A Brooklyn comedian who spent Rosh Hashanah offline came back online to discover he had become the unwitting face of an international controversy over a comedy club video he had nothing to do with. Menachem Silverstein, a 31-year-old stand-up comic who has been performing for nine years, found more than 40 messages waiting for him asking about a viral clip that supposedly showed him declaring his support for Israel and emptying out a Chicago comedy club audience in disgust. He was not there. He was not even in Illinois.
The footage was actually filmed at Laugh Factory Chicago during a taping of the club's monthly prank show, “What Could Go Wrong?”, according to the New York Post. The comic actually performing in the clip was Kieron Harrell, an Ohio-born, Chicago-based comedian and Laugh Factory regular who has also performed at The Second City and The Comedy Store, per Bold Journey Magazine. Harrell never said anything about supporting Israel. He was blindfolded and wearing headphones as part of a planned bit, unaware that the entire audience had quietly been walked out of the room.
Laugh Factory President David Fuhrer confirmed the walkout was staged by the venue's own staff and had, in his words, “nothing to do with antisemitism or people walking out on Menachem,” according to The Forward. The show features practical jokes, including blindfolds, Nerf guns and water being poured on performers, per Voyage LA. The Sept. 10 performance was recorded by four house cameras, but the viral clip that circulated instead came from a separate audience member who filmed the crowd being ushered into the lobby and posted it online without the producers' knowledge, the New York Post reported.
An Old Joke Resurfaces at the Worst Possible Time
The false narrative gained its supposed proof from a retired bit Silverstein used to perform around 2023: “Hi, my name is Menachem. I stand with Israel. It's not political; they're just the only people that can pronounce my name,” he had joked, according to the Forward. That archived material got pulled into the story after the Al Jazeera English account reportedly identified Silverstein as the performer and reported that he had made a pro-Israel statement that triggered the walkout, per Silverstein's account to the Post. Al Jazeera later removed the story naming him, though Arabic-language Al Jazeera stories continued to name Silverstein, and the outlet did not respond to the Post's requests for comment.
A post from an account called Truthseeker on X falsely claimed the performer had said, “My name is Menachem, and I support Israel,” and racked up more than 2 million views on its own, the Post reported. From there, the fabricated walkout footage spread across X, Instagram and Facebook, with Press TV and The Print among the outlets reporting versions of the false account, per the same reporting. AI tools compounded the problem: Grok both identified Silverstein as the comedian in the clip and supplied his old joke as the line that supposedly caused the walkout, weaponizing archived stand-up material that had nothing to do with the actual event, according to the Forward.
Conspiracy Commentary and a Digital Penalty
Media personality Alex Jones amplified the story further, claiming that a man in a yarmulke told the audience, “If you don't support what Israel is doing in this war, leave,” and that 99% of a full audience immediately walked out after Silverstein said he supported Israel. Neither claim matches the video: the performer wore a dark t-shirt and a blindfold, not a yarmulke, and no such statement appears in the footage, per the Forward. Jones did not respond to the Post's requests for comment.
Beyond mainstream and conspiracy channels, the false walkout narrative was picked up by regional outlets including the Palestine Chronicle and amplified by high-reach aggregator accounts such as the Global Reports Instagram account, which reaches 1.1 million followers, according to the Forward's reporting. International aggregator accounts framed the staged crowd exit as evidence of shifting public attitudes toward Israel. As the clip spread, online actors edited the footage to blur the stage background so the performer's identity could not be verified, while Cassilagio noted the edited versions made it impossible to tell who was actually on stage, per the Forward. Silverstein also said he experienced reduced reach on his own accounts after being hit with coordinated false reporting by hostile users, and he received abusive direct messages on Instagram as the story spread, the Post reported.
Praying for Viral Success, Getting It the Wrong Way
Silverstein, who grew up in Crown Heights, described discovering the situation after Rosh Hashanah services as a “monkey paw situation” — the irony being that after praying during the High Holidays for a career boost, his most viral moment came from a show he never even attended, per the Forward. He estimated the falsely captioned video accumulated more than 10 million views across all social media platforms.
Before turning fully to stand-up, Silverstein built a career as a Hollywood scriptwriter, writing digital sketches for TBS Digital and IFC Digital and developing a pilot concept with Amazon Studios, according to Voyage LA. He is also an ordained rabbi and observant Orthodox Jew who keeps kosher, follows Shabbat work restrictions and adheres to shomer negiah modesty guidelines while performing regularly at top Los Angeles comedy venues, per Forbes. He often incorporates his Orthodox identity and experiences with antisemitic stereotypes directly into his material.
Silverstein has two children and a third on the way, and he was in the middle of preparing to approach clubs about booking his next tour when the hoax erupted, the Post reported. He has not performed at the Chicago Laugh Factory since May and now plans to delay contacting clubs until the false story is resolved or positive press can explain what actually happened. “The person in the video is clearly not him,” he said of Harrell, adding that the episode reflected what he sees as a broader willingness to target Jews over perceived connections to Israel, even when the underlying facts are entirely wrong.
