how jewish are you? alex edelman, white nationalism, and a surprise broadway triumph

Alex Edelman explores white nationalism in brilliant one-man show Just for Us (photo by Matthew Murphy)

“I don’t want to get in a game of, like, how Jewish are you?” Alex Edelman says in his hilarious Broadway solo show, Just for Us, running at the Hudson Theatre through August 19. But then he does exactly that, telling the story of one night in 2017 when he read a tweet about a meeting of white nationalists in Queens and decided to attend, without revealing his true identity, like a superhero swooping in to save the day and rescue these haters from their misguided beliefs.

“Sometimes I worry I’m not Jewish enough. And to my comedian friends, I’m the most Jewish person they’ve ever met. But to my family I’m Episcopalian,” he explains. If the guy whose full name is David Yosef Shimon ben Elazar Reuven Alexander Halevi Edelman — whose brother, Adam, known as AJ, competed in skeleton for Israel in the 2018 Winter Olympics and whose father, Elazar, “was raised a Jew in Boston at a time when it was really hard to be Jewish, which was between the years 1500 and 1992” — worries that he’s not Jewish enough, then I don’t know where that puts me, Menachem Mendel ben Mayer, on the Jewish spectrum. But I completely agree with Edelman when he declares, “We are proudly and emphatically Jewish.”

It’s a question many Jews struggle with, whether reform, conservative, or orthodox, practicing or nonpracticing, major-holiday Jews or atheists or agnostics. “It blows my mind when I meet non-Jews; they’re usually Christians, and they say things like ‘Ah, well, I used to be Christian but I’m not anymore,” Edelman notes. “That is not how it works in Judaism. Judaism is the Hotel California of religions. It is a mailing list you can never unsubscribe from.”

If you’re not Jewish, you have no idea how true that is. Other people will always consider you Jewish first and foremost, before being an American, a New Yorker, a writer, straight or gay, a redhead, or even white. Although I was lucky enough not to be bullied at school, when I did get into a fight, even with kids I thought were friends of mine, they would invariably yell at me, “You fucking Jew.”

In 1979, a few guys from my high school allegedly burned down Temple Gates of Zion in Valley Stream, leaving two firefighters, Michael Moran and John Tate Jr., dead. There were also cross burnings when a Black family moved into town. Recently, when a high school friend posted on Facebook that he wished we could all go back to the idyllic 1970s, when everything was sunshine and flowers, the only Black/brown person in the school of fifteen hundred students from that time replied, “Well, not for me it wasn’t.”

At college, one of my closest friends introduced me to a nursing student from Eerie, Pennsylvania, saying, “He’s a Jew,” thinking that was amusing. It wasn’t exactly hysterical when she stared at me intently, focusing on my head. “Is anything the matter?” I asked. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” she replied. “Excuse me?” I inquired. “You don’t have any horns,” she responded. Me: “Have you ever seen a Jew before?” Her: “I think we had one in our town, but he was a hermit and never went outside.”

I can’t say I blame him. The woman was in for a treat, as there were tens of thousands of Jews enrolled at that Ivy League school.

I remember waiting on line at McSorley’s on St. Patrick’s Day back in the mid-1980s and an older woman approached me and said, “Now, look at that Irish face.” A second woman I did not know quickly squeezed my cheeks and declared, “What are you talking about? This is a good Jewish boy.”

Edelman goes on numerous brilliant tangents while telling the story of the white nationalist meeting. Early on he talks about a radio program he hosts for the BBC in England and how one listener felt the need to tweet about how upset he was that Edelman was Jewish. “Sometimes people can tell that I’m Jewish because of my name, or my face, or anything about my personality. But this guy is very upset because I’m a Jew and on his radio and he lets me know and because I’m insecure about the obscurity of my radio show, I make a mistake. I write back to the tweets.”

In 2020, Woody Allen released the little-seen movie Rifkin’s Festival. Wallace Shawn stars as Mort Rifkin, a writer and film professor attending the San Sebastián International Film Festival. His father, Max Rifkin, is played by Richard Kind. A few months ago, I bumped into a masked Shawn on a Chelsea street corner and told him how much I admired him. “I should go shopping more often,” he said, basking in the glow and referring to the bags of groceries he was carrying.

Shortly after that, I ran into Kind four times within three weeks, having several conversations with him about television and theater and a mutual friend we have. Next time I see either of them I will let them know that my paternal grandfather’s name was Max Rifkin, but I never met him because he died while I was in utero.

In the film, Mort has a dream in which his rabbi (Richard Carlow) approaches him and says, “You know, I sometimes wonder if you’re a true Jew. You don’t observe the Sabbath, you ridicule your religion, you’ve never been to Israel. What would G-d say if you met face-to-face?”

Last Thursday, my wife and I were walking outside to pick up lunch, discussing Just for Us, when we bumped into our rabbi. We told him about the play, which he had not heard of, and then I suddenly felt I had to prove how Jewish I was by letting him know that we would be in shul that Saturday for my father’s yahrzeit, the anniversary of his passing on July 22, 1985. (In the play, Edelman explains that “shul” is the Yiddish term for synagogue.)

When I arrived at shul Saturday morning, I decided to use one of the fancy, bigger tallises — the prayer shawl with fringes at the ends — but I had no idea how to properly wrap it around my neck and shoulders. I was sure I would get caught as a fraud.

Then, when I went up to read the Prayer for the Congregation, right after I started I heard murmuring from the room. I thought I had screwed up somehow and my Jew Card would be taken away. The rabbi whispered to me that it was merely the congregation reading in unison with me. However, I still felt my membership was in jeopardy, because if I actually went to shul more often, I would have known that my fellow Jews would join in.

William Anastasi, Untitled (jew), oil on canvas, 1987 (gift of the artist / photo courtesy the Jewish Museum)

I need that card. I love that card. That card is a critical part of my identity. When I took a DNA test a bunch of years ago, it showed that I am 96% Eastern European Jew, which made me proud and emphatic, although I was intrigued by the other 4%, which included Scandinavian. I guess some Viking Cossack had his way with one of my ancestors long, long ago.

My wife, who went to Catholic school but converted to Judaism before we got married, also treasures that card, which she earned on an October afternoon when she went to the mikvah, answered questions from the Beit Din, had an Italian lunch with her family at Sal Anthony’s on Irving Pl., then, to put the cherry on top of the ricotta cheesecake and stamp her Jew Card forever, walked into the middle of a Woody Allen set by Gramercy Park. I’m not sure it gets any more Jewish than that.

As Edelman, who attends Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side, relates, “I see myself very much as a Jew. More than anything else. And I hate that. Like my first thought every morning waking up is ‘Jew waking up.’ And not just Jewish. Religious. Thoughtful. It’s invested in every part of myself.”

One of the funniest parts of the show — actually, one of the funniest parts of any show I’ve ever seen — occurs when Edelman shares how his family once celebrated Christmas at home, in order to provide love and comfort to a neighbor who would have otherwise been all alone for the holiday. Alex and Adam had never even heard of Santa Claus before and had never watched any Christmas shows.

They were most taken with A Charlie Brown Christmas. “This is like the greatest thing we’ve ever seen, we’re vibrating,” Edelman fondly recalls. “AJ is like ‘The meaning of Christmas Snoopy’ and I’m like ‘The spirit of Christmas Charlie Brown.’ And my dad is in the corner praying for lightning.” A Charlie Brown Christmas is my favorite as well, but I still cringe every year when Linus does his Bible shtick.

Is that a Christmas tree in the Rifkin household? (photo by Fred Kuza)

When my mother started dating a non-Jewish man who would be with her for many years, they began hosting Christmas parties that became pretty famous in the neighborhood. Jewish friends and family came, as well as lots of goyim. We also, for the first time ever, had a Christmas tree in the living room. It made me nuts, but it didn’t bother my brother or sister and was important to Fred, who made my mother happy. I didn’t pray for lightning, but I did insist that a Jewish star be placed at the top of the tree, and I added several Jewish ornaments over time.

Just for Us is its own kind of wandering Jew, having moved from the Cherry Lane to SoHo Playhouse to Greenwich House Theater and now to the Hudson on Broadway. I previously saw it at SoHo Playhouse — you can read my rave review here — where I found myself nodding along in agreement, and hearty laughter, with so much of what Edelman was going through. I remember thinking that while you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it, it helped if you had gone to Hebrew school.

I don’t feel the same about the significantly superior Broadway iteration, which has a much tighter narrative, with the script having been tweaked for the better and director Adam Brace ensuring the digressions seamlessly circle back to the main story. With a bigger stage, Edelman traipses around like a whirling dervish, contorting his body with Jerry Lewis abandon, making use of three stools (the only props), and regularly running his hand through his floppy hair while also adding several timely ad libs that keeps it all firmly in the moment.

Wearing a shirt buttoned to the neck, light-colored pants, and white sneakers, he’s a charming fellow; it’s no wonder the white nationalists at first welcome him into their lair, especially Chelsea, for whom he develops an instant crush — “You never know,” he says, not about to let a little thing like her being a neo-Nazi get in the way of potentially scoring with a hot babe.

As funny as the show is — I can’t remember the last time I laughed, giggled, grinned, whooped, chuckled, screamed, howled, clapped, hooted, and convulsed so hard, and so consistently, for seventy-five solid minutes — anti-Semitism is no joke, whether it’s Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench making a casual aside at a Cincinnati Reds event, twenty-four-time Grammy-winning rapper Kanye West spewing dangerous rhetoric on social media, NBA all-star Kyrie Irving getting suspended for his hateful public remarks, various Republican congress members doubling down on their hatred and bigotry (Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama: “My opinion of a white nationalist, if someone wants to call them white nationalist, to me is an American.”), or, most important, the rise of violence against Jews around the world.

Conspiracy theorist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who makes it into Edelman’s show, recently claimed, “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

In January, an Algemeiner study revealed that the amount of anti-Semitic attacks rose in New York City from 207 in 2021 to 293 in 2022, an increase of more than 40%. (Numbers matter; in yet another coincidence, in shul Saturday we concluded the fourth book of the Torah, Numbers, the last chapters of which deal with war, revenge, idolatry, and marrying cousins.)

This past June, Yair Rosenberg, who writes the “Deep Shtetl” newsletter for the Atlantic, testified before a subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress about “responding to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias.” He writes, “While the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory is pre-political, it is regularly expressed politically, in ways designed to evade our defenses. . . . The notion that Jews control the weather might sound bizarre to your ears, but the idea that Israel controls the media — something Pakistan’s foreign minister claimed on CNN in 2021 — might not. Because people have long been conditioned to conceive of Jews in an underhanded fashion, it doesn’t take much to update the ancient conspiracy theory to persuade contemporary audiences. And thanks to centuries of material blaming the world’s problems on its Jews, conspiracy theorists seeking a scapegoat for their sorrows inevitably discover that the invisible hand of their oppressor belongs to an invisible Jew.”

Alex Edelman looks for answers from above in Broadway hit Just for Us (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Despite all that, I completely understand why, in 2017, Alex Edelman saw a tweet — “Hey, if you live in New York City and you’re curious about your #whiteness come to 441-03 27th Avenue tomorrow night at 9:15” — and thought to himself, “I live in New York City and as an Ashkenazi Jew I’m curious about my #whiteness. And I’m free tomorrow night at 9:15.”

As Jews, we’re taught that we can accomplish anything, that we can use empathy and compassion to make bad situations better, that we can reason intelligently with those we don’t agree with.

“It’s gonna be illuminating. I’m gonna learn so much about this perspective,” Edelman firmly believes before heading to Queens. “Maybe I’ll come to understand their point of view. It’s gonna be intense and incredible.”

It’s all that and more, making for one hell of an ingenious, gut-busting one-man Broadway show, regardless of how Jewish — or non-Jewish — you happen to be.

[Follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]