So naturally around purim time I get sent a lot of purim shpiel videos and this year they have sucked more than ever. After watching so many of these shpiels, most of which took time to think up and produce, I thank God that I can literally sit down and make this stuff up on the fly (restaurant terminology for making something for a customer before the order ticket comes in) I also wonder if those hundreds of folks who decided to have their purim shpiels about the Maccabeats actually thought they were clever?
Granted I have seen some decent purim shpeils, many of the lesser viewed, cheaply done by folks just like myself who don’t feel like spending the money on HD cameras, copyright infringement lawsuits and editing – happen to be the best ones. People have been sending me the Glickman Purim Shpeil video which is funny because it makes fun of fat people and making fun of fat people is especially funny if the people doing the poking fun are fat themselves. Like this horribly disturbing video of a man in bad need of a gastric bypass dancing to My Humps.
The other problem with finding purim shpiel videos is that there are too many of them, every shul in the world produces one, every yeshiva, every day school and every Jewish organization – so how is one dude strapped for time supposed to sift through all the crap (the funny thing about it – is that the videos with very few views aren’t necessarily bad – just poorly tagged and distributed) The problem with You Tube is that most of the videos watched are so high in views that everyone thinks their video is going to viral, when the sad truth is that most videos on You Tube have less than a 100 views.
Here are a couple decent ones, the Beavis and Butthead one made me laugh and the first few minutes of the Adath Israel Purim shpiel were very clever, but then it did degenerate into normalcy and normalcy is rarely clever.
Fat people are funny:
The idea of the first skit is very good:
Because Beavis and Butthead always tell us exactly how we feel:
My big black Jewish wedding: Not sure if this was actually a shpiel, since I was sent it a week before purim, but it’s very good.
All comments with links in them will go to spam, but I will approve them because I want to see if there are any really good purim shpiels out there, I’m sure there are and I’m also sure that if people actually post any shpiels they will probably be full of inside jokes that only 13 people will get and please refrain from posting these.
Our Shpiel last year was actually exceptionally fantastic. Several people involved were professionals: a comedian, a musician (a one man band singing a song that gave over what we had been learning), and people with theatrical training. The biggest tragedy is the guy responsible for recording the whole thing screwed up royally so nothing was there to make it to youtube.
cool story bro
Frum Jews should stick to business, medicine, philosophy and religion. Leave the creative stuff to the goyim and Spielberg. Frum Jews rarely come up with original ideas for anything creative – note all the “stolen” wedding songs, candy, Heimish cereals and Toys4U.
And PS to anyone who comes back with Hollywood is all Jews – they do the business and some of the writing though not anymore these days. I know bc I work in the industry.
I got hold of a very funny shpeil video from the community of Nofe Aviv in Bet Shemesh. If I get permission to post it, I’ll do so with the backstory too. The production quality is low (which is a shame considering how funny it is).
Purim Shpiels are bad (in general) because a lot of the “creative/artsy” stuff in the frum community is based on what non-Jews did (in some cases up to twenty years ago) so it’s a lack of originality. Everything from the Maccabeats to the Shlock Rock to those awful frum novels (I’m sorry, but I’ve yet to read one that can compete with even mediore novels written by a non-Jew) is a knockoff of something goyish, which is why I don’t care about this stuff. Frummies do have a serious creativity problem, we’re good at business, gemara learning, dovening, etc, but entertainment isn’t our cup of tea.
My point exactly!!!
Jewish culture promotes societal homogeneity, often to the detriment of creativity. Humor is derived from nonconformity, irony and satire, but these are seen as deviating from the mild-mannered ideal of the Yeshiva Bochur.
This is a little long but funny idea – the end is nice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1TegD495ZM
Keep in mind that many of the best shpiels are full of inside jokes that only the community would understand. Of the 13 shpiel clips that we’ve posted (KSYM in Modi’in), the Maccabeats parody has gotten the most hits, because it’s got universal appeal (as you said, Beavis and Butthead say exactly what everyone’s thinking). But it arguably wasn’t even our funniest sketch.
Wow, Elli took the words right out of my mouth (granted, he referred me here via FB, so it’s not exactly surprising.)
Purim shpiels are funniest because of inside jokes. The challenge with a shpiel isn’t making something that’s funny for people in different communities who surf YouTube and Facebook; that’s actually a less diverse group of people than you’d think and “going viral” stopped being cool when CNN got a hold of the term. The challenge is making something that’s funny for everyone in your shul or school, where you have men and women, young and old, chareidi and modern, freshman and senior, etc.
Anyone can write a joke about the Maccabeats at any time of the year, and nobody has done it better than the band itself (they were self-deprecating so we flocked to them.) A Purim shpiel is a special opportunity because big Jewish institutions likes shuls and yeshivas normally fill with people who only interact in smaller circles. We don’t invite every family over for shabbos lunch, and we don’t hang out with every classmate during free period. We come together as a whole on holidays, but Purim is one of the few times we don’t wear ourselves out davening. So we put on a shpiel — and that shpiel has to validate everyone in the room. It has to make them feel like it’s their shpiel, not just anyone’s.