“Oh my God, I’m in Israel! Oh my God! Unbelievable!” exclaimed comedian Jerry Seinfeld as he took the stage Dec. 19 in a basketball arena in Tel Aviv packed with more than 11,000 devoted fans in the first of four sold-out performances. It wasn’t his first time in Israel, but it was his first performance in the Jewish state.
Seinfeld made few direct references to Israel in his hourlong comedy set, other than noting that the country’s name “has a lot of vowels” and that Israelis have two answers to any question: “no problem” or “that’s impossible.”
The crowd responded enthusiastically, laughing throughout, despite the fact that some of his brand-name references were little-known to Israelis, like Pop-Tarts, Gatorade and Cream of Wheat.
Seinfeld, who said he felt “warmly received in Israel,” didn’t address the security situation, though he spent a great deal of his act on men, women and married life, which he compared to underwear. An ideal marriage, he said “offers a little bit of support and a little bit of freedom.”
He also paid a great deal of attention to a theme that many Israelis can relate to: the modern obsession with electronic devices, especially cellphones and how lost modern men feel “without that hard rectangle in their pocket.”
“Our devices keep getting smarter,” he said. “Why don’t we?”
During his encore, Seinfeld took questions from the audience and was asked to say some phrases in Hebrew, a request he politely refused, saying that he learned Hebrew “for my bar mitzvah and that was enough,” before partially acquiescing and saying, “Shalom, how’s that work for you?”
Clearly undaunted by the wave of terror attacks that had sparked a travel warning from the U.S. State Department regarding visiting certain parts of the country, Seinfeld said he was “so happy to be back, so happy to be back in Israel again.”
The fact that all of his shows sold out, despite high ticket prices, reflects his popularity among Israelis, and the fact that his legendary comedy series, broadcast from 1989 to 1998, is still going strong in reruns in Israel, as it is in the United States.
In 2007, he served as the creator and producer of the animated feature “Bee Movie” and traveled to Israel to promote the film. It was the first time he had come to Israel since he volunteered in 1971 as a 15-year-old in the banana fields of Kibbutz Sa’ar.
During that 2007 visit, he joked that he was doing his part against terrorism because a successful movie created by Seinfeld, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg would certainly be “annoying to terrorists,” and “if we can’t stop them, we can annoy them.”