Ben Apfelbaum

THE TRAGEDY OF JEWISH COMEDY @ BONDI PAVILION

David Baddiel
Shoshana Gottlieb
The Tragedy Of Jewish Comedy : A Panel Conversation
David Baddiel and the other panellists
Ben Ellwood
David Baddiel

Since its humble beginnings at Shalom College, through a residency at Waverley library, the Sydney Jewish Writer’s Festival has now held its biggest and most ambitious event at its new home at the Bondi Pavilion.

A  full house with standing room only awaited the four guests – Robyn Reynolds, a standup comedienne, Ben Ellwood, a writer for the TV shows ‘Hard Quiz ‘ and ‘The Project’, David Baddiel from the UK who is described as an intellectual Jew, author of books such as ‘Jews Don’t Count’ and ‘The God Desire’ and Shoshana Gottlieb, a  self styled orthodox Jew whose humour is expressed through memes on the web.

Some in the audience expected a rapid-fire barrage of non-stop jokes, interwoven with those jokes was a serious, in depth discussion of the tragedy that created the aspects of Jewish humour.

Robyn Reynolds revealed  that she suffers from Crohn’s disease, prevalent in Jewish people, and uses it as source material for some of her gags.

Ben Ellwood told a very funny personal story about his  mother’s outrage that Jewish law, and indeed the law of the land, did not allow  her son to be buried with her in the same grave. He found that it was both funny and sad that his mother had such a possessive complex to him.

David Baddiel’s humour used to be about Jews being mean or thrifty or the like. He felt that as long as it was he as  a Jew telling them then it was ok.

He then discovered a wave of anti-Semitism was making its way in to the cognoscenti of the literary and public elite. Many of these groups called out racist policies, bigoted people such as those who are anti gay, anti black people, anti foreigner but that they did not  call out anti-Semites as racist.

So now Baddiel tells jokes that do not rely on anti Jewish stereotypes but can contain a dark element that is inherent in Jewish humour.

He then went on to tell a surprised audience a Holocaust joke.

‘Moishe is walking up the stairs to  heaven and meets God. God asks Moishe to tell him  a Holocaust joke. After he told the joke God told Moishe that it wasn’t funny. Moishe replied, ‘Maybe you had to there’.

The ‘discovery’ of the night was Shoshana Gottlieb with her droll, humorous interaction with the other panellists and the projection of her hilarious memes. She stressed that with the Israel/Arab conflicts, and the internal politics of Israel.

Questions were relayed via QR code to Robyn Reynolds. However  there was some very funny questions directed to Shoshana from her mother who was in  the audience.

Another question arose as to whether woke culture was censoring humour.  Robyn Reynolds felt that woke culture had improved her situation as a female comedian, for example in relation to hecklers.

Further enhancing  the multi-media nature of the event, each guest had a short video clip highlighting their approach to Jewish humour.

The event was a resounding success and the Jewish audience who can be highly critical were enthusiastic in their praise of this event.

Text and photos by Ben Apfelbaum 

 

 

 

 

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.