My Life in Jerusalem’s Comedy Scene

Dispatches from a Rookie in the Field of Funny

Here in Israel, it’s halfway through Chanukah, and we have finally resigned ourselves to the winter cold, foraging in the depths of our wardrobe for coats, hats and matching gloves, warm boots and thermal undies. Our cold may be less vicious than the North Sea wind that strikes icy glances at you in London, or the soft downy snowfalls of Eastern Europe, but it is more pervasive.

A chilly blast will hit you when and where you least suspect it, since insulation, as I mentioned elsewhere, isn’t on our national priority list. We have a few weeks of this foul weather, and then—poof!—we throw out the unwanted leftovers of soups and stews, cursing aloud when a favorite sleeveless top hasn’t made it back to our wardrobe. Then the scorching heat, our daily bread, resumes.

This Chanukah I had the rare honor of—woolies n’ all—performing at an all-Anglo stand-up event organized by the charming yet eccentric Benny Leva. Benny greets me at the door looking harassed; he’s multi-tasking with tech and tickets and trying not to be mad at people who happily volunteered but should have showed up an hour ago.

His love of comedy prompted him to pull in the Jerusalem funnies (eight comedians, naturally) for a night of Chanukah entertainment and to warm ourselves temporarily from the literal and metaphorical storms raging outside. Strangely enough, one of the funnies happened to be me.
Help!

Crafting Laughs
If you think churning out regular newsletters and blogs—and meanwhile uttering a fervent prayer that one of them will gain traction—is bloody hard (especially since you are competing with a flood of AI slop), put your creativity to the real test when you try to tease as many laughs as possible from your audience in seven minutes flat. To up the ante, try performing it on stage with nonexistent heating, whilst praying the mike doesn’t act up.

Comedy writing, unlike the stuff I’m penning now, doesn’t involve churning out ever-growing lines of personal expression via metaphors and meanderings in Arial font. No, to be funny, I have to be extremely low-tech. I take out my pen and a notebook from my ever-growing pile that are slowly colonizing my home, and scribble furiously during the inconvenient moments when my creative muse decides to pay a visit.

Then I ask myself, “Is this really funny?” If the answer is no, I erase the offensive stuff and toss the book angrily across the floor. If the answer is yes, I’ve gone up to level 2—that of figuring out the next punchline. And then I might backtrack, asking myself yet again, “But Ella, is it actually a joke that will produce laughs? I mean, maybe you’re the only person in the universe who thinks it’s funny?” Then I’ll spend the next half an hour in an angst of self-doubt and existential doom.
The editing is merciless, the inner voice torturous. When I’m not butchering my own script with a red pen, I’m rehearsing the ultimate cop-out: cancelling. A hundred times a day.

Compared to this, blogging is patient, tolerant and benign. Less responses than I expected? Move on. The stage is the opposite. You walk on stage and feel the audience’s inner scream of “Make us laugh, now!” The world of comedy is immediate and direct, and it doesn’t really care for your turn of phrase or metaphors—unless they are funny, of course.

Yes, I Work for Laughs
Yes, I am an entertainment worker, and my pathetic compensation is laughs. No bonuses, no promotions. Do not pass go. I carefully analyze recordings of my set. How many laughs are loud? How many are just polite giggles? When does my joke meet a stony silence?

On stage it’s much worse. I might fail to hear them altogether. Some people laugh quietly, damn them.

I want them to be roaring—like they do for Yochai Sponder and Shahar Sasson, my two favorite Israeli comedians who perform in English and turn their accents into punchlines. But there are comedy sets I enjoy without laughing out loud all the time, aren’t there? Each time I stand there, wobbling the mike so much I look like I have early onset Parkinson’s, I realize that I’ve still got a very long way to go before I join the Exclusive Funny Club. Perhaps never.

I watch in awe as other, more seasoned comedians saunter onto stage, notebook-free (although I usually use mine for emotional support more than anything else), and deliver their punchlines with slow deliberation, displaying stunning mastery of wit and witticism. Even when a joke bombs, some of them expertly spin it with a pregnant pause or a self-deprecating remark, and are thus able to tease yet more laughs out of the audience.

Why can’t I be more like them? After all, it’s not through want of trying.
I’m serious about my craft. Perhaps that’s my downfall. My notebooks bear witness to the shaving, chipping, and sculpting in the never-ending quest to create the best punchlines and keep them coming. And yet, there are the comedic masters—those who prompt me to laugh so loudly on a bus that fellow passengers consider contacting security. These guys barely seem to care about a set. They simply clear their throats, and the audience are already peeing their pants.
When will my day come, I ask myself?

I Hold a Candle
I might be a minor rookie when it comes to giggles, but I must hold on to the small successes. I must clutch those miniature wins in a world where, in the large scale of things, nobody gives two hoots about my seven minutes on stage—especially not my family.

My first win is that this time I was actually invited to take part in this ticketed event. Like, big wow.
The second is that my photo has gone on Benny’s Facebook page as one of “Jerusalem’s favorite comedians.” I mean, WTF? It was probably because I was the only one on the WhatsApp group who’d obediently sent in their photo and bio.

Enjoy the moment, Ella.
I hold this recognition—a nod to hours spent scribbling and giving timed talks to the wall—like a tiny candle, and make sure nobody blows it out by mistake.

The Evening
In all honesty, it is a great evening. If the comedians are good at one thing other than making people laugh, it is recognizing each other’s talent. We all understand that the little corner we dwell in—where our jokes are muttered in the car, on the train, or under our breaths—can be a very lonely place. This evening, we get to commune in the humorous camaraderie of a wonderful show-and-tell.

The evening features musical entertainment. A talented band is playing Taylor Swift covers, some of which I know and some of which I don’t. A group of young 18–19-year-olds sing along word for word, and I feel very old. I worry that my jokes about middle age, coping with adult children and aging parents simultaneously might bomb. But it’s too late to change anything. In any case, all the walls here are occupied.

The very thought of bombing—especially when I realize that there is some real talent here, people who I cannot hold a candle to (c’mon, let me roll with this metaphor!)—fills me with a nervous energy which is more nervous than it is energy.

My friend Micky, an actress and comedian herself, has come. She’s loyal. She comes to all my acts. She claims that it’s because I’m funny. Am I? Or perhaps she just feels sorry for me. After all, what is a middling mum and grandma doing on stage making Generation X references that a lot of the audience is too young to understand?
Ah, that’s it. Perhaps it’s because she’s closer to my age.

“Break a leg!” she whispers and winks.

I’m up there in the blinding lights, convinced I’ll forget all seven minutes of my carefully prepared set.

When I go on stage, my legs are shaking. Bloody hell! I hope the audience can’t see them. I’m relieved that after trying on five different pairs of pants, I chose the baggy ones for this event. I clutch my notebook, but the words, the extra punchlines and spins, all blur into the white space between stage and blaring lights.

No meandering, my inner voice says with purpose. You will deliver. You will get laughs. And you will do what you do best—tell a story.

The act is always my story. Of middle-age madness and what the world tastes like in its hilarious irony (well, to me, anyway). And I will tell it. Even if it kills me.

The Aftermath
And then, before I know it, the audience are clapping and I’m heading off the stage feeling somewhat dazed. I didn’t blank, and I definitely didn’t bomb. But how funny was I on a scale of one to ten? I pray I was just funny enough to get invited to another event.

Yes, the organizers will wink at each other tolerantly and say, “She’s only been doing this for a year, you know.” That’s a best-case scenario.

I sit down and realize that I’ve finally stopped shaking.
“You were nervous,” Micky says.
Gee, thanks, Micky. Like, duh.
“I’ve never seen you nervous before.”
I feel like killing her, but she’s right.

Note to self: three box breaths before I go on stage. Ignore the previous performer as you focus on getting into the zone.

My husband isn’t one for grand gestures, but he’s proud, I guess.
I hope.

The headliner appears last. His name is Mike Kroll, and he’s come all the way from Tel Aviv to perform. I doubt even his fares got paid. Such is the life of a comedian, and Mike spends a good few minutes on set milking that one. Honestly, everything is material. The more personal, the better. And he doesn’t shy away from radical honesty. He stands there in a relaxed pose, riffs with the audience, talks about his dysfunctional childhood, his homosexuality and his relationship with God. At one point, he rips the mike out and proudly struts off the stage to directly address members of the audience. The laughs come thick and fast, many of them from me.

You see, that is the golden lining of being a comedian—you get to laugh, a lot.

The crowd are in high spirits when the evening draws to a close. I am in my element too, having chatted and networked with all the weirdos and creatives like me. I’m fast feeling a sense of community with the comedy Anglos in Jerusalem, and even those from further afield.

We all share something precious. It’s not about fame or fortune, and it’s most certainly not about money. It’s about taking this ridiculously absurd world we live in and making others laugh about it.

It’s most likely the highest level of creativity there is. We aren’t just reflecting—we are twisting the world we see, like melted copper, into a new form that delights. We are not copying; there is no fanfiction or season five, and AI for sure can’t do the work for us (it’s almost funny how bad AI is at jokes)—it’s us and our seven minutes (except Mike got 20).

Some of the jokes might be old, but the delivery and audience always add a different flavor. We are creating cultural artifacts in real time. We are crafting stories—hysterical ones—that might make people feel less alone in the world. We are the escape button—and we are also real people drinking real beer, feeling the real cold, and being ridiculously real on stage.

Even if we are just joking.
It’s a funny thing, that.