It’s a laughing matter at JW3 as comedians raise funds for Beit Halochem
Zach Margs, Shahar Cohen and Olga Namer among stars who performed at sold-out show
It’s good to laugh. So good, in fact, that the Jew-ish Comedy Night at JW3 in aid of Beit Halochem sold out in minutes and a second date was added. Social media star Zach Margs compered a group of five Jewish comedians, giving us plenty of his own shtick before, after and indeed in between their individual 12-minute acts and for almost two hours the sound of laughter could be heard reverberating around the room.
Zach began the evening with a string of amusing tales – ranging from the one about the Chabad rebbe who died on the day he was born which makes him think he has Moshiach powers, the Pret employee who became more Jewish as his interactions with Zach pursued and the strategy of encouraging negative comments on his videos to drive engagement which has resulted in his father commenting ‘Free Palestine’ on all his posts (it’s a joke).
Read more about Zach Margs here.
First up was Candy Gigi, who did a skit about appearing in Borehamwood’s Got Talent, dreaming of being crowned the best singer and dancer in north west London, while her mother had other goals – to marry her off, proclaiming: “We are a dying breed and it’s kids we need.”
Leeds-born Debra Tammer touched on antisemitism, parenting and marriage with amusing insights from her time spent living in New York (exiting a changing room in a shop to be told by another customer “it doesn’t suit you”).
Deli Segal talked about Jewish identity and trying to find the right kind of shul service, claiming that Norrice Lea is Hebrew for talking but turning to face a portrait of Dame Henrietta Barnett at a service at the eponymous school was just weird. She got a lot of laughs when explaining the ‘frumness’ scale – frum, not so frum and not frum at all, with the definition of the least religious being those who “buy their challahs from M&S”.
Shahar Cohen
Israeli social media star Shahar Cohen appeared as his female alter ego Nofar Levi and has “come here to teach you all how to live in Israel”, with highly amusing and brilliant tips about how not wait in line (I’m not giving them away). He/she then proceeded to try and find a husband from the audience and got three possible contenders up on stage.
Self-proclaimed alcoholic anorexic comedian Olga Namer, who grew up orthodox in Brooklyn and was first married at 17, had everyone chuckling behind their hands with her very droll, very risqué blend of humour.
Zach closed out by reminding us that the money raised would support more than 60,000 injured veterans in Israel and gave a fictitious reading-out of the larger donations from the night (a reference to a story he had told earlier of a gala dinner in LA where live donations of millions of dollars were made).
We all went out into the cold night giggling, good humouredly debating who we’d found the funniest.
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