My So-Called Jewish Life

December 17, 2009 at 7:30pm
at Sixth & I Synagogue
600 I Street NW, Washington, DC 20001

7:30 pm. $10 in advance, $12 day of show. Pre-sales will close at 3pm. You may buy tickets at the door.

Spend Hannukah with SpeakeasyDC and Sixth & I Historic Synagogue (a well-known performance venue and cultural center) for a night of funny, poignant, powerful, and peculiar autobiographical stories about all things Jewish, not-so-Jewish, and wanna-be Jewish.We are thrilled to have an incredible line-up of story tellers for this event:

Ezra Klein ruminates on economic and domestic policy as a blogger for The Washington Post. He was formerly an associate editor for The American Prospect. Klein has appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Rachel Maddow Show, Countdown With Keith Olbermann and many more. Klein, who makes a mean kung pao, shares his culinary opinions in a biweekly column for the Post’s Food section.

Vijai Nathan is one of the leading Indian American female comedians making people laugh across America and internationally. She has performed in South Africa, England and Canada, and was featured at the Montreal International Comedy Festival and Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery in Washington D.C. Vijai has two created and performed two solo shows: Good Girls Don’t, but Indian Girls Do and McGoddess: Big Macs, Karma, and the American Dream and was almost married to a Nice Jewish Boy. Watch a clip of one of her performances on SpeakeasyDC’s stage.

David Plotz is the editor of Slate, the world’s most popular web magazine. He is the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank and Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible, based on his “Blogging the Bible” series from Slate.com. He has also written for the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Washington Post, and GQ. He has won the National Press Club’s Hume Award for Political Reporting, the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Writing, and the Online Journalism Award.

Hanna Rosin is a founding editor of DoubleX, contributing writer at the Atlantic and the author of God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America. Rosin has written for the Washington Post, The New Yorker, GQ and The New Republic. She has also appeared on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and Air America’s The Majority Report.  In 2009, she published a controversial article in The Atlantic with the provocative title “The Case Against Breast-Feeding.” Rosin was born in Israel, grew up in Queens, and is married to fellow storyteller and Slate editor, David Plotz.

Amy Saidman is known best for her victories at Purim Festivals far and wide, claiming the coveted goldfish-in-a-bag prize many times. Her favorite Hebrew school song is “Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish.”  When not watching Fiddler on the Roof, she spends her time as Artistic Executive Director of SpeakeasyDC which is how she weasled into this show. She is part of the cast of Chocolate Jesus and directed two other acclaimed Capital Fringe Festival shows — Revenge of the Cat-Headed Baby & Other True Tales of Life & Death and The Sin Show.

Hadar Susskind, recently honored by the Jewish Daily Forward as one the the 50 most influential Jewish Leaders in America, is director of policy and strategy for J Street , the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. Mr. Susskind held positions at a number of other Jewish organizations including the Jewish Council For Public Affairs, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and the Israel Policy Forum.  He is a graduate of the University of Maryland and holds the rank of Sergeant First Class in the Israel Defense Forces where he was decorated for his service as a combat soldier.