| Ayelet Newman | |
| Birth Name: | Ayelet Ben Hur |
| Birth Place: | Long Island, New York |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Stand-up comedian |
Ayelet Newman, known by the stage name Ayelet the Kosher Komic,[1] is an Orthodox Jewish female stand-up comedian. She discontinued her acting career and began performing "kosher comedy" to women-only audiences after becoming a baalas teshuva (embracing Orthodox Judaism) in the early 2000s. In 2003 she moved to Jerusalem. She performs both in Israel and internationally.[2]
Born Ayelet Ben Hur,[3] she grew up in a secular Jewish family in Long Island, New York.[4] After high school, she moved to Los Angeles to audition for roles in TV and film. Among her acting credits are an HBO series, a Lifetime TV movie, and a bit part in the 2003 film The Hebrew Hammer.[4] [3] She also performed stand-up routines on Comedy Central and at the New York Comedy Club and The Improv.[5]
Her career took a 180-degree turn when she began attending Torah classes at the Los Angeles branch of Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox Jewish outreach organization. As she embraced a Torah-observant lifestyle, she quit acting and began performing what she calls "kosher comedy" - stand-up routines that are devoid of off-color humor, vulgar references, cursing, and personal attacks, but that instead focus on the humor in daily life.[6] [4] [7] She also stopped performing in front of men, but plays to female audiences exclusively.[6] [4]
Her hour-long show for Orthodox women and seminary girls includes stand-up routines on topics such as modesty, dating, dieting, kosher laws, Jewish prayer, motherhood, and malapropisms in Hebrew.[5] [8] [9] While most of the show is rehearsed, Ayelet does some improvisation.[2] Her signature routine is a pre-flight safety briefing on the fictional "Glatt Kosher Airlines", in which passengers receive emergency instructions such as: "Should there be, God forbid, a rapid change in cabin pressure, a book of psalms will fall from the panel above your head".[6] "Please say your own tehillim [psalms] prior to assisting the small child, elderly passenger or recent baal teshuvah seated next to you".[4]
She has produced the comic audio CDs It's a Frum Frum Life and Life in Israel.[1]
Since she started her comedy career in the Orthodox Jewish world as a single woman, Ayelet was reluctant to reveal her age to media sources lest it limit her marriage opportunities.[6] She has since married a full-time kollel student[2] and is the mother of 9 .[10]