Rabbi Mendy Korer: ‘There’s more than enough comedy in life without needing to resort to swear words and vulgarity’

HEARD the one about the rabbi who walked into a bar?

Well, this time it was a hotel, and it was actually the rabbi telling the joke about the rabbi, the vicar and the imam, as part of a fundraising drive to buy a Torah scroll for his synagogue.

Describing his first ever stand-up show, which took place at the Soho Sanctum Hotel in Warwick Street on Sunday, Rabbi Mendy Korer said: “I thoroughly enjoyed it. I believe the participants enjoyed it.

“What was interesting is seeing the science behind doing stand-up. So the first session, the afternoon one, from the get go, everybody was just into it, laughing and like the entire set, 45 minutes, people were just having the best time ever.

“And then the second set in the evening, joke one: I get a little laugh; joke two: nothing. Like, oh my gosh, and then I’m on stage, trying to figure out how to get the crowd going. Eventually I got there, but it was fascinating.

“I’ve got the same scripts, the same jokes, but different crowds responding in such different ways.”

Rabbi Korer set up the Chabad Islington synagogue in 2011 with his wife, and since then has been trying to raise £40,000 to buy a Torah scroll. Currently they are about halfway there.

The world’s first Torah scroll was dictated to Moses by God, according to Judaism, and is the cornerstone of any synagogue.

Rabbi Korer said: “For a synagogue to mature to that point that they’re able to own their own Torah scroll – it’s quite an important milestone.”

Was it hard to curate a setlist of jokes that were appropriate coming out of the mouth of a rabbi?

“There’s more than enough comedy in life without needing to resort to swear words and vulgarity,” he laughed.

While doing stand-up is, for most people, up there with swimming with sharks on the terror-­ometer, Rabbi Korer says he wasn’t actually nervous about doing his first official comedic turn, because he is used to public speaking, and didn’t have a fear of failure.

But he did admit that comedy has long been a part of his service at his synagogue.

“Having comedy included within your repertoire, that people see that you can take a joke, and you could say a joke and that you don’t take yourself that seriously, and you are able to be relatable, that’s something that I feel is an important value,” he said.

And what of the rabbi joke? Here it is…

“A rabbi, a vicar and an imam walk into a bar. And they’re talking about the various differences and similarities of their faith and they go on to lifecycle events; you know, births, weddings, and then at some point, it goes on to funerals. And they start talking about their own funerals. So the vicar says, ‘You know what I hope my congregation would say by my funeral is the way I inspire people to be committed to their faith’.

“And the imam says, ‘You know what I hope my congregation will say by my funeral is that I inspired people to be charitable.’ And the rabbi says, ‘You know what I hope for my congregation to say by my funeral? Look! His foot’s moving!’”