‘Diaspora Diaries: India’, Jewish Comedian Travelled to India to Meet the Local Jewish Community

Noah Gardenswartz, a Jewish comedian, travelled to India to spend time with the local Jewish communities and documented what he learned for the web series “Diaspora Diaries“.

In Diaspora Diaries: India, we learn that in a country of more than one billion people, a 4,500 member, 2,000+ year old community of Jews is thriving, with it’s own traditions, history and communal institutions. Noah spent Shabbat singing Meat Loaf with the residents at Bayiti, the Jewish home for the elderly in Mumbai, playing with children at the Gan Katan (kindergarten), and schmoozing with “oldest living Jew in Jewtown” (yes a real place)…

Noah’s visit to India was the first of many countries that he will visit for the series. The idea came about when Noah suggested that he document his travels for JDC Entwine, the youth division of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).

When Gardenswartz returned from his first trips with JDC Entwine, the young people’s leadership, travel and service arm of 100-year-old humanitarian organization The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), he came back from Turkey, Russia, Spain, Cuba, and Latvia, not only with a passion for learning about global Jewish communities, but an “iPhone full of mustache and mullet photos” and fodder for what became his “Global Jewish Comedy Show” that he took on the road with Entwine to inspire others to follow in his footsteps. Gardenswartz who was recently chosen as one of Montreal’s New Faces of Comedy: “So I said to JDC Entwine, ‘Let’s do videos; we can reach thousands more people that way,’ and the next thing I knew I was davening, and then hurling, in India, but not necessarily in that order.”

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips