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Menachem Silverstein’s High Holidays were interrupted by what he calls a beautifully ironic “monkey paw situation.”

“Like any good Jewish comedian, I’m in Rosh Hashanah services praying to God for a little bit of a boost in my career, for something to go viral, for something to hit,” Silverstein, a 30-year-old comic in Los Angeles, told me. “I turn my phone after hag. I have about 40-plus messages from people being like, ‘What the hell’s happening? Is this you?’”

Friends were sending him links to a video of a crowd leaving a theater in the middle of a standup set. The caption overlaid on the clip said, in English and Arabic, “audience walks out after comedian backs Israel.” On an X post with more than 2 million views, an account named “Truthseeker” identified the comic as Silverstein.

Silverstein knew immediately the video was of the Laugh Factory in Chicago, a venue he last played this summer. He had no memory of the crowd walking out — a traumatic experience for any standup. In fact, as he took a closer look at the video, he realized it wasn’t even him onstage.

“My most viral thing was not showing up to a comedy club, which is hilarious in itself,” said Silverstein, who estimates across platforms the clip has been seen more than 10 million times. “If I would have known, I would have missed more shows.”

By the time Silverstein was clued into his virality, it was too late to contain the disinformation.

Alex Jones picked the clip up, commenting, “It’s got one guy in a yarmulke. He literally says, ‘If you don’t support what Israel is doing in this war, leave.’”

No such statement is made in the clip. There’s no guy in a yarmulke, only a man in a dark t-shirt who appears to be blindfolded. This didn’t stop news outlets like Palestine Chronicle and the 1.1 million follower Global Reports Instagram account from running with the story.

Someone captioned the original clip — now deleted — indicating the comedian stated their support for Israel, leading to a mass exodus. From there, Truthseeker identified Silverstein as the comic, based, Silverstein believes, on a joke he retired about three years ago.

“Basically, the joke was, ‘Hi, my name is Menachem. I stand with Israel. It’s not political; they’re just the only people that can pronounce my name.’”

Grok and other AI models reinforced the claim that Silverstein was the person in the clip. But the real reason for everyone leaving their seats was something much less loaded: a prank.

David Fuhrer, president of the Laugh Factory said, based on an account confirmed by the Chicago Laugh Factory’s head of operations, that the video was from a Sept. 10 performance of a regular show called “What Could Go Wrong?,” in which practical jokes are played on comics.

“In this particular case, we had a comedian named Kieron Harrell and we blindfolded him and put headphones on him,” Fuhrer said. “They walked the entire audience out into the lobby as a joke so he had an empty room he was performing to.”

Fuhrer said it had “nothing to do with antisemitism or people walking out on Menachem.” He doesn’t know who repurposed the video, only that it had gone viral.

“It’s a shame because he’s a wonderful person and a great performer and a part of our family here.”

If you go to the “What Could Go Wrong?” Instagram, you’ll see a better image of the real comic, Harrell, who looks nothing like Silverstein.

Daniel Cassilagio, who produces “What Could Go Wrong,” captioned the images of the performer, saying the show was “so good that it was used as a geo political [sic] disinformation campaign.”

Cassilagio wrote on Instagram that the clip was recorded, uploaded without the producers’ knowledge and “then virally shared by what are most likely bots from China.”

People who don’t check their sources have “been harassing both the comic that was on stage, and a comic from LA who I’ve never even heard about or met,” Cassilagio wrote on a post that, judging by its 166 likes, has far less visibility than the fake account. “He wasn’t even in Chicago at the time.”

Silverstein told me that, while he added around 200 followers, he’s been inundated with hateful comments and his reach has dropped as people have been reporting his account. If you search his name now, the top hits are for his nonexistent scandal. When he’s looking to play clubs, he’s concerned that bookers will see he “walked a crowd” and deny him a slot.

Beyond the made-up controversy, there’s not much about geopolitics in Silverstein’s act. His material includes jokes on fatherhood, being 5’9” (“a Jewish 6’2”) and some well-deserved ribbing of Kanye West. In videos, he can be seen circumcising a baby carrot.

In an age when performers like Macklemore and Jerry Seinfeld have been canceled for their views on Israel and Palestinians, Silverstein sees a new frontier in his experience.

“It used to be you watch a podcast or watch a stand-up clip, clip someone out of context, post it, and get them canceled,” he said. “Now they’re getting away with just posting a random thing, putting your name on it, and then people believe it.”

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Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky plans to open his Yom Kippur sermon this year in an unusual way: with an emergency evacuation plan.

It’s how he opened his Rosh Hashanah sermon, too.

“I mentioned [that] people should understand where the exits are,” Kanefsky said. “I mentioned what our plan is, God forbid, if we need to evacuate the children in the youth program — that we have volunteers for that.”

Kanefsky, senior rabbi at B’nai David-Judea Congregation in Los Angeles, acknowledged that the reminder to prepare for the worst could be “potentially a little bit jarring” on the holiest days of the year. But with synagogues on heightened alert, he said, it felt unfortunately necessary.

“It’s just part of our lives right now,” he said. “That extra measure of vigilance.”

Extra security measures at synagogues are nothing new. Since the 2018 shooting that killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, Jewish institutions have invested heavily in infrastructure, personnel and training to counter the threat of violence. But this High Holiday season, several synagogues are taking the unusual step of integrating emergency preparedness into the services themselves, whether through verbal instructions like Kanefsky’s or written plans handed out alongside prayer books.

A flyer distributed at Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto outlines a three-point plan in the event of an attack: Run, hide or — as a last resort — “Be prepared to defend yourself.”

“Remember: Your actions before police arrive may save your life,” it reads in all-caps.

In August, the Jewish nonprofit Secure Community Network released a safety card that synagogues can customize with their own evacuation maps then place in their pews. While a range of scenarios could prompt a building evacuation, like a fire or earthquake, the card focuses on reacting to an attack.

It includes instructions for how to make a tourniquet to stop bleeding and tips for fleeing or fighting “the shooter.”

And at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, a flyer advising congregants to run, hide, or fight in the event of an attack was placed on every other seatback during Rosh Hashanah.

“It brought home the potential dangers in a way I hadn’t seen before,” Frances Dinkelspiel, a member of Congregation Emanu-El, told the Forward. “You’re going in for services. You’re opening your heart. There’s a sense of community. You’re embracing one another. And then there’s this piece of paper that’s reminding you: Don’t relax too much.”

Kanefsky said he felt a responsibility to his congregation to provide safety instructions, noting that the High Holidays may attract out-of-town visitors unfamiliar with the building.

But he also acknowledged that such warnings “can take away from the spiritual mood that we’re working so hard on building,” he said.

Kanefsky said he tried to make the announcement as unobtrusive as possible — giving the instructions in what he called “a spiritual and emotional envelope” by thanking the synagogue’s security team and framing preparedness as “part of the devotion to one another and our devotion to God.”

Michael Masters, Secure Community Network’s CEO, said the High Holidays present an elevated security risk at synagogues compared with other times of year. Even basic preparedness measures, like knowing where the exits are, can make a meaningful difference in a threat situation, he said.

He cited the ramming attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, in March as a prominent recent example. Seconds after the assailant drove a truck filled with explosives through a building entrance, a security guard opened fire on the vehicle; after the vehicle caught fire, the campus was safely evacuated.

“The guard was there, and he was well trained, and he did an amazing job, as did law enforcement,” Masters said. “But the faculty and the staff and the students were all trained as well.”

Dinkelspiel emphasized that she feels safe at her synagogue, which has a modern security system and bollards around the sidewalk to prevent cars from driving onto the property. But that sense of safety, she said, was part of what made the flyer so unnerving.

“After all these security measures the congregation has,” Dinkelspiel said, “there was still this reminder on this flimsy piece of paper that Jews can be attacked at any time.”

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