Never before have the security guards at the Brooklyn Academy of Music likely gotten such enthusiastic applause.
Jewish comedian Alex Edelman’s performance of “What Are You Going to Do” on Sunday night at the storied theater in downtown Brooklyn hit differently than most comedy shows.
It was the first night of Chanukah, and the night after 15 Jews were slaughtered at a celebration for the holiday at Bondi Beach in Sydney, allegedly by a father and son. The day before the performance, a masked man entered a Brown University classroom and sprayed students preparing for their final exam with bullets, killing two and seriously injuring several more. (The instructor also teaches in the Jewish studies program.)
When Edelman appeared on stage, with a large Chanukah menorah in his hand, he seemed visibly shaken.
After putting the first Chanukah candle and shamash—the “attendant” candle used to light the others—into the menorah, he paused and turned to his father, who was in the audience, to check if the candles ought to be lit before or after reciting the blessings.
The entire crowd in the full, 2,096-seat theater seemed to sing the blessings along with the Tony- and Emmy-Award-winning writer, seemingly with an air of defiance.
When Edelman, 36, said he wanted to show his appreciation to the security team, whose members wanded attendees patiently and looked through each bag of everyone who entered the theater, the crowd burst into enthusiastic, sustained applause.
After the blessings and appreciation, Edelman brought out Ben Folds, the Emmy-nominated singer-songwriter, who played several songs, including “Hava Nagila,” with which the audience sang along.
Folds, who isn’t Jewish, smiled and faced the crowd. “I’m just a white guy from North Carolina,” he said, to audience laughter.
Edelman’s stand-up was his typical mix of storytelling, funny observations about other human beings and self-deprecation.
He lived in Jerusalem as a young adult, studying at yeshiva and working as a clown in a hospital for young amputees.
In the show, Edelman talked about a recurring dream in which he boards a Jerusalem city bus filled with a seemingly random assortment of famous people. Including John Cena, an actor and retired wrestler, whom Edelman jokingly said he resents for being the celebrity whom children request most through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
In Edelman’s dream, as he tells it, the bus goes down Emek Refaim and other Jerusalem streets before it explodes. The comedian is the lone survivor, he told the crowd.
The dream long plagued him and prevented him from sleeping well. He sought help from a sleep expert and a psychiatrist, he said. At their first meeting, the psychiatrist asked Edelman why he thought he had the repeating, disturbing dream.
Edelman told him that there had been a terrorist bus bombing not far from his Jerusalem apartment. “You’ve just saved yourself a lot of money,” the therapist said.
One of his best-received jokes of the night revolved around his brief career as a hospital clown. He went to the hospital in full clown attire—squeaky shoes, painted face with a red nose and a rainbow wig. One hospital patient, an adolescent Palestinian boy, had an arm amputated below his elbow.
Edelman tried and tried to make him laugh. Through multiple visits from Edelman as a clown, the boy stayed sullen. Edelman used every trick he could think of until one day, the boy spoke.
In hesitant English, the patient said that “for four years, I have not had my arm. For four years this,” he said, gesturing to his amputated arm.
“But still, you are the worst thing I have experienced,” he said.
The audience laughed at his joke as Edelman laughed at himself along with it.
