This interview first appeared in print in The Comedians in May 2007
“When I was ten years old, I saw Woody Allen’s, “Annie Hall”. There’s a scene where he’s describing how he met his first wife just before he appeared at a political convention. He says he tried to do to her what Eisenhower was doing to the country all those years. And I just remember myself thinking at that moment that telling jokes could be really exciting. Like most people, I didn’t do anything with that thought. And it came back to me only 16 years later, when I was traveling in India, after graduating from university. Usually, these kinds of trips are a good time for rethinking your life. I was climbing a mountain when I remembered that scene, and thought to myself that when I go back to Israel, I will just have to try it. Few months later, when I came back to Israel, I just went to the Camel to an Open-Mike, told a few jokes, and really killed. So the next time I came back and from then on I just bombed for a year. You know, the regular story…”
These are the words of Yonatan Friedrich, a twenty-six year old comedian that performs at the Camel Comedy Club, one of two comedy clubs in all of Israel. Comedy is a great means for learning about the culture of a people and by providing a commentary on Israeli comedy, Yonatan also provides a commentary of Israeli culture. And although Israel may be half way around the world, its people, just like the people of New York, want to laugh.
“For years the Camel was the only club in Tel-Aviv, and it was only four years ago that the spin-off “Comedy Bar” was established. If you’re a regular comedian in one club – you won’t be able to perform in the other one. In the same way, a comedian who moves from one club to the other is really considered as a defector in his former club. The Comedy Bar today has more comedians– around 40, where the Camel has around 25 comedians.
The clubs are quite similar and all types of comedians can perform at both clubs. What distinguishes them, and creates different atmosphere, is that The Comedy Bar is much more related to Israeli television industry. That’s why young comedians whose main goal is to be famous – in any field whatsoever – are targeting The Comedy Bar. The “Camel” on the other hand, is more concerned with stand-up as an art form..
“The material in both clubs is similar. You have tons of observational “Have you noticed” jokes that are related to the Israeli here-and-now. This comedy genre was really dominant even before Seinfeld was broadcasted. Israelis live and think in communities and each time you allow them to recognize a common feeling or a common fear – they will always laugh. Besides that you have a lot of improvisation – from pure improvising with not even one setuppunchline joke – and Israel has few really great improvisers – to semi-improvisation, which means having an open and funny dialogue with a crowd, and once in a few minutes turning to a prepared block with real structured jokes. Semi-improvisation is really popular among Israeli comedians. Finally, you will find a lot of Black Humor on any subject you can imagine – Palestinian bomb suicides, Holocaust jokes, etc.
There are almost no taboos in the clubs. Unless Israeli soldiers were killed in the near past, I cannot think of one taboo. And even this taboo, regarding the killed soldiers, is not really powerful. I have a colleague, for example, who has a whole chunk on dealing with the possibility of informing families that their sons had been killed through an answering machine. And in that chunk, he’s imitating that answering machine, and naming names of really brutal combats that the IDF had fought only few months ago, in Lebanon, and since he’s such a brilliant comedian the whole chunk is hilarious, and the crowd is laughing its pain out. And that’s the same thing concerning the Holocaust. Almost every comedian I know has few Holocaust jokes. It’s said that in Israel there are 6 millions Holocaust jokes – one for each Jew that was murdered. So generally speaking, Israelis are open to most kinds of jokes – if they’re really funny. It’s only if a joke is not funny enough that the issue of taboo is raised.”
“I don’t think you can say that there is a political stand up in Israel. I know that it sounds surprising, considering the whole political situation in Israel, but it doesn’t really exist. You have a lot of stand up dealing with how politicians are dumb, and you have a lot of jokes about situation that are related to politics – for example a description of how Jews in Israel are getting off buses as soon as a Palestinian gets on because of the fear of a suicidal bombs. But it’s much more observational than political. Generally speaking, Israelis are sick and desperate of politics, because change hasn’t come for years. You will not see in Israel a comedian like Bill Maher or Lewis Black, which contains a sort of a message or lesson. I think that this kind of stand up in Israel would be considered archaic and out-of-date. The real problem with the real political stand up – the whole political tradition that Lenny Bruce invented – is that in order to make people react and laugh through it they must believe at a certain level in the possibility of change. In my opinion, this kind of belief does not exist today in the Israeli atmosphere, and that’s why you don’t see in Israel profound political stand up.”
“It is really astonishing how despite all the various types of jokes that are told in Israel’s comedy clubs that 95 percent of Israeli comedians are really comedians of energy. Even the really few abstract comedians are really energetic. You will hardly find in Israel a comic who’s talking slowly, like Todd Barry, for example. I think that’s firstly because Israelis are really “hyperactive” people, very jumpy, and very impulsive. And secondly that’s because a lot of comedians turned to stand up after watching Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious”. It is unbelievable how many Israeli comedians went to Open-Mikes following that movie. And you can really track his huge influence on the energy of the many Israeli stand up comedians.
“I cannot say that all the Israeli demographics are going to the shows. You can see in the crowd a lot of children, a lot of soldiers, a lot of religious people, a lot of Israelis with Russian origins, and some Israeli with Ethiopian origins. But when you look at these people, and analyze them, you can see that the majority of the crowd belongs to the middle class. Generalizing, you will not see in the crowd people working in high-tech or in other liberal professions, and you will not see there bourgeois, or intellectuals. I always see the American comedians commenting on their special shows in colleges, and I always envy them for the opportunity to perform also in front of very high-level sophisticated crowds. And that’s maybe one of the main differences between the stand up in Israel and the stand up in U.S. – the Israeli upper class in Israel do not perceive stand up as an art form. They will go to ballets, and they will go to theaters, and they will go to sport events – but they won’t go to comedy clubs to laugh profoundly.
I think that Israelis really like all kind of jokes. The problem, in my opinion, is that are not exposed to all kinds of comedy. For example, they are not fully exposed to alternative, absurd, or abstract comedy. You will not find too many comics doing Steven Wright-type jokes. However, I can see that as soon as the crowds are exposed to new kinds of comedy – and you do have few comedians who deal with abstract comedy, especially because the enormous influence of the late Mitch Hedberg – the crowd is really receptive, and they laugh and like it. It is interesting to notice that in the past year; I see a small change in the comic influence from U.S. A year ago, Israeli cable started broadcasting stand up from Comedy Central and HBO, so the influence is expanding a little bit and Israelis are exposed to more types of comedy.
In addition to the stand up influences, there is also huge influence from TV comedy, especially the Israeli equivalent of SNL, called “Eretz Nehedert” (“Great Country”). There’s a real gap in Israel between the status of the Israeli humor – which is considered first rate and profound – and the status of the Israeli stand up, which is considered sleazy and dirty entertainment. Unfortunately, neither the crowd nor the clubs have succeeded to bridge that gap. That’s what’s always killing me – Israelis love humor, and jokes, and still they are not really exposed to the art of stand up comedy.”
” Living off comedy is very difficult in Israel. There are perhaps only 10 comedians who are able to live off their comedy, and most of them are not club comedians – they are comedians who appear on TV on a regular basis, and that’s how they attract their audiences. The Israeli audience is small. Stand up is not really popular and not all the demographics come to the show, so the business is pretty rough, and naturally, the majority of the club comedians are supporting themselves financially elsewhere, in various jobs. Few comedians are writing for comedy TV series. One colleague of mine is a security guard in a school, another is a guitar player, and another one is an officer in the army. I myself work as a strategic business consultant, and sometimes I get to perform just one hour after I finish my work in the office, when I’m still wearing business clothes, trying to explain to the crowd with a few prepared jokes why the hell I’m not wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.”
“I’m not sure what sort of jokes I’m actually telling; I’m much more confident about types of jokes I don’t like. I personally don’t like low-level observational humor, and I also don’t like to do pure abstract jokes. I always felt that the Steven Wright type of abstract joke is much more ‘witty’ than hilarious. The thing I really like is sharing a doubt or an emotion with the crowd with a dialog, and then, after raising slowly a serious issue on the table – taking it quickly into a very surreal direction.
For example, I may ask the crowd a few interrogating questions – “Where are you from?” etc., and then I’ll mention that I don’t really do crowd work properly like other comedians do, wondering with them – with a “have you noticed” structure – about situations in which the only way to learn something you can’t handle is to practice on people you know well. And then, I tell them how in order to learn to question a crowd I went to my mother, to practice on her, and how after interrogating her for two minutes she started crying, telling me that I’m adopted. From there, I have a whole chunk about learning that you’re adopted in your late twenties, and how it explains things you have always been wondering. Like how come I’m white and my parents are black, etc.
Another bit starts with me talking about a show I had two weeks ago where I had told some Holocaust jokes and how the crowd reacted badly. Some people even came to me after the show and told me that I hurt their feelings. Then I tell the crowd how I thought about this ability of mine to hurt a crowd’s feelings with my Holocaust jokes and how I don’t want that to happen again. Then I say “So in order to prevent any inconveniences now – are there any Nazis in the room?”. And then I do a whole chunk on the Israeli-Nazi community in Israel, where are their meetings, how are they dating, etc.”
“I’d say the American humor is much more concerned with ‘knowledge’ than with ‘feelings’. I think that if you’d take average American and Israeli comedians, and you’ll give them the same ‘Set-up’ for a joke, they will come back with two different punchlines: generalizing, the American will refer to a fact in the world – in politics, in dating, whatever – and he will gain the laugh by illuminating this common knowledge. The Israeli, however, will illuminate a common feeling – a common fear, or a common hate, etc. It’s as if for Israelis, the real world is happening inside, meaning the world is much more internal than external. And that’s why, in my opinion, there’s much less obsession in Israel with celebrity jokes. Sometimes, when I see American stand-ups, or even the Late Night shows, I’m really amazed how Americans are obsessed with celebrities – Paris Hilton is a whore, Michael Jackson is a child abuser, etc. It’s not that you don’t have celebrity humor in Israel; it’s just that celebrity jokes die much faster. Instead of another joke stating that Paris Hilton is a whore, Israelis comedians will go for a joke dealing with the question, “If you dated Paris Hilton – would you tell your grandma?”
The second difference is cultural. Americans are really pragmatic people, and it affects their whole culture, and consequently their ability to make people laugh. Look, for example, in the differences in the sport culture: Israelis are crazy for soccer, yet they don’t have a very developed lingo concerning soccer. When I see all the terms, shortcuts and abbreviations Americans have in their baseball culture – I really envy them – it’s like Americas have terms to everything in life. And that’s what, in my opinion, lets Americans focus on things better than anybody else. It’s much easier for Americans to describe a picture or to draw a thought and this is one of the core necessities of making people laugh. Israelis are much less focused on things. One moment they are in one place and in a second they are in another one, and the only way to really attract their attention is to tell them things that are either very extreme or very emotional.
Finally there’s a difference in the language. I think English is an easier language to make people laugh with than Hebrew. There’s something in the music of the English language that fits comedy much more. Sometime it feels that American comedians can make a joke using just vowels in the entire sentence, and then changing to consonants just for the punch line. I remember that feeling when I first saw Richard Pryor on DVD. I really felt that on some level I just heard a motion, and then every few seconds he got to the consonants of the punchline – and Blam! Even without understanding the joke – it was explosive. Yon cannot do that in Hebrew. In Hebrew you have three consonants even in a two-letter word and its music is much more ‘Staccato’ than ‘Legato’. Of course I’m not complaining. Hebrew is a beautiful language, and it’s really special and exciting to talk, and dispute, and also to do stand up – in a language that was revived after hundreds of years not being regularly spoken, and yet, it raises unique challenges, and you really have to strive finding elegant solutions to make its music more suitable to comedy.”
