Off-The-Wall Comedy Basement: How They Do Stand-up Comedy In Jerusalem

If you're visiting Israel and missing stand-up comedy, get yourself over to 34 Ben Yehuda Street in the city center for a night of laughter with Israeli and American comics.

According to the writeup at Jerusalem.com, it took an American to make Jerusalem to become the home of a comedy club.

David Kilimnick, an American from Rochester, New York quickly became the biggest star of English-language Jerusalem stand-up with a series of family-friendly stand-up routines touching on immigration from the West to Israel, the struggle to find a wife, and, of course, religion.

The material presented by Off the Wall's stable of comics is pretty safe; comics working blue, or those mining bleaker comedic veins, are more of a Tel Aviv sort of thing.

Off the Wall focuses mostly on English stand-up, with English open mic on Mondays, but on Thursday nights the microphone is handed off to the natives. Check their website for a complete listing of showtimes. The club is located underground; access is from the stairs in the plaza in front of the Ha'Mashbir mall.

In the video clips that follow, David Kilimnick does his stand-up routine about Jewish Holidays, Singles, and the Kotel, and ISRAEL21c reports on the Off the Wall experience.