An Orange Tie and A Grieving Crowd: Comedian Yohay Sponder on Jewish Resilience

What do you do when you're an Israeli comedian set to perform in Paris on the very day the world learns the fate of the Bibas family? Yohay Sponder faced that moment in February 2025—and chose to take the stage. Wearing an orange tie in their honor, he brought laughter to a grieving crowd. Since October 7th, he has used comedy to carry pain, affirm his identity, and connect through resilience. Hear how his Jewish identity shapes his work, how his comedy has evolved since the Hamas attacks, and what he says to those who try to silence him. Recorded live at AJC Global Forum 2025. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: Untold stories of Jews who left or were driven from Arab nations and Iran People of the Pod : Latest Episodes: From Broadway to Jewish Advocacy: Jonah Platt on Identity, Antisemitism, and Israel Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War: The Dinah Project's Quest to Hold Hamas Accountable Journalist Matti Friedman Exposes Media Bias Against Israel Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Transcript of the Interview: Manya Brachear Pashman: Israeli stand up comedian Yohay Sponder: first gained popularity for his funny Monday shows in Tel Aviv, which attracted a following on YouTube. A few years ago, Sponder made the decision to perform Israeli comedy in English to reach a wider audience and a wider audience it has reached. He has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, and in May, launched the North American leg of his international tour in Baltimore. Sponder is with us now on the sidelines of AJC Global Forum 2025. Sponder, welcome to People of the Pod. Yohay Sponder: Thank you so much for this eulogy. Manya Brachear Pashman: I'm curious how you found your way to stand up comedy and tell us a little bit about your upbringing in general. Yohay Sponder: Doing comedy, I always been fascinated about the laughing reaction of humans. You know, it's fascinating, if you think about it, if you have the ability to improve the frequency in the room. As a kid, I was really intrigued by that. So you saying few things, and people go, haha. It's like designing a vibe. So as a kid, I was attracted to that. So as a kid, you watch video cassettes, back in the day, I would watch all of the comedy stuff. I had all of them cassettes. I was very, very affected by it, impersonations, imitating them, doing jokes of my own, and always around that. And in my show, I'm talking about comedy. I have a bit about comedy in my show that I'm saying that I was, I wasn't just the class clown in my school. I was the jokes technician. If you had a broken joke or a joke that didn't work, you would come to me. I would fix it for you, bring it back. Not using it as my own resume. I would bring it back, when it's fixed. Manya Brachear Pashman: That's great. So you helped others clown around as well. Yohay Sponder: Yeah, I was a clown teacher. Manya Brachear Pashman: Were you raised in a secular home, a particularly Jewish home? Yohay Sponder: I was raised in a, let's say secular but Jewish, celebrated holidays, family Friday night family dinners. But we weren't like super Shabbat keepers. I think I became closer now, when, after my father passed away, I for the Kaddish and I put tefillin a little bit. And the war, you know, this war, activated a lot of Jews to the to this kind of level. Manya Brachear Pashman: Right. You're sitting across from me, and you're wearing a gigantic Star of David. On your chest. Yohay Sponder: Yeah, you see what she did, you see what she did? You're sitting across and you're wearing a gigantic Star of David. Manya Brachear Pashman: Have you always worn that or did you put it on after October 7? Yohay Sponder: No, it's after the war kicked in. I don't know. I had a vision that that's what we should do right now. We need to be out there and show other Jews that we're there. That's what I felt. And I imagine that, I need a big star of David. And the day I thought about it, I saw that. So there was a sign for me, like I had this vision, that I need a big star of David here. And less than 24 hours, that one find me. I didn't look for it. It came across my eyes. Manya Brachear Pashman: Which I imagine you'll be wearing your Magen David on tour. The tour itself is called Self Loving Jew. What is the meaning of that title? Yohay Sponder: So, basically, you know, this is so awesome, because before October 7, you could argue of other opinion. You could hear some people saying, Yeah, but maybe we should this. After October 7 that we know so all these monsters that came and attack us, the self hating Jews that they're doing now, super horrific, disgusting job of mocking us. And I find it really bad, and I think so I'm I'm bringing the other side. I'm just bringing the you know, it doesn't mean that I hate someone that is not Jewish. I'm just, I want to inspire other people to be to love themselves, even if they're not Jewish. But as Jews, we have to love us, because we're probably the last ones to love us, and if we won't love us, that's that's over for us. And people, people saying that it's very harsh to compare the self hating Jews of now to the Kapos and and I'm saying, yes, it's it's not fair for the Kapos, because they didn't have a choice. You guys have a choice, and you did it just for likes and for other people from other cultures to like you. I really, I really believe. I really deeply believe I'm coming from there. I'm coming from the war. I really believe that the people that don't, they don't give us the credit, people that not supporting Israel, they're uneducated. I really believe in that they don't know enough. They might be not bad people, but they might be stupid people. Self hating Jews, like whatever Dave Smith, all these guys that try to be liked by, you know, others, and they they just out of their own idiocy. Listen, you don't know anything about what's going on. As Douglas Murray told them, ou've been there. You saw those things that you're talking about when you're saying, Israel, starving the Gazans you're never seeing the the trucks that going every day. You're You're an idiot. You're just an idiot. You listen to other people, and you listen to other lies. And they will say, No, I just want peaceful. We all want peace. Just the fact that you're Jewish, it means that you want peace. We say Shalom when we see each other, when we say Shabbat Shalom. The holiest day of the week. We say telech bshalom, tachzor bshalom. Go in peace, come back in peace. You don't want peace more than I want. We all want peace, but we're willing to fight for peace because we have to make sure that no innocent people from both sides, by the way, will get hurt. So yeah, it's really bad and shitty situation, war, but you blame us without checking it. So anyway, I don't want it to make it too much political. It's not political, by the way, Self Loving Jew. It's about loving yourself and being, you know, being in touch with what's going on right now. Manya Brachear Pashman: So there is so much misinformation out there, you launched your you started doing English language comedy to reach a wider audience. Now you're doing an English language international tour. Do you have a message that you want to get out to the wider world to especially this region where there is so much misinformation and misunderstanding? Yohay Sponder: Yeah, the message is that, we're living in a time that it's very hard to agree on something, and I really miss the days that we all agree that the world is round. You know, a little long ago, a few years ago. But yeah, the message is that you do your research and come to laugh with us. Manya Brachear Pashman: It's an important message that gets forgotten. October 7, and its aftermath were so horrific. Did you press pause on your comedy career for a little while? At what point did you find it acceptable to make people laugh again in the aftermath? Yohay Sponder: No, it took time. It took time. It took a day. Manya Brachear Pashman: One day. Okay. Yohay Sponder: Because right after that, after the attack, they start to arrange people to go to volunteer in squads and families that got evacuated from their house and soldiers and hospitals, people got wounded. So I've been around. I did that. That was my duty service. And also I did regular reserves duty, stuff like that. Manya Brachear Pashman: And what did you do on reserve duty? Yohay Sponder: I was in Ramat Gan patrol. So not super serious, but I did what I did. Manya Brachear Pashman: And at what point did you go back to the stage and so more standup? Yohay Sponder: So I'm running the show Funny Monday, I think roughly a month after October 7, we get. Maybe two months, yeah, something like around that. January, maybe, I remember, like a little bit after that, the show went back and we did stand up in English. People really followed what's going on in Israel. No matter what you do from the country, they follow that. And we had strong they were saying, Wait, Shahar Hassan, my co-host, very good friend. Really funny man, serious comedian, like one of A-list, Top list. And people follow, people watching what we have to say. That was the main purpose of Funny Monday, when we launched it in 2016 nine years ago. Manya Brachear Pashman: Did it shift? When you restarted it after October 7, was it different? How so? Yohay Sponder: Yeah. We always talked about current events, what's going on in the world? It's the international perspective of not just news, but Israel perspective and stuff like that. So in that case, you're talking about Iran's attack. What the news with Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu? Whatever is happening politically, or current events and yeah, people were more attached to the screen those days. And also in comedy. It's a great form of art to deliver, you know, your point of view, or your, yeah, your what you want to say. So it's, it was great to do that, and till this very day, that's what we do. Manya Brachear Pashman: So you really though, have to read the room, right? I mean, different audiences, I imagine, receive your comedy in different ways, especially in different regions of the world. So I'm curious if there are differences in the kind of humor that resonates with an Israeli audience, and the kind of humor that resonates with an American audience or a European audience. Yohay Sponder: So that's the thing, why I love my country so much, because you can just stand up in any form you want. You can go as dark as you want in Israel or as political as you want. We have some issues right now with people having fight with each other, of political issues, and we have a lot of demonstrations and stuff. So there's that. But beside that, you can get away with a lot of what people say here in America, woke culture, politically correct. In Israel, we don't have it. You don't stand up like in the 80s. If someone looks gay in the audience, you say, Hey, you look gay man. That's very gay. You're fat. You these, you're old, you're very brown. We just say that, and that's fine. No one canceled. We don't even know what it means to cancel someone. No one get canceled in Israel. Manya Brachear Pashman: Holocaust humor, is that acceptable in Israel? Yohay Sponder: Yeah, it's not just it's acceptable. For example, from my wife's point of view, she was shocked when people came back to say, wow, mitlachot poh shoah—the shower was like, it's the Holocaust. Holocaust shower. They sang that. There's something that you say in the army and it's kind of fine. No one like, hey, how can you compare this? Because the water was cold, so they were called. So they say, but in the Holocaust, no water at all, was gas. And also, when my wife told me, Don't honk like this, it's ghetto. You know, it's American thing to say, Don't honk. It's ghetto. It's like, I'm pretty sure that in Auschwitz, they didn't have cars. Manya Brachear Pashman: She's talking about a different kind of gheto. Yohay Sponder: And she said, like, you can't do these jokes. Yeah, you can't do this. She's like, she's from American perspective, you can't do these jokes. It's horrible. It's like, that's jokes we do here all the time. And in Israel, you use Nazi sometimes, like, as a, not only as a bad thing. It's like, accuracy. You say, like, Nazis coming on time. I need a Nazi plumber, not . . . someone that is a good commander. When I'm having the perspective of my wife and American people, I understand how horrible that is. However, some Holocaust survivors testify that they had humor in the camps. They used humor, even dark humor, in the camps, and it helped them raise their frequency and raise their morality and maybe survive, maybe humor saved them. So when you saying too soon, sometimes it's, yeah, it's too soon for someone but it's okay for someone else. I see black humor as spicy food. We all have our own scale for it. You can, you can eat spicy like a crazy mental person, and I can just taste it. And, you know, it's too harsh for me, and vice versa. So I did jokes about October 7, in November 7, and horrible ones, and it was also with the Holocaust. That's how horrible that was. So maybe it's too soon for the Holocaust. It's too soon for October 7. I said, the people that compare compared October 7 to the Holocaust. And I'm saying at least in the Holocaust, no one kidnapped Holocaust survivors. It's not even a funny, like, haha, funny. It's like, oh shit, yeah, yeah, that's the joke. It's not a joke of a punch line. It's a punch in your belly. Yeah. Manya Brachear Pashman: What have been some of the most memorable moments from your shows, from your live shows, and I'm talking good and bad, have there been really positive responses and have there been really ugly? Yohay Sponder: So let's just take this afternoon in Paris that I'm sitting in my hotel and Instagram and social media exploding from what's going on with the releasing of the Bibas babies. That we're getting back coffins, and I'm getting, I don't know, hundreds of messages from people that like we don't know if we're coming to the show. Two shows sold out in a huge theater in Paris. I'm not there every day. That's the show. That's it. One day since October 7, and no one knows when I'm going to come again. And my heart is broken, and people tell me we want to come but we can't. What do you think we should do? Now, I responded to all of them, my wife and I responded to all of them, you do what you feel. I totally support your feelings. And the show is going to happen, and we get together tonight, and it's going to be a group hug, but if you can't make it, that's fine. I went on stage with an orange tie that I bought, and we talked it through. Arthur is the comedian and producer of those shows. He opened the show, he talked about the situation, and we did the shows. Now, that's the beauty of it, that's, that's the genome of the Jewish people. That's so in us to . . . . what we talked earlier about the Holocaust survivors that testify that they want to laugh, they want to have a good time. They don't want to let these terrorists decide for us what we gonna feel. Yeah, we feel bad. Yes, you're the worst people on the planet. I wish God will wipe you out, or IDF as fast as possible. You're a disgusting dirt of…but for us, for what we can do right now, we're gonna, we're gonna do our best to raise our morality and frequency. And I did the shows. I'm not gonna lie to you, I was very sad. But you know, the people that, that's what Bob Marley said after, he got shot, you know, and he did the show anyway, and he said, the people that want us to feel bad, they don't take a day off. So how could I? That's a very nice thing to say. Manya Brachear Pashman: You had a show at City Winery where some people in the audience came with, maybe with intentions to protest, or at least they expected to disagree with you, and they met up with you after the show. And what happened? Yohay Sponder: After my show, one of the presidents of the BDS organizations. She approached me and she said, we came to hassle the show. We came to ruin your show. So like, why you didn't do it? And she said we were waiting for the right moment, but the more the show went on, the more we liked what you said. You talk a lot about peace, you talk a lot about mutual values and how to solve problems, and you talk about the nice things of the Jewish tradition and the Jewish religion. We couldn't ruin that. We have conscience and we also liked you. They liked the show. They wanted to ruin it, but they loved it, and they laughed. I told her, that's exactly what I do. In my stand up show, when you see that bit, it's with the whole structure of what happened there and how I almost made peace with these guys, but it didn't work out. Manya Brachear Pashman: Maybe you need to do your stand up routine in Gaza and that would solve everything. Yohay Sponder: I checked that. They don't have comedy clubs there. I said that when I hosted the show, we have an Arab comedian, a friend of ours. You know, people like they don't know that, but Arab-Israelis, are Palestinians. To their definition, to the Palestinians definition, it's the same thing, but they don't identify as Palestinians. It's like we're Muslims, we're Arabs. Anyway, they're with us. They're like siblings to us. So when I introduced him, I also made fun of the situation. I said, When is going to be in Palestine? When it's going to be the Jewish comedian goes on stage like you going here and stuff like that, and there is no comedy clubs in Ramallah or in Gaza, but Inshallah, when there will I go and I do a spot. Manya Brachear Pashman: How many of your shows, as you've been traveling around, have actually been canceled or moved or postponed. I read something about your Amsterdam show, for example, was moved to an undisclosed location because of security concerns. Has that happened elsewhere? Yohay Sponder: Australia. And they tried to cancel my show in Brussels, didn't make it. They tried to cancel my show in Paris. They couldn't make it, but demonstrated outside. And every time that thing happened, I got a lot of press covers and interviews, and people get insane. And like, oh, we have to support and come to see the show. So every time it happens, I doubling or sometimes tripling the amount of people. Which is so weird, you know, because they're always the people they hate us. Always go, oh, Jews, money and you guys this, and you made me make more money. I didn't want to make that much money. I want to make third of the amount of money. But because of your protesting. Your hate, that's how bad you are of what you do. And how amazing we are what we do. You know, I didn't want to make that much money, so now I hire them, the protesters. So they work for me. Manya Brachear Pashman: They do your marketing, generate publicity. So none of the shows have been successfully cancelled? Yohay Sponder: No, the Amsterdam show canceled. The Boom Chicago, which also surprising. Your name is Boom Chicago. What's your security concerns. That's gonna be a boom. Let it be. Manya Brachear Pashman: But I thought it was moved. Yohay Sponder: We moved that like because they a week before the show, they said we're not doing the show. And was like, guys, let me respond. Let me say something. No, no. Police said that. We called the police. We have their numbers, you know, we call them. They say, No, we didn't talk to them. And then they wrote, we can help you find a Jewish venue. So I told him, we can help you find a Jewish lawyer. Manya Brachear Pashman: So there was no show? Yohay Sponder: Not in the Boom Chicago. Manya Brachear Pashman: Got it. Yohay Sponder: And I'll never go there. Manya Brachear Pashman: And not in Amsterdam? Yohay Sponder: No, it was in Amsterville. Manya Brachear Pashman: Got it, okay. Amsterville, is that next to Amsterdam? Yohay Sponder: Turns out, yeah, they didn't know that too. Was was a very nice theater, I think, three times' size of the Boom Chicago, and we had a great time. And I'll go there again. And it's not just the Boom Chicago, when we try to rebook it, a lot of other venues, more than 30 venues, didn't want to have me there. Manya Brachear Pashman: So is there anything else that I haven't asked you that you really want to share with our audience? Yohay Sponder: Yeah. I mean, listen, I'm not sure that the audience is going to be 100% Jewish, right? So the message is going to be split for both. So I'll talk to them. So if you guys are Jews, I wanted to know that everything's going to be fine, and we got this, and raise your head, and we're good. We're going to be good. This is probably the last one. It's the last one. I think Messiah is coming, right? We're going to be fine, all right? And if you're a non Jewish person watching it, you're an ally. So I want to thank you. We don't take it for granted. It's very important that you're around. Manya Brachear Pashman: Sponder, thank you. Yohay Sponder: Thank you so much.