Tuesday, June 25th, Los Angeles, CA
written by Entertainment Editor, Dan Ruth
Being a goyim who fancies himself a mensch, and living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for 22 years, more than prepared me for Abel Horwitz’s very funny play, Kosher Salt, now playing at The Hobgoblin Playhouse on Santa Monica Boulevard as part of The Hollywood Fringe. In all honesty, I bartended and concurrently “attended” my first bar mitzvah in Manhattan at the age of 32, and ended up tearing up during the ceremony because the outpouring of community that I saw was so beautiful, and as someone who was raised Catholic, it was very foreign to me. Nonetheless, even if you have no familiarity with the Jewish culture, I urge you to see this show.
Abel Horwitz uses the device of a bar mitzvah to set the stage for what turns out to be a very important show. He enters the stage, half rabbi and half clown, and yes, if you’re not familiar with certain songs from Fiddler on the Roof, then I can’t help you there. Horwitz is funny and has the audience laughing and helping out throughout the quick 55-minute performance that quickly turns pointed. Horwitz makes the argument that antisemitism is in fact, just another word for racism. When he was younger, he hated being Jewish, constantly hearing all the lies that people love to spread and with kids making fun of him, who wouldn’t? That, fortunately, has changed and Horwitz now embraces being Jewish, but one can only imagine what the “otherised” and what Horwitz himself choose not to disclose about hate and its ramifications. Horwitz instead, redirects and turns his frustrations into art, using unspeakable and ludicrous sketches to hammer home his point, that the Jewish people are not monsters, and in fact, when communities include large Jewish populations, they tend to thrive. It’s clear that the real monsters here are gunmen such as Robert Gregory Bowers, who murdered eleven people and wounded six others at the Three of Life Synagogue in the sleepy neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, with one of Horwitz’s family members counted among the dead. Being keyed into humor as a weapon, Horwitz takes his place among those who came before him, Charlie Chaplin included, who knew that humor, while certainly a vehicle for human joy, doubles as a sword that cuts both ways.
One should never live with fear and hate as constants in their life, and why this needs to be said in our so-called modern age, is baffling and pathetically sad, especially with all eyes on The Gaza conflict. But Kosher Salt isn't about that, it remains a story personal to its star. It is a funny, sometimes squeamish but very poignant piece of theatre, in the school of the political Avant-garde theatre of 1930’s Poland. It makes you realize, as the lights come up and you’re surrounded by balloons, that being hated is no party. Kosher Salt is a huge score for laughs and humanity, fronted by Abel Horwitz, who is a hilarious and fearless performer, possessing a winning sense of humor and very important script. Kosher Salt is art-as-device in the highest order and again, I urge you to be a mensch and see it.
Please note that $1 of every ticket sold, goes to The Survivor Mitzvah Project, which provides care to the last generation of Eastern Europe’s Holocaust survivors.
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