Comedian Elon Gold will perform a full show of comedy at the launch of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s annual campaign on Sept. 11. (photo by Limor Garfinkle)
Comedian Elon Gold helps the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver launch its annual fundraising campaign on Sept. 11.
The last time the Jewish Independent spoke with Gold, in 2019, he was driving from his home in Los Angeles to Las Vegas, with his family, for a Jewish National Fund event. This time, he had returned home from New York, where he performed gigs all over the East Coast, from DC to Jersey to the Catskills.
It’s a tradition for Gold and his family – wife Sasha and their four children – to spend summers in New York, though, this year, his oldest son, 24, has a job, so had to stay in Los Angeles.
“We all have really fun summers together because both of our families are from New York,” said Gold. All their oldest friends are also in New York, he added. “So, it’s like a summer of recharging, with our roots and our family and all that.”
Amid performing at various venues, working on a film, writing a TV series and creating a new comedy special, among other things, Gold gets great joy from doing shows for Jewish organizations.
“My motto is, ‘everything matters and nothing matters.’ That’s how you should look at life, and that’s how you should look at gigs,” he told the Independent.
The nothing matters isn’t about being “lackadaisical and lazy and dismissive,” he said, but more about reducing the stress level.
“It doesn’t really matter, it’s just a gig. If it doesn’t go well, I’ll have another one tomorrow, whatever, it’s fine. It takes the pressure off,” said Gold. “But everything matters is also a big part of it, because everything does matter, and every gig, to me, is important.
“It’s important for myriad reasons. The whole community is getting together and to let them down would be very upsetting, not just to them, but to me,” he said. “I always call these nights of community, unity and comedy. So, it does matter that you not just do well, but I try to hit it out of the park every time.”
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel, community gatherings like the Federation’s campaign launch, are especially important, said Gold.
“We need these nights more than ever before,” he said. “We need these nights to forget that the world hates us, which also is perception, not reality…. The world doesn’t really hate us – there’s far too many people who do hate us, but the world as a whole?
“I was talking to my friend in Israel – I’m writing a TV series in Israel that we’re going to film there, hopefully in the spring – and he was saying he just went to Greece. All you see on social media is they hate the Israelis, [but] everyone we met said, ‘Oh, you’re Israeli? Wow, welcome,’ and gave us hugs.”
That being said, Gold acknowledged we’re living in a frightening time and antisemitism is prevalent.
“But it’s not omnipresent, it’s not everywhere,” he said. “It’s groups of people. There have always been groups of people who hate us, and I always say to Jews, don’t take it so personally. Usually, those groups hate other groups. It’s not just us that people hate. Racism doesn’t start and end with us, but, for some reason, we seem to be the favourite scapegoat of humanity and a lot of it is on us. And, again, I’m not dismissing antisemitism – it is so real.”
Referencing the Jewish man in Montreal who was beaten in front of his children, calling it “disgusting,” Gold said, “It’s really a constant, whether it’s Colorado or DC or wherever you look, there’s another attack, so that’s why we have to be strong and vigilant and stay safe, but also we can’t live our life through the prism of everybody hates us and everything’s terrible. The truth is, a lot of people have always hated us, and whether it’s, ‘they are drinking the blood of Christian children’ to ‘they’re starving Palestinian children,’ they’re blood libels. This is the latest iteration of a blood libel that gives the haters an excuse to hate.”
Gold pointed to inaccurate reporting by the media, including the New York Times’s use on its cover of a photo of a sick, emaciated child in Gaza, wrongly claiming the child was starving.
“It turns out it’s a genetic disease that he has,” said Gold, “and so many of the pictures have been falsified and misrepresented as starvation, when they are children with diseases, which is tragic in its own right, but to blame Israel … and to put that on the cover of the New York Times, that incites and emboldens the haters to hate us and attack us even more. So, it’s all based on lies. The only truth is that there is a war that Israel didn’t start or want and must fight to the end or there’ll be Oct. 7 every day until the last Jew standing. So, we shouldn’t apologize for defending ourselves ever again – but we do have to clarify all the mistruths out there that are representing the Jewish state, and thereby the Jewish people, in the worst light.”
After Oct. 7, Gold needed to step back from work. “For the first few weeks, I found no humour, I was in a state of shock and traumatized, like everybody,” he said. “I actually canceled gigs, I couldn’t do them.”
But one gig he wasn’t allowed to cancel was emceeing a Jewish Federation of Los Angeles event that happened in the shadow of Oct. 7.
“Steven Singer from the Federation in LA said, ‘No, no, we’re insisting that you do it, and that you do open with 10 minutes of comedy in a respectful way. We really need this and … even though we’re still mourning, we have to start healing…. It was the first time I went back on stage, almost a month in,” said Gold.
The terror attacks and the hostages are continually on his mind, he said, but he must pull himself back from those thoughts.
Fortunate to have had an “average to normal childhood,” with parents who “are amazing and brought us up in a loving, happy house … my comedy doesn’t come from pain,” he said. “And now, I’m in more pain emotionally than I’ve ever been with everything going on, but I push it away because, if I delve in too much for too long, I won’t be able to come out of it, I won’t be able to be the funny guy.
“And it’s not just my responsibility,” he said. “In life, I’m fulfilling my purpose by being light and fun and funny, and bringing that to other people, so I can’t get too into it because my rage for what happened and what’s happening and how the world is denying or excusing Oct. 7, the way the world’s demanding the end to the existence of our ancestral homeland – it’s so infuriating and so depressing. If I focus and harp on it too much, I won’t be able to deliver the goods.”
And delivering the goods is something he is compelled to do, by his very nature. When COVID-19 hit and the forecast was that it would last only a few weeks, Gold said his first thought was that he’d catch up on every TV streaming service, binge on shows he’d never been able to watch with four kids and a job that is pretty much 24/7. But, by Day 2 of the pandemic, he was doing a daily show on Instagram Live called My Funny Quarantine.
“Every day at 6:13, which is the number of mitzvahs in the Torah, I would do an 18-minute show, which is also, again, significant, 18 is chai [life],” he said. Most of Gold’s Instagram followers are Jewish, so the show had a lot of Jewish themes, though the guests were wide-ranging, including comedians from Jim Gaffigan to Bill Burr to Tiffany Haddish, Jay Leno and Michael Serra.
Gold’s friend, screenwriter and director Jeremy Garelick, loved My Funny Quarantine and suggested Gold do a Jewish dating show every Saturday night.
The Bachor (bachor is Hebrew for young man, guy) ran for a couple of years. “I made two shidduchim [matches],” said Gold.
“It was a way for people to connect, and no one was doing anything, no one could go anywhere, and I had so many people watching live,” he said.
Gold also did Zoom stand-up shows and outdoor performances during the pandemic. More recently, he worked on the film The Badchan, spending a month in Israel for it. He’s been to Israel four times in the last two years, he said, doing shows.
“Badchan is like a wedding jester,” Gold explained. The film was written by Shuli Rand and Gidi Dar, who did the 2004 film Ushpizin (Guests) together.
“To me, every decade has a seminal cultural Jewish film, like Yentl or Fiddler or The Chosen or their Ushpizin,” said Gold. “And I think this is going to be that film of this decade. It’s going to come out in November, hopefully.”
Gold is currently developing a new hour-long comedy special, which will come out sometime near the end of next year perhaps.
“It’s really exciting,” said Gold, “because Chris Rock, one of my comedy mentors, he said every special should be like a thesis and I have the thesis for this one, and I already have been closing for 20 minutes with this thesis. And so, now I’m just building it out, and I think it’s going to be very fun and relatable, because I’m getting more personal in my comedy.”
He said, “The more you reveal, the more they relate.”
“Little arguments with the wife, little stories that happen, when you share them, I have not just men but women coming over to me going, oh my God, are you in my house? How do you know this happens? I’m like, because it happens to me…. The comedian’s job is to relate and connect, to have this shared experience where you’re taking observations about human behaviour … and laughing about it.”
As for Gold’s performance here on Sept. 11, it represents more than just a good many laughs.
“I think everyone should come out,” he said. “I think we all need nights like this event, and supporting your local community and your local Federation, that’s one of the best ways to help us all get through these tough, insane times where the world feels upside down. I’ll try to turn the world right side up for even just a little bit, even just for one night.”
For tickets ($36) to Gold’s show on Sept. 11, go to jewishvancouver.com/faco25.
