Arts & Fintertainment

Kadima Strikes

Gold

New York comedian-actress stands up for nonprofit agency.

Judy Gold has

paid her dues

on the stand-up

comedy circuit.

Bill Carroll
Special to the Jewish News

udy Gold is a Jewish performer
who refuses to work as the
Sabbath begins on Friday eve-
nings. She has two children in Hebrew
school and a sprightly Jewish mother who
often serves as a foil for many of her jokes.
And she's coming to town as the sole per-
former in a benefit for Kadima Tuesday,
Sept. 26, at the Max M. Fisher Music
Center in Detroit.
Founded in 1984 by members of
Detroit's Jewish community, Kadima,
which means "moving forward," spends
about $2.5 million a year providing coun-
seling, therapy, housing, employment and
rehabilitation services to about 200 people
with mental illness.

"This is our biggest fundraiser of the
year:' said Janette Shallal, Kadima execu-
tive director. "We raised about $300,000
last year, and we hope to bring in even
more than that this year with Judy Gold's
show."
And Gold loves to get away from her
native New York "to do these one-night
gigs — to see what people think is funny
in the rest of the United States:' she
explained during a recent phone interview.
She was interrupted a few times by her
two children and by a phone call from her
mother, Ruth, thanking Gold for sending
her chocolates for her 84th birthday. "She's
a typical Jewish mother," Gold laughed.
"She'll say all the things usually associated
with a Jewish mother, like,`Are you so busy
you can't come by and see me anymore?'
Someday, I'm going to write her biogra-

phy and call it, She Caine, She Saw, She
Criticized."

Flair For Comedy
Indeed, Jewish mothers have played an
important part in Gold's career so far.
She appeared in an Off-Broadway show,
25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, which
earned her a Drama Desk Award nomina-
tion for Outstanding Solo Performance.
She'll return to an Off-Broadway theater to
reprise the role starting Oct. 12. The show
is derived from a compilation of inter-
views with a variety of Jewish mothers.
Gold and her mother had some "issues"
when the comedienne first came out to
her morn about being a lesbian. "But my
morn came around after awhile and is fine
with that now; we have an excellent rela-
tionship!' said Gold. "I'm not a gay comic;

I'm a comic who happens to be gay."
Gold's mother now delights in her two
grandchildren. Gold's partner, Sharon,
gave birth to Henry, now 9, and Gold gave
birth to Ben, now 5, during a relationship
of almost 20 years. After they broke up,
Gold adopted Henry,"and the three of us
attend Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in
Manhattan together on .a regular basis,"
she said.
Gold's Kadima performance will be
strictly stand-up (and rated PG-13), she
said. "Comics have to keep developing
their acts, like developing muscles during
a workout!'
Her act reflects a flair for comedy she
discovered while obtaining a music degree
at Rutgers University in New Jersey, when
she did a comedy routine roasting her

Kadima Strikes Gold on page 61

September 14 2005

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