Orthodox Comic Converts To N.Y.

Yisrael Campbell: Hoping for Off-Broadway venue for his Catholic-turns-Orthodox-Jew act. Getty Images

Yisrael Campbell: Hoping for Off-Broadway venue for his Catholic-turns-Orthodox-Jew act. Getty Images

by Joshua Mitnick/Tel Aviv

With payes, a long black coat and black yarmulke, Yisrael Campbell looks the part of a Jew who’s strictly traditional. His stand-up comedy is anything but.
“When they ask me why did you convert to Judaism,” begins his routine on getting past El Al security, “I say, ‘For the women.’”

Born Christopher Campbell, his spiritual journey from Catholic high school drug addict in the Philadelphia suburbs to Reform convert in Los Angeles, and eventually to new immigrant in Jerusalem is the thread of a spiel titled, “It’s Not In Heaven.”
This weekend, his family of five will head to New York for a year so he can fine-tune a one-man Off-Broadway show he hopes to premiere in November, a year after he

opened his show, then called “You Can Never Be Too Jewish,” at the St. Luke’s Theatre in the Theater District.

Campbell’s unique path — his act includes two religions, three Jewish denominations, the U.S. and the Middle East — is drawing attention; he’s the subject of a new documentary called “Circumcise Me,” and is poised to become a stand-up comic version of chasidic reggae star Matisyahu.

Campbell’s mother flirted with life as a nun, but he was raised in a nominally observant house. Adrift from Catholicism early on, his spiritual search began in rehab when a counselor told him to find a spiritual force bigger than himself.

Drawn to all things Jewish, Campbell devoured Leon Uris’ “Exodus” and inquired about joining the Volunteers for Israel program. He found himself fasting on Yom Kippur well before he took a class in Jewish religion at a Reform synagogue in Los Angeles that led to his conversion.
An alumnus of the Circle in the Square actors school, he names Woody Allen, Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce as comedic influences. Campbell was a commercial actor in L.A. as he became increasingly observant. “My agents thought it was cute when I put on a kipa. When I turned down the job on the eighth day of Passover, my Jewish agent jumped out of her seat.”

Matthew Kalman, a Jerusalem journalist and co-producer of the “Circumcise Me” documentary, remembers how odd it was to see a man in payes in a Jerusalem comedy club.
“I thought of asking him, are you lost?” he says. “And then he gets up on the stage as the headliner. He’s not what you think he’ll be. He’s a terrific observer of human nature in general. A lot of his jokes have nothing to do with Jews.”

Campbell acknowledges that most people in the Orthodox community don’t quite know what to make of his profession.

“It’s the sense of, ‘Where does that fit in?” he says. “I’m not a doctor or a lawyer. They think I’m a clown, and then if you’re a clown, is it a legitimate use of your time?”

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization