81-Year-Old Comedian Wins Jewish Week Annual Contest

On June 26 we attended the finals of The Jewish Week's 18th Annual Funniest Jewish Comic Contest at the Broadway Comedy Club in Manhattan. The contest has been run by Geoff Kole for the last 15 years.

After more than two hours of comedy performances by host Steve Marshall, seven contest entrants, and seasoned stand-up comedians Stewie Stone and Corey Kahaney, the judges declared that the winner was George Saltz, a clinical psychologist who first tried stand-up comedy in the Catskills when he was 18 years old.

As Alan Zeitlin wrote in The Jewish Week,

The 81-year-old from Ardsley, in Westchester, said he panicked when he had a set in the Catskills and was promptly fired. But he was fired up to get back in comedy two years ago. He took a class in comedy writing and began performing at open mic nights. This time he was calm and collected as he fired off zingers on the theme of the old generation versus the new.

“This was not a good day for me,” he told the crowd. “I found out I was unfriended. Not on Facebook. I read it in the obituaries.”

We'll share the stand-up comedy of some of the other contestants in the coming weeks.

Enjoy!

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