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No Hair, All Heart
A Comic Rabbi Walks Into a Podcast... How Robert Alper Heals with Humor
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Bob Alper spent fifty years as a congregational rabbi. Then he became a stand-up comic, sharing stages with Lewis Black, Susie Essman, and Mo Amer, and eventually beating out 4,000 entrants in a Jimmy Fallon comedy competition, which got him a congratulatory note from Pope Francis. Turns out rabbi and comic were the same job all along, except now people pay to listen instead of checking their watch during the sermon. He's the only guy doing both, and he's got a two-thousand-year-old excuse: a rabbi named Rabba figured out that a room absorbs a hard lesson better once you've made it laugh first.
On this 107th episode of No Hair, All Heart, Bob and Mookie talk about cracking jokes at funerals, why Jewish comedy runs on generational trauma with great timing, and the time a joke about a camel named Schmuck made a dying woman forget she was sick for ninety minutes. Bob's got strong, specific views on Israel too — but none of it makes the act. Fifty years of material, and the stage stays (mostly) clean and politics-free by design.
Jewish humor has always punched above its weight, and Bob and Mookie dig into why. When you can be kicked out of your home country on short notice, you learn to travel light — and the one thing nobody can confiscate is your brain, so wit becomes a survival skill. That instinct built an entire comedic lineage: Seinfeld's neurotic precision, Woody Allen's anxious self-mockery, Mel Brooks turning catastrophe into farce, Joan Rivers saying the unsayable, Larry David refusing to let anyone off the hook. Wildly different comics, wildly different styles, same delightfully ironic root system.
Bob's own brand sits closer to the gentler end of that lineage: warm, autobiographical, a little cynical, but never cruel — self-deprecation as armor, not despair. Making people laugh and making people feel less alone were never two different jobs. Bob's just been doing both, spectacularly well, for half a century.
And for bonus points: Mookie tells his chicken soup enema joke. You've been warned.
The Guest
Bob Alper is a rabbi-turned-stand-up comedian known for clean, sharp, intellectually engaging comedy. At 80, he's one of the wisest comedians still actively touring, with 35+ years in the industry. He's performed everywhere from the Montreal Comedy Festival and Hollywood's Improv to Toronto's Muslimfest and international stops in England, Israel, and the Caribbean. He's appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, The Today Show, and The Tamron Hall Show, is heard regularly on SiriusXM, and is a published author (Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, A Rabbi Confesses, Thanks. I Needed That) with several best-selling comedy CDs and a DVD to his name. He lives in rural Vermont with his wife, Sherri.
For bookings or inquiries: info@bobalper.com | www.bobalper.com
Hello and welcome to the No Hair All the Heart Podcast No Hair Host. Okay, Smith. So the one on the heart today is Rabbi Robert. Bob Calper and not Rabbi Robert Halper. Is that correct? I want to get this right out of the gate. Not Rabbi Bob. Not Rabbi Bob. We will not refer to you as Rabbi Bob. Rabbi Bob is not happening.
SPEAKER_03All over the place. There's Rabbi Herbie and Rabbi Mindy and Rabbi. Years ago, Alan King did a routine about his son's bar mitzvah. And he did the same routine about his grandson's bar mitzvah. But he said they hired a tutor, and uh he drove up to the house in his Corvette, gets out in his Bermuda shorts and sneakers and says, Hi, I'm Rabbi Chuck. And I hear that, ah, Rabbi Bob. I don't like that.
SPEAKER_00There's a cringe. What do you do with Starbucks? What's on the cup at Starbucks for you?
SPEAKER_03Starbucks? They asked me my name? I say it's Khanukh Rahmiel. Write that one on the cup.
SPEAKER_00I had a friend who's uh Iraqi refugee. We were we were hanging out in New York, and his name is Faisal. So his cup came back facial. At least you avoided that.
SPEAKER_03I do, yeah. And I told people, call me, you know, first of all, call me Bob. If if it's a kid, I like Rabbi Alper. But uh if it's uh normal normal people, it's it's just Bob.
SPEAKER_00All right, Bob. And and and speaking of which, you are a rabbi, you are a stand-up comic, you're an author, you're a speaker. And the first logical question is how how did all those Venn diagrams come together?
SPEAKER_03Um Rosh Hashanah morning, I'm conducting services, and this is how I began the sermon. For the last two weeks, my wife and son were in Peru on vacation. I stayed home to write sermons and prepare for the high holy days. You're welcome. So crowd, crowd loved it. But the the truth is, I start most many of my sermons when I was in congregational life, which I did for 50 years, um, start most of my sermons with with something funny. Because it gets people's attention. And it's there's a tradition in 2,000 years ago, a guy named Rabba in the Talmud, it says he used to start his lessons with a joke. It would relax his students, and then they were ready to take in the important and and complex issues that he would raise. So humor's always been part of my rabbinant. Um, and I'm lucky enough to be able to make people laugh. Um, fast forward to today, and it's kind of flipped. Um, people always ask me, are you still a rabbi? Yes, I'll always be a rabbi. Um there are all kinds of ways to being a rabbi. You can be congregational life, organizational life, academic life, uh, chaplaincy. And I finally was able to articulate because I didn't realize my rabinant is making people laugh. And it goes right back to Maya Angelo, who says, people forget what you say and they forget what you do. They never forget how you make them feel. And the highest point of my career as a comedian and a rabbi uh took place after a show when a woman who I knew was dying of cancer walked over to me. She said, You know, she said, for an hour and a half, I forgot I was sick. And to me, I'm the luckiest person in the world that I can do something, that I can touch people's lives, that I can make a woman who's dreadfully ill forget that she was sick for an hour and a half. So that's that's how I function as a rabbi. And I think it's every bit as meaningful, if not more so, than the other aspects. And I love you know conducting service, I love giving sermons, I love doing life cycle events, uh, all parts of the rabbinate. But this is one part that I do day to day, um including uh leaving uh leaving Switzerland two weeks ago. I was uh I was in the uh Swiss Air Swiss airport going through customs or whatever, and the woman has to look at my driver's license, I didn't look at my passport, and we finished, and then I said, uh, and she's very dour. I said, uh, and I want to show you my driver's license. She said, Oh sir, I don't need to look at your driver's license. I said, No, I I really would I would like to show it to you. She said, All right. So I took out my driver's license. This is my driver's license. I don't know if you can see it well.
SPEAKER_00Be careful about uh your personal info getting out there.
SPEAKER_03It has my date of birth, you know.
SPEAKER_00It's watch out for the numbers there, Bob. Yeah, I love the image. Mine looks like a hostage or a WWF wrestler in heat, and yours looks zany, right?
SPEAKER_03So I showed this to her, and she's she broke character. She smiled, she laughed, she insisted on showing to the person in the next booth, and then she took out her cell phone and said, Can they take a picture of this? And I let her do it. And then she said, when she first saw it, she said, they let you do that, and so I I you know I turned it over, and this is what I have it written on the back.
SPEAKER_00Nice. You melt you melted the Swiss Alp. And these the Swiss in particular are known for their uh frigidity, if you will, so that you you crack that one. Well, and the the more I think about it, the the less it feels like a contradiction between being a rabbi, being a stand-up comic, being a performer, being an empathetic individual, channeling energy, telling stories, warming people up, making people feel better. And laughter is the best medicine, the best therapy, and the best type of spiritual healing.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03There's it, I feel it's it's such a wonderful tool in my arsenal of serving people. Um, and I love it too. Um, it's creative, it's intellectual, um, but it also is very effective. Uh, I've used humor everywhere in my car. In funerals, I can give you several examples of humor during a funeral. Um, but it has to be judicious. You you can't do a stand-up routine at a funeral, you can't make it a laugh fest. But and I'll give you the example. I I did a funeral once with a woman who we used to email back and forth. She was in Philadelphia and I moved to Vermont in 1990, but we kept in touch and and uh I would visit her even when she was, especially when she was ill. And then I was doing the funeral. And I began by saying how uh Gwen and I sent sent jokes back and forth. The last email I got from her can contained a list of curses for Republican Jews, one of which was, may you make millions of dollars and lose it all in one of Sheldon Adelson's casinos. So so I read that, and of course, everyone cracked up. And the main thing is they remembered Gwen not as a victim, not as a patient, not as a person very ill and dying. They remembered her in her vitality, making people laugh, which she did all the time. And then, of course, we we got serious, we you know, the serious part of the but that way it was a wonderful way to help people remembering remember her uh as she as she would have liked to have been remembered.
SPEAKER_00Being judicious is important, and also it's helpful to be Jewish because uh that kind of cynical humor is foundational to our culture, the tradition itself. There's this archetype of Jewish humor that we've seen through the ages. Featuring many great stand-up comics, your predecessors rolling all the way into film and stage. You've got all these Jewish humorists. What do you think it is? Why are Jews particularly associated with humor? And there's a certain brand of Jewish humor. It's different. The Seinfelds are very, very different than the Richard Priors. It's a it's a very different kind of humor, as the Woody Allen's of the world.
SPEAKER_03Right. I think Jews prize intellect. And the reason is when you're kicked out of your town or your country, you can't take your farm with you, you can't take your factory with you, you can't take your you can take your brain with you. So we tend towards intellectual pursuits because they're portable. Um and it's a survival mechanism uh to look at things with a with a wry point of view. Uh there's a story, it's an old story, but it's uh absolutely appropriate to today. This is in a 1950s Israeli joke book about uh uh an elderly couple was racing from their apartment to the bomb shelter when the husband turned around and started going back to the apartment. Wife said, Where are you going? He said, To get my dentures. She said, What do you think they're dropping? Sandwiches? So it's taking a really difficult moment and making light of it or or and it's a survival mechanism. Uh so you know that that's that's how we do it.
SPEAKER_00Uh survival and also just this idea of even cultural compression, when you're in the shtetl, when you've been isolated, that high population density is is annoying. And we we love our our fellow Jews, our fellow humans, but oh my god, can it be a pain in the ass? And nowhere does that come out better than in a lot of Yiddish phrases in humor. Some of my favorite insults on the planet come from great Yiddish phrases like, go take a dump in the ocean. That's one that's one of my favorites because it's it's existential. It's like there's nothing more meaningless that you can do as a human being than taking a shit in the Pacific. So it's simultaneously saying you are meaningless, your efforts are futile, and get out of my face with it. Go go do something pointless because you annoy me.
SPEAKER_03So I I I use I don't speak Yiddish, but I use a line in my routine where I say uh I did a show in in Baltimore when a man came up afterwards and said, Rabbi, your performance was geschmechtly, beshmachen, which I which I think was a compliment because he he he he uh um used a lot of syllables and uh used a lot of phlegm.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And and Jews, Jews are effervescent, we talk with our hands, we emote, and I heard schmecken in there, which is I think the German Yiddish for the smiling, for the laughing. So you are uh you're a a schmecker engine, which is probably better than a schmuck.
SPEAKER_03So speak spe speaking of which, I I taught it when I was in my congregation in Buffalo, I taught a course in Judaism at a small college outside of Buffalo, Hamburg, New York, and a lot of my students were policemen on a criminal justice program at the college. And at the end, I would ask people to any questions you have, anything about Judaism, no matter what it is, I want to answer it, uh get rid of uh stereotypes, whatever. And uh a policeman who I knew was going through a divorce, uh and I knew his lawyer was a member of my congregation, he said, Yeah, I I got a question. Uh my lawyer Adrian, um uh we become pretty close, and and but he's always using a word that I I think it's I think it's like a term of affection, and but I don't know what I mean. He's always calling me a schmuck. So I had to explain what schmuck meant.
SPEAKER_00Tell him it's like the jam, you know, schmuckers. Right. You're you're sweet and flavorful.
SPEAKER_03Actually, what I what I did was I told him the the story about the man who bought a camel. Uh you know, that in and lived in Miami, and he always wanted a camel and a small circus was going out of business. So he bought a camel and he he put it in the parking lot of his apartment house, and he was very happy. But one day the the uh attendant called and said, I've got some terrible news. Your camel's missing. So I'm like, God, what do I do? He said, Well, you better file a missing camel report. So he calls the police, said, I want to report a missing camel. Well, it sounds like you don't describe it. He said, Well, uh, it was camel color, okay. Uh one hump or one hump, it had one hump camel. Was it male or female? He says, Chad, I don't know. He said, You don't know. He said, No, I don't know. All right, have a bridle yet out of red and gold. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Uh, it was a male camel. Well, wait a minute, how come you suddenly remember there's a male camel? Well, because now I recall, as I would ride up and down Collins Avenue, people on this on the sidewalks would would point and say, hey, look at the schmuck on that camel.
SPEAKER_00That is another good one. Uh I'm I'm Hungarian and I grew up speaking Hungarian, and Hungarians don't say bullshit, they literally say horse cock. Horse cock. So you we say lofoss, which means you know, you know, horse dick. That's a load of horse cock. And it reminded me of that, and there are even more profane extensions of where that horse cock could or should go. Rationing up the insults and the absurdity, but um, all cultures have have that. But the Jewish culture in particular is biting in its cynicism and its capacity for self-deprecation. Jews are great at that. Right. Right. Tell us a little bit about your shows. You're you're on Sirius XM pretty much as a as a as a regular on there clean, clean comedy. And and and that says a lot about your style of humor, too, which which I found very, very funny. It's a little bit acerbic and it's a little bit cynical, it's very Jewish, but you've got your own style. And I don't want to say you're like a Seinfeld with a hug, but that's kind of what it's like. You take everyday instances, especially in families, between parents and their children, between adults in in complicated situations, and you really draw out the funny in the everyday. Am I more or less capturing your style?
SPEAKER_03It's autobiographical. It's every instance I use could be true, but of course, most are not. You know, I make them up, but some are things that have actually happened to me, and then I'll add one thing to it uh to make it even funnier or change the wording around. But um first of all, I try to be unique. You know, I'm so tired of hearing even really good comedians say, I just moved to Los Angeles, and here's the difference between Los Angeles and New York, and I broke up with my girlfriend, and I'm living in poverty. I don't care. I just really don't care. So I can talk about things like officiating at weddings and funerals, uh, I can talk about uh um uh baby naming ceremonies, I could talk about traveling to Israel, traveling to Russia, um, having I talk about my family, my wife, my kids, having a psychotherapist wife.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, just just those two words together send chills into most men, right? Psychotherapist wife.
SPEAKER_03Right. Ooh. Well, here it here's how it works out. I say we have complimentary careers. I don't criticize the way she does therapy, and she criticizes the way I do comedy.
SPEAKER_00Of course. Whatever is yours is hers, and whatever is hers is hers, too. Especially when it comes to criticism.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I use that joke. I mean, I don't there's another joke I used to use, I might bring it back where I say uh we have complimentary careers, I make people laugh, and she helps people cry.
SPEAKER_01Perfect.
SPEAKER_03That's a that's more of a written thing. It's not that funny, but it's it's it's amusing. But anyway, I'm always uh putting things in, taking things out. Um and so therefore, I have a whole set of uh material that makes me unique uh because I am the only rabbi comedian uh you know doing rabbi doing stand-up comedy. And also my uh my goal uh is I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want anybody to be upset. And the example is back in uh the 1990s, uh I was doing a joke where I talked about how every wedding I officiated at, uh the people would select the song from Fiddler on the Roof for the processional Sunrise Sunset. And it always amused me to see a 220-pound bride walk down the aisle to is this the little girl I carry?
SPEAKER_00No, no, no, no, Bob.
SPEAKER_03Well, I was doing that joke. I had the approval I had a manager at the time who was a uh a heavy woman, and she thought it was very funny. And other people, and then I was doing, I remember doing a show in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and uh my manager called me, she said, I just had a talk with the chair of the event, and she told me a few things, and then she asked if I'm gonna do the joke about sunrise, sunset. And I said, You don't have to tell me anything more. I know the woman has a weight issue, I know she finds it not as funny as everyone else. And from that day forward, I I not only did it never do that joke again, but when I transferred my material from a cassette to a CD, I cut it out. Because I just don't want anybody to walk away feeling in any way upset, because that's what they're gonna remember if I do material that upsets them. And I've got so much material that doesn't make people upset. That's what so I I want to make people laugh. I don't want to make them cry.
SPEAKER_00That self-censorship is thoughtful, it's empathetic, it's also interesting because so many comics have been complaining actively about censorship and cancel culture. Many of them are terrified, even doing live sets, maybe a little less so now, but only a few years ago they were terrified of folks with cameras clipping something of their set, putting it up on YouTube, it being taken out of context or misrepresented. And a lot of comics have been canceled for jokes, for just saying things rather than doing things. So you've managed, I'm assuming, to skirt a lot of that because you're self-selecting your material in a way as to conscientiously not offend.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, you it's funny you should. I did a show on a riverboat uh a couple weeks ago in Germany, and I looked on this, you know, the person who introduced me said, please turn off your cell phone. And there's a guy with his cell phone filming me. And I was so tempted to say, would you please stop doing that? Then I kept I'm thinking as I'm performing, no, you know, let him film me because everything I'm saying you can find on YouTube. I've got like 70 or 80 YouTubes, it's all out there. My website, which by the way is bobalper.com, B-O-B-A-L-P-E.
SPEAKER_00Links in the description below, and I found you on TikTok too.
SPEAKER_03Oh, really? So, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Hopefully it's you or it's someone impersonating you. But you've got something like 21,000 followers on TikTok with your material.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's out there. So if he wants to tape it and show it to his friends in Peoria, I don't care. Um, but it was just annoying. Um, but you know, I I uh I let him do it and just uh kept on going. When you're a professional, you know, things like that, you have to overlook it and not let it interfere. I, you know, I mean years ago I was doing a show, a Hadassah show in Miami, and I'm starting one of my jokes, and there's a sort of a minor commotion, and it's a woman with a walker walking out, and the door was right next to the stage. So, of course, all eyes are on the woman walking out and not on me. And I knew any joke I was gonna do is gonna go right down the toilet. And the worst thing is I knew she was gonna come back. And she did.
SPEAKER_00Now, another style of comic might have used that for food, right? But you're staying away from that.
SPEAKER_03I didn't want to, I didn't I didn't want to. Pick on her because I knew, you know, I'm sure the last person in the room who wanted to distract would be a woman who slow walks with a walker and has trouble navigating. She's got enough on her plate, enough sadness on her plate. And if I were to pick on her to make myself look funny, or to you know, any no, you know, I I I can't I I wouldn't, I would never do that.
SPEAKER_00Chappelle might have leaped on it. And you know, if it was a transgendered handicap person, then you know, maybe even all the more so. But obviously that's a different style of comedy and with different expectations. And at least on the plus side, going back to the guy filming you, uh going all the way back to Metallica suing Napster, uh, the realization happened that shared content online, even though it's your IP and you're no longer in control of it, is arguably the best advertising that you can get. There'll be hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who've never heard of Bob Alper up there on stage laughing at your jokes and perhaps wanting to pursue and see you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So that that's a good that's a good side to all this. And again, if you've filtered out your own content so as not to offend, then what do you got to lose? Yeah, go for it, right?
SPEAKER_03I I I was saying, I can't think of his name. A really good comedian. Um, he was performing, and like a few minutes into the show, four blind men are let in to sit in the front row, and he had to stop. So he said, So how come you're late? They said, Well, we were at a a bowling tournament, and and we're late, and then we're sorry we're late. He looks at me, he says, So uh, what's your handicap? And the thing these guys afterwards thanked him. They said they they they were mortified that they were ruining, you know, coming in late and and all that, and and he turned it around so that everyone laughed together. Uh clever genius.
SPEAKER_00That stuff is always funny. I remember that Bugs Bunny cartoon when he's he's like getting up and sitting down in the middle of an audience, excuse me, sorry, excuse me, sorry, and his ears were clapping up and down like this. And it's it's just uh an archetypal meme and just that idea of interrupting the show. It can be food for the show itself, depending on how it how it shakes out.
SPEAKER_03I I don't interact with my show is is it's a hundred maybe ninety-eight percent scripted, although it looks like it's not. But I work on every joke, and I if I can take two syllables out of uh a 15-second joke, I'm thrilled. It's script, but it looks like it's not but I so I I don't interact with the audience. I have one heckler line, and I've never been heckled. Um, the only time I ever use it was I was in a comedy club doing yes set, and there was a table where they were talking. So my one heckler line goes like this. I said, excuse me, sir, would you mind leading us in the silent prayer?
SPEAKER_00Very good, which is which is a nice way. That's uh that's a Bob Alper way of saying S G F U. Right, right, right. I was gonna actually ask you about that in terms of the ratio of what's improvisational to prepared.
SPEAKER_03It sounds like you're all buttoned up going in there and and you're totally and and I find yeah, I've done a lot of shows, other comedians, and I find you know some of the younger comedians get up there and they say, you know, I I was thinking about what I should say. Well, shut up. You know, don't tell me you're not prepared. You know, prepare. You know, we're paying good money to see you. Don't don't tell me you're just playing around with us. So anyway, I that's that's my uh um I don't write my jokes out, but I I go over and over and over and over. And if I can, you know, get rid of a syllable or two, it's a better joke.
SPEAKER_00I I I think you're in the majority than the minority. And and when even younger comics do that, I think it's feigned. It's like I'm giving the impression of just winging it when they've they've got they've got the aces in the hole, and they're playing with the audience to create the perception of spontaneity so that they don't know what's coming, but they're clearly drawing into what's been prepped and reprepped and frankly tested. So many many of the comics do tours in smaller clubs before they hit the big venues to test material. They'll they'll use it as an experiment to make sure that it's funny or at least throw it up against the wall to see to see Kevin Hart, I think, is a classic example of him just doing a whole tour of small cocktail lounges just to test the material out. So I don't think you're alone in that. And I think that even if comics come across as improvisational, they're they're in your same boat. They've they've polished these and they know that that this stuff works. Otherwise, to your point, we paid great greenbacks to see this guy, and he's what, just kind of winging it.
SPEAKER_03I guess when I when I see them say that they're just playing and then they go down the toilet, you know that they're probably not.
SPEAKER_00In that case, yeah, when they crash and burn, it's like they came in with high hopes and left with their tail between their legs and they've wasted everyone's time, including their own. So it behooves the talent to not just rely on the perception of innate talent, but do the work. And it and in terms of the content itself, have you seen changes in how it's received from your audiences? Changes in the audience over the years? You've been doing this for a while. And comedy, for the reasons we've just discussed, has been a flashpoint politically and culturally. So our audience is coming in with certain expectations. Have you gotten any pushback, even anti, even any anti-Semitism that's sprouted up in your in your work?
SPEAKER_03I haven't, but I I've changed, I I always people say, Do you write new material for no? Of course, we change audiences. That's how we do it. Um I think now when I do my Israel material, it comes with a little bit of relief because they know it's Israel material, but it's not political. You know, it's it's it's it's very benign, it's very funny stuff. Give you one example. You know, I talk about when I was uh a student in Israel in 1969, we had pay phones and you had to use tokens. And I had to make a call from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, I dialed the number, heard a voice say, please deposit eight tokens. I said, gee, I I only have seven. The voice said, All right, I take seven. So they hear Israel, and then they said, Oh, it's it's gonna be okay because people are are tense, no matter what side of the issue they're on, they're tense. Um so I still do the same material, but maybe the reaction is a little bit a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00I think it's gotten so radioactive though, especially among young people. And here's the irony or the paradoxical twist to it, especially among young Jews. So you you and I have been around the block a few times. You know, we we both cracked our 29th year, I think, recently. And uh and we're we're part of the boomerslash Gen X generation. We grew up with Israel being the underdog. Our perception of Israel, Zionism, Jewish identity are strikingly different from younger Jews of today. And they're much more empathetic to the plight of the Palestinians specifically, and they see Israel often as a big bully. And it's at odds with, again, stereotypical, but but more or less true that Jews are synonymous with humanism and equality and the values of the Democrats and the left. And there's a fissure now inside the Democrats, and there's a fissure now, often generationally, between older and younger Jews regarding Israel. And I'm curious about your take, especially being a rabbi and being a comic and being there to create community and empathy and bring everyone together. How do you feel about all this? Because it's so strikingly different from what we're used to, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03I'm an unabashed Zionist because I understand what Zionism is, which most people don't. The liberation movement of the Jewish people. Um and the part of me that, you know, I I write letters to our representatives. Um we live in Vermont, and we have Bernie Sanders, who's a virulently self-hating Jew. We have Becca Balant, who's Jewish, who now brings out the I'm a Jewish card uh when she's playing it, and Peter Welch. And all three of them are using the Jews that Israel committed genocide. And uh when Becca Balant spoke about a half hour from here at a town meeting, I stood up and asked her a question. And the question was this I said, um you've accused Israel of genocide. During the recent war, Israel was bombing military sites that were built underneath mosque synagogues, houses, and hospitals. There was a lot of people tragically who were killed. You called that genocide. I said, during the end of World War II, the United States and Britain bombed cities in Japan and Germany that were not military targets. They were civilian cities. Uh Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Berlin, Dresden. They they bombed those, killing about a million people. I said, was that also genocide? And her answer was Israel didn't supply enough food for the children of Gaza. And then I I was the only person that whole night who got the microphone back. I said, You've just given me a Pam Bomb Bondi answer. I said, I need to know yes or no. Did the Allies commit genocide of which you're accusing Israel when they killed a million civilians in civilian targets? And she didn't answer the question. And I've written her several times. I've written Bernie, so they won't answer the question because of what the answer is. And Israel did not commit genocide. What's happened is uh Qatar and and other countries and the thousand billions of dollars put into this propaganda camp have used it to demean Israel and to say, look, we don't have to be sorry about the Holocaust because Israel is just as bad as the Nazis. They're committing genocide, which they're not. There was there was a genocide that was committed, it was October 7th, uh, when uh the the Gazans came in and targeted by the by the Hamas charter the killing of every single man, woman, and child they give their hands on. That was genocide. Uh but the uh the the targeting of terrorists who are hiding in tunnels underneath civilians uh is not genocide. Anyway, that's that's my other hat. That's my my Zionist hat, my Jewish hat. Um I don't do it in my comedy routines, uh, and I'm absolutely pro-Palestinian in terms of wanting the best for Palestinians. Have you ever heard of a comedian named Mo Ammer?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. He opened for me 50 times. Uh I did 50 shows with Mo called Laugh in Peace.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna ask you about that.
SPEAKER_03And he stayed in my house. Uh we're we're friends, we're not in touch now. He's he's just he's a mega major, and he deserves every minute of it because he's incredibly talented, incredibly funny. But um, you know, uh I performed at the Palestine National Theater in East Jerusalem. Uh I was set to perform in Ramallah. Uh I've done shows sponsored by the Muslim Student Association and Hillel together. Um we've done you know about two or three hundred shows in colleges called the Laugh in Peace Tour with the Jewish, Muslim and Christian comedians. So I'm in it for peace, but I'm not uh I I I won't uh uh won't countenance defamation of Israel, which is what's happening, and and they're winning. They're winning that that fight, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_00As I mentioned, I had my Iraqi friend in New York, Faisal, who ended up being facial on the Starbucks Cup. So I empathize with that, and I in no means want to get into a political or ideological debate in any capacity. I'm more curious about your take about young Americans, young American Jews, and young Democrats, because to your point, Israel is now the wedge issue. Many of the candidates who just won in New York, just south of you, uh won to a large extent based on what would ostensibly be considered an anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian position. And this is really becoming endemic and politically charged. So, you as an entertainer, uh a rabbi stand-up comic, even though your material is really devoid of ideology and politics, you've expressed your personal opinion, and I and I appreciate your candor. And I'm not saying that I'm not aligned with much of it, but I'm curious as to your take. On the one hand, you have this humanism and empathy, and on the other, we've got an entire generation of young people who see Israel in very, very different ways than than you do.
SPEAKER_03Well, first of all, I th I I think uh many of the people who sat in the encampments were useful idiots that that that wanted to get laid. Uh it's a movement. Oh boy. And I think that's that's part of it. That's a major part of it. Um the second thing is I don't think people think critically of what the word genocide means. Uh if they can't answer yes or no to that very simple question that I asked about did America and Britain commit genocide also, then they're inconsistent at best and disingenuous uh at worst. And the third issue is and this is something I just don't know. I wonder when where where where young Jews vote for the progressives or whatever, are they doing because uh they're attracted by their position on Israel, or are they doing it because they're attracted by their position on social justice? You know, whether that's the issue and that the Israel part comes along with them as baggage. I'm not sure. I hope it I hope that's the case, uh, but I'm not sure. And but plus another thing is for a young person, what a great way to give their parents the middle finger by becoming anti-Zionist. What a what a superb way.
SPEAKER_00That's a big part of it. What I find frustrating, though, is is this binary position, and I don't mean to dwell on the politics or the ideology, uh, because your stance comes across, as I framed it pretty much, as the boomer gen X or knowing Israel under different terms in opposition to these younger Democrats, even and Jews. And this feeling that everything Israel does is justified, that Israel's strategy and even its tactics, both culturally and militarily, are completely justified from an existential perspective. So my point of frustration is twofold. I find that the younger group, which I call the liberal apologists, they're apologizing for the excesses of Islamists, ostensibly terrorists, in the name of humanism and as an anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli bent. But you also have the militant Zionist who seems to absolve Israel's ostensibly right-wing government, Netanyahu in particular, and the tactics of the IDF as completely carte blanche. That in the name of Israel's survival, Israel cannot be criticized. And even if it its overall strategy of this 100x reprisal, its expansionism, its takeover of the West Bank, is fine. Don't worry about it. Don't complain, don't criticize Israel, because the survival of Israel is tantamount to the existential survival of the Jewish people. I have trouble with that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I don't I don't think that's the reality. I think, you know, you look at Israel, the the criticism of the government is rampant and deserved, and and because it's a democracy. And I think anyone who says Israel's right all the time is is is inaccurate, of course. Um what bothers me is if is is that the criticism of Israel is the only criticism that's launched, but in terms of uh you know the the the slaughter that's going on uh in the Sudan and uh in China and uh so many other everyone else, you know, uh they they get a pass, they get a pass. But Israel is to be vilified and to be criticized and to be mocked and to be, you know, um everyone else is um I saw there's so much on Facebook, but I saw one thing and said there are three billion people in the United States, there are 15 million Jews. Um and and you're saying the Jews is why your life the Jews are the reason your life sucks.
SPEAKER_00That's the the elders of Zion paradox, right? That the that the Jews are lazy and incompetent and horrible people and yet they control the whole world. And and to your point, there's what, all of these 15 million Jews, you've got 350 million people. Uh even the budget of the State Department, we spend three, four billion dollars on Israel aid. And how much is one B2 bomber? So again, it's it's everything is crazy. I think both sides are kind of nuts in this, and it's just very frustrating being an American Jew, especially a slightly older one, trying to figure all this mess out, and you as a public figure being ostensibly identified as the Jewish comic, the rabbi stand-up, you're doing a pretty good job of staying out of the crosshairs, is I think ultimately what I'm getting at here is I appreciate your candor, and I think this is a wonderful conversation, very illuminating to me personally, and I'm sure our viewers and listeners, but you're getting over that hump, you're avoiding these landmines of controversy and uh and being successful while doing it. So, you know, hats off to you.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I want to make people laugh, you know, give give some relief, uh common relief. Um, but anyway, so there's all kinds of all kinds of stuff.
SPEAKER_00And you've got books too.
SPEAKER_03I've got two books.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, I needed that with a bunch of nice vignettes and and warm stories. And then you've got life, that's as good as it gets.
SPEAKER_03Is that is that life doesn't get any better than this.
SPEAKER_00Life doesn't get any better than this. These are great. Do you want to tell our listeners, viewers a little bit about your books too, and how your books relate to your humor and your stand up?
SPEAKER_03But the stories, um I tell people if they want to know what what the books are like, think Garrison Keeler or the Wonder Years. I don't know if people remember the Wonder Years, the narrator of the Wonder Years Stories of Life. Uh each story is maybe five or six pages. They're they're brief. They're real stories, real things that happen. And they end with with uh a kick um that uh uh sometimes will make people uh laugh. And most of the they're not humorous stories, they're very, very poignant. Um I tell one story, for example, uh about uh going through life cycle events and about a bar mitzvah that I can I can uh look down and see it from a distance uh where the uh um there's a typical bar mitzvah, you know, the uh afterwards at the reception, the the boys ran through the building, the synagogue, and the the girls taller than the boys were appropriately discussed it and and the the kids. Received, you know, congratulations and uh, but there was a haunting absence at that bar mitzvah uh because the bar mitzvah boy's sister, who was 15 and a half, was not there. She wasn't there wearing uh stockings and lipstick as the kids did back then. Um at that time she was in a psychiatric hospital and pregnant at age 15. And I ended us the story by saying, and I often wondered how could the parents of that bar mitsu boy go through that day and smile and laugh and be proud of their son uh with what they were enduring. And the story ends: I never asked them, although I had many opportunities, they were my parents.
SPEAKER_00Very sweet.
SPEAKER_03And and and so uh it brings people through an event in my life, um, and to think about how people endure really difficult times. That's one story. There are 75 stories uh between the two books. Um there's the story that gets the most attention of all the ones I wrote is called A Woman named Elizabeth Bat, B-A-D-T. And this is a story, I'm gonna make it quick. Um in Philadelphia, when I was living there, the funeral homes would call me often to do funerals for people who are not affiliated with the synagogue. Um, and uh they called me to do this one. I said, Fine, uh, how can I contact the family? They said, There is no family. I said, Well, can I talk to the person who's arranging? There is no one. And it turns out she was housewritten, house housebound for probably five or six years. The funeral director came to her house to make the arrangements. She picked out her coffin, flowers, grave, everything was set. The announcement that was to be in the paper. And then they said, just just come. So I went there to do the funeral, and nobody came. Nobody. Not a single person. So I read some prayers quickly. The funeral director uh was sitting in the next in the family room looking in, sitting there. He was not the head funeral, he was one of the worker bees, you know, a man in his fifties, kind of kind of heavy set, awkward, uh, a nice guy, but he was he was the lower level. And we had this awkward funeral procession out to the cemetery with the Hurst in my car. When we got there, the workers got the casket and put it on the lowering device. And then they said, When are the other people coming? And we said, There is no one else. And usually, and I think they were instructed to do this, they had to disappear during the interment. Walk behind a a a building, a shed or something, and have a smoke or whatever they did. This time they didn't, they stayed till to lend a presence, you know, at a kind of a distance, but they were there, and I felt their presence. And they did the final thing. And then I I as I walked away from the casket, this funeral director squatted down, which was difficult for him, because he's a heavy guy, picked a rose off of the casket, put it to his lips and kissed it, and put it back. And that was it. And so many people have commented on that. And I said, No one attended the funeral of Elizabeth Batt, and no one knew of her passing, except for the funeral director, and for me, and now you. And that was the end of the story. But the story didn't end. Have you ever heard of the um uh TV producer David Milch? Northern Exposure. Okay. His his mother, whose name was Mike Michelle, I think, but Mike Milch was a member of my congregation in Buffalo. And I returned to Buffalo one time after my book was published, and I ran into her, and she told me she read that story that she says cottish, the memorial prayer for Elizabeth Bat every year.
SPEAKER_00Um very sweet. And it it highlights how nature doesn't just abhor a vacuum, but human beings, when there's an opportunity for empathy to flow out, will rise to that challenge. So the workers who saw there was no one really in attendance changed their roles and really connected in ways they likely never did before. It wasn't just a job anymore, but their own significance exponentially rose to fill that gap in ways where Ms. Bennett was represented in her final moments, perhaps from an unlikely minion, if you will, but um a meaningful one. And it became even more meaningful because it elevated these people to a role they otherwise never would have had and made connections that otherwise never would have been made.
SPEAKER_03Right. You know, and I perceived them in a different way. You know, they were, you know, and there, I mean, there's so many other stories. One one of the one of my favorite, two of my favorite stories. Uh I talk about a woman named Gerda Klein. Is a name ever Holocaust survivor named Gerda Klein, who died a couple years ago. And I tell her I tell her story uh and a story about her grandfather. An amazing story. She survived a death march. Uh she was one of 4,000 Jewish teenagers who were centered on a death march that began on January 29th, 1945, which was the day on which I was born. And Gerda and I had that in common. We would call each other on on that day. She was a member of my congregation in Buffalo in the early 70s, and we maintained our our friendship and my adoration for her um until until she died. And then I flew out to Phoenix and officiated her at her uh funeral. Um but Gerda told a story uh about uh um the death march of the 4,000 Jew two 2,000 Jewish girls, 120 survived at the end, some of whom died soon after. But they they marched for three months, they put them the last day into a barn, uh a bicycle factory in Czechoslovakia, and they set a timer to explode it. And then it rained, which means the timer was interfered with mud or water, didn't explode. The next morning only Goethe and one other woman, young, were able, were strong enough to walk outside. And Goethe weighed 68 pounds. She was one day shy of her 21st birthday, and her hair turned white. Um and this Jeep drove up, and instead of an eagle on the door, it had a gold star. And these two soldiers got out, a lieutenant and his driver. And the lieutenant approached Goethe carefully, not knowing what he was saying, and said, Who are you? And Goethe, having been trained for all those years to always identify herself, said, We are Jews, you know. In German. And the she said for the longest time she couldn't didn't know what he was thinking because she couldn't see his eyes behind his aviator sunglasses. And then finally he spoke and he said, So am I. And then he said to Gerda, May I see the other ladies. She said, those words, ladies, restored her humanity. And he held the door for her. And as she explains this over and over in in her lecture, she said, and he continued to hold the door for me for 50 years, because the next year they were married in Paris. And Goethe um went on to write the first one of the first Holocaust memoirs uh published in 1953. And the the editors, the the publishers rejected it over and over and over again because a memoir of the it's been done. It's been done. But finally she got a publisher. It's been published, I think, six, seventy, seventy, or eight, seventy-eight printing, somewhere around there. All kinds of languages. Um and Goethe went on to become a a speaker. She's touched thousands and thousands and thousands of people's lives. Uh, I have a picture of her receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom for from Obama. And the story of her life uh was made into a a uh uh a film, um, and a documentary film in 1994 uh it won the Academy Award for the best documentary. And then Goethe's uh acceptance speech was known as one of the most meaningful acceptance speeches ever made. It's on YouTube, Gerda Klein, YouTube exp uh so one more thing, and I I won't keep but to to that I love telling about Goethe um was I found out just a few years ago, just be so before she died, maybe it was after she died, I'm not sure. But anyway, her husband Kurt was born in Waldorf, Germany, came to the United States at 17. His sister had gotten to here. Um he tried, he and his sister tried to save their parents, and they finally got visas for them to come to the United States uh six weeks after they had been taken to Auschwitz and murdered. So he was a sole survivor. He became what was called a Ritchie boy. You know the name Ritchie Boy? The the Ritchie um Fort Ritchie in Maryland.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But he was an interpreter. Uh and the Ritchie boys would be on the front lines and they'd capture a German soldier, and instead of beating them or threatening them, they'd sit down and say, So where are you from? I'm from Dusseldorf. Dusseldorf! I had a cousin from Düsseldorf. He went to such and such a high school. No, I didn't. Oh, right. And how many tanks do you have on the other side of the hill? And they tell them, and they saved countless lives. So here's what I'm building up to. A few days after Kurt liberated Goethe, he was still in Western Czechoslovakia. The Soviets were moving west, and the place was filled with SS and Wehrmacht and all the Germans who had just surrendered but were very dangerous. Kurt came across an argument, yelling, screaming, an argument between American soldiers and 11 people wearing strange outfits they had never seen before. Concentration camp outfits. And they weren't understanding each other. And they were speaking German, and the Americans didn't speak German. Then the Americans said, because the German, we're going to put them in a POW camp. And the strangers, knew that if they got there, they could be killed by the SS. They were in the camp by the German soldiers. They were terribly afraid. And also the Russians coming. So Kurt said, spoke German, found out they were Jewish. And he said, I don't have the authority to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to issue you a pass to the American lines just over the border in Germany, which he did. And the eleven, they finally made it to Switzerland and they were saved. Forty years later, Kurt received a letter. Dear Mr. Klein, I've been looking for you for 40 years. My wife attended a lecture by a woman named Goethe Klein, who spoke of a being liberated in Western Czechoslovakia, and mentioned her husband Kurt. I'm sure that you must be the Kurt Klein that saved our lives in such and such a town. I've always tried to find you to thank you. And there's one more thing you should know. All of us were not Jewish. Nine of us had the task and the commitment to take the other two to safety. Their names were Emily and Oscar Schindler. So that's the story of uh that's not in my book. The story of Goethe is in my book. Um that's one of the stories and uh 74 other stories.
SPEAKER_00That's absolutely wonderful. And it comes full circle to the essence of your perspective and your contributions, which is sharing empathy, creating community, connecting with people, telling great stories, making people laugh, and in this sense, making them cry, but in a good way, right?
SPEAKER_03And Goethe, by the way, Goethe had a great sense of humor. You know, I I opened with a joke that Goethe told me. I won't do the joke now. And then when Go for it. And it's true what they say. They say there are three stages in life: youth, adulthood, and you look wonderful. So my guys would skew older, they'd love that joke. But um a few years ago, I got a call from Gerda's son, Jim. He said she she they they were living in Phoenix at the time. Um Kurt died ten years earlier. Gerda was 96. She said, and I would visit her periodically. Uh he said, Mom, mom is dying. And she she had a strange request. She said she would like you to write her eulogy. I said, Jim, that would be the biggest honor in my life. Calls the next day. Mom had another, it was a strange request. She said, Could she read the eulogy? I said, No. I said, I will be there tomorrow. So I got on a plane, I flew out to Phoenix, and she was at home, she had caregivers, and I went into a room and I have a picture of this. Um her son was there, one of her daughters was there, her son-in-law was there, and the third, the second daughter was there by video, so the whole family that was the family, just the five of us. And I held her hand and I read her her eulogy. We called it an audition. And then in the middle, she got became uncomfortable. So I went out of the room. The caregivers came in and they readjusted her pillows and made her comfortable. And then they said, Should we ask Bob to come back in? She said, She said, I'm okay now. Then she said, Maybe I'll close my eyes and you'll think I died. And we had such a huge laugh. And then I finished the eulogy and she approved it. And then we had gin and tonics together.
SPEAKER_00That's wonderful. And it's again very Jewish. She it's like the old Jewish grandma scrutinizing your cooking, right? She's always hovering around the kitchen. It's her kitchen, it's her cooking utensils and her paprika, and then she's gotta taste it, make sure that it's okay. And then once she signs off on it, then then she's in, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, Gerda, she was she died a week later, and I miss her terribly. Um, but uh, you know, she she is uh she was the most important part of of my life, with the exception of my wife. Um, her philosophy. She she talked about the death march and how all they would pass by houses with people sitting in their houses and smoke coming out of the chimney. And that's all she wanted. And she, in fact, one of the books that she wrote after her autobiography was called A Boring Evening at Home. And she said, you know, that's that's what to aspire to. That's all she wanted. That's all they wanted, a boring evening at home. And, you know, it it colors my life because every there's so much I'm grateful for. And I think of Goethe all the time, I think of her philosophy and how precious a boring evening at home is. Um, and uh I teach that all the time.
SPEAKER_00My parents were Holocaust survivors too, both Hungarian. And my father, around that same time, December, January 1945, had no shoes. So it's winter, snow, and uh that's one of his peccadillos. As I grew up, he was very frugal and tensitive, but he had 40 pairs of shoes. He wouldn't even wear them. Just to wake up in the morning and see rows of shoes in his closet gave him the assurance that his feet wouldn't be frostbitten that day. He would literally, I remember this vividly since I was young, he would literally just walk through the American supermarkets. You know, we're accustomed to all the food laid out in front of us. He wouldn't even buy stuff, he would just walk the aisles back and forth seeing all of this food having nearly starved to death during during all of this. So you you learn to appreciate it. And looking back, even to the younger Jews now who aren't entitled to grow up with not just the silver but a platinum spoon in their mouths, they really don't understand or appreciate or even emphasize what it's like to literally be existentially threatened, and to have people hate you to the point where they are actively trying to kill you. And this does exist, it existed then to a horrific effect, and it exists now, and we should never take anything for granted.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Goethe tells a story about when they knew they were going to be taken away and it was summertime. Her father said, Goethe, wear your ski boots. And she and she said, It's summertime, Dad. You know, 15 years later, and she's a teenager. Her father said, he said, Wear your ski boots. And she did. And that's why she survived the death march, because she had ski boots. I mean, it's the same story. It's amazing. You're telling the story about dad and his shoes. Um that's that's why she survived. She always tells that story. She also tells a story, and each time I would be with her, she'd tell me something that uh she how when she the last time she was with her mother, um, they were loading Jewish women and girls onto trucks, and they made her mother get in one truck, and they told Gerda to go to another truck, the Jewish policeman. And she said, No, I want to go with my mother, and she chased after her mother, and she said the policeman grabbed her and literally threw her onto the other truck. And she told me she said for years, decades, I hated him because he was the one who tore me away from my mother. And then one day I realized he saved my life. He knew where they were going. He saved my life, and it changed changed everything.
SPEAKER_00We could go on with all these stories, and their relevance resonates to this day because it's just the human drama, only exponentially made significant because of the existential import of every moment, every potential decision. And I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be sitting here on this podcast with you a million different events branching back in 1944, 1945, and Hungary didn't play themselves out. It's uh it's it's amazing. We're we're in we're in a multiverse of possibility and decision and moral accountability at the end of the it's uh yeah, it's it's wild.
SPEAKER_03With me, everything reminds me of of something funny, or not everything, but I love I love to so you mentioned your dad in the supermarket. So Mo Ammer, for those who don't know, Palestinian comedian, he says it's wonderful. He says they they got here, came here as refugees to Houston. He said the first time my mother was in a supermarket, she got to the checkout, and they said, All right, that'll be $47.20. She looked at the teller and said, I give you $25.
SPEAKER_00I love that story. Perfect.
SPEAKER_03That's such a human story. That's such a great story.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's so built in, right? It's 45, maybe, maybe and maybe we'll get to 32, 33 minutes together, right?
SPEAKER_03I'll give you 25.
SPEAKER_00That's great. Thank you for your time.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00And I'll put all your links below. Some of these websites of people want you to perform. You do you do gigs.
SPEAKER_03That's what I do. I love doing it.
SPEAKER_00You'll fly in and give them some rambum rumber. Rambom bum. Congratulations on converting a great sense of empathy and sense of humor and all this humanism to um a practicing effective career and entertainment. You're bringing delight and life and humor to a lot of people. And I think that's the giving. That keeps on giving. And you did a lot of that for me over the last hour, and I thank you for it.
SPEAKER_02It was my pleasure. You're a wonderful interviewer, and we could go on and on. I'd love to love to keep chucking.
SPEAKER_00I'll bring you back. I'll bring you back in six months a year. We'll see how everything's going. And uh and we'll get some feedback from our listeners and viewers, and uh we'll tell we'll tell some jokes. Do you want to part with a with a good Jewish joke?
SPEAKER_03A good Jewish joke. I mean, I've got to be a good one. Just any any joke. Okay, here's here's one. Here's one. Yeah. A rabbi was visiting a retirement community, and he said to one of them, How old are you, sir? He said, Rabbi, I'm 87. She said, Marvelous. May you live to be 120 like Moses, our teacher. And to a woman, and how old are you? She said, Rabbi, I just turned 97. She said, Wonderful. You should live to be 120 like Moses, our teacher. And to a third man, and how old are you? He said, Rabbi, you may not believe this, but I'm actually 120 years old. She says, Have a nice day.
SPEAKER_00Bravo. What the hell else should she say? Thanks, Bye.
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00That's another one. There was another one on the tip of your tongue.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, the young man in he's at a funeral. He goes up to the rabbi and says, Rabbi, what's what's the Wi-Fi password for this room? The rabbi says, That's how you honor your dead mother? He says, Is that all lowercase?
SPEAKER_00Nice. Nice. I I know one. I'll I'll I'll this one too. So you got Moritz. Moritz is in the hospital and he's got all these ailments. And then Rachel, the nurse, comes in and she's got a reputation, and she goes, It's time for your chicken soup. And Moritz goes, I hate chicken soup. Get that out of my face. So the next day, the same routine. Rachel comes barreling in with the tray. It's time for your chicken soup, Moritz Morris. I told you, get out of here. So on the third night, Rachel comes in. She goes, Okay, Moritz, it's time for your anima. On the fourth day, Moritz's wife comes in and she goes, Moritz, how's it going in the hospital for you? And Moritz goes, Well, I'm learning some lessons. You know, if they offer you the chicken soup, take it the first time.
SPEAKER_01Cute.
SPEAKER_00I thought I would end with that. That's a good ending.
SPEAKER_01Good ending.
SPEAKER_00And I'm not, I'm not the consummate stand-up like you. Please forgive me, viewers and listeners, but I thought that that would be a fun well told. Good joke. Thank you so much, Bob. Take care. We'll catch up soon. Thank you. And once again, like, comment, share, everyone, and hire. Hire the Bob. Do you do bar mitzvahs? You do uh weddings.
SPEAKER_03I I weddings, as long as you're my grandniece, I'll do a wedding.
SPEAKER_00That's the best. No, no bar mitzvahs for a reb. That's great. That's a great way to cap it.
