Israeli comedy show offers serious message for dark times – The Forward

(JTA) — Israelis have long taken pride in two things: the long arc of Jewish history and their relentless, dark humor in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

For about a decade, the synthesis of these two qualities has been “The Jews Are Coming,” a sketch comedy show now in its sixth season on Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster.

Nearly every sketch on the show satirizes a millennia-old event in Jewish and Israeli religious texts and history. Its guiding principle is irreverence.

So the show’s catalog includes parodies of the story of Purim and the invention of the mezuzah, but it also features joke after joke about the Nazis, the Spanish Inquisition, the Yom Kippur War, the destruction of the Second Temple in Antiquity and many others. other lachrymose episodes from the Jewish past. In the opening credits and between sketches, the show presents the tools used during a ritual circumcision.

So, after October 7, the program asked itself a question: what to do when the tragedy is not historical but current and – for many Israelis – ongoing?

This week we got our answer: In unprecedented times, “The Jews Are Coming” did something unprecedented: It got serious.

In two segments posted online last week, which opened and closed a recent episode, the comedy series hardly aimed to elicit laughter but gave viewers a window into the situation Israelis find themselves in more than seven months after the October 7.

Both sketches take place in what look like typical “The Jews Are Coming” settings. At the opening videothe biblical Moses, a recurring character in the series, congratulates the Israelis for their spirit of generosity after the attack.

“I saw how you volunteer, how you welcome guests, how you pile into trucks to go and cheer up the evacuees, or dance with soldiers, to bring a little happiness in this sad time,” he says. “You really surprised me. You are a great nation and you deserve to hear it.

The closing video begins with Yael Sharoni, one of the actors in the series, dressed in robes indicative of ancient times in front of what looks like a wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. The text on the screen reads: “Jerusalem, 70 CE.”

“It was the morning of the 9th of Av,” she begins, looking troubled, referring to the day the Second Temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire. “We were woken up by a terrifying noise. We didn’t know what was happening until we realized that the Romans had started burning the temple.

Seconds later, looking terrified, Sharoni’s character says, “Then we heard screams coming from the house next door. »

The scene shifts to a man in medieval costume, from Cologne in 1096, during the Crusades, who picks up the story where Sharoni’s character left off. He was followed by Jewish survivors of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, the Hebron massacre in 1929, Kristallnacht in 1938 and the Farhud, an anti-Semitic pogrom in Baghdad. Each describes witnessing the murder of Jews and their own fears that their families would be killed by violent anti-Semites.

Finally, the narrative shifts to a woman dressed in contemporary clothing and in color, alongside the text “Kfar Aza, 2023”. The community was one of the sites hardest hit by the October 7 attack.

“Everyone wonders if we can continue to live with this,” she says. “We have no choice. We must continue, step by step, and start rebuilding from scratch.”

The message is clear: As global attention increasingly turns to the devastation in Gaza, the video conveys the Israeli view that the Hamas attack – which killed around 1,200 people – is destroying communities Israeli forces and took some 250 people hostage – is only the latest in a long series. anti-Semitic massacres that the Jews overcame.

“In October, we received a slap in the face not only from Hamas but from all of history – from Pharaoh, from Amalek, from Haman, from the Cossacks, from the Mufti, from Hitler – from those who, every generation, rise up against us”, Natalie Marcus and Asaf. Beiser, the creators of the series, published in an online statement. “In difficult times, when the present is intolerable and the future is overshadowed by fog, the past has a special power: it is a source of comfort, guidance and, above all, a sense of proportion.”

Both videos, posted online with English subtitles, are aimed at an Israeli audience as well as a global audience. And both, aiming for a unifying tone, come from a spectacle that has divided Israelis in the past. Its premiere ten years ago took place delayed by several months after a promotional clip satirizing far-right murderers in Israeli history was accused of political bias.

Orthodox rabbis complained on representations and invocations of Jewish tradition, and critics organized a demonstration against the show in 2020 which attracted thousands of people. The show includes a disclaimer at the start of each episode stating “We apologize in advance” if anyone is offended.

The show’s creators seem aware that messages of common destiny can ring hollow at a time when their country is both deeply traumatized and deeply divided. In Moses’ segment, he warns Israelis not to give in to the forces that divide them.

“Remember how you were in those days, without fighting, shouting or civil wars. And decide what kind of generation you want to be: a generation that destroys or a generation that builds. Future generations of the Jewish people are now looking at you,” he said.

(Because it is, after all, a comedy series, he adds: “Past generations watch too, but that’s because there’s nothing better to do. We We don’t have Netflix.”

He ends, however, on a hopeful note: “I know it’s a difficult time, but remember, I’m past Pharaoh – you can get through this. »

It is unclear whether the message of Jewish endurance will take hold in today’s Israel and around the world. But online, where the segments took off as soon as they were published, thanks in part to the addition of English subtitles, there were signs that they were hitting their mark.

“I love how your team made us laugh,” one YouTube commenter wrote. “Now you also deserve my gratitude for your homage to our reality.”

This article was originally published on JTA.org.