Word: jewish
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...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...
...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...