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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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US Announces Ceasefire Extension With Iran
US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before boarding Marine One to depart for Quantico, Virginia, from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would indefinitely extend the ceasefire with Iran, hours before it was set to expire, to allow the two countries to continue peace talks to end a war that has killed thousands of people and shaken the global economy.
Backing down from threats of new violence earlier in the day, Trump said in a statement he had agreed to a request by Pakistan, which has mediated peace talks in the seven-week-old war, “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Trump’s announcement appeared to be unilateral, and it was not immediately clear whether Iran, or the US ally Israel, would agree to extend the ceasefire, which began two weeks ago. Trump also said he would continue the US Navy’s blockade of Iran‘s ports and shore, which Iran‘s leaders have called an act of war.
There was no immediate comment from Iran‘s most senior leaders, but Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards, said Iran had not asked for a ceasefire extension and repeated threats to break the US blockade by force. An adviser to Iran‘s lead negotiator, the speaker of parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said Trump’s announcement carried little weight.
“Trump’s ceasefire extension is certainly a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike,” Mahdi Mohammadi, the parliament speaker’s adviser, said in a statement on social media, calling the US blockade an ongoing military aggression. “The time for Iran to take the initiative has come.”
Trump said he would extend the ceasefire until Iran‘s “proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
It was the latest instance of Trump backing down at the 11th hour from his repeated threats to bomb every power plant in Iran. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and others have condemned the threats, noting international humanitarian law forbids attacks targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Trump, who with Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, said he decided to extend the ceasefire because “the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so,” a reference to US-Israeli assassinations of some of the country’s leaders, including the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been succeeded by his son.
The US blockade became a sticking point as the two countries wavered this week on whether to send negotiators to a second round of peace talks in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
The ceasefire extension came only a few hours after Trump had said he was not inclined to continue the temporary truce and the US military was “raring to go.” He told CNBC in an interview that the US was in a strong negotiating position and would end up with what he called “a great deal.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump in a statement on social media for “graciously accepting our request to extend the ceasefire to allow ongoing diplomatic efforts to take their course.”
“I sincerely hope that both sides will continue to observe the ceasefire and be able to conclude a comprehensive ‘Peace Deal’ during the second round of talks scheduled at Islamabad for a permanent end to the conflict,” Sharif wrote.
It was not clear when, or if, that second round of talks would be scheduled.
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Hungarian PM-Elect Says ICC Warrants Will Be Enforced, Even for Netanyahu Invitation, as Orban Policy Reversed
Election winner Peter Magyar speaks during a press conference in Budapest, Hungary, April 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Peter Magyar vowed that his government would detain any foreign leader subject to International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants who entered its territory, even as he extended an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who himself faces such a warrant — to visit the country.
During a press conference on Monday, Magyar reiterated his pledge to reverse outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s decision to withdraw Hungary from the ICC.
The Hungarian leader also said that, despite inviting Netanyahu — who faces an ICC arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Gaza — to a national ceremony, he could still be detained upon arrival, noting that ICC-related obligations would take precedence if the conditions were met.
“If a country is a member of the ICC and a wanted individual enters its territory, they must be detained,” Magyar told reporters. “Every state and head of government is aware of these obligations.”
“I also made clear to the Israeli prime minister that we will not reverse course on the ICC withdrawal, as my colleagues have reviewed the matter and concluded it can still be halted,” he added.
Magyar had spoken with Netanyahu last week after the Israeli leader called to congratulate him on his election victory, which came after the defeat of a government widely seen as a strong ally of Israel.
But his latest remarks have triggered confusion and outrage, deepening concerns over his stance on Israel and raising questions about the future of relations between the two countries.
Netanyahu visited Hungary in April 2025 at Orbán’s invitation, with the government rejecting the ICC warrants and announcing its withdrawal from the court during the visit.
At the time, Orbán denounced the ICC as “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel.
Israeli officials also say the military has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Under ICC warrants, all states that are parties to the Rome Statute — the 1998 international treaty that established the ICC and sets out its jurisdiction over crimes such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — are legally obligated to arrest Netanyahu if he enters their territory.
However, several countries, including Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, as is also the case with other countries, including the United States, that have not signed the court’s founding treaty.
However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
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Exclusive: As Ceasefire Extended, Iranian Voice Describes Deepening Repression, Waning Hope Under Regime’s Grip
People attend the funeral of the security forces who were killed in the protests that erupted over the collapse of the currency’s value in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 14, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
As a fragile ceasefire halting the US-Israeli military campaign in Iran continues, some Iranians say the pause in fighting has not brought relief but rather fear that the regime is regaining strength while internal repression intensifies.
In western Iran, a former schoolteacher who asked to be identified as “Maddie Ali” for security reasons says the ceasefire has left many ordinary citizens feeling abandoned and exposed, watching authorities tighten control while hopes for meaningful change fade.
“People actually felt more hopeful when the war was ongoing. Now, with the ceasefire in place, many feel discouraged and disappointed about the future, which feels increasingly uncertain,” Ali told The Algeminer in an exclusive interview.
Ali lost her job after authorities imposed a nationwide internet blackout when fighting erupted earlier this year — a disruption that continues to shape daily life and restrict communication with the outside world, effectively cutting millions of Iranians off from independent reporting on the war and access to global news.
Internet access remains unstable across much of the country, forcing many people to rely on illegal black-market virtual private networks (VPNs) — tools that bypass government censorship — to stay connected beyond Iran’s borders, with access reportedly costing millions of tomans per gigabyte. (A toman is one-tenth of the rial, the official currency of Iran.)
Iran’s nationwide internet blackout has become the longest recorded of its kind, as authorities continue restricting access to the outside world in an effort to suppress internal opposition and silence domestic dissent.
Iranian authorities have even warned that citizens suspected of accessing the internet through VPNs could face arrest or imprisonment. According to state media reports, Iranian security forces have arrested several citizens in recent weeks for using the Starlink satellite internet system, which allows users to bypass state-controlled terrestrial infrastructure.
Human rights groups have warned that the regime repeatedly uses nationwide internet shutdowns as a tool to intensify its crackdown on opposition movements and conceal ongoing abuses from international scrutiny.
Ali said many people in Iran fear the ceasefire is giving authorities time to regroup and rebuild.
“People are deeply disappointed that the US and Israeli sides agreed to a ceasefire without taking the Iranian population into account,” Ali told The Algemeiner. “The regime has repeatedly proven its capacity to rebuild and recover time and time again.”
The US–Iran ceasefire, which took effect on April 8, was initially set to expire on Wednesday night if no agreement was reached. US President Donald Trump told Bloomberg on Monday that he was “highly unlikely” to extend the truce without a deal with Tehran.
“I’m not going to be rushed into making a bad deal,” the president said.
On Tuesday, however, Trump announced that he was extending the ceasefire indefinitely, to allow the two countries to continue peace talks to end the war.
In a statement on social media, Trump said he had agreed to a request by Pakistan, which has mediated the talks, “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Noting Iran’s government was “seriously fractured,” Trump said the US military would remain ready and continue its blockade on Iranian ports but continue abiding by the ceasefire “until such time as [Tehran’s] proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
According to Ali, who spoke with The Algemeiner before Trump’s announcement, reconstruction efforts began quickly after the fighting stopped, even as widespread infrastructure damage remained and internal repression intensified.
“There is frustration that the ceasefire may help the regime recover,” she said. “They started reconstruction for damaged sites and internal repression is still going on.”
Ali also said security forces remain highly visible across the country, especially after a sweeping crackdown earlier this year following mass demonstrations.
“We don’t have an option to really be out on the streets right now. It is really hard because of what happened in January. People are too afraid,” she said, referring to the nationwide anti-government protests, which security forces violently crushed, leaving tens of thousands of demonstrators tortured, imprisoned, or killed.
Checkpoints and surveillance now shape daily movement across many areas of the country.
“There are security forces on the streets stopping people, checking phones to see who they have been in contact with and reviewing messages — and they even make arrests,” Ali said.
Despite the risks, Ali said frustration with the regime runs deep after years of sustained crackdowns and tightening control.
“Most Iranians want an end to this regime. People are exhausted after decades of repression, arrests, executions, surveillance, and control,” she said. “Everybody was waiting for Israel and the US to do something and help us.”
“At the same time, people don’t support war itself — they support removing the regime, which is deeply rooted throughout the country,” Ali continued.
She said many Iranians initially saw the outbreak of fighting as a rare opening for change after years of failed internal protest movements.
“When the war began, many people actually felt hopeful,” Ali told The Algemeiner. “It’s not that they didn’t try to overthrow the regime themselves before — they did. But nothing worked.”
Even those who opposed the war, she said, are not necessarily defending the government.
“Those who were against the war mostly believed it would not lead to real change in the end — not that they supported the regime,” she explained.
More broadly, Ali said many citizens viewed outside military pressure as a necessary catalyst rather than something they welcomed.
“For many Iranians, support for the US and Israeli strikes came out of necessity and exhaustion — not because they support war,” she said.
Despite significant leadership losses during the conflict, Ali said the regime’s structure remains deeply entrenched nationwide.
“The regime and its ideology are embedded at every level — in cities, towns, and institutions across the country,” she said.
“From what we can see, the system is still functioning almost completely intact,” she continued. “It remains coordinated at both the national and local levels, and internal repression is actually increasing.”
“It feels suffocating and extreme, but at the same time it isn’t surprising,” she added.
For some inside Iran, Ali said, this reality has reshaped how people understand the scale of effort needed to dismantle the regime’s entrenched security apparatus.
“People support Israel and the United States, but they also believe airstrikes alone are not enough,” she said.
“Many believe that only a military ground intervention with troops on the ground could remove the regime from its roots,” she continued.
At the same time, she said many Iranians feel especially frustrated by what they see as political solidarity between Muslim-majority governments and Tehran’s leadership rather than support for ordinary citizens.
“Just because a government presents itself as Islamist does not give it the right to repress dissidents and crush its own people,” she said.
“Many Muslim countries have continued to cooperate with this regime, shaking hands with a killer regime instead of standing with the Iranian people,” Ali added.