Comedy Roundup

David Bashevkin:

Hello and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast, where each month we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host, David Bashevkin, and this month we’re exploring not our typical fare. We’ve already entered into our summer programming, and we do have new interviews dropping in just a few weeks. But what we’ve decided to do instead is to go back to some of those earlier topics that we covered in our early, early months, and this episode is going to be talking about comedy.

Now this dropped when we didn’t have the viewership, thank God, that we’ve built over the last year. And you could go on 18Forty.org. That’s 1-8-F-O-R-T-Y.org, or of course scroll back earlier and listen to the full episodes. But that’s not what we’re going to be doing today. We’re going to be taking a broad, big picture perspective on what we covered that month and why we spoke about comedy. And it frankly is a fair question. I believe we covered this topic as our third topic right out of the gate, and people could rightfully wonder, again, there are a lot of Jewish questions that people have, a lot of Jewish ideas. Is comedy number three? Is it in your top five, so to speak?

And it’s a very fair question. I think it’s only compounded by the fact that we’re about to enter into the days of mourning. And every summer – and this summer it’s even more stark – we always have on the Jewish calendar Tisha B’Av in the month of Av, which we aren’t quite in. I wouldn’t drop this during the month of Av. But it’s the month of Av that appears every summer, where we have this strange feeling where on the one hand, we’re in camp, it’s summertime, things are lighter and breezier. And right in the middle of the summer, every single year on the Hebrew calendar, is Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, the temple in Jerusalem. And people could rightfully wonder, I’ve always felt this in camp, where camp is so fun and the summer is a little bit breezier. What role is there? How do you reconcile the fact that we’re supposed to be thinking and preserving memory in a way? And we do have, God willing, a very special episode that we’ll be dropping right before Tisha B’Av. But in the summer time, I always felt this strange dissonance of, “Are we allowed to enjoy ourselves during this time?” And I think both of these questions intersect in a really important way and where much of the subject that we spoke about during this month, which is the religious value within comedy. Why comedy, I believe, is so important in constructing religious identity. It’s so important as a Jew. And really, in many ways, it is the inverse of the way that we confront and approach tragedy.

I’ve mentioned many, many times that what 18Forty is trying to do is going to points of dissonance, theological, sociological, and emotional dissonance that we have in our lives, between the stories and ideas that we have heard, and our lived experience, our lived lives, what we read and what we see out in the world. And comedy more than anything else is that negotiation with dissonance. What makes something funny? This is a question that a lot of philosophers have actually dealt with, and there’s one approach from the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who says as follows. He explains it this way. What makes something funny? So he says, “Many human actions can only be performed by the help of reason and deliberation, and yet there are some which are better performed without its assistance. This very incongruity of sensuous and abstract knowledge on account of which the latter always merely approximates to the former, as mosaic approximates to painting, is the cause of the very remarkable phenomenon which, like reason itself, is peculiar to human nature, and of which the explanations that have ever a new been attempted as insufficient. I mean laughter. The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.” What a brilliant idea.

So often when we are in academic settings, when we’re at work, in our professional lives, we want the product of our work to cohere, to reflect the effort that we put in, the value of that work. Humor and comedy is when there is dissonance. It’s when the reality that you see doesn’t measure up to the expectations that you had internally. When you think of something as funny, the classic setup, and this is really said by the great Jewish theologian known as the Maharal, who says that humor is the subversion of expectations. If you see somebody in a really fancy suit, coming in like a big shot on their cell phone and all these things, you expect them to be this suave, smooth-talking person. And if as they walk in they slip on a banana peel, it’s going to be hard to hold back your laughter, because sequentially, A, B, C, you saw this person who was pompous and arrogant and self-important, and all of a sudden A, B, C, skip to Z, when they’re on the floor because they slipped on a banana peel.

Obviously we hope that they’re fine, and if they were injured you may not actually laugh. But that classic setup of A, B, C, and then skipping to Z is the subversion of expectations. Which Schopenhauer said, “Laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.” And that’s why I think comedy is actually something worth reflecting on, particularly when we have this incongruence of the summer time itself. When we’re trying to relax and unwind, and at the same time, we’re entering this time, which is a time of mourning. There’s an inherent incongruity in what we are doing and experiencing. And in many ways comedy and tragedy are the inverse of one another. They are both looking at the same incongruity. They are both looking at the same subversion of expectations. It was not supposed to turn out this way. A, B, C was supposed to proceed to D, E, and F, and instead it skipped all the way down to X, Y, and Z.

When we have this subversion of expectations, it can sometimes totally erode our perspective and approach to the world. That’s when we cry, that’s when we have tragedy, that’s when we become stunted and ossified in a moment, not sure even how to react. Comedy takes that same incongruity and finds a place for joyfulness and finds a place for laughter. So before we get into the clip show, at the very least, it would only be fair, wherever you are, if you’re vacationing, you’re on an airplane, you’re driving up to the mountains, I wanted to take a few moments out and just give you my recommendations for the people who not only influenced my comedy, but the people who I think are just great, wholesome, kosher fun that you can listen to. They’re not all Jewish, and that’s okay, but it’s just the style of comedy that I think can be appreciated in these incongruous times.

I’m going to go through a short list, and then we’re going to kind of jump into the episode recap. The first comedian that you must check out if you’ve never seen him before, he has shows on Netflix, you could see his stuff on YouTube. He’s super clean. I mean this is really Mehadrin kosher. The highest level of kosher. He’s absolutely wonderful and has this really great take on family life and storytelling that I think our listeners will find particularly enchanting. If you’ve never heard him before, his name is Nate Bargatze, which I think I pronounced his last name correctly. He has specials on Netflix. And I love him so much because of his bit about fathers and their knowledge of what’s going on in their children’s lives.

Nate Bargatze:

One thing my daughter does miss is she was starting to ride the bus, which is very fun. And when she first started riding the bus, we switched schools. It was in first grade. First day of school we walked her to the bus stop. It was a very fun day. And then at the end of the school day, someone from the school called my cellphone. They have my wife’s cellphone and they have my cellphone. So they called my cellphone, and they said, “Hey, do you know what bus number your daughter’s supposed to be on?” And I said, “I’m her dad.” I was like, “This is how you thought, you saw a mom and dad’s cell phone and you said, ‘I bet the dad knows.’ I mean do you have parents? Were you raised with a family? Have you ever seen families out before? You thought, ‘Let’s call the husband. I bet he knows.’” Unless there’s two husbands, you should never call a husband a day in your life. I would rather you ask a lady that doesn’t know her walking by. I think she could get to the bottom of it quicker than I can. Finally, I just said, “All right. I’ll get her. What’s the name of the school?”

David Bashevkin:

The second comedian that I absolutely love, and I feel like this is the patron saint of yeshiva humor. He’s the comedian that was passed along. I know the person who really introduced him to me. His name is Eliezer Williams. Somebody, a family I grew up with, I’m quite close with. And I remember he pointed out to me, we stayed up all night in yeshiva listening to Mitch Hedberg. He just has this very sharp, wry, dry sense of humor. Unfortunately his life ended quite tragically. He died very young. But to reach out and connect to his humor, it is so sharp, it flies right under the radar. Check him out, you could find his specials, also very easy to find on YouTube. And he always had a special place in my heart because of his wonderful bit about my absolutely favorite food: rice.

Mitch Hedberg:

I like rice. Rice is great when you’re hungry and you want 2000 of something.

David Bashevkin:

And Lord knows, those in my family who know me well: if you leave a full pot of rice out without supervision, it will be gone the next morning. I cannot be trusted around rice. And I just absolutely love Mitch Hedberg, the way he looks at things so sharply. He has this really wonderful bit that I think about when I go into these stores, buy these products. This is back in the day when we were not really shopping online. But he has this wonderful bit about buying a donut.

Mitch Hedberg:

I bought a donut, and they gave me a receipt for the donut. I don’t need a receipt for a donut. I’ll just give you the money. You give me the donut. End of transaction. We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this. I just cannot imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a donut. Some skeptical friend. Don’t even act like I didn’t get that donut. I got the documentation right here. Oh, wait. It’s back home in the file under D for donut. And we all know what D is.

David Bashevkin:

And for my family, and every Sunday, not so much anymore, but we used to take our kids to Dunkin Donuts. I think about this bit every time when my wife hands me the $11 receipt for our collective breakfast. I think the genre of Jewish humor is constantly evolving, and there were obviously some absolute greats. Jackie Mason… I’m afraid to even start getting into particular names. We talk about Jackie Mason in the interview we’re just about to head into. I think for me, and I don’t know that I could call her absolutely kosher, but I think the voice, the voice of Jewish mothers to me has always been Joan Rivers of blessed memory. I first was introduced to Joan Rivers comedy, to be quite honest, with her cameo in the movie that played a formative role in my comedic taste and personal development. And that is, of course, Muppets Take Manhattan.

And I just love, I think more than anything else about her comedy, and what makes her comedy so Jewish isn’t necessarily that she’s telling Jewish jokes, but a lot of it is just her very tone. This is from a classic monologue when she was taking over for Johnny Carson. She used to sub in, her and Johnny Carson later had a falling out. I’m sorry. I keep peppering all these episodes with fun facts about the history of late night comedy. But she has this very fun bit about – it’s a little stereotypical – about marriage.

Joan Rivers:

I’m married 18 years, and let me tell you, things have changed. When you first get married they open the car door for you. 18 years now, once he opened the car door for me in the last four years. We were on the freeway at the time. It changes. It changes. In the old days he used to take me out to dinner. Last night I said, “I’d like to go out to dinner.” He kicked my dish on the porch. Yes.

David Bashevkin:

And for me, Joan Rivers as a Jewish comedian is not because of the Jewish jokes. It’s because of her intonation, her pronunciation, her voice, which is like deliberately grating in this hilarious, comedic sense, and played a huge role in the way that I look and try to transmit Jewish ideas. It’s not always about the idea being Jewish, but sometimes the tone, the structure, the way you tell it over. It’s not always what you say, of course, sometimes it’s how you say it.

But for me, I think in comedy, and this is kind of the last of the comedians that I’m going to mention, because he was a guest on our show. Just to review, Nate Bargatze, you must check him out. Mitch Hedberg, anybody looking for kosher comedy, they need to be on your list. But finally, the last person we’re putting on the list is a guest who we had on 18Forty. And you can check out the full interview. We’re going to share some snippets with you now. And that is the great Gary Gulman. Now, he of course, is a Jewish comedian. He talks about Judaism, and we’ll talk a little bit about that. But I think so much of the scenarios and the storytelling, the way that he gives things over, there’s something distinctly Jewish about it. And he has this one bit that I absolutely love, and I’ll share with you now, which, it’s not overtly Jewish. But what is more Jewish than a little bit of an incident at that great store, which isn’t officially Jewish, but I feel like it’s an honorary member of the Jewish family. And that, of course, is Trader Joe’s.

Gary Gulman:

I want to tell you a story of my meltdown at Trader Joe’s. I love that place. I love Trader Joe’s. They are so thoughtful there. They’re nice. Everybody does everybody else’s job from the top to the bottom. It’s no doubt communist. Now, the people who shop at Trader Joe’s, at least in New York City, they’re godless animals. They are pushy. They put their carts in the checkout line, half full, and then continue to pick up items and bring it back so that there’s this empty field of carts. And I do the right thing, and I’m standing there, and last week, a woman disappeared for so long that a gap developed between her cart and the rest of the line. And so I filled it and prepared myself for a showdown.

Because I knew just by the time of day and the neighborhood what was going to come back. I just knew. It was during the day, so she was wealthy, entitled, aggressive, pushy. I even predicted the first two words of her sentence when she returned, because she came back arm full of frozen foods. Meaning she went downstairs to frozen foods. A 10 minute round trip. The audacity. Nay, the temerity.

She puts them into the carriage, and she’s… And I knew the first two words. She says, “Yeah. No. I was ahead of you.” And so I said, “No. Yeah.” Flipped it. “You were ahead of me until you went shopping. You can’t go downstairs to frozen foods, come back with an armful, and take your spot in line. The best I can offer you at this point is back cutsies, and that’s incredibly generous.”

But she was not going quietly. She pushed me in the basket and went ahead. And I’m standing, I’m like, “Is somebody going to do something about this?” And then I realized I was old enough and big enough to do something on my own. So I took a stand, which consisted of raising my fist, ’68 Mexican Olympic style, completely inappropriate. And then my slogan was, “This isn’t fair.” Thinking I would start a groundswell of support and the people would rally behind me and chant USA. Silence. Silence. Except for a guy behind me who said, “Oh, here we go.” And then there was this eerie glow as the people raised their phones and switched from pic to vid.

And I would have backed down, except the woman who cut me after I said, “This very…” She turns around and she says, “You’ll get over it.” Thereby ensuring that I would never get over it. I will never… I know myself, I’ll never get over it. So, I picked up my basket and I jab faked left, and she bit. So I crossed over to get the baseline on her, and she was spry. She spun and rammed me in the basket, crushing my lentil chips, rendering them useless, because they’re for dipping not for topping.

Now at this point, I’m out of my mind with rage and I scream, “That’s assault. That is assault. Ring the bell. I’ve been struck.” And that is when she realized she had been out crazied. And she started her retreat, but she got a couple of digs in on me at the end. She said, “Fine. Fine. Go ahead of me if it’s that important to you.” It is. If what’s that important to me, justice? Yeah. It’s that important to me. “But you should know…,” she says, “you should know that you’re allowed to leave your cart in New York City. That’s how it works.” “Yeah. No.”

David Bashevkin:

But what I spoke about with Gary that I thought was really interesting was how he navigates the world of Jewish humor, and what Jewish humor means to him. A lot of it, of our discussion, was couched on a bit he made about the Holocaust, which I actually think was very well executed. And instead of undermining, God forbid, the seriousness of the Holocaust, the joke was about people who don’t appreciate the gravity of what that was. And this is how it went.

Gary Gulman:

My friend recommended a documentary to me recently about Hitler. It was about Hitler’s atrocities. But my friend, God love her, she couldn’t think of the word “atrocities”. She tried to cover for a second. She went, “Ah,” while she searched for a synonym. But it didn’t come out right. She said, “Gary, I saw this very interesting documentary about Hitler’s shenanigans.” Shenanigans. Not even close. And as a Jew, I’m obviously not overly sensitive, but when people trivialize Hitler’s monkey business, when the Nazi’s hijinks, tomfoolery, and ballyhoo is understated, I feel it does a disservice to the millions who were inconvenienced by Hitler’s mischief. Tomato, tomato. Shenanigans, genocide.

David Bashevkin:

So when I sat down with Gary, one of the things that we spoke about is, what exactly is Jewish humor about? And here is our conversation, a snippet about what informs his Jewish comedy.

In a lot of your comedy, it’s not a consistent theme at all, and I don’t even know if you agree with the notion of something called Jewish comedy. It has very hacky connotations. Shticky, all these routines that you can almost finish the line. But you do have these appearances of, both the Jew – When you put the “the” it sounds maybe a little anti-Semitic. I don’t know, maybe I should… But Jewish people pop up –

Gary Gulman:

Right. Only Jews should be using “the Jew”.

David Bashevkin:

Yeah. And also you have… The Holocaust has come up. You have a great bit. I think it was such a well-executed Holocaust joke. When you talk about a friend who was trying to find the right words to describe what Hitler had done, and he used the term –

Gary Gulman:

Yeah. Hitler’s shenanigans.

David Bashevkin:

Shenanigans. He used the word “shenanigans,” which is a great bit. But I was wondering, do you, and maybe in retrospect or consciously, do you look as Jewish identity and forming your comedy, or those are two separate tracks?

Gary Gulman:

No certainly, I think there’s an ethic there as far as… I mean maybe it’s not Jewish the religion, but Jewish the immigrant, which is to really work hard in your studies.

David Bashevkin:

To prove yourself.

Gary Gulman:

Well, to be prepared, to be hard-working, to be industrious, to use your potential. And then, so I learned early on that it was important to be different on stage. And in Boston at the time there weren’t many Jewish comedians, and the ones who were Jewish didn’t really talk about being Jewish that much. And I was able to sort of stand out by… I wanted to… I wasn’t really even trying to stand out as much as I wanted to be original, and I don’t want to do jokes that other guys were doing. So I found it easy to have different jokes, if I was talking from being a Jewish man rather than what the other guys were talking about. They would talk about their Catholic upbringings or their Italian or their Irish, and so that was the first part. But I know that I love certain authors who keep coming back to certain ideas. Like I love John Irving. John Irving usually has certain things, whether it be amateur wrestling, or children, or just, the circus is a big one, bears. Just things that he keeps coming back to.

And with me, it’s my Jewish upbringing and my Jewish ideas. And I remember one of the things when I first started was, I want to be a comedian I would like to see. And I knew in Boston when I went to the comedy shows, there was nobody talking about being Jewish. So I knew that I would want to see that. And I had grown up and I was a fan of Richard Lewis and David Brenner, and to a certain extent there was one album by Jackie Mason that I really connected to, this one called The World According to Me.

And later on his politics turned me off, but that album was very special at the time, and holds up, partially. So, I knew that I had a very, it was easy for me to make Jewish jokes, because I had a pretty good knowledge of our religion and our people and certain aspects of it. And I had strong feelings about certain things, whether it be the trivialization of Hitler, or I have been harping for years and years on a joke about the use of, and especially in sports, of the term “Sophie’s choice”. It was Sophie’s choice.

David Bashevkin:

Oh, yes.

Gary Gulman:

There’s always some trade or draft failure. Sophie’s choice, and it’s just such a lazy and hurtful use of the tragedy.

David Bashevkin:

Do you know where that term came from?

Gary Gulman:

Yeah. I don’t expect you to have read the novel, but the film was everywhere. So I feel very competent and skilled in talking about our people, and just my experiences, and also the… I mean, some of it I feel bad for, I kind of feel bad about making fun of the athletic…

David Bashevkin:

The athletic ability of Jews.

Gary Gulman:

Yeah.

David Bashevkin:

That’s what makes you feel bad?

Gary Gulman:

A little bit, because it’s so funny that they had a collapsible rim at the Jewish Community Center, but I feel like, “All right. I’m piling on this thing about Jews not being able to jump high.”

David Bashevkin:

They had a collapsible rim just in case the five foot six year olds –

Gary Gulman:

Yeah, but we were 10-year-old kids, and I thought it was so absurd. But I tried to make it about the caution that goes into Jewish parenting –

David Bashevkin:

Gotcha.

Gary Gulman:

And I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t do that now. But one thing that I am proud of was that I became very angry at anti-Semitism very early, at six or seven years old. And finally, in my 30s, I was able to formulate a joke which combined this sort of pride over the contributions of Jews, and also an acknowledgement and a chastising of the hypocrisy of anti-Semitism, where you’re more than happy to try to wipe these people out or denigrate them or humiliate them, but you use all these things that we invented, created, or produced without any kind of reluctance or recognize the irony.

David Bashevkin:

Exactly. I love the way Gary kind of very subtly incorporates Jewish humor into his bits. He’s not officially a Jewish comedian, though you could bring him into shul. I heard him perform in Teaneck, and he was absolutely wonderful. A plug to bring him in, find a way for him to run your events. He’s really just knockout.

But one of the things that drew me to him, and we’ve developed, I think, a very special friendship, and the way that we’ve done that is really what drew me to his comedy, is the way that he talks about mental health. He had a special that dropped I think a few days before Yom Kippur on HBO called The Great Depresh. And in that special, he really opened up about his personal struggles with depression. And he had an earlier comedy bit that he did on Stephen Colbert where, without using the word “depression” even once, he spoke about what it felt like in a hilarious way, but his own struggle and grappling with depression itself. And this was the bit.

Gary Gulman:

I’m having a good day. Yesterday was tough. I slept too late. I slept… All I know is that I woke up and I was immediately praying, “Please be am. Please be am.” I turned over my phone, it was 1:52 PM. 1:52 PM. And you’re thinking, “Oh, you must have gone to bed really late.” 11:00. I slept through an entire ‘m’. By the way, I woke up at 1:52 PM. I didn’t get up at 1:52 PM. When did waking up and getting up become two separate negotiations? Successful people have no idea what I’m talking about. They wake up, they get up, they start dominating the world. Everybody else, there’s promises and compromises and bargains.

The other day I said to myself, I couldn’t believe it, I said, “Gar…” I’m very gentle with myself. I said, “Gar, just brush your top teeth.” Why is it so hard to get out of bed? I’ll tell you why. Because the thing that they don’t tell you growing up about life is this: life, it’s every single day. The thing that gets me through though is donuts and ice cream. I love ice cream, but I have this thing where I have to… I don’t want to eat the entire pint, so I say, just eat half the pint. But then, when I get halfway through, I have this compulsion where I need to leave a flat surface.

Who am I leaving the flats for, the day crew? They’ll come in and be outraged by all the crags and crannies in this it’s… But I find myself eating it flat. I eat more, and then I’ll come across a chocolate chunk, and I’ll have to excavate that. And then there’s a pothole. I got to smooth that over. I’m doing all this ice cream masonry work. And then it starts to melt around the edges, and that’s delicious, so I have to eat that.

Before I know it, I’ve hit bottom. Literally and figuratively, I’ve hit bottom. And I finish the ice cream, and I put the fork down. More often than not I use a fork to eat ice cream, and if you eat ice cream with a fork, I know you so well. I know you so well. Because my policy is, I’m not washing a spoon until I’m all out of forks. And people say, “Why don’t you just wash a spoon?” Hah. Why don’t I shower?

Fork prints and ice cream. Oh, if I see fork prints, I know your world. Fork prints in ice cream are evidence of a life in chaos. Chaos. If I see fork prints in your ice cream, I don’t need to see your kitchen. I know the dishes are piled so high you can’t refill the Brita. Not that I should refill the Brita. I haven’t changed the filter in four years. I don’t need to go into your bedroom. I know there’s no top sheet on your bed. The top sheet is tacked up over the window as a curtain. I don’t need to go into your bathroom. I know that the new roll of toilet paper is resting on the empty spool.

David Bashevkin:

And when Gary says, “Life, huh? It’s every single day.” There’s something about that grind, that Sisyphean battle of just moving forward, no matter the obstacles, no matter the difficulty, that resonated so deeply with me. And while I’m attracted to many styles of comedy, there’s something about Gary’s voice and the realness of his struggle that comes out in what I think is an extraordinarily profound way, because he struggled in a profound way.

And the way that he shares it with his audience, we’ve spoken together. He’s become an educator of sorts of how to navigate that world of mental health and comedy, which I’ve always felt, there’s something intertwined about both of them. It’s about having to perform for an audience, about having your self-worth dependent on somebody else’s approval, that so many comedians grapple with this. And you can check out this essay that I wrote on the website. It’s entitled Gary Gulman: This Impossible Life, where I spoke a little bit about how I think the experience of comedians mirrors in many ways the experience of being a rabbi or an educator. When you walk into the classroom, so much of your self-worth ends up becoming dependent on the audience receiving what you’re giving, and it doesn’t have that more objective procedure like, I don’t know, like a surgeon or a mechanic or whatever it is.

There’s something about your success is dependent on the approval of somebody else. And this is true, of course, with every job. But I think in a real way, comedians, educators struggle with this in a different way, which is why I personally have been drawn to comedy in helping me navigate my own struggles of my feelings of self-worth, being dependent on an audience.

And what I found so remarkable about his struggle, and really what we spoke about next in the conversation, is the fear of being average. When you are dependent on other people’s approval, when you’re dependent, or you feel like you’re dependent, on the emails telling you, “Oh, that was wonderful. That was important.” Or the applause, or rabbi, that was a great speech, or a great whatever. And everybody has something in their life, even if they’re not an educator or not a rabbi, where some of their self-worth is tied up in somebody else’s approval, and you want to be great, you want to be excellent. When you walk away from something, and you feel just average or mediocre in the reception, it’s very easy to allow that to become your very self-worth. And that’s the struggle that Gary and I spoke about.

You used a phrase that, you’ve used a lot of phrases that I feel like underneath them have almost religious language. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit, you mentioned on that interview about the fear of being average. And when I think about that, aside from the fact of how much it resonates with me, and so many people I know growing up in the Jewish world, that need for perfectionism and distinguishing yourself. It gets to like, not even a Jewish point, but like a human point.

Gary Gulman:

An American point I think.

David Bashevkin:

An American point of needing to seek distinction. There’s this book called The Most Human Human, which is about somebody who takes a Turing test. The Turing test is basically, you have a conversation via text with computers, and it’s a way to measure if a computer could have artificial intelligence, if the computer can mimic actual conversation.

So somebody took this test as a human being to try to see, because you’re talking to computers and you’re talking to humans. So one person took this test as a human being to see as the confederate, can the judges, can he fool the judges to know if you’re human or computer? And he was reflecting on his experiences, and they asked him, “So what do you think makes humans most human? What are the telltale signs, if you’re having a text conversation with judges via text, that would distinguish a human being from a computer? What can we say? What can we experience that a computer can’t?”

And he said, “Throughout history, we’ve had a lot of ways that we’ve tried to distinguish our humanity. It used to be that we were the best at chess. We’re not that anymore. We’re the best at Jeopardy. We’re not that anymore.” He said, “I think humans are the only people who have angst and anxiety about what makes them unique,” almost turning the question in on itself.

Gary Gulman:

Wow.

David Bashevkin:

And I was wondering, I feel like fear of being average to you is, again, I’m not putting you on the Freudian couch right now. I’m just curious. It intersects with a search for a sense of choseness, of distinction, of trying to reconstruct and feel like, “I am here for a purpose. An affirmation of having a purpose in life.” Which is, I feel like… Does that resonate?

Gary Gulman:

Well, I think that there were probably two things going on. Because I had that feeling of not wanting to be average at a very young age, maybe as early as seven or eight. And I think part of it was that I was depressed and convinced that I was depressed. I didn’t know it was the word for “depressed”. I just didn’t like myself and I didn’t think much of myself, and I was very sad and lonely a lot, and felt very uncomfortable around other kids.

I was convinced that what needed to happen was I would have to get great at something, and then I would like myself. Because I saw how I responded to people who were great at things, and later it became mostly about sports. That I loved basketball. I loved basketball players. If I got really good at basketball, then I would like myself, then people would appreciate and respect me. But I realized occasionally but then hopefully finally after reading Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography. Bruce Springsteen, I forget how old he was. Either 58 or around there, but older, and he couldn’t get out of bed. He was very depressed. And I thought, “Oh. It’s not about working hard and being great at something. He’s the ultimate in working hard and being great at something. This is chemical. This is not me feeling bad because I’m not great.”

And when I’ve said that during interviews, and I’ve heard back from people who’ve said, “Well, yeah, not feeling good about yourself until you do something great, well that’s just human.” And no. No. There are people who feel good about themselves and enjoy their lives who, from the outside you would say, “Well, that’s not a life that would be a compelling movie or documentary, but these people like themselves. They’ve created a family and a world and they have their interests and their beliefs, and they’re happy.” So I for a long time had what I needed to be happy except the proper chemistry. But I also feel, one, I am healthy. My potential, healthy mentally. My potential is extraordinary. I was gifted with a remarkable amount of sensitivity, enough intelligence, enough confidence. I’m sexy.

David Bashevkin:

Yeah. Extremely. I’m happy you said that.

Gary Gulman:

I’m an attractive man –

David Bashevkin:

I was worried you’re going to leave that out.

Gary Gulman:

And I’m living in a time where stand-up comedians have an ability to gain audiences quickly, and also that you can have great influence, and you have power and responsibility.

David Bashevkin:

You’re thought leaders now.

Gary Gulman:

Yeah.

David Bashevkin:

And rightfully so, as I think you should have been for ages. I always… I got rejected from a fellowship. I interviewed with a Jewish fellowship. They were very right-wing politically, and I should have played more to their audience, and they asked me, “Who are your religious role models?”

And I said, a couple rabbis, typical stuff. And then I said, “You know who really inspires me religiously?” This is before I met you. I said, “Stephen Colbert.”

Gary Gulman:

Yes.

David Bashevkin:

I’m like, “He just is so inspiring religiously.” And they were like –

Gary Gulman:

That’s really insightful.

David Bashevkin:

Yeah, but I got rejected immediately from that fellowship.

Gary Gulman:

Nonsense.

David Bashevkin:

Yeah. They were not happy with that. So, what you’re saying –

Gary Gulman:

Suddenly now I feel like I have this responsibility to use my talent and gifts to diminish suffering, or at least make people feel less alone, or better about themselves, or seek help, or address their illness for now. And then I’ll move on to the next thing while keeping mental illness at the forefront of my endeavors.

David Bashevkin:

Exactly. Because when I heard fear of, when you said the fear of being average, my first thought was like, “Well, the best antidote to the fear of being average is to be great.” And that’s the illness talking.

Gary Gulman:

Yes.

David Bashevkin:

And after that I said, “No. There is dignity and joy and meaning to be found in the average. You have to learn to embrace…” It’s only going to be those moments of greatness, and you’re living your life chasing that. That’s the illness driving you. That’s not –

Gary Gulman:

Yes.

David Bashevkin:

And I think for me, the part of the conversation that moves me the most, and that I really developed into my own practice, is emerging from this struggle, Gary told me, not just emerging, but during, before, Gary told me that every time he goes out on stage, he davens. He says a prayer and something quietly to himself.

Gary Gulman:

I think if you can find a why, you can deal with any how. From Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. And there was no why. Why? This is nonsense. So I can buy a better car? So I can wear jewelry? So all these things that are meaningless to me? I found my family moved by the rich, impressed by the rich, and embracing of the rich lifestyle. And so that was my rebellion.

David Bashevkin:

And comedy was then your salvation so to speak, of giving you that out?

Gary Gulman:

Yeah. That at least, I found, initially it was, I would pray to God before every show, “Please let me make the people forget about their problems while on the stage.”

David Bashevkin:

You would say a prayer?

Gary Gulman:

Yeah.

David Bashevkin:

That’s beautiful.

Gary Gulman:

Yeah. Before every show. And now I say something –

David Bashevkin:

Do you pray? Is that a part of your –

Gary Gulman:

Yeah. Mostly gratitude and thanking and –

David Bashevkin:

Yeah. Not in a traditional religious sense, you’re not, but –

Gary Gulman:

Right. But I speak in English, and I say, before every show I talk about the miracle of even having this outlet –

David Bashevkin:

Really?

Gary Gulman:

That stand-up comedy exists, that I’ve been given the talent to succeed in it, and that I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve gotten, that I haven’t been passed over, like so many great talents have, that I’ve been fortunate enough to get to this point. And thank you for the audience that’s there, and it used to be, “Please help me forget about their problems.”

David Bashevkin:

It’s like a meditated reminder.

Gary Gulman:

It became, “Make them feel better about their problems, or feel less alone with their problems,” as I started to speak more about my struggles with mental health.

David Bashevkin:

When I heard this from Gary, the notion of starting with a prayer, the idea that before you share something, you say to God, you say to yourself, you say to the world, “Please help them forget about their problems.” And what later became, “Make them feel better about their problems, or less alone with their problems.”

I think that’s at the heart of what makes comedy so beautiful and really such a religious experience, a prayer that using this tool to improve somebody else’s life resonates with me so much. And the idea of praying quietly to yourself, that what you put out into the world should improve it, should make it easier, should make it less impossible, less Sisyphean, less like you’re pushing that boulder up the mountain, but to improve somebody else’s life, to me, is the easiest way to bring that positivity and that energy into your own life.

And that’s why I was so moved by my conversation with Gary Gulman, and it’s one of the reasons why I reached out to our next guest, Leah Forster, who you may know from Instagram, and her phenomenal Tichel Tuesday character. Hello hello hello.

Leah Forster:

Hello hello, it’s Tichel Tuesday.

David Bashevkin:

But the reason why I reached out to Leah, and she was so gracious, is because she’s a person who grew up in a Hasidic community, and she left, but really continues to make jokes in what I believe to be an incredibly constructive way. She’s never laughing at her audience or her subject, it’s with them.

And there’s a generosity of spirit that you see in her characters that I feel like she’s using comedy to stay tethered and connected in a positive way to a community that ultimately she left and could have been very bitter and cynical about. But she uses comedy to remain connected, and there’s something about that I find so constructive and beautiful. In a way, it’s kind of a Twitter persona. What you see on Twitter jokes. People who are no longer in yeshiva, no longer in that immersive religious world, but still making these nostalgic jokes about what their teachers were like, what their rebbe was like, what…

I don’t know, the raffles that they went to, and parent-child learning, or whatever it was. There’s a way of remaining connected to a world that you’re no longer a part of that comedy affords you. And I think she obviously is a little bit more of an extreme example, but she does it in an extremely brilliant and creative way, which is why I was so excited to have this conversation with Leah Forster.

So eventually, you left the Hasidic community. That’s not where you live right now, that’s not where you identify. And I want to, what I always find so striking about your comedy, and what I want to talk about is, there’s always this question, when you see somebody doing an imitation, are they laughing with them or at them?

And I always have the impression when I listen to you that it’s with them. It’s not biting. It’s not cynical. It’s not, you’re not tearing people down. There’s a warmth to it. And what I want –

Leah Forster:

Yeah. I mean I feel like, to me, which is why I have the tagline in my Instagram that says “relatable comedy”. But what I wanted was, and this is the messages that I get all the time. Like, oh, my gosh. I know a girl like this. Hadassah, the girl from young Israel, baruch Hashem, I’m telling you, it’s such a bracha, you know? She’s that woman with the little doily on top of her head, you know what I mean? And then, there’s the frum girl that just came back from seminary, and she’s devastated because her mother eats chalav stam. So I feel like people who watch it are like, “Well, that’s my neighbor. That’s my sister. That’s my cousin.” And to me, when I do that character, I’m just joining in on the fun. There’s definitely no evil intentions. And comedians don’t always get it right. It’s a very fine line to tread.

David Bashevkin:

And Leah really navigates the generosity of comedy in such a brilliant way that you never feel like she’s throwing salt on a wounded relationship. She’s remaining connected to something that she’s no longer formally a part of, but obviously still remains a very warm part of her life. But I went a little bit further, because I wanted to really understand how she remains connected to a community that in many ways ended in a very difficult way. And I thought that her response, and this part of the conversation, was so brilliant and beautiful.

Let me dig into this a little bit more, because as you mentioned, you were divorced, you were raised in a chassidish community, ultra-Orthodox, or whatever you want to call it, and that’s very much not your life right now. And you have every reason, and I’m fascinated by comedians and comedic personalities, especially their emotional character. You have every reason to be bitter and frustrated and more biting in your approach and looking back at the Jewish community that you left. But it’s so endearing. So how do you manage to create comedy that doesn’t have that anger to it?

Leah Forster:

Okay. So let me just stop you right there. First of all, I think that everyone has a reason for things that they went through in life. We’ve all been through difficult circumstances and painful circumstances. But bad circumstances doesn’t excuse bad behavior. You know what I’m saying?

David Bashevkin:

Yeah.

Leah Forster:

And this is not to knock anyone that’s been through terrible experiences. But the way that I personally choose to live my life is not to victimize myself. So, yes, I’ve been through some tough experiences and sad experiences, but also, I’ve had tremendous good and gift in my life, and I see God’s hand every day.

David Bashevkin:

And finally, something that I found so moving is, I asked her, do you feel like you’ve moved past this? Do you feel like you’ve healed? She got into a major kind of media battle, which I genuinely believe was to no fault of her own. I don’t think she planted a story, but she was on the cover of some New York newspaper about a kosher restaurant that didn’t want her to perform there. And I loved her response when I asked her about how she’s able to move on.

Do you feel like you’ve healed since that incident? Because, again, what I find so remarkable, and I keep on coming back to this, is the resilience of your spirit even given all of the headlines and scandal about it. And here, we’re two years later, you were in the front page of a major daily newspaper. I don’t sense the bite. I sense the regular Tichel Tuesday. You’re not coming after people still. So, after this, what did you use to heal?

Leah Forster:

I’m going to sound super preachy, but I really feel like you’re not a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes.

David Bashevkin:

This idea, “you’re not a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes,” is something, it’s just a quote that I keep thinking about. It remains a part of my life, of taking control of your own story. And I think that’s the gift that comedy allows you to do. To look at the incongruity, the discrepancies in your life. And instead of becoming bitter and cynical and negative, to find something funny, constructive, optimistic, or just the absurdity of it allows you to float on top of the ocean of emotions that you may have rather than feeling like you’re sinking, submerged, drowning in this sea of feelings and emotions.

And I think she remains floating on top of it, and I think it’s because of the gift of comedy that she wields so artfully and beautifully. And really, check her out on Instagram every Tuesday, the Tichel Tuesdays. It brings joy to my life, and I’m sure it will do the same for you.

My final conversation, which is somebody who has become really a close friend and mentor, somebody who, particularly with 18Forty, has been an incredible guide to the vision and direction of everything that we do, and that is my friend, and the Rosh Yeshiva in Yeshiva University, Rabbi Daniel Feldman. Who, if you listen to the full interview, and I’ve called him out on this before, he flies very under the radar. For every inch he reveals, he’s hiding a thousand feet. And he’s really absolutely brilliant. He’s written quite a bit on comedy, and we have links to some of his essays, which are absolutely brilliant. You could check that out, of course, on 18Forty.org. But what we spoke about was the inherent religious value of comedy. Where is it?

There’s this wonderful story in the Talmud, in Tractate Taanis, which has Elijah talking to a rabbi. And he points to two brothers in the marketplace, and he says, “These two have a share in the world to come.” And when the rabbi went over to them, and says, “What do you guys do?” They responded, “We’re jesters. We’re comedians. And we cheer up the depressed.”

Alternatively, the Talmud offers that when we see two people who have a quarrel between them, we try to make peace. But it’s that first explanation, that they’re comedians, and we try to cheer up the depressed, there’s something about that occupation, about somebody whose mission in life is to make other lives better. Reminds me, frankly, of the prayer of Gary Gulman. But this idea of elevating other people’s lives who seems submerged in something else is ultimately where comedy needs to be directed. And it’s what I spoke about with Rabbi Daniel Feldman.

One thing that he was renowned for when I was in high school, he doesn’t bring it up so much anymore, but it’s his knowledge of the Simpsons. I don’t want to get in depth, but he has more than a working knowledge. And we spoke a little bit about that famous Simpsons episode, Like Father, Like Clown, where Krusty the Clown on the Simpsons is looking for his father, who turns out to be a rabbi voiced by the great Jackie Mason. His father in the episode is Hyman Krustofsky. I think I accidentally called him Chaim Krustofsky. It’s Hyman Krustofsky, I believe. And there’s this wonderful exchange in the episode between Bart and Lisa when they first meet Hyman Krustofsky.

But I was thinking about a different narrative, an episode that actually came from the Simpsons was Like Father, Like Clown, which is an episode about the backstory of Krusty, where it’s revealed that Krusty’s father, Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky, voiced by Jackie Mason, who had his own story like this, has the story of being rejected by his father because of his sense of humor and because he went into comedy. And for a lot of people, when they think about religiosity and humor, religiosity is serious and somber, and it’s not, you’re not making everybody laugh and smile. And that’s the impression that you have walking into it. You have that narrative arc of, if people in the room are laughing, they’re not learning Torah. They’re not involved in something holy. So where is the holiness in the world of humor?

Rabbi Daniel Feldman:

So I think there are a couple angles to consider, and some of them are functional and pragmatic, like the ability to cope with the day. Rav Shamshon Rafael Hirsch comments in Parshas Beshalach that when the Jews come out of Egypt and they say to Moses, “Why did you take us out of here? Because there aren’t enough graves in Egypt?” So he comments that that’s not a serious question.

David Bashevkin:

They knew there were no graves –

Rabbi Daniel Feldman:

That’s a sarcastic comment, and he writes that they were doing that in order to cope. And he adds, “But that’s what Jews have done ever since. That’s the quality that we’ve adopted in order to cope.” And if that’s the case, which is pretty self-evident, then it’s only a short jump to say that if you can make other people laugh when they’re having a hard time, so then that’s an act of kindness, which is our core mission in this world. And in fact, the Talmud says that explicitly also.

There’s a passage in the Talmud, which was actually in my high school yearbook quote, which says that two people are identified in the marketplace by Eliyahu HaNavi, and this was actually used by the Simpsons in that quote. This was an actual quote from the Talmud, that these two individuals were identified as destined for a special reward because they were comedians who could cheer people up.

David Bashevkin:

But of course, comedy can be used improperly, like anything else, and one of the things that I discussed with Rabbi Feldman was, when does comedy cross that line? What’s the difference between comedy that is healthy and Jewish in spirit, and comedy that we would call leitzanus, or mockery? Which is a characteristic which is very much not appreciated in Judaism. And where is that line? And that’s what we spoke about next.

Rabbi Daniel Feldman:

It refers to a sense of perspective. That’s how we often talk about a sense of humor, is a sense of perspective. And that we need to be able to differentiate between what is important and requires our focus and our attention, and what is a distraction, and what bogs us down, and weighs us down, and can make us feel bad in ways that aren’t productive?

And to be able to identify what’s important, what isn’t, that is a crucial skill in life. And essentially, God is the one who sees it all at once, and who knows what is big and what is small. And when we’re told to emulate God, in this sense, we’re asked to cultivate a sense of perspective. To be able to recognize that this is not something that we should care about. And that is, you have to really be careful. And comedy is particularly double-edged in that way, because comedy certainly could have the effect of just knocking down things, of being cynical, which is the opposite of a Jewish sense of humor the way we were describing it a few minutes ago. If we’re trying to be able to preserve the importance of important things by identifying what should be focused on, so then a cynic who doesn’t think anything is important, like Oscar Wilde said, “He knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing,” so then cynicism is the opposite of a Jewish sense of humor. And as Rav Hutner discussed in the first, my first essay in Purim, because that’s what the Talmud means when it says all leitzanus is prohibited, he defines leitzanus as cynicism.

So for sure an attitude that knocks down anything of significance and says, “It’s all nothing.” That’s something we have to really worry about. And any kind of an attitude that’s going to cheapen important things or going to lessen our sense of reverence or our sense of dignity is tremendously dangerous. But at the same time, or together with that, what humor can do in addition to the sense of perspective that we mentioned is just, it gives us a vocabulary. It gives us a language towards the world to be able to understand some of what works, some of what doesn’t work, and some of the nuances of life that we don’t necessarily always catch onto right away. And that’s where it can be tremendously valuable.

David Bashevkin:

I believe in the value of comedy, and I think what we spoke about in this episode was comedy’s ability to reconcile dissonance. When there is incongruity in your life, when life is not measuring up, the ability of comedy to bring joyfulness and laughter, rather than to wallow in difficulty and pain. And that’s why I think this was such an important subject, and one that I think that we will come back to over and over again. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve mentioned and written about this before, that one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard about comedy was actually at a funeral.

My dear friend, Rabbi Josh Grajower, and colleague, lost his wife, Dannie Epstein originally, and somebody who I considered a friend. And when he was eulogizing her, he said something that I found incredibly moving. He said that when they were in the hospital together, he took out Dannie’s copy of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. And in there, there was a few lines that were underlined by Dannie, and these were the lines.

Viktor Frankl writes, “It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any occasion, even if for only a few seconds. The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of trick learned while mastering the art of living.”

And I always come back to this. And somebody one time asked me when the pandemic first started, “What do you do to cope? What do you do when you’re feeling anxious, or just misaligned, or the whole world is upside down?” And I said, “I’ll be honest with you. I’m not listening to classes or I’m not necessarily reading. When I’m really in that space, I’ll turn to comedy. I’ll find a bit, some way that looks at the absurdity and possibility, all the difficulties of life, and finds joy in it.”

And when you listen to it enough, you begin to develop your own capacity to look at life the same way that instead of crying, you begin to learn how to smile. Which is, I think, a part of the process of mourning itself. It’s that famous Talmudic story that closes Tractate Makos. When the temple was literally on fire, and all the rabbis were crying, Rabbi Akiva was able to look at that very same moment and start to laugh. He’s able to find something optimistic, something that subverts what we would normally associate with tragedy, into something that’s actually far more hopeful, far more joyful, far more optimistic. Taking the normal sequence of events, subverting it, when it doesn’t come out, the expectations don’t turn out the way you want them to be, and allow you to find something constructive and joyful even in moments of difficulty.

And that’s why, I’ve mentioned this before, I was a guest on a different, amazing podcast, that I’m nearly certain all of our listeners have heard of, called Meaningful People. And I was on there before Purim. And I shared an idea that I think is just as apt to share in the summer time when we’re about to enter into a real period of mourning. And that is, there’s something very unusual about our reading of the Purim Megillah.

It’s the one Megillah where we transport in the truck the melody with which we read the words, we import it from the Megillah of Eicha, Lamentations, that we actually read on Tisha B’Av. There are a few lines in the Purim story, when we’re reading them out of the Megillah when the Jewish people are just hopeless, and they’re not doing the right thing, we add in and we read those lines with the more mournful, sorrowful tune that we usually reserve for lamentations. And it always struck me. What are we trying to do? Is this the soundtrack? We’re trying to get the people, like we don’t know how the Purim story turns out? Why are we adding in this dramatic moment? We know this is a joyful day. Why are we bringing Tisha B’Av into this story?

And what I always think about, I think this relates to our entire discussion about the relationship between comedy and tragedy, how we confront moments of incongruity, is that Purim and Tisha B’Av can be seen as two old friends who’ve experienced a lot of difficulty in pain together. Maybe they were going through something together, the same struggle. Maybe it was dating, and after many years, Purim finally realizes his redemption, and has his moment where everything concludes, and during that moment of excitement and joyfulness, everybody’s dancing along with Purim, that story unfolded in a way that was joyous and beautiful, Purim catches out of the corner of its eyes and sees Tisha B’Av standing at the side of the room because Tisha B’Av, the story of the destruction of our temple and the Beis Hamikdash, has not yet concluded. And Purim, so to speak, inside the Megillah, pulls Tisha B’Av into the center of the circle, and Purim and Tisha B’Av begin dancing together.

That’s what we do when we read those lines in the Megillah of Purim with the tune of Eicha, with the tune of Lamentations. We’re pulling Tisha B’Av. We’re pulling tragedy into our comedy. And for that brief moment, Purim and Tisha B’Av are dancing together. We remind ourselves, we remind Tisha B’Av, that it’s a Purim that’s still unfolding. Comedy and laughter have the power to subvert tragedy. On Purim, we take all of our Tisha B’Av feelings and moments and bring them into the circle to dance along with us. And to me, this is the power of comedy. To look at incongruity, to look at difficulty, and have that tool, what Viktor Frankl called mastering the art of living, and subverting our expectations, and instead of descending into depression, we find joy, optimism, and hope.

So, thank you so much for listening to this comedy roundup. Of course, you can check out the full episodes on 18Forty.org. That’s 1-8-F-O-R-T-Y.org. It wouldn’t be a Jewish podcast without a little bit of shnorring. So please subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends about it. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue putting out great content.

And I want to give a shout out, if you’re still listening now, God bless you. Somebody reached out to me and says, “I don’t like that you keep saying ‘it wouldn’t be a Jewish podcast without a little bit of shnorring.’” And I think they’re kind of right. They say you’re kind of leading into this stereotype of what Jewish people are like. I think this is still in the bounds of constructive comedy. But reach out if you find that offensive. There’s nothing more Jewish than reaching out and complaining if you find something offensive, another stereotype that I just doubled down on. But please do, and of course, if you’d like to learn more about 18Forty, about this topic or any of the other topics. Check us out. 18Forty.org. That’s the number 1-8, followed by the word F-O-R-T-Y.org. You’ll also find videos, articles, recommended readings, so much more to learn. Thank you so much for listening and stay curious, my friends.