Many comediennes look up to their
predecessors from generations gone by, but Ayelet the Kosher Komic says
her comedic influence is the original Jewish comedian, none other than
God Himself.
Ayelet, who is coming from Jerusalem to New
Jersey to perform at the Adas Israel synagogue in Passaic on February
28, says there is no other strictly kosher comedian out there for her
to look up to, so she goes straight to the source for inspiration.
"Hashem
is my comedic influence, because he is funny," Ayelet says. "Abraham
and Sarah were too old to have a kid, but He gives them a kid and they
name him Yitzhak (Isaac), which means He will laugh in Hebrew. Now that
is funny."
Ayelet was not always a kosher komic. Just two
years ago, she was a fast rising comedienne and actress in New York and
Hollywood, who appeared in cameos on several cable television shows and
performed stand-up in the NY Comedy Club, The Improv, and The Comedy
Store.
Her raunchy routine back then was not only unkosher, it
was as treif as the cheeseburgers she used to eat. As she puts it, she
repented "all the way from totally treif to glatt kosher."
A
native New Yorker, she started taking Judaism classes in order to find
a Jewish boyfriend and ended up putting her career aside to attend
seminaries in Jerusalem for newly religious women.
It was in
Jerusalem that Ayelet discovered that she could continue her comedy
within the context of her new Orthodox lifestyle. She gave up
performing for mixed audiences and now does her stand up exclusively
for women.
"I realized I could utilize my talent for Orthodox
women, who don't watch television and don't have much opportunity for
entertainment," Ayelet says. "These are great women who concentrate on
their families, self-sacrificing and doing chesed for others on a
constant basis. They deserve a break, they deserve to be entertained
and they deserve to laugh."
Asked why she stopped performing
in front of men, Ayelet admits that there is nothing overtly forbidden
about it, but that she wanted to be modest and avoid having a room full
of men looking at her.
"It doesn't say anywhere 'thou shalt
not tell jokes in front of men', but I have chosen to take on extra
measures of modesty and I feel that this is right for me," she says.
Speaking
in Jerusalem to seminaries, fundraisers, women's events, and private
meetings led to an American tour for the Aish Hatorah Jewish outreach
program last summer and an independent world tour this month that took
her to London, Los Angeles, and Berkeley before an East Coast swing in
New York, New Jersey, and Toronto.
Confined to the boundaries
of Jewish law and good taste, Ayelet's routine focuses on such kosher
topics as children, dieting, airlines, and arranged marriages. She
jokes about a lot of Jewish concepts, so you have to be Jewishly
informed but you don't have to be orthodox to understand.
"It
is a religious-based show that appeals to anyone with knowledge and
understanding of religious Judaism," Ayelet says. "You don't have to be
religious but have to know the Yiddish or Hebrew words I throw in. The
show makes light of the religion, so people who are not so observant
would actually find it very amusing."
One of her characters is
a New York Jewish mother who has an argument with her daughter about
the show. She also tells stories with a twist about people in Brooklyn
and a hysterical routine about a Glatt Kosher airline.
"The
key to humor is to give them something that they're not expecting," she
says. I tell people that I date guys who look like a movie star --
Shrek."
Ayelet's bad luck on the dating scene is a source for her
material, as is her full Jewish name, Ayelet bas Bina Penina. Ayelet is
the only name she was given and it's the only name she has performed
under, "just like Cher and Madonna" she says with a chuckle.
Ayelet wants
to find her soul mate, but it's not easy finding a match for a tall,
orthodox comedienne with a big personality.
Her parents are
very supportive of the changes in her life, especially now that
they see that she can be just as successful as a kosher comic.
"They see I am actually struggling less than before," she jokes.
But
being a kosher komic has its limitations. Ayelet admits that even if
Jay Leno calls and asks her to be on the Tonight Show, she would have
no choice but to turn him down, something that would have been
unthinkable just two years ago.
"Fame and money won't make me
sacrifice my beliefs and values about modesty," Ayelet says. "Millions
of men would see me on Jay Leno, and then the tabloids would be after
me, calling me a hypocrite. This is who I am now and money doesn't make
a difference at all."
So Jay won't get to see her show but God is out there, laughing right along.