What’s More Powerful than a Failed Punchline?

It was a busy fall Sunday. Errands, meal prep, middle school baseball. After my son Nati finally “locked in” to finish his homework, we rewarded ourselves with some ice cream and the previous night’s episode of Saturday Night Live.

We were looking forward to laughing together. Instead, we ended up turning off the TV.

SNL is a guilty pleasure for some of us in our family. We generally watch individual sketches rather than full episodes, sharing our favorites with my daughter and son-in-law in Israel and asking each other if we’ve seen the latest one. Sketches like Domingo, Snack Homies, and Marcello Hernández impersonating Sebastian Maniscalco just make us laugh. The catchphrases become our own inside jokes.

One of my all-time favorites is Bronx Beat with Jodi and Betty. They’re two moms who love their families, but express it in their own hair-sprayed, gum-cracking, Bronx-accented way. I watch those sketches when I’m feeling down and they make me laugh every time.

That’s what comedy is about. It gives us a break from the everyday. It lets us feel something different from the humdrum boredom of walking through the grocery store aisles, sitting on the train to work, or cleaning the kitchen.

And sometimes, it’s just a fun way to spend time together.

Which brings me back to Sunday night.

As Weekend Update got underway, Michael Che weighed in on the Israeli election voter turnout. It took him seconds to get to his version of a punchline, which was the word “genocide.”

Nati and I looked at each other, our jaws dropping in shock. It felt like we’d been punched in the stomach. Nati’s instinct was to define the word genocide to show it didn’t have anything to do with election turnouts. But we knew that wasn’t it.

We kept watching for a little while, but it was like eating when you can’t taste the food. Whatever enjoyment we’d been anticipating was gone. Finally, we turned it off.

Now, I don’t expect Michael Che to care about Israel. He’s made anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist jokes before. And I’m fully aware that SNL has a strong political bent. When you watch a show like this — or so much entertainment today — you know what you’re signing up for.

That’s why it’s only a guilty pleasure for some of us in our family. My husband, for example, doesn’t find the entertainment value worth the price of being maligned on national television. These days, it’s hard to avoid the public spewing of hatred and lies against Jews and Israel. So why put yourself purposely in the line of fire?

It makes Dara Horn’s explanation of antisemitism – that it’s not a bias, but a lie – ring so true. Horn explains that societies gain or maintain power by holding Jews responsible for destroying their most sacred values. Those values change depending on the time and place, but the underlying mechanism remains the same.

For example, if a society is communist, then the lie is that Jews are capitalist pigs. In a Christian society, the lie is that Jews killed Christ. If your value is human rights, then Israel is accused of human rights abuses, never mind that it’s the Iranian regime making the accusation.

People who believe and spread the lie don’t necessarily hate people because they’re Jewish. After all, I’m sure Michael Che doesn’t hate his Jewish boss, Lorne Michaels (born Lorne Lipowitz). Instead, they think they’re standing up for society’s values. And regardless of how preposterous the lie is, the more people hear it, the more they believe it’s true.

That’s what those few seconds on Weekend Update did. They helped perpetuate a lie about Israel and gave the American public permission to laugh about it.

When I was a teenager growing up in America, being Jewish was part of my identity, but I never had to defend my people’s very existence. Nobody was blaming us for the rising price of bananas.

But my teenage son is growing up in a different world. He wears his kippah proudly, but he’s aware he could get judged – or worse – for it. He sees the hateful graffiti as we drive around Washington, DC, and has even personally faced unhinged protesters screaming at him just because he is Jewish.

So what can we do? Because trying to engage with the Michael Ches of the world isn’t the answer. There are too few of us and too many of them. It would be like playing a game of whack-a-mole: Knock one out and there’s another one coming right behind it.

Instead, we can engage with everything Israel has to offer. Because there is a place, a culture, and an entertainment industry where we don’t have to justify our existence or worry about who is going to libel us next.

We can watch Eretz Nehederet, the Israeli political sketch comedy show, where the criticism comes from a place of national pride. Sure, everyone disagrees and argues. But it’s because they love Israel – each in their own way, challenges and all. One sketch brings this to life: Israel’s political party leaders scheme against each other as they try to scale a mountain. What’s at the summit? The same blue and white flag that belongs to us all.

Of course, watching Israeli TV might not be as easy as watching a show in English. But the easy way isn’t as easy as it used to be.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that strength in ourselves is what keeps us going. And that strength is a lot more powerful than any punchline.