Laughing Through the Lights: Eitan Levine Brings Hanukkah, Comedy and Community to Guild Hall

With Hanukkah coming to a close this weekend, it’s the perfect time to get together with friends and family. It takes a special someone to bring the community together and send-off such a special holiday. So why not have it be the guy who can tell you if ChatGPT is Jewish or antisemitic?

“ChatGPT, by the way, is Jewish. It finishes your sentences for you and is a big know-it-all and over-explains.”

Such is the wisdom of Eitan Levine, a New York-based writer and comedian who will be bringing his views on everything from AI to baseball to Guild Hall this Sunday, December 21. Levine’s performance will be the finale of “Pop-Up Chanukah,” the annual celebration of the holiday hosted by the Jewish Center of the Hamptons.

David Waserstein, executive director of the JCOH, said in an interview last week that he first heard about Levine from Rabbi Josh Franklin. After seeing some clips of Levine’s stand-up, the comic’s skills of tackling touchy subjects with an eye for detail were very evident.

“I think a mark of good comedy is that sometimes the subjects are not easy,” Waserstein said. “Tears were rolling down our faces watching his clips, in a good way.”

Levine’s style of comedy certainly keeps him busy. He spoke over the phone last week from Fort Lauderdale after making stops in Philadelphia and Boston, which was part of his “Go Back to Law School” tour. He’s also been touring his “Jewish or Antisemitic Live” gameshow, which originally started in 2022 as part of his Jewish Man on the Street social media videos that have garnered millions of views.

“I’ve been very booked and blessed over the past couple of years,” Levine said. “Every show I do is slightly different. We’re gonna talk about the Jewish stuff and that’s definitely a focus of the content that I do. I talk to the audience a lot and what’s been very interesting is that, as I’ve been going across the country, every city has had a very similar but also slightly different experience just being a Jewish community over the last couple of years.

“I’m definitely very curious to talk to the audience and see how they experienced Judaism in the Hamptons over the past couple of years.”

All of that work is on top of hosting his weekly podcast, “Jew York Times,” where he brings a Jewish perspective to everything from Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York City to Luka Doncic’s trade to the L.A. Lakers this year. Levine said he started in the podcast world with, “Game Breakers,” a two-hour sports show on Amazon Prime Video before realizing he had much more to say in his own “very unapologetic” way.

“I don’t see a lot of voices like mine online and it felt like there was a ripe opportunity to go out there and say the things that I was feeling,” he explained.

Levine’s comedy also touches on his upbringing and family history. Growing up, he experienced a mother whom he called “the funniest person I’ve ever met” and a father who was so committed to Kosher life that he “used to have to smuggle food into Disney” so his family could have appropriate snacks in between rides. Some jokes in his set touch on his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, who died in spring 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though Levine had to go through the immense pain of saying goodbye to her over the phone and not in-person, his “very unserious upbringing” helped him find some light in a dark time that he tries to bring onstage.

“This is April 2020, so like the thick of [the pandemic] and I remember they put us on hold,” Levine explained. “We said goodbye to her over a call, and they put us on hold, and I was like, crying while the hospital’s on-hold music is happening and my mom is crying to the hospital’s on-hold music. This is during COVID, when nothing was funny, and I remember that it was the first time in a little bit where there was a natural comedic response in my mind. I remember walking over to a notepad and writing ‘hospital on-hold music.’

“That’s just the way that it is,” he continued. “It’s not that I have an issue talking about the tough stuff. Most of the time the hard part is figuring out how to relay that information to the audience without them getting uncomfortable in a way that prevents them from laughing.”

That experience led to Levine writing about that experience in a New York Times op-ed called “Burying My Bubby During the Pandemic.” It’s one of many unique pieces the comic has penned over the years, ranging from a perilous binge-watch of the Netflix sitcom “Fuller House” for Elite Daily to a revelatory replaying of “The Oregon Trail” for New York Magazine. He’s even worked on creative projects for big names like Nike, Red Bull and Jeep. The punchline to all of that? Levine didn’t even go to school for journalism.

“I was doing comedy in New York, and I was doing it during the first wave of the digital media boom,” Levine said. “Being in New York and in comedy in that era and writing for websites that had me writing five or six articles a day did teach me on the fly the concept of self-editing. It was a ‘jump off the deep end of the pool’ moment in learning how to do journalism. I was good at writing and was definitely able to write jokes, but I learned how to write just by being on staff.

“The comedic sensibilities definitely helped me when it came toward making my journalistic stuff pop more, but the journalistic side of what I was doing and making sure that everything had to be in a formula and there was a certain style to it, that definitely helped me in the comedy world.”

Levine is out and active in the real world, and the real world sometimes can’t be explained with a punchline. More than two years after October 7, 2023, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages as an attack on Israel, the Israeli-Palestine conflict remains a constant talking point. This is especially true for Jewish Americans and Levine says he’s not an exception.

“After October 7, it was weird where I went from just doing comedy stuff to now, I get brought in not just to do comedy but do Q&As and moderate conversations with Jewish individuals” he explained. “The way people talk about October 7 now, people are looking for alternative ways to talk about Judaism, so I’ve been doing the stand-up and everything, but this has obviously taken on a different meaning over the past couple of years.”

Levine describes himself as a “more moderate voice” when it comes to talking about the Israeli-Palestine conflict. He says that though he’s played shows in Israel (even selling out two nights in a bomb shelter at one point) and has a connection to the country “in a very deep way,” he’s also been “openly skeptical or at least being critical” about how the Israeli government has responded to “a very messy, complicated, complex situation.” Levine said that because of the conflict, many Jewish and non-Jewish people have been asking for his level-headed insight to the situation.

“We’ve been forced into roles as Jews to be representatives, whether we wanted to or not,” he explains. “It’s a thing that I’m still navigating, to be completely honest. The metrics in what’s going on in Israel have shifted recently over the past couple of months because the hostages got back, and obviously stuff is still going on there. When that happened, I started to get contacted by more and more people who were interested in the moderate side of what I had been saying.

“It has made me, for the first time ever, really, really, really evaluate why I was getting reached out to, and the answer was because of comedy,” Levine added. “My clips do very well, and I think it’s because I’ve been decent about talking about this in a comedic way but also making sure that the information I was putting out there was accurate. It feels like everything worth thinking about and dealing with has a little more of a weight to it.”

Waserstein was just as affected by the Hamas attack and its impact on the Jewish community. Though working in private equity, Waserstein said he joined the JCOH about two years ago as a means of supporting those who felt impacted by the event.

“I wanted to do something more engaged with the Jewish community after October 7,” he explained. “They were looking for someone [to be executive director of the JCOH] and someone mentioned it to me, and I said, ‘You know what, that’s something I’d like to do.’”

While Levine’s Guild Hall performance may not exactly be family-friendly, the Jewish Center of the Hamptons is hosting “Pop-Up Chanukah” fun for all ages throughout the week. Each night the lighting of the menorah takes place at 5 p.m. at different spots in East Hampton with delightful extras sprinkled on top. The first night this past Sunday at Herrick Park included a donut truck to kick-off the festivities. Monday’s menorah lighting was at Nick & Toni’s with drinks and latkes. Tuesday brought “Light the Menorah with the Mayor” to East Hampton Village Hall followed by a festive holiday feast at Smokey Buns with free ice cream for the kids. Wednesday’s menorah lighting included a storytime filled with songs and Hanukkah’s joy at Book Hampton and a book for every child to take home. Tonight, Thursday, December 18, at 5 p.m., the menorah lighting will be held at Amagansett Wine & Spirits where owner Michael Cinque will host an Israeli wine tasting paired with Cavaniola’s cheeses. This Friday will see the return of Shabbat & Hanukkah on the Beach, with the night’s menorah lighting accompanied by a bonfire and hot chocolate on the shores of Main Beach.

“Our congregation is pretty broad in its age,” Waserstein said. “We have families with kids, and we have 65, 75-year-old retirees. We’re always looking to put on a series of events that are attractive to all of those groups. One of [our goals] is partnering with good partners in the community.

“We’re making an effort to support local businesses. We’re also bringing the joy of Hanukkah and the Festival of Lights out in the community, which is a nice thing to do. It’s nice to be able to get out there and light the menorah, sing some songs, and eat some donuts with your friends.”

“Eitan Levine: Comedian. Writer. Mensch” takes place in the Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan Theater at Guild Hall on Sunday, December 21, at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 at guildhall.org. Guild Hall is at 148 Main Street in East Hampton. For more information about the Jewish Center of the Hamptons “Pop-Up Chanukah” events, visit jcoh.org.