CO-STAR Blog - Sharing insights about synagogue life

It’s become a Purim/Synaplex(tm) tradition. For the third year in a row, Brotherhood Synagogue in New York has hosted a Friday night congregational dinner with a comic as the “main” entertainment during their Synaplex weekend closest to Purim.

Turns out the comedy hour Shabbat dinner is one of the best attended congregational dinners throughout the year. This year more than 100 people attended.

While these dinners are popular, inviting a comic into a synagogue is not the easiest event to pull off. Different generations appreciate different types of humor and finding someone who can appeal to all generations is an important part of the planning process.

To vet their guest comedienne, Synaplex co-chairman Debra Pearlstein says she relied on word-of-mouth. “In this case, someone saw the comedienne at a Schechter school event and liked her, and the venue also gave me confidence she could handle a synagogue crowd,” Pearlstein explained.

As an added precaution, however, Pearlstein visited the comic’s website where she was able to read her bio and see excerpts from her routine. Having this online preview gave Pearlstein the confidence that this comedienne would work in a synagogue setting. She also had something else going for her.

This particular comedienne had written and performed in an off-Broadway show about some of the great Jewish women comics of the past –think Totie Fields. So after her routine, the comedienne agreed to take questions from the audience about some of these entertainers. “That resonated particularly well with our older members.”

Brotherhood Synagogue is not the only congregation to invite comedians to perform at a Synaplex Friday night congregational dinner; Town & Village Synagogue also had a great turnout for their comedy night. As it turns out one of their members is a comedian. Instead of having just one comic, Town & Village asked their comedian member if he could recommend some comic friends to join him.

The committee didn’t vet the other comics and while the committee co-chair Elinor Nauen says one was a bit bawdy for their congregation, the event was so successful that they are scheduling a comedian to perform after Friday night dinner again this year.

East End Temple in New York also invited a comedian to perform, Ellen Wiewel, Synaplex co-chair says, “We heard about Joel Chasnoff through our Temple’s Educator, who is well-connected and vouched for his talent. He also had an extensive website with testimonials and a clip from his comedy CD, and he lives in NYC, so we did not have to wait for him to be touring to the city. The Educator put us in touch with Joel, and Karen Solomon (co-chair) finalized the booking.”

East End Temple had the highest turn-out for Joel’s performance of any Synaplex program in the last two years, 100 people (good for a congregation of about 250 families).

Says Wiewel, “There was something wonderful about so many people turning out to laugh together in the sanctuary the middle of winter - and laugh we did. Feedback from audience members was positive, including that they appreciated the ease of just enjoying Shabbat together by being entertained without having to think (many of our programs are academic or political), and that we should have more comedians in the future.”