Avi Hoffman's Too Jewish?

As a special 15th anniversary season event, the Aventura Arts & Cultural Center is thrilled to welcome back the first show to perform on our stage in 2010. In this award-winning solo musical performance, Avi Hoffman explores his Jewish roots, and has discovered that all audiences can identify with the humor and music of his upbringing. Jews and non-Jews alike joinAvi on a journey through his history, relating stories of his family’s immigrant background and the culture within which he was raised. He has discovered the ‘lost treasures’ of Jewish comedy and music, the songs and comedy routines that entertained hundreds of thousands of people from the Catskills to Miami Beach, from Carnegie Hall to Yiddish Vaudeville. Avi serves as a bridge between the old world and the new as he recreates and rediscovers the wonderful music, comedy and pathos of the extraordinary period of creativity that began with the immigrants and continues till today.

Avi introduces performers, that were the biggest stars of the '40s, '50s and '60s, whose jokes, stories and songs served as a bridge between the old world and the new, and are now completely unknown to contemporary audiences; only vague memories to those who lived through that era. He recreates the persona of the great-grandfather of stand-up comedy, the Jewish Vaudevillian Menashe Skulnick.

Avi Hoffman recreates and rediscovers the wonderful music, comedy and pathos of the extraordinary period of creativity that began with the immigrants and continued with their children. A time that was to become the breeding ground for the great comedians of our time - Henny Youngman, Milton Berle, The Marx Brothers, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Brooks & Carl Reiner, Woody Allen and the hundreds of others that were influenced and inspired during those years.