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How a standup show at a Chinese restaurant turned into a 30-year Jewish comedy tradition
(JTA) — Just a few years into her comedy career, Lisa Geduldig was invited to perform standup at the Peking Garden Club near Northampton, Massachusetts. She went to the gig assuming it was a comedy club.
It wasn’t.
“I just had the most ironic experience,” Geduldig remembers telling a Jewish summer camp friend on the phone in October 1993. “I was just telling Jewish jokes in a Chinese restaurant.”
As a Long Island native who was by then living in San Francisco, she was very familiar with the tradition of Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas, a product of the neighborhood dynamics between Jewish and Chinese immigrant populations living in New York’s Lower East Side from the end of the 19th century.
After ruminating on it, she thought: why not start a Jewish comedy night on Christmas Eve?
She had enough time before the holiday to find other Jewish comics who liked the idea, write her own press release and partner with a restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown with banquet room space open on Christmas Eve to organize the event, which she called Kung Pao Kosher Comedy. (Geduldig liked the alliteration, even though it doesn’t involve kosher food.)
It was an instant hit, with around 400 guests, and Geduldig said nearly 200 people were turned away at the door. The kitchen of the Four Seas Restaurant was completely unprepared for the volume, as Geduldig didn’t expect anything close to the turnout. The show received a heap of local press, and the next year it earned a three-quarter page spread in The New York Times.
Fast forward and this year marks the 30th Kung Pao Kosher show, and the first one back in person since the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, the event has moved into a synagogue — the Reform Congregation Sherith Israel in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, one of the country’s oldest Jewish houses of worship. The Chinese banquet room at New Asia Restaurant, where the show had been hosted since 1997, became a supermarket in 2020.
Over the years, an impressive roster of comedians has performed, including names such as Marc Maron, Margaret Cho, Shelley Berman, David Brenner, Judy Gold, Gary Gulman and Ophira Eisenberg. Many of the show’s comedians return — Wendy Liebman, who has been doing standup for 38 years, has performed at Kung Pao four times.
Geduldig — who is now a publicist and comedy show producer, in addition to a comic — said the show that put her project on the map was when well-known Jewish comedian Henny Youngman headlined in 1997, at 92. Youngman — famous for his quick succession of clever one-liners and interludes from his favorite prop, a violin — died of pneumonia just two months after giving his final performance at Kung Pao Kosher Comedy. For six months after Youngman’s death, Geduldig and other Kung Pao promoters and staff were convinced that they killed him. The SF Weekly published an article titled “The Gig of Death?” But Youngman’s daughter, Marilyn Kelly, exonerated everyone involved in the show, saying the travel was a strain on her father’s health, but he was “delighted to have done it.”
Ten years after Youngman’s final performance, Shelley Berman, then in his 80s, was scheduled to perform at Kung Pao when he called Geduldig complaining of chest pains.
“I go, ‘No! I can’t kill another one!’” she recalled.
It turned out to be just acid reflux, and the emergency room doctor told Berman he could go onstage. (The doctor was extended an invitation to the show, but did not attend.)
In keeping with the Jewish tradition of social responsibility and tzedakah, meaning “charity” or “justice,” Geduldig has given a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales each year to two different charities. Past beneficiaries include a variety of Jewish and secular organizations; this year, the charitable proceeds will go to the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and The Center for Reproductive Rights.
The charitable aspect is part of what keeps Shelley Kessler, a long-time California labor leader, coming back to the show. She has yet to miss a single one.
“Given what’s going on in the world, this is a very nice way to manage the depression,” Kessler said.
At Kessler’s table, her core group of five always bring tchotchkes and booze — though the synagogue has asked this year’s guests to refrain from red wine, to avoid any accidents on the carpet.
“People bring all kinds of things,” Kessler said. “We once had a humongous menorah. Our table has fun, I’ll tell you.”
This year’s lineup of comics includes Mark Schiff (Jerry Seinfeld’s longtime opening act), Cathy Ladman and Orion Levine. Lisa Geduldig will emcee in her customary tuxedo, accented this year with a Cuban guayabera shirt.
Joining Kung Pao on the virtual stage for the third time is Geduldig’s mother, Arline Geduldig, 91, who will Zoom in from Boynton Beach, Florida.
“One of the silver linings of the pandemic was not only living with my mother, but getting to know each other, finding out how funny she was,” Lisa Geduldig said.
In March 2020, the younger Geduldig flew to Florida to visit her mother — and stayed there for 17 months. That was when she launched Lockdown Comedy, a monthly online comedy show where Arline got her start, thanks to some mentoring from her daughter. Arline’s routines are often centered around her fascination with handsome young firemen and the way she calls her husband, Irving, downstairs for dinner.
“I love people saying they like me,” Arline told the Los Angeles Times in 2021. “I have a swelled head already.”
In previous years, Geduldig said she tried to turn “a Chinese restaurant into a synagogue.” She brought inflatable dreidels, giant matzah ball pillows and “Happy Hanukkah” banners, when Hanukkah and Christmas overlapped. Things are trickier now, since she wants to avoid any cultural appropriation while still paying tribute to the show’s origins. For instance, she learned that red paper lanterns are symbolic of good luck in Chinese culture, so she wants to incorporate some into the room.
The restaurant that the show was held in became a supermarket during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Courtesy of Lisa Geduldig)
“This year, I’m turning a synagogue into a Chinese restaurant,” she said.
Although the food will still be provided by a local Chinese restaurant, the usual fortune cookies filled with Yiddish proverbs will not be included. The food isn’t kosher, but because the event is being held in a synagogue there are still restrictions: No pork and no shrimp, despite Geduldig’s 30-year streak of serving treif (or non-kosher) food at Kung Pao Kosher Comedy.
“I was like, ‘How about if I call it kosher prawns?’” Geduldig joked. “They didn’t go for it.”
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The post How a standup show at a Chinese restaurant turned into a 30-year Jewish comedy tradition appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A Personal Perspective From Israel: The Signs Are Small, But We Are Still at War
An Israeli police officer investigates a crater at the site of a missile attack, launched from Yemen, near Ben Gurion Airport, in Tel Aviv, Israel May 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Avshalom Sassoni
Israel is an unusual place, where we balance war and daily life on a constant basis. So today, I’m taking a moment away from deep analysis, and instead sharing something a bit more personal — my weird/normal life as an Israeli.
In addition to my work at RealityCheck, I also teach as an Adjunct Professor at Reichman University (formerly the “IDC”) in Herzliya, Israel. I absolutely love my students — who are enthusiastic, intelligent, and in many cases, actively risking their lives to protect mine.
Last week, a student came to class in uniform — not מדי א׳ , which is the dress uniform that soldiers typically wear when traveling home for the weekend, but מדי ב׳, which is the full combat uniform. I asked if he was in מילואים (reserves) and he said yes, that he’s serving in Syria right now.
Only later I realized that when he said “right now,” he meant RIGHT now: his commander had given him a special pass to come to class for a few hours, after which he was leaving my classroom and returning straight to Syria. I don’t know what’s more impressive — that my students are out there protecting our safety, or that when they have a moment away from combat, their first priority is to come to class.
This is Israel. These are Israelis.
Though it’s not strictly speaking a part of my course, students ask about the legal status of Israel at The Hague so often that I prepared several slides on the topic. Once, a student asked whether she should expect that her boyfriend (a combat soldier) would get arrested on their upcoming trip to Europe. Fortunately, I had the knowledge to explain that topic, and to recommend certain precautionary measures, which gave her a degree of comfort. Sadly, those same precautionary measures may soon be relevant in New York City.
I sometimes enjoy sitting on my balcony, eating dinner, and watching passenger planes fly across the Mediterranean into Israel on their standard flight path toward Ben Gurion International Airport. Yet the other evening, I noticed something unusual: several aircraft turned away from the Tel Aviv shore at the last moment, and took strange detours. Minutes later I saw (and mostly heard) several fighter jets heading northward, intersecting the commercial flightpath.
Perhaps air traffic control needed to clear the skies for the fighter jets? I may never know for certain, but the next morning, I read about an unusually large IDF operation in Lebanon, across Israel’s northern border.
Other days, I see helicopters heading south, most likely to Gaza. But on one special day, October 13, 2025, I saw the very helicopters that were bringing the hostages back home. All this, right from my window.
These small but striking experiences serve as a constant reminder that we are not really at peace.
For the moment we aren’t dodging rockets, running to bomb shelters, or watching the ominous orange glow of Iranian missiles as they heat up upon re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere — on their way to strike our cities and communities. Yet Israel is very much still at war on multiple fronts: we see and feel it every day, in the most unusual and ordinary ways.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.
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Arab Druze Scholar Says BDS Efforts Against Israel ‘Silence’ Minorities Instead of Protecting Them
Dr. Sawsan Kheir, center, speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America’s 2025 General Assembly in Washington, DC, on Nov. 17. Photo: Provided
An Arab Druze scholar and religious minority studies expert at the University of Haifa told The Algemeiner that efforts to boycott Israel – whether it be cultural, academic, or economic – impact minorities in the country the most by “silencing” their voices and blocking them from advancing in all fields.
“Sadly, and ironically, the boycotts and those who promote them declare that they are there to protect minorities, but actually they affect us the most and hurt us the most,” said Dr. Sawsan Kheir. “I guarantee you that many, many people who call for these boycotts and support them don’t know anything about the reality in Israel.”
“As an equal rights citizen in the state of Israel and as a minority, to whom education is the most important, for me to promote myself and do my work as an academic, I need to publish papers, for instance,” she explained. “Boycotts call for not publishing my papers; for not accepting me at conferences. And so instead of supporting me as a minority, they are actually silencing me through these boycotts … you are hindering us from promoting ourselves and making our voices be heard.”
Kheir was born and raised in the small Druze village of Peki’in, in northern Israel. She never encountered people from other cultures until she attended the University of Haifa, she told The Algemeiner. She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in psychology at the university, earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The scholar has been a part of the school, first as a student and now as a staff member, since the age of 18, and called it her “home” several times while speaking with The Algemeiner.
Kheir is now a teaching fellow in the University of Haifa‘s Department of Multidisciplinary Studies and leads a research team at the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies that examines the intersection of religion and gender within the Druze community.
The Druze, an Arab minority who practice a religion originally derived from Islam, live in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. In Israel, many serve in the military and police, including during the war in Gaza.
At the University of Haifa, more than 40 percent of the student body are from minority communities, including Arabs, Druze, Baha’i, Muslims, and Bedouins. The school has been described as Israel’s most culturally diverse university.
Kheir said it has been “heartwarming” to see the university promote so many cultures and be welcoming to minority students. She spoke to The Algemeiner after leading a session at the Jewish Federations of North America’s 2025 General Assembly in Washington, DC, where on Nov. 17 she discussed in part the importance of maintaining strong relations between the state of Israel and its Druze community.
Supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which seeks to isolate Israel on the international stage as a step toward its eventual elimination, have been targeting the country for many years, but their efforts intensified following the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, there have been non-stop calls to boycott Israel or Israel-affiliated institutions in practically every field, including sports, film, music, academia, and economics. Kheir said these boycott efforts are counterproductive and simply promote “hatred.”
“Instead of promoting inclusion, they are actually hurting me [and minorities] the most,” she noted. “They are silencing the voice of minorities the most because we want to also promote ourselves, pursue our dreams. I’m speaking for myself as an academic, but this also reflects the state of all my colleagues. You are silencing our voices. You are not promoting anything beyond hatred and specifically I think those who promote these boycotts don’t know what our campuses, specifically in academia, look like.”
“For me, as a minority coming from a conservative culture; as an Arab Druze scholar specifically, I have so many boundaries already, most of them are cultural,” added Kheir, who argued anti-Israel boycott efforts just make the lives of minorities more difficult. “They are promoting the very opposite of what they claim to promote, and that is protecting minorities. It doesn’t promote inclusion. It actually promotes exclusion.”
Kheir said her colleagues at the University of Haifa express similar sentiments. She even shared a story about a colleague who could not attend a conference because of her ties to Israel. Luckily, Kheir said, the school has an office that faculty members can turn to for assistance when they encounter boycotts, and the university has advocated for its staff in the past against these bans.
The scholar also said claims that Israel is an apartheid state are sheer “nonsense,” especially considering the multiculturalism seen at the University of Haifa. She explained that in fact, the state of Israel and the University of Haifa both “promote togetherness.”
“Come to Israel and see what Israel is about. Come to the University of Haifa specifically,” she said. “Come to our multicultural campus. Give me proof of any apartheid. The university promotes every single voice as long as you raise your voice with respect for others’ feelings and thoughts.”
In July, Israel launched massive airstrikes against Syrian regime and military targets in Damascus after Syria’s government forces reportedly joined Bedouin fighters in attacking and killing Druze communities in the south of the country. Israel also provided medical and humanitarian aid to the Druze community in Syria, and a ceasefire was reached on July 19.
During her speech at the Jewish Federations of North America’s 2025 General Assembly, Kheir discussed a upcoming program at the University of Haifa, in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund, that will support Druze soldiers in Israel finishing their mandatory military service by providing them with housing and other means for five months so they can further their academic education and pursue a degree at the university.
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Palestinian Authority Celebrates That Released Terrorist Has No Remorse for the Murder He Committed
Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its ruling party, Fatah, glorify terror daily. This example, however, was special — a rebroadcast from Israeli television of an unrepentant Palestinian terrorist.
An official Fatah Facebook page, Awdah, reposted an interview conducted by Israel’s Channel 13 with released terrorist murderer Mahmoud Abu Sorour, who was serving life in prison before being released for Israelis held hostage by Hamas in October 2025.
The Israeli interviewer challenged Abu Sorour on the morality of the killing. The PA’s repost did the opposite: it celebrated his refusal to express remorse.
Awdah’s caption read: “Watch how senior Fatah official prisoner Mahmoud Abu Sorour responded to the Israeli Channel 13 reporter.”
Posted text: “Watch how senior Fatah official prisoner Mahmoud Abu Sorour [i.e., terrorist, murdered an Israeli together with an accomplice] responded to the Israeli Channel 13 reporter.”
Israeli Channel 13 reporter: “Do you regret what you did?”
Terrorist Mahmoud Abu Sorour: “Am I sorry for what?”
Reporter: “For the murder you committed.”
Mahmoud Abu Sorour: “After 33 years?”
Reporter: “Yes.”
Mahmoud Abu Sorour: “You are asking me to be sorry?”
Reporter: “Yes, you are a murderer… I asked you if you are sorry, you are not sorry.”
Mahmoud Abu Srour: “Sorry for what? You come to me after 33 years and [expect] I will be sorry?”
[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Oct. 19, 2025]
Abu Sorour’s refusal to feel regret is treated as entertainment and a point of pride.
By reposting this interview with admiration, Fatah once again signals to its public that terrorists are role models — not in spite of murder, but because of it. And it must not be forgotten that Fatah is the party of Mahmoud Abbas. So how can Western leaders continue to promote Mahmoud Abbas as a “peace partner” while his own party proudly glorifies unrepentant murderers?
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.