worth it.
Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI, (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
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How the Media Erases the Voices of Millions of Iranians
Cars burn in a street during an anti-regime protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2026. Photo: Stringer/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
A recent CNN article by Iranian freelance photojournalist Maryam Rahmanian, in collaboration with Kyle Almond and Brett Roegiers, purports to feature pictures and interviews of “everyday Iranians” amidst the war.
In “‘Nothing feels normal anymore’: How everyday Iranians are coping with war,” CNN claims to depict the average Iranian, but it should raise eyebrows. Whether a result of biased or gullible journalism, the CNN article fails to accurately inform its audience.
While there are no reliable surveys, there is clearly a significant portion of Iranian society that supports the war out of desperation, hoping for regime change.
Just four months ago, the Islamic Republic responded to mass protests with extreme violence, killing up to 36,500 protesters.
More were executed in the aftermath despite President Donald Trump’s clear red line warning the regime against killing protesters. Many Iranians posted videos of themselves asking President Donald Trump to militarily intervene.
In the early days of the war, many Iranians also posted videos of themselves thanking President Donald Trump and dancing in public. Then came the mass celebrations that erupted on Iranian streets following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by Israeli forces.
Anti-regime sentiments have been noted elsewhere in the media, too. Left-wing, diaspora Iranian journalist Arash Azizi wrote for The Atlantic that he was surprised that even Iranian socialist activists, typically biased against war and especially against the United States, were sympathetic and supportive of a military intervention.
NPR interviewed Iranians who had fled the war to Iraq and Turkey and reported that “most people told us they supported the strikes.”
After two months of war, Iranian attitudes have undoubtedly shifted, but in which direction we cannot know, given the regime-enforced Internet blackout in Iran. But anecdotal evidence — including my own conversations with those in Iran — suggests that a large portion of the population continues to hope that the hostilities resume until the regime falls.
Euronews’ Persian service recently published interviews of Iranians showing a divide between those who want the war to resume to bring down the Islamic Republic and those who oppose it, including those who have changed their minds since the war began.
Honest journalism would have reflected the diversity of views. But Rahmanian’s report instead falsely depicted Iranian views as monolithic against US and Israeli strikes.
Her first subject told her, “When I stepped outside, the atmosphere felt very different,” adding, “The streets were extremely crowded. Mothers were crying. A route that usually takes me 40 minutes took nearly three hours.”
A second subject said, “Fear quickly settled in. I live next to a mosque, and that made everything more frightening. I kept thinking it might become a target.”
These are common reactions to war, and that is precisely the problem. Iran is not a normal society at war. When it comes to Iran, anti-war and patriotic sentiments common among war-torn nations tell only a partial story when another significant portion of society invited foreign militaries to liberate them.
The context of the previous conflict is informative. The Twelve-Day War created a perception that military action would be light, and many Iranians assumed this war would look the same. They were wrong, but that group of people did not have a representation hearing in the CNN article.
One comment stood out. A 35-year-old woman, Salemeh, told Rahmanian, “I jump at every noise, wondering if something has been hit again,” adding, “There is construction near our house, and even those constant sounds make me anxious.” This recalled a conversation I had with a woman in her 60s from Tehran two weeks before the war, who told me the same thing almost word for word.
“There is construction by our apartment,” she told me, “At every loud sound, everybody jumps, asking, ‘Did [America] finally hit?’”
There is a key difference: The woman I talked to was excited about the prospect of war, hoping that it would take down the Islamic Republic. She told me, “I heard a very loud noise one day while in the shower.” She went on, “Convinced that the war had started, I excitedly jumped out to celebrate, naked, only to be disappointed.”
Another woman I interviewed weeks into the war, with the pseudonym Golnaz, whose home had been destroyed in a strike, told me that the destruction had made her even more supportive of the war. She explained that, because the price the nation had paid was so high, she did not want the war to stop before the regime fell, for the destruction to have been all for nothing.
She told me, “Do not let the war stop until they surrender.”
None of Rahmanian’s subjects said that they had previously supported the war, but several were against it in the outset. One woman, Akram, 63, told her, “I believe Israel and the United States have manipulated the situation, and I am proud that we have stood against a superpower and defended ourselves. For me, it is an honor to stand firm and say we resisted.”
While opposition to Israel persists among the older generations of Iranians (but not among the youth), anti-Americanism has been out of the mainstream for decades. The average Iranian does not view the “resistance” favorably. A plurality blamed only the regime for the Twelve-Day War, with 69 percent saying that “the Islamic Republic should stop calling for the destruction of Israel.” In other words, while CNN and Rahmanian claim that they were representing the everyday Iranian, they had to reach for the fringe.
The network also failed to provide readers with important context, shaping the credibility of the sentiments expressed. The Islamic Republic has been persecuting, even executing, those who have supported the war. For Iranians to publicly support the US and Israeli strikes is to put their lives on the line. Rahmanian, Almond, and Roegiers did not disclose this important context. The authors also failed to mention the January protests, during which many more Iranians were killed over four days than during 39 days of bombardment.
The largest news organization in the world should know better. There are a plethora of images and social media posts that confirm that a large number of Iranians have supported the war throughout. Many have even recorded themselves on rooftops cheering for the American and Israeli F-35s flying over their heads.
CNN should also know, and have reported on, the threat Iranians face for speaking out against the regime. It is also obvious that no journalist in Iran would be safe reporting on these matters for an American outlet, an act the regime equates with treason. By selling this one-sided story as the mainstream view in Iran, CNN erased the millions of desperate Iranians suffering under the thumb of the Islamic Republic’s oppression.
Shay Khatiri is an immigrant from Iran and a media researcher at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, where this article also appeared.
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It Doesn’t Begin With Bricks; How to Stand Up to Jew-Hatred Today
A man walks through the grounds of the former Nazi German Auschwitz death camp for the annual International “March of the Living” in Oswiecim, Poland, April 18, 2023. Jakub Porzycki/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS
My friend Abe Foxman who headed the ADL for many years and who passed away this week, used to say that the Holocaust didn’t begin with the bricks manufacturing the Concentration camps — it began with words and hate speech.
Words transformed Jews into something less than human beings, which allowed Nazis and their allies to dehumanize Jews. By dehumanizing Jews, it became possible — and much easier — to mass murder millions of them.
That same process is happening right now, all over the world.
This week, I attended the 90th anniversary of the founding of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Geneva. Representatives from almost 100 countries, as well as government representatives whose job is to fight antisemitism, were there. Each had a story to tell — a story of a world we never thought we would have to face again. It was two full days of stories.
But stories were not the main focus of the conference. Efforts to combat hate and antisemitism all over the world were on full display. In fact, 32 Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism from more than two dozen countries and international organizations issued a unified declaration from Geneva reaffirming a shared commitment to protect Jewish life and confront antisemitism in all its forms.
The joint statement — signed by representatives from the United States, European nations, Israel, Australia, Canada, the Organization of American States, OSCE, European Commission, and others — warns that antisemitism is no longer a marginal phenomenon, but an escalating global threat targeting Jewish communities, democratic values, and the foundations of free societies.
The signatories called for strengthened security for Jewish communities, prosecution of antisemitic offenders, expanded Holocaust education, and coordinated international action to combat the spread of antisemitic hatred online and offline.
Importantly, the statement demonstrates that despite political differences or differing national approaches, democratic nations remain united in the understanding that antisemitism cannot be tolerated — anywhere, at any time, or under any pretext.
Besides the Jewish leaders and the government representatives, three representatives stood out. The WJC gave a special Resilience Award to the parents of Ran Gvili, the police commander who was killed on October 7 and whose body was the last Gaza victim returned to Israel.
Second, Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism from the US Department of State, was front and center, telling the crowd that this US administration is taking the lead in combating antisemitism worldwide.
Third, Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer SE, delivered a sweeping and uncompromising address before the World Jewish Congress Governing Board on Monday, declaring that antisemitism has become a global ideological movement threatening not only Jewish communities, but the future of Western civilization itself.
Speaking in front of the senior Jewish communal leaders, diplomats, and government officials, Döpfner condemned the worldwide surge in anti-Jewish hatred following the October 7 Hamas terror attacks, and delivered a forceful defense of Zionism, democratic values, and Israel’s right to defend itself.
“Right after the images of the victims were seen, the downplaying began. Right after the names of the murdered were known, the justifications began,” Döpfner declared.
Arguing that anti-Zionism has become the modern vehicle for antisemitism, Döpfner stated, “It is not Zionism that is racism. Rather, anti-Zionism is racism.”
“What does not make sense to me is this: Why should Zionism be an idea and a goal that only Jews can embrace?” he continued. “I am a Zionist.”
Declaring support for Israel inseparable from the defense of democracy and Enlightenment values, Döpfner defended, “A people’s right to live in safety. The right to defend oneself. The right not to be dependent on the mercy of others again. Anyone who questions these rights is not only questioning Israel — but the principles upon which free societies are founded.”
Throughout the address, Döpfner warned that antisemitism has entered what he described as a dangerous new phase fueled by ideological radicalization, elite institutional failure, and social media amplification.
“Antisemitism is no longer a dark shadow from Austria and Germany,” Döpfner said. “Since then, it has become a global export hit.”
Warning specifically about the rise of extremist ideologies within parts of Western political and cultural movements, Döpfner declared: “We must expose ‘woke’ ideology as a Trojan horse for antisemitism and Islamism.”
Calling for “new thinking and most importantly, new actions,” Döpfner outlined a five-point plan to confront the crisis, including a “zero-tolerance policy toward open hatred of Jews,” stronger action against antisemitic incitement online, expanded Holocaust education, and greater support for Jewish life in Europe.
Döpfner concluded the address with a call for solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people: “We shall all be Zionists!”
Döpfner stands in stark contrast to most of the press around the world. We should applaud him for his words and actions, and hope they are finally replicated elsewhere.
J. Philip Rosen is currently Chairman of the American Section of the World Jewish Congress and Board Member of Yeshiva University, as well as several other Jewish causes. He was Vice-Chair of Birthright Israel for many years.