Finding Humor in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict of Summer 2014

Regular readers of my blog will certainly notice that I've been silent since July 1 when I posted "There are no words for this tragedy" following the murder of three Israeli teens. With Israel in turmoil and its people under constant rocket attacks, it's a challenge to write about anything else. In the past two weeks I've been so consumed reading all of the thoughtful opinion pieces trying to make sense of the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that I haven't blogged about anything.

My Facebook news feed has been flooded with personal stories of my friends who live throughout Israel running for bomb shelters. And since this conflict is taking place in the summer -- the height of tourist season in Israel -- I'm reading the reflections of my friends from the United States who are visiting Israel this summer and finding their travel itinerary has been altered like they never expected. Rather than hiking in the South and touring Jerusalem's ancient sites, they are experiencing what it's like to have to grab the kids and make it to the shelter in 30 seconds as another errant bomb from Gaza descends overhead.

I'm also watching as the global Jewish community walks the tightrope between solidarity and security. Is now the time to travel to Israel to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters there? Is it time to bring Israeli children to Jewish summer camps in America to give them some respite from the daily conflict? At the same time as I'm being invited to travel to Israel for a three-day solidarity mission with the Rabbinical Assembly (the Conservative rabbis' central association), I'm also discussing whether the local Jewish Federation in Detroit should bring the Teen Mission back home for safety (they're cutting the trip short by two weeks and returning to Michigan today).

Rather than attempting to make sense out of yet another senseless and violent escalation in the no-end-in-sight Middle East conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, I've been intrigued by the way humor is helping Israelis cope with the current situation.

White House Comedian Ari Teman Gets a Laugh Out of Obama

Ari Teman is having a great year. First, the Jewish comedian and founder of Jcorps wins the highly competitive Jewish Community Hero award. Next, he gets invited to the White House Hanukkah party. I'm pretty sure it was a legit invite and that he didn't just crash an official White House party like Tareq and Michaele Salahi did last month.

Seth Galena, one-half of the Bangitout.com duo, reported on Facebook about Ari Teman's White House experience. Apparently, he didn't just shake the president's hand in the receiving line, but actually used the time to tell Barack Obama a joke. The party was a who's-who of Jewish D.C. including an assortment of Jewish leaders from across the nation.

Here's the apparent conversation between Ari Teman and the 44th president of the U.S.:

Ari: Mr. President, I'm a comedian from New York --
Obama: Are you funny?
Ari : I tell jokes about you on stage every night, can I tell you one?
Obama: Sure.
Ari: I'll say "Obama" instead of "Mr. President."
Obama: Sure.
Ari: So, they're calling Obama a Nazi --
Obama: Oh yeah (nodding)
Ari: Which I think is fantastic... because if you thought the Presidency was a tough job for a black guy to get!
[Obama starts cracking up.]
Ari: ...Nazi... we have overcome! Mr. President, you have broken down color barriers.
[Obama, still laughing, shakes Teman's hand again and gives him a hug]
Obama: That's great!!