Jewish Comic Leah Forster Is a Force On Stage

It is the rarest of shows when a performer will make the Hebrew blessing over Gatorade, and then ask a woman in the front row if her coat is made of real fur.

But one should expect nothing less from Leah Forster, and her hilarious and inspirational show, That’s Yentatainment! at the Theater for the New City in Manhattan through December 15.

Forster sings a Yiddish version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and original comedic songs including “Shabbos Goy,” about how when she was growing up Hasidic in Borough Park, her father would ask if someone walking by was a gentile, and would then ask them to turn on a light.

Forster explains how she was a top comic in the Hasidic community performing for women only, and how a number of traumatic events that took place beginning about a decade ago changed her path.

She was outed as a lesbian online, fired from a teaching job at a yeshiva in Brooklyn, and made headlines in the New York City tabloids in 2018 when a restaurant cancelled a scheduled New Year’s show due to her being a lesbian.

While most performers would use their outrage at these events to make a scene in their shows, Forster doesn’t do that. Instead, she recounts some nice moments, as well as some tough ones, and breaks into some of her hilarious characters that she’s made famous on Instagram (including one with several businesses in her apartment), where she has 133,000 followers.

“I’m not p***ed off,” Forster told me in an interview before the show. “I took my anger, and I turned it into art.”

She said she feels a freedom to pursue any artistic vision she wants, unlike some influencers who fear backlash from fans.

“I don’t [care] about (losing) followers,” Forster said. “I was fired from my job, my parents stopped speaking to me, my community threw me away and threatened to take away my child. I’m not afraid. I love and appreciate my followers. The whole world focuses on engagement and algorithms. I got cancelled by my own mother. I keep getting cancelled because I’m a queer and I refuse to stick to one spectrum. I feel that way about my sexuality. I feel that way about my religion. I feel that way about entertainment … why can’t I be like what Hasidim do, which is we make a cholent with all kinds of beans and that’s what makes it so savory and there isn’t a need to fit into one category.”

While there is not a lot of glitz and glamor in the show, That’s Yentatainment has a palpable power of a Jewish soul wanting to speak out. Of the many shows I’ve reviewed, this one is likely the easiest to perform on a technical level, but the most difficult to perform on an emotional one.

While some performers make themselves vulnerable by jumping in the air or wearing strange clothing, Forster does so in a way that makes you feel like she is a member of your family.

It is clear that Forster has taken the “gam zu letova” approach — which essentially means that whatever happens is for the good. Forster, who will be releasing a book in January, has an authenticity that is hard to rival and a sharp wit that could cut through a turtle’s shell.

I would like to see her do more crowd-work, as she is a great kibitzer, but that may vary from night to night.

“Who goes to a theater?” Forster asks in her show, mimicking her mother’s voice, saying that’s not a heimish — or a properly Jewish thing to do.

Forster also jokes that in her community, for young women, there is the “getting married season” and “when are you getting married season.”

“What size is the girl?” she recalls in the show, as one of the questions that would be asked when setting up matches. She details several funny scenes, including how a woman who charged people to use a treadmill in her basement turned it into a bakery, selling wonderful rugelach on Thursdays.

Forster has done standup comedy for Jewish and secular audiences, but this is her first one-woman show. It will make you laugh, tap your foot, and think about the great power of being kind and sweet in a world where some are unsavory.

“They say that you can’t go home again,” Forster says near the end of her show. “But maybe home isn’t a place. Maybe home is just the courage to be yourself…”

The author is a writer based in New York.

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