“I started to perform more in English because I saw there was a need for someone to talk about Israel, to talk about Judaism to talk about antisemitism and about the things they blame us for,” says the 42-year-old. “I wanted to mock it, make fun of it and make it a joke because that is what it is.
“It is time for Israelis to show Jews how to be Jews. I want to say to people, we are the best. Don’t shy out. Wear the biggest Magen David you can find and be loud about who you are. We have nothing to be ashamed of. It is the other way around. We’re awesome.”
It is comforting just to hear him warm to his theme. Listening to him as he chats over Zoom from his home that he shares with his wife and child in Ramat Gan, makes you realise how much we diaspora Jews do hide and imbibe the shame we are told we must feel.
“It is not our fault God chose us,” he says, half joking, half not. “It is not our fault, so other people need to deal with it. They need to suck it up. We want to be a light for the goyim, but if they are against us that will be harder for them. History proves that. We are not looking for a fight. We want peace – our word for hello, shalom, means peace. The songs that we sing are about peace. We don’t start wars. And the world is going to have to accept that we are here to stay.
“We Jews make more and more medications and technology, we make this world better and as we do that, people are trying to kill us. So, we’re fighting while, at the same time, trying to improve the lives for others. Our motto, basically, is we want to make your life longer so that you will have more time to hate us.”
Comedy has always been part of Yohay’s world. His father was the son of Polish Holocaust survivors but “my dad didn’t want a sad house” while his Moroccan mother’s side of the family is “loud and out there”. Growing up on the Golan Heights, he says he knew he wanted to be a comedian before he realised such a job existed.
He started on the comedy circuit as soon as he finished his duty in the IDF, working part-time as a painter and decorator on the side, and his comedy has taken him some funny places – at one time he specialised as a hen night comedian.
He started doing comedy in English as well as Hebrew alongside veteran Israeli comic Shachar Chason, and it soon became comedy with a political purpose.
“From 2012, we decided to do more to defend the narrative; to stop the lies. We know that Israel is not very strong on public relations so we thought maybe we could counter the misinformation with comedy. Soon there was a group of us, participating in each other’s shows, supporting each across Europe and in America.”
During Covid they started to do more online. Yohay has nearly 100,000 followers on Instagram alone – the first of his first three London dates sold out within a few hours because people who know his work love him.
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Why does he think Israel is so bad at PR that it needs comics to tell its story? “The problem is that they have truth on their side so they don’t understand the need to defend what is real,” he says. “Unlike the other side, they don’t come with an army of people who are going to lie for us. But what we failed to predict, to calculate, is how this would checkmate the situation. We can say things like, ‘We let everyone pray in Jerusalem’ and ‘It’s the only democracy in the Middle East’ or ‘Israeli Muslims have equal rights’ and they are all true. But we have to get better at convincing people of the truth because they are always hurling new lies.”
Post October 7 he feels even more justified in his cause. “Now we see the real picture, don’t we?” he says. “People are either with us or they are not. I have Jewish friends who refuse to say anything about what has happened and they are not my friends any more.
“There is an American Jewish comic who does this whole fantastic angry scene about how he cannot open a piece of candy. It goes on for five minutes. But all that anger and energy and he’s not said one word about anything that’s important to the Jewish people? Hmm. It is hard to make a living from comedy but I really believe that now is the time you have to stand up. You have a responsibility – God gave you this talent to make people laugh and if you don’t use it, it might be too late.” He asks me to write the following in capitals: “USE YOUR VOICE.”
For Yohay his career is now also his duty to his country: “When people tell me that they haven’t laughed like this since October 7, I know I am doing the right thing.”
But the laughter is just a part of it. “After a gig in Manhattan a girl approached and told me, ‘I came here with ten pro-Palestinian supporters and they stayed the whole show.’ She said, ‘I’m Jewish and I’m with them, but I told them we needed to hear the other side.” She was a self-hating Jew but she saw me saying, ‘We just want peace. We are fighting for life and saving all Israelis whether they are Jewish or Muslims.’
“And when she told me they stayed, they listened, and they ‘loved me’, that was worth more than compliments or money or anything else. It was something I did for my country.”
Yohay Sponder will be at the Leicester Square Theatre on January 22 and 23. For tickets go to: leicestersquaretheatre.com/show/yohay-sponder-self-loving-jew/#book-now
