
It’s common wisdom that some of the best comedians are outsiders, standing at the fringe of society lobbing critiques inward. But it’s also common wisdom that white, tall, blond, Catholics are not outsiders, at least not in America, at least for another year or two. In fact they’re pretty much the norm. But Jim Gaffigan, the platonic ideal of whiteness itself, has made a career out of proving just how outside the inside can be. I spoke with him after a show Saturday night in Jerusalem’s accurately named “Comedy Basement.”
Gaffigan came up in the New York comedy scene, so performing for an audience made up of 99 percent Jews isn’t really new for him, but performing in the birthplace of monotheistic religion is a bit different, especially for Gaffigan who covers a range of biblical stories in his stand-up, and was here with his family on religious pilgrimage.
Being on vacation, the show was laid back, and his already characteristic glottal fry (that swallowing your own voice syndrome that your grandmother may have chided you for in seventh grade was kicked into overdrive. He also eschewed his inside voice conceit almost entirely (perhaps because the Midwesterner it usually refers to wasn’t in this audience?), but he still brought his full attention to the crowd, with some classic material, some new material and a range of jokes and segues specific to the Middle East.
Gaffigan’s appreciation for the setting was evident right from the start, as he began with a rousing “Thank you, thank you, wow it’s like my bar mitzvah! it’s gonna be weird doing this not in Hebrew. Chag Sameach,” but his self-described geo-political dorkiness really shone through over the next few minutes as he rattled off a string of Israel-centric jokes, talking about the Israeli breakfast (”there is no meat, but to make up for it we will offer every other food possible”), his heritage (”as you can tell by looking at me, I’m an Ethiopian Jew”) and Israeli demographics (Eilat is like the Jersey Shore of Israel”).
In an interaction with a pale blond audience member he got a big laugh just by saying “so you must be Sephardic,” adding, “I never thought I would be able to use any of this information.” For those of you without the context to judge, I swear that all these jokes are dead on, and with Saturday’s audience they hit hard.
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