I Eat Jews

Last Jewish Comic Standing

A room full of Jewish comedians inevitably led to one thing. Jokes about disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

“I actually met Weiner at my 8th grade graduation,” said one comedian, Saul Good. “He shook my hand ... I’ve been using Purell [hand sanitizer] ever since.”

Several of the seven comedians competing at the 12th annual Jewish Week Comedy Contest poked fun at Weiner, and covered familiar ground like dating, family and Jewish holidays.

The first-place winner, 28-year-old Aaron Friedman, mines his years as a Hebrew school teacher and b’nai mitzvah tutor for his act. He lamented the difficulties of being a Jew on Christmas. “We try to convince ourselves Chanukah is better,” he said. “They get one day, we get eight days. They get one day of presents, we get eight days of presents. They get one Xbox, one iPod, we get eight ... pairs of socks.”

But for Friedman, redemption comes on Passover, when Jews eat matzah, “the Costco version of the communion wafer,” he said. “When they see us eating matzah, they must be thinking, ‘your Jewish God must be huge!’”

Friedman, a Philadelphia native who now lives in New York, has been doing comedy for several years, performing at college Hillel houses and participating in sketch comedy troupes both here and in Israel, where he lived for a year while his wife attended rabbinical school. Last year Friedman, along with his friend Andrew Davies, started “The Bible Players,” an improv children’s show covering Jewish topics.

“Judaism and entertaining is my forte,” Friedman told the Jewish Week. “All the intricacies and neuroses that comes with being Jewish” are perfect fodder for comedy.

Second place in the competition went to Good, who in addition to telling jokes, performed parody songs, like “Hamataschen,” sang to the tune of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi.”

In third place was Robyn Schall, a 26-year-old comedian from Long Island, who said she has been compared to Rikki Lake, Snooki from “Jersey Shore” and Danny Devito. She said that after losing a lot of weight, she became “a CEO. A closet eating offender.”

The comedians were judged on three criteria-presentation, orginality and audience response-by David Goldman, Joe Franklin, Gloria Nadel and Geoff Kole, who produced the event. The winner received $175, and second and third place $100 and $50 respectively.

Eat This NY | ABSOLUTELY THAI (Absolute Bagels)

Traditionally, bagel shops (and appetizing shops) are run by Jewish families – oftentimes older men who may be trying to uphold the traditions of the Bagel Bakers Local 338 union. But of course, that union no longer exists and bagels have become such a universal, international food that Jews are not the only ones making and eating bagels nowadays. In fact, quite a few of the most popular bagel shops in the city are owned by Asians.

That’s right. Absolute Bagels sounds like it should be a great place to get a nosh and in fact it is, but nobody that works here speaks Yiddish (I’m guessing) or refers to a bagel as a nosh. Yet Absolute is consistently heralded as some of (if not the) best bagels in the entire city. The owner’s name is Sam Thongkrieng and he is from Thailand. I’m not sure what the bagel industry is like over there, but Sam learned his trade at a number of popular bagel shops in New York, most notably at Ess-a-Bagel before opening Absolute in the early 90′s. And it’s been an unassuming success ever since.

I came here many years ago to seek out what I had read was the best bagel in New York. And I had to concur. I don’t remember my experience too specifically back then, but if it was at all convenient to my usual path, I’d have had many more experiences to talk about. But as it is, Absolute is all the way up near Columbia University, which is probably the most difficult area for me to get to by train coming from Queens. Yet for bagels, I’ll make an exception.

As I  entered the small no-frills shop once again, I watched a few workers rolling out the bagels. It was amazing how similar the precision and speed was to all the dumplings I saw being stuffed during my dumpling quest. Here, it was a different type of dough and a different shape, but the focus was the same. The smiley man running the register told me almost all the bagels were hot. I couldn’t imagine that was exactly true since it was close to 3pm. Not sure if there was a slight language barrier or if he meant they were all fresh. Taking his word, I chose my usual: plain and everything.

The Everything bagel was on the smaller side (which I appreciate), but it made up for flavor intensity for what it lacked in girth. This was the first fully realized everything bagel I’ve had on the journey so far. It was completely covered in, well, everything. Yet it didn’t overwhelm the wonderful soft textures of the bread. Everything bagels are a tough one to get right – most places are either too skimpy with the toppings or overwhelm you with salt and garlic. This was the perfect balance.

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