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What Marc Maron’s comedy special taught me about laughter and Tisha B’Av
(JTA) — I’ve been teaching a virtual class on Jewish humor through our partner site, My Jewish Learning. I share classic jokes and bits and then discuss what they say about both the Jews who tell them and the Jewish audiences that enjoy them.
We have a lot of fun, and I think I’ve made the case for how a classic Jewish joke can be as revealing and meaningful as any other classic Jewish text. But I do wonder if I am complicit in a worldview that sees humor as the sum total of Jewish identity. The Pew Research Center found that 42% of Jewish Americans associate being Jewish with having a sense of humor — twice as many who said the same thing about observing Jewish law.
Have we all become Tim Whatley, the dentist on “Seinfeld” who Jerry suspects has converted to Judaism just to be able to tell Jewish jokes?
I am having these doubts on the eve of Tisha B’Av, the annual fast that mourns the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and other historical calamities. Leading up to the fast day, observant Jews take on many of the rituals of mourning the dead. It’s a grim period, and I’ve always bristled at a custom that demands I perform grief at the height of summer.
The unrelenting sadness of the period must have gotten to the sages of the Talmud. They tell the story of the elders who look down on the Temple Mount after it has been ransacked by the Romans, and see a fox scamper out of what had been the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the Temple. They begin weeping, but Rabbi Akiva laughs instead.
They want to know why he’s laughing, and Akiva explains. On one level, he understands the absurd irony — the cosmic joke — of what they are witnessing: While the Torah says that any non-priest who approaches the Holy of Holies shall die (Numbers 1:51), the fox violates the space unscathed.
But Akiva is also laughing because the scene of destruction fulfills a prophecy: that Jerusalem won’t be restored to the Jews until after it is reduced to rubble. The other sages are comforted.
Miriam Zami, in a deep analysis of the story, says Akiva “resists the notion that the only future is a bleak one.” Laughing and recalling God’s promise to restore Jerusalem is “an act of healing, protesting Roman power and protesting the notion of a fundamentally meaningless existence.”
That’s the kind of laughter that scholars of Jewish humor have long celebrated: “laughter through tears,” the “laughter of defiance.” As the Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse wrote in her study of Jewish humor, “Both mystic and comedian aspire to get the better of a world they are powerless to reform.”
I worry, though, that humor can offer an undeserved escape from grim reality — perhaps healthy in small doses, but delusional when it becomes a way of being in the world. When we celebrate the genius of Jewish humor are we mocking those who suffered without its comforts? To paraphrase the German philosopher Theodor Adorno, is making comedy after Auschwitz barbaric?
Like Akiva’s buddies, however, I found some comfort in the latest HBO special by veteran comedian Marc Maron. Now 59, Maron has long been a “comic’s comic” but found wider fame in recent years on the strength of a popular podcast and his roles in the Netflix series “GLOW” and his eponymous sitcom on IFC. His style is dyspeptic and confessional, and Jewish to a degree that seems to surprise even him: “There’s part of me that just wants to keep poking the Jew thing,” he says at one point in the new special.
“From Bleak to Dark” is Maron’s first special since the death, in 2020, of his partner, the filmmaker Lynn Shelton. He is one of a number of comedians who have been exploring their personal grief in their comedy; as New York Times critic Jason Zinoman pointed out in a recent essay, “These new shows illustrate how grief, precisely because it’s usually handled with solemnity, jargon and unsaid thoughts, is ripe territory for stand-up.”
The very first words of Maron’s special would fit right into the key text of the Tisha B’Av liturgy, known as “Lamentations“: “I don’t want to be negative,” he says, “but I don’t think anything’s ever gonna get better ever again. I don’t want to bum anybody out but I think this is pretty much the way it’s gonna be for however long it takes us to polish this planet off.”
He’s talking about global warming, but he eventually shifts to talking about Shelton’s death. At first he wonders how he can discuss his loss on stage,tims and then imagines a sad one-man show called “Marc Maron: Kaddish, A Prayer for the Dead,” and even chants the opening words of the prayer.
But Maron is not one to take comfort in Jewish ritual. “I’m not religious. I’m Jewish,” he explains, as if the second sentence makes the first one self-evident.
As for comedy, he says, “I’m a guy who talks about his life. So I wasn’t clear how that was gonna go. How am I going to talk about [Shelton]? You know, is that ever going to happen? Is there a way to bring humor to that?”
There is, and it came to him on the night the doctors took Shelton off of life support. At first, he is not sure he wants to be there, but his friends convince him that he would regret it if he didn’t say goodbye. “So I walk in there and really see her and she’s gone,” he relates. “And I was able to touch her forehead and tell her I love her and cry for a few minutes.” And then, because he is at heart a comedian, he thinks of a joke: As he walks away from her hospital bed, he thinks, “Selfie?”
“When I wrote that joke, or when I came up with it, it made me feel so happy,” he says.
Maron knows he is not the only person in the theater, or watching at home, who is grieving, and his words are solace for them as much as for himself. In another famous Talmud story about laughter, Elijah the Prophet and a Rabbi Baroka come across two men in the marketplace. The two explain that they are jesters. “When we see a person who is sad, we cheer him up,” they explain. “Likewise, when we see two people quarreling, we try to make peace between them.”
Says Elijah, “These two have a share in the World to Come,” which is a prophet’s way of saying they have a free pass to Heaven.
I don’t know if Maron knows the passage, or the one about Akiva, but his special feels like essential viewing on the eve of Tisha B’Av, when Jews are asked to hold onto hope and embrace life despite a tragic history.
“I find that humor that comes from real darkness is really the best because it disarms it,” he explains. “It’s elevating the spirit. It’s why I got into comedy, because I’ve watched comics and they would take things that were complicated or horrifying and simplify them and sort of make you see them in a different way and have a laugh. And I think it’s a beautiful thing and necessary.”
And then, because he is a comedian and Jew, he can’t resist a joke: “I believe there were probably some hilarious people in Auschwitz.”
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The post What Marc Maron’s comedy special taught me about laughter and Tisha B’Av appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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ICE Arrests Pro-Hamas Activist at Columbia University
Illustrative: Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of media at Columbia University encampment in New York City, US, June 1, 2024. Photo: Jeenah Moon via Reuters Connect
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Saturday night arrested a male alumnus of Columbia University who was a leading anti-Israel agitator on campus and an architect of the Hamilton Hall building takeover, which took place during the closing weeks of the 2023-2024 academic year.
ICE agents picked up Mahmoud Khalil, who recently participated in another building takeover at Barnard College, on Columbia’s campus at his university-owned apartment, his attorney, Amy Greer, told several news outlets. The agents reportedly explained that they were acting on a US State Department order to revoke his student visa and permanent resident status.
Mahmoud is a Palestinian from Syria. He completed post-graduate studies at Columbia University in December and is awaiting the formal granting of his diploma.
In a statement, the US Department of Homeland Security said ICE arrested Khalil “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.”
The department continued, “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting US national security.”
ICE’s arrest of the student follows an executive order by the Trump administration that calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” A major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses. Trump has also said that foreign students who hold demonstrations in support of Hamas “will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.”
So far, Columbia University has been the administration’s main focus, as the school continues to be convulsed by pro-Hamas activists.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Columbia remains one of the most hostile campuses for Jews employed by or enrolled in an institution of higher education. Since Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the university has produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
Amid these incidents, the university has struggled to contain the anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which in late January committed an act of infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
In recent weeks, CUAD occupied two buildings at Barnard College, disregarding threats that doing so would lead to swift and severe disciplinary sanctions, including possible expulsion.
Following the incidents, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia as punishment for its failing to address the issue, executing an ultimatum delivered by US Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
Some groups are unhappy with the administration’s policies on pro-Hamas advocacy, however, and following Khalil’s arrest, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) denounced his detainment as unconstitutional.
“The Trump administration’s detention of Mahmoud Khalil — a green card holder studying in this country legally — is targeted, retaliatory, an and extreme attack his First Amendment rights,” NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said on Sunday in a public statement. “Ripping a student from their home, challenging their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint will chill student speech and advocacy across campus. Political speech should never be a basis of punishment, or lead to deportation.”
On Monday, however, US President Donald Trump defended Khalil’s arrest and said it will be the first of many.
“This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Trump went on to argue that the presence of those who support terrorism on US soil undermines American national security interests, adding that he expects colleges and universities to cpmply with his executive order.
On Friday, Columbia University, which has been accused of refusing to impose disciplinary sanctions on pro-Hamas activists, announced that is has suspended four of its students who were identified as co-conspirators in the latest storming and occupation of a Barnard College building, which took place on Wednesday at the Milstein Center.
“These students have been suspended and restricted from campus as we swiftly work through the discipline process,” the university said in a statement. “We are a campus governed by our rules, policies, and the law. Any violations of these will not be tolerated and will have consequences.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ICE Arrests Pro-Hamas Activist at Columbia University first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Releases ‘New Day Will Rise,’ to Be Performed by Yuval Raphael in 2025 Eurovision Song Contest
Yuval Raphael in the music video for her new song “New Day Will Rise.” Photo: YouTube screenshot
Israel debuted on Sunday night the full song that Yuval Raphael will perform in the Eurovision Song Contest in Basel, Switzerland, this May.
Israel’s Kan 11 premiered during a live broadcast the music video for “New Day Will Rise,” a powerful ballad written by singer-songwriter Keren Peles that has mostly English lyrics but with some French and Hebrew as well. Yuval, 24, lives in the Israeli city of Ra’anana — same as Noa Kirel, Israel’s representative in the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest – but lived as a child with her family in Switzerland for three years. She is fluent in Hebrew, English, and French.
Raphael sings in the chorus: “New day will rise/ Life will go on/ Everyone cries/ Don’t cry alone/ Darkness will fade/ All the pain will go by/ But we will stay / Even if you say goodbye.” The song has a Hebrew line from the biblical Song of Songs, which translates to: “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.”
Raphael survived the Nova music festival massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, in Re’im, Israel, after hiding from Hamas terrorists in a roadside bomb shelter. She pretended to be dead and laid under dead bodies for several hours until she was rescued. Terrorists killed 370 people and abducted 44 hostages at the site of the festival.
In the music video for “New Day Will Rise,” Raphael and a group of young people gather together to sing, dance, and enjoy each other’s company in a grassy area, which is reminiscent of what young Israelis did at the Nova music festival before the Hamas-led Oct. 7 onslaught. Red anemones, Israel’s national flower and the flower that is known for growing specifically in the southern region, are seen in the grass in the music video.
In mid-January, Raphael won the Israeli television singing competition “HaKochav Haba” (“Rising Star”), whose winner goes on to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest.
“Throughout the season of ‘Rising Star,’ I chose songs solely from a place of emotion, as soon as I felt a twinge in my stomach,” Raphael told Kan 11. “When I heard this song [‘New Day Will Rise’], I had a twinge in my stomach and said – ‘This is your song.’” She also commented on the song’s connection to her surviving the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
“One of the most exciting things that has happened to me in my life is the very extreme transition from the most terrible event of my life on Oct. 7, to such a great and empowering moment – representing my country at Eurovision. The feeling of personal victory is immense,” she said.
The lyrics and the video for “New Day Will Rise” has been approved by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the Eurovision Song Contest. Last year, Israel’s original song submission, “October Rain,” was rejected by the EBU for being too political since it referenced the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Kan ultimately rewrote the song and titled it “Hurricane.” It was performed in the Eurovision by Eden Golan, who finished fifth place in the competition.
Israel has been competing in the Eurovision since 1973 and won four times — in 1978 with Izhar Cohen’s “A-Ba-Ni-Bi,” 1979 with Milk and Honey’s “Hallelujah,” 1998 with Dana International’s “Diva,” and most recently 2018 with Netta Barzilai’s “Toy.”
Raphael will compete in the second semifinal of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest on May 15 and, if she advances, will compete in the grand final on May 18.
Watch the music video for “New Day Will Rise” below.
The post Israel Releases ‘New Day Will Rise,’ to Be Performed by Yuval Raphael in 2025 Eurovision Song Contest first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Two Men Face US Trial Over Iran-Backed Plot to Kill Dissident
Rafat Amirov appears in court charged with murder-for-hire and money laundering for his role in the thwarted Tehran-backed assassination attempt of a journalist and activist, who is a US citizen, during his arraignment hearing before Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave at a courtroom in New York, US, Jan. 27, 2023 in this courtroom sketch. Photo: REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
Two men accused of being members of a Russian organized crime group will face trial in the United States on Monday over what prosecutors call an unsuccessful Tehran-backed attempt to kill an Iranian dissident living in New York.
Federal prosecutors say Iran‘s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a US-designated terrorist organization, in 2021 hired Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, members of a “Russian mob” sub-group, to kill an Iranian American journalist and activist who has spoken out against the Iranian government’s treatment of women.
Amirov, 45, and Omarov, 40, have pleaded not guilty to murder for hire and attempted murder in aid of racketeering.
Omarov’s lawyer, Elena Fast, said in a statement, “Mr. Omarov is presumed innocent.” Amirov’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment. In court papers, lawyers for both men have said it was “inaccurate” to refer to them as members of the Russian mob.
Prosecutors have not named the target of the alleged plot, who they have said in court papers is expected to testify at the trial.
Masih Alinejad, a journalist who left Iran in 2009, has told Reuters she was the target of both the alleged murder plot and a previous alleged attempt by Iranian intelligence officers to kidnap her and take her to Iran.
Alinejad has brought attention to women in Iran protesting laws requiring head coverings, as well as accounts of Iranians killed in demonstrations in 2019.
“I am very excited to join the public trial as a witness to testify against those who were hired by the Islamic Republic to kill me,” Alinejad said in an interview on Friday. “It’s like I’ve been given a second life.”
The trial, before US District Judge Colleen McMahon, kicks off with jury selection on Monday in Manhattan federal court.
The charges were part of a broader push by the Justice Department during former President Joe Biden’s administration to crack down on transnational repression, or efforts by US adversaries like Iran and China to silence dissidents on American soil.
The two-week trial could provide a window into alleged ties between Iran‘s government and criminal organizations prosecutors say it hires to do its “dirty work.”
A representative of Iran‘s UN mission did not respond to a request for comment on the trial of Amirov and Omarov.
US prosecutors in 2021 brought charges against four Iranian intelligence officers over the alleged kidnapping plot. They are at large, and Tehran has called the allegations baseless.
The alleged murder plot came to light in 2022, when Khalid Mehdiyev – an alleged co-conspirator of Amirov and Omarov – was arrested outside Alinejad’s New York home with an AK-47 rifle.
Prosecutors say a Revolutionary Guard brigadier general named Ruhollah Bazghandi began monitoring Alinejad in July 2021. They say Bazghandi later hired Amirov, an alleged Russian mob leader living in Iran at the time, to kill her. Omarov and Mehdiyev are also part of the mob, prosecutors said.
Bazghandi was also charged but is not in US custody.
Mehdiyev, 26, pleaded not guilty to murder-for-hire charges in February 2023, but the status of his case is unclear. Prison records show he was released from US custody on May 19, 2023.
Neither a Justice Department spokesperson nor a lawyer for Mehdiyev responded to requests for comment.
The post Two Men Face US Trial Over Iran-Backed Plot to Kill Dissident first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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