YISRAEL CAMPBELL
11.06.08 | Behind The Lens Of Jewish Cinema - Australian Jewish News
09.29.08 | Who Knew? NY's Coolest Jews Share Their Views On The High Holy Days
09.26.08 | Chris's Bris - Jerusalem Post article
09.17.08 | Jewish Film Festival Opens In Dallas
Film Review of Circumcise Me
08.01.08 | The Kindest Cut
Haaretz article about Yisrael
07.31.08 | Orthodox Jewish Comedian Converts to NY
06.13.08 | Yisrael Campbell Explains Why He Converted To Judaism Three Times
Article on JEWCY.COM
05.05.08 | A Barrel Of Laughs With Serious Notes
Canadian film review of "Circumcise Me"
05.05.08 | TRIALS OF THE CUTTING ROOM
Great film review of "Circumcise Me"
05.05.08 | So This Catholic Goes To Israel...
Canadian newspaper article about Yisrael and his film
04.29.08 | THE ECONOMIST - film review of CIRCUMCISE ME
02.07.08 | The Epoch Times: Dressed For Poland in the 17th Century
Comedian Yisrael Campbell on how sharing a joke may be an antidote in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
01.22.08 | Mideast Not Funny? Four Comics Are Working On It
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
A troupe of three Jews and a Palestinian aims to promote understanding through laughter.
By P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
CHICAGO -- Comic Ray Hanania nervously paced backstage at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies and occasionally peeked around the velvet curtains to gauge the mood of the school's packed theater.
The downtown audience -- Arab businessmen, a Palestinian professor, Jewish students and Israeli families -- glanced curiously at one another and quietly chatted in their seats. Some fidgeted nervously.
"Think it'll be like Tel Aviv?" asked fellow comedian Charley Warady, an Israeli who grew up in the same South Side neighborhood in Chicago as Hanania. "Or will it be like East Jerusalem?"
Hanania, a Palestinian American, grinned and rolled his eyes in memory.
The Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour -- which also includes Aaron Freeman, an African American Jewish convert from Chicago, and Yisrael Campbell, an Orthodox Jew from Jerusalem (and formerly a Roman Catholic who lived in Philadelphia) -- has shared some unlikely stages and pushed the boundaries of political humor over the last year.
The comedians' goal is to help people laugh at the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians through their brand of stand-up diplomacy.
"You can take a joke that, if we had a serious discussion, would really create an emotional argument," Hanania said. "But when you do it as a joke -- me making fun of the wall, Charley making fun of the checkpoints -- then everyone laughs. And everyone's unified for the moment."
Still, it's tough to imagine anyone being able to giggle over the region's ever-growing tensions.
Recent Israeli ground and air attacks in the Gaza Strip have killed 18 Palestinians, including the son of a senior Hamas leader. Palestinians continued firing rockets into Israel, while Israel temporarily blocked all shipments of fuel, food and emergency supplies to Gaza.
But the comics insist that, during times of intense stress, people are hungry for the chance to laugh."We're a bunch of comedians. We're not going to solve anything. We're not going to cause peace," said Warady, who moved from the U.S. to Israel in 1996. "What we want people to understand, and to point out, is that the fighting is stupid."
A tongue-in-cheek mood emerged on the streets of Israel in 2006, after the militant group Hamas won a landslide victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections: Taxi drivers reportedly riffed about how their orange-hued cabs would have to be painted green -- the color of Hamas -- and residents exchanged quips through cellphone text messages about how beer brands would be renamed with holy monikers.
The idea to develop the Israeli-Palestinian show came about in late 2006, when Warady read online that Hanania was writing a book about their childhood neighborhood. He e-mailed Hanania, and the pair became friends.
After discovering that they both were pursuing careers in stand-up comedy, the men decided to work together. They recruited Freeman and Campbell, and booked a series of gigs in Israel, including stops in Tel Aviv and East and West Jerusalem.
There was rejection from both sides of the borders.An Israeli company declined to book them because it didn't "want to alienate anyone's sensitivities," Warady said. "I said, 'Yeah, I understand, it's because we're promoting peace.' "
When Hanania returned to Chicago last summer, several Arab American organizations that had previously booked him as a solo act canceled.
"No one would come out and say it, but it was because I'd shared a stage with an Israeli," said Hanania, who's also an author and a political columnist. "It's one thing to perform with a Jew. But the political ramifications of crossing that Israeli-Palestinian line are too much for some people."
Still, the quartet found a welcoming audience in a variety of venues, traveling from Haifa to Beersheba. Whether the audience was predominantly Israeli or Palestinian, Hanania said, the desire to laugh was universal.
Now the quartet is getting ready to crisscross the U.S. over the next two months, performing at college campuses, community centers and faith-based festivals.
The 15-city tour starts at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in early February, with a stop in Southern California later in the month.
Before hitting the road, they recently tested their material back on familiar turf in Chicago.
For two hours, the four men joked about such subjects as taking classes from a "master suicide bomber" with missing limbs ("Can I defer to next semester?" quipped Campbell) and took swipes at President Bush.
"Our goal is to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in six shows," Freeman told the sold-out crowd of more than 400. "This is our 20th show. But we're making progress. Our beloved president, George Bush, was in Israel and he announced to the world that it is time that the occupation must end."
Freeman waited a beat. Then, he deadpanned, "Thus, we are giving Washington back to the Indians."
The audience laughed at that one, but sometimes the punch lines fell flat. When Warady delivered a joke about how a series of earthquakes in Jerusalem made him think "that if we can't figure a way to divide up Jerusalem, somebody else will," the largely Israeli audience was uncomfortably silent, before politely laughing.
After the show, as the comics chatted with friends in the theater's lobby, audience members approached to say thanks -- and make a suggestion.
"You should have even numbers of Israelis and Palestinians on stage. And a woman," said Miriam Joyce, 71, a history and political science professor from the Calumet campus of Purdue University, in Hammond, Ind. Otherwise, Joyce pointed out, it's not truly "a fair division between Israelis and Palestinians."
Hanania replied with a grin, "When we perform in Ramallah, we call ourselves 'Ray Hanania and the Three Hostages.' That better?"
p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com
12.17.07 | I'M WILDLY EMOTIONAL -- IN A VERY QUIET WAY
Yisrael Campbell is not your average Orthodox Jewish comedian - he was born a Catholic, for a start. Now starring in the Guardian's new Sounds Jewish podcast, he talks to Tanya Gold about booze, finding God and his four circumcisions
Monday December 17, 2007
The Guardian
As far as we know, Lenny Bruce never had sex with an Orthodox Jew, but if he had he would have produced Yisrael Campbell. The child of this improbable union is sweating on stage before me, underneath the 18th-century robes and black hat of a true believer.
But he is quipping, not praying. "I could do this routine in Hebrew," he says with a self- deprecating wince, "but it would be 35 words long." He plays with his long black side-curls - "They're the beginning of a comb-over" - and follows the rhythm of Jewish comedians everywhere. He starts with a whisper, then he waggles his arms, grins and soars up to a shout. "The Nazi Pope!" he announces. "Oh yeah, they say he quit the German army in 1945. Hitler quit the German army in 1945 - 1945 was a bad a year to be in the German army."
Sitting backstage, staring into the eyes of this calm 44-year-old, I realise why this is, for him, an important joke. Yisrael's real punchline is that he grew up a Catholic in 1960s Philadelphia. "I hated it because nothing ever happened there," he says. "So I moved to Jerusalem, where too much happens."
When I first heard this, I couldn't believe it. I have been a Jew all my life, and pride myself on my impeccable Jewdar. And this man is as Jewish as anyone I have ever seen. It is not just his outfit: it is his face. He looks so Jewish. He talks so Jewish. He is so Jewish. How is it possible he was born into another world? "I'm the first-born son of a manic-depressive Italian woman and a pathologically silent Irishman," he explains. "This makes me wildly emotional ... in a very quiet way. My aunt is a nun. Which makes Jesus my uncle." He slugs back a Coke. "But I was Catholic enough to know I was going to hell."
Before she gave birth to Yisrael, or Chris, as he was known then, his mother had a crisis of faith. She entered a convent, and she "saw the wizard behind the screen", the mechanics of Catholicism behind the spirituality. "She was angry with God, she was angry with the Pope. She left the faith and she never found a spiritual solution." So he grew up with a pathologically furious mother raging at the non-existence of God - she sounds oddly Jewish too.
His first religious experience was alcohol. Campbell was 13 when he took his first communion in beer. "It was my own spiritual crisis," he says. "What I was searching for in alcohol and drugs," he says, "was what I found in religion."
After he had dried out and moved to Los Angeles, where he was trying to become an actor, a girlfriend handed him a copy of Leon Uris's novel Exodus. It is the story of the founding of the Jewish state, told through rose-tinted spectacles. He clutched it and "had visions of waiting while a beautiful woman with long dark hair rode towards me on a horse. I had fantasies of plucking avocados out of the earth. I didn't know they grew on trees."
So he replaced his addiction to alcohol with an addiction to God. Over the next 10 years he skated from liberal Reform Judaism to Conservative Judaism to Orthodox Judaism - or, as the Orthodox describe this trajectory, wrong-wrong-right. He told his mother recently that he is thinking of becoming a rabbi. "You'll do anything to avoid getting a proper job," she told him.
He began to churn through rabbis, finding he quickly tired of them: they never offered enough ritual. He was circumcised four times. The first time was as a baby, when his foreskin was cut away. Then each time he upgraded to a new level of Judaism they insisted on ritual bloodletting of the penis. "Four times isn't a religious ritual," he says, "it's a fetish."
Orthodox Jews often ritually cleanse themselves in a pool of water called a mikvah. Yisrael's first mikvah was the palatial pool in Bel Air. "They didn't have a wave machine, but you could see where they would put it if they did." When he followed the Zionist Yellow Brick Road to Israel seven years ago, he discovered the Bel Air mikvah had been heaven. "The Jerusalem mikvah is full of big fat hairy Jews, and you can wait for them to get out but there's no point because more will come in. So I go in and I say my prayer. My prayer is, 'Please don't let them touch me. And don't let me touch them.'"
His other major problem in Israel has been the response of the El Al check-in desk to a man dressed as an Orthodox Jew whose passport was in the name of Chris Campbell. "They didn't ask to check my luggage," he says. "They asked me where the bomb was."
So he changed his name to Yisrael and formed a comedy troupe called the Israel-Palestinian Comedy Tour. It was a rag-tag army of two other Jews (one a black convert) and a Palestinian called Ray Hanania, who announces at the start of their act: "I don't think of you as an audience, I think of you as potential hostages."
When the tour began in January, they were the closest thing the Middle East had to a peace process. Hanania would stand on stage and say, "My friend wants to know why we're not playing occupied Palestine. I say - I'm in Tel Aviv, it is occupied Palestine." Then Campbell launched on to the stage and prodded Hanania in the chest. Hanania prodded back, and they fell to the floor while the compere declared, "Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you have enjoyed the show."
He really has acquired the manner of an Orthodox Jew: he shakes my hand, but warily - Orthodox Jews don't shake strange women's hands because the Bible forbids "endearing contact" between strangers - and only because he doesn't want to embarrass me, he admits later. He has that fixed, distant beneficence of a man of God. I tell him I'm a mamzer, the product of a forbidden relationship - to the Orthodox, I am an outcast because my grandmother did not divorce her first husband in Jewish law before she married my grandfather. I am not allowed to marry an Orthodox Jew, and neither are any of my descendants. He looks at me and - with genuine pity and horror, as if he can see my soul floating off in a bubble - he says, "Oh my God."
And he sits there, remote as a distant planet under his hat, a serene smile on his face. The gags have fled.
I yearn to have Lenny back. Campbell is no fun off-stage. As he talks on in sentences soaked in Orthodox platitude, I think back to his routine. "Do you remember when the Israeli army killed a Hamas bomb-maker? He has one arm and no legs. If you went to master bomb- making class and the teacher had one arm and no legs, wouldn't you want to defer?" And with that thought, he ambles out the door and back to Israel - where he is pursuing his strange, successful dream of being more Jewish than the Jews.
You can hear Yisrael Campbell on the Guardian's monthly podcast, Sounds Jewish at guardian.co.uk/podcasts
11.26.07 | The Comedy of Religion(s)
Your standard Jewish stand-up comic fills his act with stories about Hebrew school and bar mitzvahs and overbearing Jewish mothers, but how many Jewish comics, especially the bearded-black-hat-black-coat type, can talk about a close relative who had entered a matrimonial relationship with the Christian messiah?
That would be Yisrael Campbell. Formerly Chris Campbell.
“My aunt was a nun,” he says one recent night in an Off-Broadway theater, before an SRO Jewish crowd. “Which makes Jesus my uncle.”
For an hour, one of the Chosen People’s funniest Jews-by-choice paces the small stage, taking sips of bottled water, switching his black hat for a baseball cap, throwing in occasional Hebrew words, adding a story about the Baal Shem Tov and telling strangers his life’s story. “I want people to have a sense that searching for your identity is a good thing,” he says.
Formerly a resident of Philadelphia, formerly a member of a Catholic family, formerly a teenager hooked on alcohol and drugs, Campbell has converted to Judaism (three times), moved to Israel (he had only planned to stay a few months), sobered up (only grape juice now, even for kiddush and the seders) and turned his life into a poignant comedy routine.
At 44, Campbell is an emerging voice in Israel’s growing English-language comedy scene, sometimes performing with the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour that consists of three Jews and one Arab, sometimes doing his one-man show here or back in Israel.
Balding, with a graying beard and chin-length payot, he looks, at first glance, haredi, in a long black coat, but he quickly establishes his unorthodox bona fides, speaking in sympathetic terms about homosexuals, about Palestinians and about his encounters with Reform and Conservative Judaism that led to his eventual identity as a Sabbath-observant, kosher-keeping Modern Orthodox Jerusalemite.
In recent years several comics with Orthodox backgrounds have broken into stand-up circles, but none with both a kapoteh and a Catholic background.
“Vaguely Catholic,” Campbell stresses. “I wasn’t an altar boy.”
His mother, who had once studied in a convent, eventually forsook all organized religion. His recovery from substance abuse eventually brought him to Judaism and to comedy. Comedy, because humor was “an avoidance technique, a way of getting around having to deal with stuff,” he says.
Judaism, because he had, unknowingly “set on a spiritual search.”
“I’m not a religious person,” Campbell insists. But, he tells in his act, Judaism grabbed him. First, he tried exploring his Catholic roots. “It didn’t make any sense to me.” Then, advised by a Jewish friend, he started reading about Judaism and Jews — Leon Uris, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi. He took an introductory Judaism course at a Reform temple. “It made perfect sense.”
Step one was a Reform conversion and a ritual circumcision.
After a few years, he wanted more ritual. Two more conversions, Conservative and Orthodox, and an adult bar mitzvah followed.
As a new Jew, he needed a Jewish name. He liked two he had noticed in Uris’ “Exodus,” Dafna and Yisrael. “You can’t take ‘Dafna,’” his Reform rabbi told him. “It’s a girl’s name.” Chris became Yisrael. “My parents still call me Chris,” he says. His comedy, part parnasa, part therapy, began here, while studying drama at the Circle in the Square Theatre School. Now he does his ultimate-outsider’s observations — about flying El Al, about life in Israel, about the intricacies of doing mitzvot – largely for visiting groups in Israel.
His recent appearance at the St. Luke’s Theatre was a premiere of his show “You Can Never Be Too Jewish,” which will open early next year.
“I look more haredi than I am,” he says. “I happen to like dressing in a very haredi style.” He owns five hats of various styles, all of them black. “I like having a very Jewish appearance.”
His Catholic family was “supportive” of his decision to become a Jew. But his mother was initially uncomfortable with his embrace of any religion. “If I came home in a saffron robe, she would feel the same way.”
And his aunt the nun? She died about eight years ago, after her nephew became a Jew. “I didn’t know what her reaction would be,” Campbell says. “When I first told her, she looked at me and said, ‘Jesus was a Jew. We have to be kind to the Jews.’ “I took that as a latent blessing of what I was doing.”
11.07.07 | THE MATISYAHU OF STANDUP COMEDY
In a remote hall in the heart of Jerusalem, a man with a long beard, peot (side locks), a black hat and a black frock walks onto the stage. He begins to curl his peot in his hand and addresses the crowd. "I know what you are all thinking -- and no, these aren't peot, it's just the start of a comb-over." This is not a rabbi imparting deep spiritual truths about the world. This is stand up comedian Yisrael Campbell.
Yisrael Campbell was born Chris Campbell. He grew up Catholic, or as he says, "Vaguely Catholic but Catholic enough to know I was going to hell." While battling an alcohol and drug problem in his teens he was rehabilitated by a group who advised him that he needed some sort of spiritual assistance in order to affect a complete recovery. Soon thereafter, he found what he thought was spiritual guidance, but in an unlikely place: Leon Uris' novel .
Campbell was so inspired by the Uris tale that he went to his priest and announced his intention to move to Israel. The priest discouraged him - what's a nice Catholic boy doing moving to the Jewish homeland? "Because he was in a position of authority," Campbell relates, "I thought that he must have known something that I didn't, so I listened to him. But I was still very much fascinated with the story of the Jewish people."
Professionally, Campbell had a passion for the arts and moved to New York City to study drama at Circle in the Square. After a brief stint in a few off Broadway productions, he moved westward attempting to further his career in California. He did some commercial and film work and also performed stand up comedy with the likes of Kathy Griffin and Jeanine Garofalo. His career seemed to be progressing, but spiritually, he sensed that he was stagnating.
Fortuitously, he came across an ad for a course in Judaism being given at a local reform synagogue. According to Campbell, he was planning on learning a little bit about Judaism and moving on. But that didn't quite happen. "I fell in love with Judaism, and eventually decided to do a reform conversion." Describing the ceremony he explains, "I didn't stand before a Beth Din (religious court) it was more of a commitment ceremony, where I held a Torah scroll and answered a series of questions including, 'Have you thrown in your lot with the Jewish people, come what may?'"
Although still a novice, he already sensed some tension between the various movements. "When I was going to the reform temple, I bought a black hat and started wearing it. Someone said to me, 'Don't wear that hat -- it's Orthodox.' I said, 'No, look -- it's actually Canadian.'"
"I bought a black hat and started wearing it. Someone said to me, 'don't wear that hat - it's Orthodox.' I said, 'No, look - it's actually Canadian.'"
After spending a few years in the reform movement, he thirsted for more ritual which led him to the conservative movement. This time, his conversion included immersion in a mikveh (ritual bath) and a hatafat dam brit (ceremonial circumcision).
Becoming progressively more observant, Campbell decided to finally visit the source that had inspired his journey to Judaism in the first place -- the Land of Israel. In 2000, he left for what he thought would be a four-month period of study. Seven years later, he now calls Israel home.
Before his departure, Campbell found himself in a difficult position professionally. On one hand, he was becoming more observant. But on the other hand, some of the acting jobs he was being offered were on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. To help guide him in this quandary, he sought the advice of Mark Schiff, a comedian and an observant Jew himself. "Mark asked me, 'Is it going to be a nationally syndicated commercial?' So I started wondering if there was an exemption to working on Shabbos in nationally syndicated commercial situations. I told him that the commercial was in fact not a national. 'Good,' Mark said. 'Because those are even harder to turn down.'"
Campbell added, "My agent thought it was cute when I started wearing a kippah, not so cute when I started turning down jobs on Shabbos."
Upon arriving in Israel, Campbell immediately embarked on a course of intense Jewish study, and a third conversion - this time in an Orthodox framework. If ever questioned, he cites his three circumcisions as proof that he is really sincere about being Jewish.
Soon after arriving in Israel, Campbell met Avital - the woman who he was going to marry. The wedding date was set to take place in March of 2002, but the second Intifada had just begun, and sadly, March was the month in which the most Jewish people were killed in a "non-war" situation since the State of Israel had been created. This was the backdrop against which Campbell's wedding was set.
"I thought to myself -- are we crazy? 400 people in a public place? But someone read me a quote: 'When a Jew is sad, he cries; when he is even sadder, he is silent; and if he is even sadder still, he sings.' So I realized that we simply had to go on with our wedding."
Campbell also notes that in the middle of the festive dancing, while he was being twirled around the room by one of his friends, he remembered the question that had been asked, ""Do I throw my lot with the Jewish people, come what may?' I realized that I did, in a much more significant and deeper way that I ever thought possible."
Shortly after the wedding, tragedy struck when two of Yisrael's close friends -- Ben Blutstein and Marla Bennet -- were killed in a suicide bombing at Hebrew University along with seven others. While Campbell was sitting with their bodies at Ben Gurion Airport reciting passages from Psalms, he had another chance to reflect on the direction that his life had taken.
"I always wondered what my reaction would be to something like this -- would I want to leave? But it made me want to stay more. I think the State of Israel needs to exist in the Land of Israel, and for that to happen Jewish people need to live here. Granted, if all Jews in the world moved here, I would never get a parking spot. But it's important that the Jews be here. I loved living in the U.S. but I never felt like my life made a difference there. By simply living in Israel my life -- and the lives of my three children -- make a difference."
"By simply living in Israel, my life -- and the lives of my three children -- make a difference."
Finally finding his place in the world physically and spiritually, Campbell has now taken aim at returning to his roots professionally. He developed and performs a monologue called Not in Heaven which examines his journey, his conversions, and his thoughts on life. He riffs on the idiosyncrasies of Israeli society, and how his new homeland relates to a comedian who was once Catholic but now looks like a charedi Jew. "When I show up on a flight on El Al, and they see that my passport says "Chris Campbell," they don't ask me if I packed my own luggage, they ask me where the bomb is."
He has met with such success in Israel that he has decided to take his show on the road to North America. He readily admits that he doesn't expect to get an HBO special once he steps off the plane, although that would be nice. "I think the world would be a better place if a guy who looked like me had an HBO comedy special. It expands our collective human experience. And the more we know about our fellow man, the better off we are."
Yisrael Campbell has certainly acquired a significant amount of experience during his interesting journey. He has also, without a doubt, thrown his lot in with the Jewish people, come what may.
10.10.07 | JERUSALEM POST ARTICLE ABOUT YISRAEL
Earlier this summer, a group of four comedians, billing themselves as the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour, played a series of shows in Israel to packed houses, considerable acclaim and a significant degree of media interest.
It's not every day, after all, that a Palestinian-American (Ray Hanania), a Jewish oleh (Charlie Warady), a black convert to Judaism (Aaron Freeman) and a Catholic convert who now appears to be haredi (Yisrael Campbell), perform together on stage before both Jewish and Palestinian audiences.
Plus they were funny:
Hanania: "I'm a Christian Palestinian journalist married to a Jew. (Long pause.) That's why I have no friends at all." (Ba-boom!)
Hanania again: "In Israel, this is the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour. In the West Bank, it's Ray Hanania and three hostages. In Gaza, it's the four hostages."
Warady: "Did you see the gay parade in Jerusalem? Boys dancing with boys. Girls dancing with girls. It reminded me of an Orthodox wedding. But in color.
Warady again: "Olmert's at 3 percent in the ratings... Thing is, there's a 5% margin of error. That means there's 2% of people who aren't even born who hate him."
Freeman: "This is the Israel-Palestine comedy tour. Our aim is to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 6 jokes. (Long pause.) "This is our 14th show."
Freeman again: "Since we got here, the two-state solution is now a reality... Of course they're both Palestinian."
But it was Campbell who got the biggest laughs and the warmest applause at the show where I saw him, at Jerusalem's Kol HaNeshama Reform synagogue. And that was because the Catholic convert with the peyot and the tzitzit delivered comedy with chayn - with charm and humility and even a certain spirituality.
He had some straightforward material: "I live in Baka. My parents live in Philadelphia. I couldn't get any further away from them."
But his best lines - which, unsurprisingly, don't come off nearly as well in black on white as when delivered by a genial gent in soft tones from behind a beard and beneath a fedora - culminated riffs on his lifetime's voyage of Catholic rejection and Jewish discovery.
Like how, when you leave Catholicism, you're meant to tell the authorities that you're going, but no, he hadn't written to the pope - "the Nazi pope." (Ripple of laughter.) "Well, he wasn't actually a Nazi, he just served in the Hitler Youth. (Laughter swells.) "And he deserted from the German Army in 1945. Hey, Hitler deserted the German Army in 1945; 1945 was not a good year to be in the German Army. (Huge applause.)
Or like when the rabbinical authorities told him that, although he'd been circumcised, he'd have to undergo another symbolic circumcision as part of his conversion. Only they used a Hebrew term he didn't understand and wasn't remotely fazed by, since it sounded, he said, like something that would come in a glass with an umbrella.
Or, best of all, when he recounted learning, in one of his introduction to Judaism courses, that on Hanukka you light the new candle first, so that it doesn't feel uncomfortable. And that you have two loaves of bread for the "Hamotzi" blessing, so as not to embarrass the bread. And how he was thinking, as he came closer to the faith, that if Judaism displayed such sensitivity to the feelings of new candles and hallot, it was sure to be astoundingly welcoming to new Jews. Except that he's since discovered that this isn't always the case.
And here Campbell's humor showed real Jewish soul, and the laughter in the audience began to mix with lots of nodding and appreciation.
LIKE HE tells it on stage, he was born Chris Campbell into a Catholic family in Philadelphia 44 years ago, but though he was baptized and sent to Catholic schools, his mother was already rejecting the faith and that was probably what first set him searching, too.
Tracking through his life over coffee in Jerusalem's Cafe Hillel this week, Campbell, trusty hat on the seat alongside him, tzitzit out, twirling his right peyah intermittently, recalls troubled teen years with alcohol problems, a period of sobering up, and then the first encounter with Judaism when he dated a Jewish woman in Florida. "I'd been raised on a fear-driven God: 'Don't break the rules, or God will kill you. Literally. Maybe right now.' If I'd break a rule, I'd look up and say sorry, just in case."
She, by contrast, gave him insights into a warm and loving faith. And she gave him Leon Uris's Exodus. "I read it, and fell in love with the Zionist enterprise," he says, smiling at that full-on enthusiasm of yesteryear. "As far as I was concerned, it was the fight for what was right, for justice."
He was ready to come to Israel there and then, he remembers, and looked into a volunteer program. But a Miami rabbi talked him out of it: "You're a Catholic. Why go to Israel?"
Jewish friends told him later that the rabbi had probably wanted him to argue, to prove his commitment. "But I'd come from the background of, 'When the priest says no, he means it.' So when the rabbi said no, I thought he meant it."
As the years went by, nonetheless, Campbell got drawn deeper into Judaism - first through the Reform movement in Los Angeles, where he'd moved to try to make it as an actor.
His first conversion (of three) was through the Reform, and included saying yes to five questions. The true significance of one of them, "Will you throw in your lot with the Jewish people," would only hit him two decades later, when he was getting married at the height of the terror campaign in 2002 and inviting all of his and his bride-to-be's family to celebrate at a Jerusalem hotel days after the nearby Moment cafe had been blown up and shortly before the Park Hotel in Netanya would be destroyed on Seder night.
After a couple of years at a Reform community, Campbell asked a fellow congregant - "Florence Adler, she was 85" - what Conservative Judaism was like, and she told him "If you find out, we're never going to see you again." And so it proved.
On the day of his conversion through the Conservatives in California, he got an audition for an acting role. "Wow," said one of his uncles, "word travels fast." Evidently, comedy runs in the family.
Doing the odd commercial and working as a limo driver, Campbell, in time, was also becoming ever-more observant, keeping kashrut and Shabbat. "My agents thought it was cute at first when I put on a kippa, less so when I turned down work. I had to turn down a Shabbat job, and another on the eighth day of Pessah. My agent at the time leapt out of her chair and shouted at me, 'I happen to know that Pessah only has seven days.'"
He came to Israel, finally, in the summer of 2000 - "I landed here on the same day that Barak arrived at Camp David" - to take courses at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, but extended a stay of a few weeks to a year, and then another, and another.
And after being rebuffed a few times by Orthodox rabbis, he was finally able to convert one last time, with one last ceremonial snip. (At a key test, he was asked what blessing he'd make over Coke. "I really wanted to say, "God bless America," but I held myself back.") He fell in love (with a Pardes teacher), married, had twins "and then a singleton, as it says in the twin literature," and built a new, fulfilling life.
He dresses kind of haredi, except that he eschews the black jacket - "I'm wearing three shirts already" - and prefers a blue shirt to a white. And he prays at the self-styled "halakhic egalitarian" Shira Hadasha congregation. So classify him as you wish.
THE STAND UP routine emerged from an invitation from Pardes to tell his story to an advanced learning seminar. It went down well. "Some of them told me, you should package this." So he did.
He played some Purim parties. Got spotted. Got invited to a Dead Sea hotel one Pessah. Someone from England saw him, and invited him to Manchester. He's done the Limmud annual study gatherings in the UK and US. (You can see his Website at www.yisraelcampbell.com) Intermingling stand-up with continued Jewish study, he performs for birthright alumni events and for solidarity missions of Diaspora Jews. "I resonate with them: my search for God; they're generally searching for identity, or strengthening it, too."
And he's just come back from New York, where he made a first foray into the Catskills and is hopefully being set up for an off-Broadway run.
The Israeli-Palestinian gigs were a case of one improbable contact leading to another - "I know a guy who's Black and a convert." "Really? Iknow a guy who's black and a convert." (Think about it.) And they're playing here again in November.
"I don't pretend to think that if we all get together and laugh, the conflict will end," he says. But he does think the laughter can help.
He no longer looks at Israel from the glowing innocent perspective of the Exodus reader of half-a-lifetime back. "It was easier, three or four years ago, when we had an external enemy. Lately, waking up to the internal rot - the corruption, the probes..." He tails off. "Ari Ben-Canaan's father, walking to the Yishuv from Ukraine, would have been disappointed."
Then he brightens, and paraphrases Winston Churchill: "What is it they say? 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms.' Well, I suppose Israel is the worst Jewish state, except there are no others."
Campbell says he does comedy "because it's what I do best," but also that some of the material is indeed aimed at conveying a deeper message, with a particular resonance at this period of the Jewish calendar - an emphasis on "Torah values relating to how we should interact with our fellow man... which you can do much better when you have people laughing."
For instance, with that Hanukkah candle riff, "I couldn't just say, 'Sometimes we don't treat each other so well.' But I can make that same point with the joke."
The fact is, he says quietly, "I've been trying since I was 16 to have a relationship with God, and some of my friends really tell me they have a deep connection. Well, I don't get a sense of that connection. If and when I feel any spiritual interaction with God, it's in that moment of connection between human beings."
And that, he says, is what he hopes his comedy helps foster - drawing people in, making them laugh, reminding them they're alive, sharing an experience.
MY FAVORITE Campbell line is a gentle throwaway, when he talks about having changed his first name from Chris to Yisrael. "Yisrael Campbell," he says softly, letting it hang in the air for a few seconds. "On average, it's a Jewish name."
On average, he's a precious, life-affirming comedian.
09.02.07 | An Israeli, a Palestinian, a Chasid and an African-American walk into a bar
An Israeli, a Palestinian, a Chasid and an African-American walk into a bar.
This may sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but it is actually the latest form of cross-national dialogue, and the first-ever Israeli-Palestinian comedy tour.
The project, launched at Jerusalem’s Syndrome nightclub, is the brainchild of Ray Hanania — no relation, he reminds the audience, to Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh — a Palestinian-American with roots in Bethlehem and American immigrant to Israel Charley Warady.
They hope to take their four-man show, now touring Israel, to America and beyond. It even has its own manifesto. “A Palestinian and an Israeli comedian on the same stage. Pointing fingers at each other and instead of blaming, laughing.
“And pointing fingers at themselves and laughing. It’s never been done before. But hopefully it won’t be the last time, either.”
This is no rival to “Combatants for Peace”, the organisation of former Israeli and Palestinian fighters now actively involved in dialogue. The show’s creators are insistent that politics must give way to art and that laughter must be the priority.
Thus taking the stage is Yisrael Campbell, a Catholic turned Chasid, who now lives in Jerusalem.
“I was Catholic enough to know I was going to hell so I switched religions,” he quips.
Aaron Freedman, a Chicago-based African-American, is another convert to Judaism. “When people ask why, they really mean ‘What’s wrong with you?
“You don’t have enough trouble? You want to be an extra-credit target for the Ku Klux Klan?’”
Charley Warady concentrates on the difficulties of getting used to Israeli society. “When I first drove up to a checkpoint, I threw some change and kept driving. They shot at me! They get so mad here when you don’t have exact change.”
Mr Hanania had some fun with the all-Jewish crowd — “I don’t think of you as an audience, I think of you as potential hostages” — before reflecting on the difficulties of Palestinian-Jewish intermarriage, with UN peacekeepers among the wedding guests and the bridegroom shackled and hooded.
Then the Arab-America allowed himself moment of reminiscence over the favourite Arab-American pastime, post-9/11 — hanging out at airports and scaring the passengers
09.02.07 | THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: An Israeli, a Palestinian, a Chasid and an African-American walk into a bar.
An Israeli, a Palestinian, a Chasid and an African-American walk into a bar.
This may sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but it is actually the latest form of cross-national dialogue, and the first-ever Israeli-Palestinian comedy tour.
The project, launched at Jerusalem’s Syndrome nightclub, is the brainchild of Ray Hanania — no relation, he reminds the audience, to Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh — a Palestinian-American with roots in Bethlehem and American immigrant to Israel Charley Warady.
They hope to take their four-man show, now touring Israel, to America and beyond. It even has its own manifesto. “A Palestinian and an Israeli comedian on the same stage. Pointing fingers at each other and instead of blaming, laughing.
“And pointing fingers at themselves and laughing. It’s never been done before. But hopefully it won’t be the last time, either.”
This is no rival to “Combatants for Peace”, the organisation of former Israeli and Palestinian fighters now actively involved in dialogue. The show’s creators are insistent that politics must give way to art and that laughter must be the priority.
Thus taking the stage is Yisrael Campbell, a Catholic turned Chasid, who now lives in Jerusalem.
“I was Catholic enough to know I was going to hell so I switched religions,” he quips.
Aaron Freedman, a Chicago-based African-American, is another convert to Judaism. “When people ask why, they really mean ‘What’s wrong with you?
“You don’t have enough trouble? You want to be an extra-credit target for the Ku Klux Klan?’”
Charley Warady concentrates on the difficulties of getting used to Israeli society. “When I first drove up to a checkpoint, I threw some change and kept driving. They shot at me! They get so mad here when you don’t have exact change.”
Mr Hanania had some fun with the all-Jewish crowd — “I don’t think of you as an audience, I think of you as potential hostages” — before reflecting on the difficulties of Palestinian-Jewish intermarriage, with UN peacekeepers among the wedding guests and the bridegroom shackled and hooded.
Then the Arab-America allowed himself moment of reminiscence over the favourite Arab-American pastime, post-9/11 — hanging out at airports and scaring the passengers
02.10.07 | TIME MAGAZINE: Three Jews & An Arab Walk Into A Bar...
The audience is Jewish, the comedian an Arab. This is something of a rarity in the divided city of Jerusalem. A flutter of apprehension runs through the packed basement that is the Syndrome Club as comedian Ray Hanania takes the stage. Hanania is a Palestinian, and the Jewish audience is wondering if his jokes will strike like Molotov cocktails. "I usually perform for Arab groups in the States," Hanania says peering through the nightclub smoke at the crowd, "And this is quite a change for me... it's good to have an audience that's not hooded and shackled."
Hanania gets a big laugh, and relief lightens the nightclub air. To the Jerusalem crowd, he may be an Arab, but he's not dangerous — just subversively funny. A few jokes into his routine, Hanania, 53, a U.S. citizen raised in Chicago, is making his Jewish audience laugh at themselves and at the luckless, ordinary Arabs living in the U.S. after 9/11 who are often branded as terrorists by their countrymen.
After the show, Hanania explains how he switched from being a Chicago beat reporter to a stand-up comedian. "These guys stole our land, our homes," he says wryly, "So I read a couple of books on Jewish humor, and I stole their jokes."
Welcome to the "Israeli-Palestinian comedy tour." Organized by Hanania and American-Israeli comedian Charlie Waraday, the January tour took three Jewish and one Arab stand-up comedians to Tel Aviv and three Jerusalem venues, one of them a synagogue. They never made it into the Palestinian territories; two of the comics hold Israeli passports and are banned from travel there. The tour's aim, says Hanania, was to show that "If we can laugh together, we can live together."
The comics are a sight gag in themselves. Waraday's meek demeanor is spiced up with wacky neckties. Aaron Freeman is an African-American Jewish convert who looks as though he just swung off the movie set of Pirates of the Caribbean. The third comedian is Yisrael Campbell, a former Irish-Italian Catholic who became an orthodox Jew. Campbell appears on stage much as he dresses every day around the Holy City — wearing a long black coat, a hat and a Moses-like beard. Black-suited Hanania has the broad-shoulders of a grizzled street tough, either in Chicago or Gaza.
Humor has an edge in the Holy Land. It helps Palestinians and Israelis confront their worst fears. "In Israel, laughter is a necessity, a survival thing," says Waraday. Shortly after a suicide bombing in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, Waraday got an email from a woman who wanted to see the comedy tour. "She said, 'I live in Eilat, and I really need a laugh.' And I thought: 'Wow! That's what it�s all about.'"
Sitting in the Ottoman-style grandeur of the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem before a show, Hanania and Waraday trade politically incorrect jokes about the belief, popular among suicide bombers, that 72 virgins await the martyr in paradise. "And what do the women get?" muses Waraday, recalling that a 57-year old Palestinian grandmother recently blew herself up. "What would they possibly have told this woman — that she'll have 72 kids who'll call every day and visit once in awhile? I know my Mom would blow herself up for that."
Hanania laughs and lets rip with his version: "I'm an Arab, so we read from right to left. There's only one virgin, she's 72 years old, and they promise her to everybody. That ain't paradise." Hanania adds, "The best jokes are the ones that take on the toughest topics. If we allow the tough topics to define us, we become prisoners of that crap."
Jews and Arabs may battle over land and religion, but according to these stand-up comics, they share the same kind of self-deprecating humor. In a serious vein, Campbell says, "Downtrodden ethnic groups have a history of humor, and it seems to come out of that tragic experience. Certainly, the Palestinians have lots to talk about in that respect — as do the Jews." Freeman adds with a grin, "Well, Jews have self-deprecating humor and Arab-deprecating humor."
Hanania claims to be one of a dozen Arab comedians still working in the U.S. after 9/11. He corrects himself. "Less than a dozen," he says. The others drifted away from the stage; anger towards Arabs was running too high for jokes. But Hanania says, "Humor is contagious, and it's good. It makes us look at each other as human."
11.13.05 | A CROSSOVER SUCCESS IN RELIGION AND THEATER
Philadelphia Inquirer
November 13, 2005
Author: Michael Matza INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Born at Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital in 1963, Christopher Campbell was raised Catholic in Lower Merion. He attended schools in Rose Valley and Ardmore. He graduated from Archbishop Carroll High School.
Today he is known as Yisrael Campbell, a black-clad Orthodox Jew, living in Jerusalem and performing a poignant, hour-long, English-language monologue about his religious conversion that leaves audiences alternating between rapt silences as he talks about the friends he lost to suicide bombings and fits of laughter over his quirky spiritual quest.
"I am the first-born son of a manic-depressive Italian woman and a pathologically silent Irishman. Which makes me wildly emotional - in a very quiet way," Campbell said recently, warming up the audience of about 75 people in a tiny room at the boutique hotel where his erratically scheduled shows sell out.
When he takes the stage in large black hat, gray-flecked beard, and wispy sidelocks, it is no sight gag. Since he completed his Orthodox conversion five years ago, that has been his everyday dress. It has also been the source of some comical encounters, as when he tangles with Israel's security-savvy airline El Al.
"El Al loves when I show up at the airport with a passport that says, 'Christopher Campbell, born in Philadelphia.' They don't ask me if I packed my own luggage. They say, 'Where's the bomb?' They think I forgot to switch the passports. I got the whole disguise down and I forgot to switch the passports," Campbell deadpans, milking the first in a series of laughs from an audience that includes many North Americans who have adopted Israel as their home.
A recovering alcoholic by the time he was 17, Campbell skipped college, worked on staying sober with friends in Florida, and began training as an actor in the mid-1980s at Philadelphia's Wilma Theater. He moved to New York to train with Circle in the Square and then to Hollywood, where he did commercials and some film and television work.
"When I lived in New York, I was mugged by three guys on the A train," Campbell says to the audience. "When I moved to L.A., I was mugged by one guy with a gun. Which is proof to me that technology takes away jobs."
Hollywood is where Campbell began his religious conversion, seeking in Judaism a spirituality that had eluded him as a Catholic and had caused his faith to lapse.
He did his first training to become a Jew with a Reform rabbi. Thirsting for more ritual, he underwent Conservative and Orthodox indoctrinations too. Among the questions he was asked by the rabbis who certified his conversion: Did he come to his decision of his own free will? Did he end previous religious affiliations? Had he thrown in his lot with the Jewish people, come what may?
Over coffee in a rebuilt cafe that was destroyed in 2003 by a suicide bomber, Campbell spoke philosophically about his decision to move to Israel, where he married an Israeli woman with whom he is raising their 17-month-old twins.
"We're in a place where people died doing exactly what we are doing here. Which is part of what makes Israel so powerful," he said, sipping his coffee.
The remark seemed an ironic reminder of a line in his monologue:
"I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. In a quiet little house on a quiet little street . . . and I hated it. All I ever wanted to be was from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, Compton - just somewhere where stuff happens. Now I live in Baka [a Jerusalem neighborhood], where far too much happens."
Campbell began doing comedy in the 1990s when his acting work waned. As a comedian, he didn't need to worry about being cast by directors. "I just had to write a joke and find somewhere to tell it," he said.
His heroes were Woody Allen ("when he was telling jokes"), Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor - "guys who were telling jokes but also talking about something much deeper."
Campbell - who will perform at the Suburban Jewish Center-B'nai Aaron in Havertown on March 18 - wanted to make people laugh "but also feel something," which he attributes to his training as an actor.
It's that sort of blending that his show achieves quite well, as in the following one-two routine that begins with an article he read in a Jerusalem newspaper, then does a fade-to-black segue into a poignant recollection about two dead friends.
"I don't know if you saw this [in the paper], but about three years ago, the [Israeli army] killed a master Hamas bomb maker. You remember that? He had one arm and no legs. I want to say he wasn't a master bomb maker. I'm going to say he was a mildly proficient bomb maker, at best. If I show up for master bomb-making class and the teacher has one arm and no legs [he pauses and raises his hand as if in school] . . . can I defer to the next semester? I don't think my detonation credits are in order."
Then, pulling the microphone close to his mouth and lowering his voice, he began:
"On the 31st of July, 2002, a bomb went off at Hebrew University, killing nine people, two of them my close friends, Ben Blutstein and Marla Bennet. And I don't know if it was that next night when we put Ben's body on a plane to Harrisburg so he could be buried before Shabbas with his family. Or later that weekend when I spent four hours in the back of a cargo area with Marla's body before she went on a Sunday morning flight to be buried in San Diego. Or if it was some weeks later when I heard about a member of the Harrisburg community who, after spending Shabbas with the Blutsteins and people who had come to Ben's funeral, opened his wallet, took out his credit card and said, 'Whoever wants to go to San Diego to be with Marla, can.'
"I don't know what part of that Jewish experience made me think of conversion question Number Three," Campbell said. "But I realized then I had thrown my lot in with the Jewish people, come what may."
Contact staff writer Michael Matza at 215-854-2405 or foreign@phillynews.com.
Copyright (c) 2005 The Philadelphia Inquirer
03.18.05 | IT SOUNDS FUNNIER IN ENGLISH
HAARETZ
It sounds funnier in English
Daphna Berman
When he first arrived in Israel nearly five years ago, comedian Yisrael Campbell's performances revolved around the holiday of Purim - a single day of the year when laughter and silliness are something of a religious mandate.
"Outside of that, no one spoke about comedy," he recalled this week after a well-attended performance at the Kibbutz Tzora night club.
Anglo comedy, it seems, is on the rise locally, and last month alone there were an estimated half dozen performances scheduled in Israel's English speaking centers.
British-born comedian Lisa Gold says that she's appeared more in the last few months than she has in the last few years, and Charley Warady, another regular in the English-language local comedy scene, says that recent months have been the first time he's made money as a comedian since immigrating here eight years ago.
Campbell, meanwhile, is scrambling around the country to perform his stand-up routine, as well as his autobiographical monologue on his very entertaining path from an Irish Catholic boyhood ("my aunt is a nun, which makes Jesus my uncle") to his current Jewish, and decidedly more religious life, in Jerusalem ("I'm the only guy I know who wore the same suit to his bris and his bar mitzvah").
Indeed, Anglo comedy is more available now than ever, but it's hardly a coincidence. Just a few months ago, Off the Wall Comedy, an English language comedy troupe was established by David Kilimnick, an Orthodox rabbi and comic, who immigrated here in 2003. Off the Wall Comedy's first performance drew a crowd of nearly 150, and within the next few months put together performances across the country for crowds ranging from half a dozen to several hundred.
"David has been doing a great job hustling," said Warady, who headlined at a number of clubs and appeared on Comedy Central before moving to Israel. "There is so much potential here and he got the whole project off the ground."
English-language theater and music performances have long been part of the cultural landscape here, but a significant comedy network was lacking until several months ago, explains Kilimnick. "People had their individual shows every now and then," he said, "but nothing consistent like this existed. People would go to bars or restaurants, but the only comedy options were in Tel Aviv, in Hebrew. At Off the Wall, they have a safer atmosphere and people are guaranteed fairly clean comedy."
"It's great to have English-language comedy here that is accessible," says Danny Sher, a Jerusalemite originally from the U.K. "We've all gone through the same aliya process and it's great to be able to laugh at it together. They joke about issues that we are all able to identify with."
Anglo comedy, though unique to individual performers, is certainly a distinct brand. Whether poking fun at government bureaucracy, Israeli rudeness, security guards who make inappropriate sexual comments or simple oddities like the break in the middle of the cinema - the comedy nights provide an entertaining look at some of Israel's more frustrating and amusing idiosyncrasies, especially for those with a unique outsider's perspective.
"I only wish that someone who believes in the international Jewish conspiracy theory would visit Israel," Campbell jokes in his opening act, after listing a few common grievances, among them the all too familiar Israeli phenomenon of line cutting. "It's the stupidest country."
In the meantime, Off the Wall has yet to turn into a profitable enterprise, but Kilimnick doesn't seem too concerned, and is taking the "ups and downs" in considerable stride and, of course, with a sense of humor.
"It was a matter of someone taking a chance on this," he notes. "Until now, I've been pushing this project to its limits, and now it's time to sit back and watch it take its course."
For information about upcoming shows, see www.israelcomedy.com
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