Who wants to be a Jew?

My friend Ran and I went to the theater tonight and caught a fun dance show that is in the vein of Blue Man Group. Something about all those sexy dancing Israelis made me want a kabob. I'm not really sure what it was but I went with it.

So we're at this kabob joint around the corner from the theater - your culinary wish is Israel's command, it seems - and the TV over the counter is on, and this show comes on called "Mi Rotzeh lihiyot Yehudi?" - Who wants to be a Jew?

This is sort of a hybrid talk show/game show type deal in which this has-been stand-up comic named Gil Kopash heckles celebrity guests with funny questions about Judaism while sharing a glass of kosher wine and wearing a series of stupid touristy tee shirts like you might see on a Bar Mitzvah kid in the airport. Tonight's guests were a somewhat hoochie female actress, an uptight gay writer and a hasidic comedian. They got asked questions like this:

To the actress: Name the 5 books of the Torah
To the gay dude: Fill in the blank, Bereshit bara _______ et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz
To the hasid: Name each of the twelve tribes of Israel and the first generation of each one complete with their wives' names and the color of their shield, etc, etc

If they got it right they got a Rebbe Nachman and if they got it wrong they got a Tomy Lapid. Very funny. The whole thing has a backup band of Hasids in tzit tzit and ballcaps playing rock called the Jewish Joint and funny Monty Python-esque graphics.

I was laughing my ass off. (Ran was doing a nice job translating.) Anyway during a commercial I'm saying, JESUS I can't believe I have never heard of this show, and I can't believe he isn't wearing one of my tee shirts, and I have to hook him up, and I want to be on the show, and I want to watch it back home, blah blah blah. And Ran looks at me incredulous.

"This show sucks, it's totally not gonna get, how do you say, renewed! No one likes it and Gil Kopash is SO over!"

And after an informal poll at the bar tonight, I found that 3 out of 3 Israelis agree. See here's the thing, hipster Judaism is totally not of interest to ISraelis, at least the ones I know (who, incidentally are reasonably Jewishly knowledgable if largely secular young people.) The stuff that I do, and that Dan does, and that Jay does and that Jenny does and that Matthue does, etc, is funky and important and apparently irritating to American Jew-watchers, but here, it doesn't even register.

And I got very excited to see it - that's it in a nutshell. I wonder how I'd fare here, really. Would I stay where I am, in my fence-walking fascination with religion? Or would I fall one way or the other? Can you walk that tightrope in Israel? I have no idea, but I have a feeling I'll be talking about this show with a lot of people over the next few weeks.