'Comedy for Koby' brings humor in a time of tragedy

For his stand-up shows in Israel next week, comedian Avi Liberman has the perfect joke based on the Duke students who walked out of Jerry Seinfeld’s commencement speech at graduation.

“See, now Jerry knows how I feel when we do our show.... To be fair, I blazed that trail: I had Palestinians walk out on me when I performed in Dubai,” he said about being the first Jew to perform there.

If, as the old saying goes, “comedy is tragedy plus time,” Liberman has been forced to toy with the exact formula. “There’s no yardstick for how much time or tragedy,” said the doe-eyed 52-year-old from Los Angeles in his fast-talking, observational, comedic way.

Comedy and tragedy

He’s brought comedy to lots of tragedies. Liberman started bringing stand-up shows to Israel after the suicide bombings in 2003, “just to brighten people’s mood, because the mood was so awful there,” he said.

And for the last 16 years, he’s been doing shows a few times a year to benefit the Koby Mandell Foundation, which helps bereaved families rebuild their lives after losing someone to a terrorist attack, in memory of 13-year-old Koby Mandell and his friend Yosef Ishran, who were murdered by terrorists.

“I remember in the van on tour of Israel comedian John Mulrooney was reading the book The Blessings of a Broken Heart, which Sherri Mandell gave him, and he turned to me and said, ‘When did they put that part about Koby loving comedy in the book? Like how long after we started touring?’ And when I told him that Koby always loved comedy and that was always in the book, his jaw dropped.”

Over the years, Liberman estimates, he has brought almost 50 comedians to Israel on the tour, including big names like Judy Gold, Jeff Ross, Harland Williams, Roy Wood Jr. and Craig Robinson. They played to English-speaking audiences in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beit Shemesh, Ra’anana, Modi’in, and Gush Etzion.

“It’s harder for the Jewish comics because I think subconsciously the crowd is like, this guy or girl better be as funny as Seinfeld. It’s hard.” But if it’s a non-Jewish person, “I think they’re like, oh, this is a real comedian.”

Non-Jewish comedians also bring a certain perspective, Liberman thinks, such as when black comedian A.J. Jamal made a joke about changing money and he thought they asked him if he wanted “shackles”; or when comedian Ralph Harris did a joke about how his job on Shabbat was just standing in the hotel elevator and pressing it for people.

“You know, there are all these things that we’re obviously not going to do, because we don’t see it from that angle,” Liberman said. “It’s fun for the audience to see how these people see Israel, and it’s also interesting for me just on a personal level, if they have any connection to faith or religion or history, to watch them.”

Liberman remembers swimming with Craig Robinson at Ein Gedi and telling him that that is where King David swam, and Robinson couldn’t believe it: “Right here? Here? Where I am?” he said. “It was just so hard for him, as someone who grew up in the church, to wrap his head around it.”

“I think, now more than ever, we need levity and to keep doing what I do, which is comedy, and bringing comedy,” said comedian Jann Karam (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Tonight Show, Letterman), who will appear next week with Liberman, John Roy, and Buddy Lewis.

“I’m looking forward to visiting all the historical sites, learning about the culture firsthand, eating some delicious Israeli food, taking a dip in the Dead Sea, and mainly excited to be performing comedy for what I hear are some of the best audiences a comedian could hope for.”

One of Liberman’s motives in bringing non-Jewish comedians to Israel is to offer them firsthand experience beyond the headlines.

“Let them see what the reality is. And then they can come back and decide for themselves,” he said, noting: “They’ve become great emissaries for Israel.”

THERE MAY never be enough time after the October 7 tragedy to make jokes about it, but Liberman, who had just wrapped up a Sukkot tour in Israel with Modi when Hamas attacked, was forced to try. He’d decided to stay in Israel and volunteer, not to mention directly distribute tens of thousands of dollars his friends in America sent.

A few weeks later, he was at a Shabbat meal in Tel Aviv when a woman told him, “I need a break,” and offered her apartment if he’d host a show.

“At the time you could only have 50 people or less, for safety reasons, so we set up 50 chairs, and it sold out in two seconds,” he said.

Over the next six weeks Liberman participated in a dozen or more shows.

How do you perform humor at a time like this?

“You have to assess the situation – what’s tasteless and what isn’t,” he said. “The first joke I did about the situation was about the sirens going off in synagogue on October 7: By the third or fourth time, half the people weren’t going downstairs anymore – they’d had it. It made me realize the lengths to which Ashkenazi Jews will go to avoid cardio.”

Another joke he had was about the trouble comforting women when the sirens went off. When a religious woman in Jerusalem was crying, he just had to stand next to her. But when he met a secular girl crying, “So in her case, I could pat her on the ass and say ‘Everything’s going to be okay’; she felt better and I felt better,” he said, noting that the joke got more laughs in Tel Aviv than Jerusalem.

Israeli comedian Yohai Sponder brought Liberman to shows for soldiers, where Liberman – who was born in Israel to American parents and lived here till age three – tried out a joke or two in Hebrew.

“A friend of mine said, ‘If you go to the Western Wall and pray 40 days in a row, you’ll find your soulmate, your bashert’; and I said that’s ridiculous, but to this guy’s credit, he went 40 days in a row, and shortly thereafter, he divorced his wife and found a soulmate.

“It reminded me of doing shows in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said about performing for American soldiers during the war. “The soldiers are very appreciative of it. We’re trying to make an effort to brighten their day for just a minute, so it’s worth it.”

Comedy for Koby will appear in Israel from May 27 to June 2. https://www.comedyforkoby.com