“I was at my friend’s house complaining about the hummus,” he recalled. “And she said, that’s a character! It’s an Israeli, but it could be anyone who came from another country with nothing, made a few dollars and thinks he knows everything.”
The character, Nir, who wears a gold chain, was an officer in the Israeli Army while having an American wife named Stacey.
“You tell someone you were in the Israeli Army, they right away think you were a commando,” he quipped. “They don’t know you could also be behind a desk for three years. That’s what Nir banks on.”
Rosenfeld said he’s rarely met a woman without a story about dating an Israeli guy.
When you see even a non-Jewish girl, she says, “Oh I once went out with a guy named Amir, he was Israeli.’ Somehow Israelis come from the smallest amount from the smallest place in the world, yet everyone has experienced an Israeli guy.”
Rosenfeld performed at Stand-UP NY as well as The Comedy Cellar in New York last week after not performing there in about a year because of COVID restrictions.
“It was really amazing to finally get back to clubs,” said the comedian who was born in Israel and moved to America when he was eight.
He still performed at private events. The comedian who appeared on the HBO show Crashing has famously thrilled audiences at comedy clubs and celebrations around the world for decades with his hilarious routine, talking about the difference between Americans and Israelis, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews and overzealous German workers on airlines.
“When the pandemic began, I did a joke a day online,” he said. “It would remind people of another joke. For a small part of the day, people were talking about jokes instead of viruses and death tolls. It’s important to always keep laughing even in a time that’s so dark. My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones, who it’s been hard for their business or any other hardship they’ve gone through. But we always have to continue to be human and part of that is continuing to laugh.”
He gave a shout-out to his homeland in how it dealt with COVID.
“I was so proud to be Israeli in watching how Israel handled the pandemic,” Rosenfeld said. “They were able to quickly vaccinate most of the country and now they are open. It was a great example to the world. Over here, they tell you to quarantine. No one watches if you do. Over there, they’re following your phone. They’re following you with drones. It’s a military state. It might not seem like the best but in terms of health, it worked well.”
The comedian urged people not to be afraid.
“You have to go with your gut,” he said, adding that clubs in Israel have opened up.
Rosenfeld said he was able to adapt well to virtual shows because he normally doesn’t do crowd work and is confident in his material so he doesn’t require feedback as others might.
He said what took place a year ago was scary.
“It was inevitable, I was already numb,” he said. “There were too many shocks to take in all at once. People were dying. It was worse than we thought it would be. Once the Passover tours were all canceled, I knew the comedy clubs would be closed.”
He said ultra-Orthodox Jews who got COVID from family members in one big house were unfairly attacked by some in the media.
“Hassidim got a bad rap,” he said. “You can’t quarantine the same way when you have 12 or 15 kids in one house. It wasn’t fair.”
Rosenfeld has another alter-ego named Yoely. He is a hassidic man who has threatened to run for public office, calls COVID “the unprecedented.”
Rosenfeld says he blesses anyone who wants to make aliyah, but added that rumors of NYC’s demise are off.
“The comedy clubs are gonna bounce back,” he said. “What happened was vicious. But you will see New York is gonna bounce back and be better than before. The restaurants also.”
He said despite the re-opening of comedy clubs, virtual shows won’t go away so quickly. He is performing as part of a virtual show for the Manhattan synagogue, Romemu, on May 25 and expects to do several others, which will allow Israeli fans to see him before he travels back to the holy land.
“It’s a convenience for people,” he said. “They don’t have to get dressed up. My message to people is no matter what trouble you are having, try to have a laugh because it reminds you that you’re alive.”