Max Olesker Turns Adult Circumcision and Conversion Into a Hit Stage Show

Comedian Max Olesker, 38, has distilled his memoir about adult circumcision and Orthodox Jewish conversion into a 60-minute show, Making the Cut, which drew full houses in Edinburgh and now feeds a growing theatre career.

Olesker met his fiancée Eliana at the Edinburgh fringe. The romance moved quickly. But marrying into her Orthodox Jewish family required a conversion approved by the Beth Din, the rabbinical court — and Olesker's existing Jewish identity did not qualify. His mother had converted to a less rigorous branch of Judaism when his parents married. The court did not count it. To marry Eliana, he faced full conversion, including an adult circumcision.

How did the Beth Din treat him?

The process, charted in his book and show, was slow and punishing. The all-male panel delayed decisions, demanded compliance and withheld approval. At one point, they barked: "Is comedy a job for a Jew?" The pace carried a cruel edge: Olesker's father is enduring dementia, and Eliana's grandmother has advanced into her 90s, while the process crawled toward its finish.

Olesker does not frame the show as an attack. "I'm not gunning for the rabbis," he said over lunch at a kosher restaurant in central London. "I wanted to communicate the way it caused me a great deal of pain and anguish, and put extraordinary stress on my relationship. It pushed us incredibly close to the line."

Asked how he stayed sane, he smiled: "There's little evidence that I successfully kept myself sane. It was extraordinarily challenging."

Why write it down?

A journal anchored him during the strangest stretch — lodging with an Orthodox family, feeling like a thirtysomething foster child. "It was so dislocating," he said. "Sat at the edge of a single bed, using an ironing board as a desk. I began writing so that I wasn't just staring at the ceiling with anxiety dancing through my brain."

He did not initially see the material as stage-worthy. "Definitely not," he said. His comedy partnership with Ivan Gonzalez, as Max & Ivan, had grown increasingly autobiographical, but only when the conversion "began to go disastrously rough" did emotional reflection feel like the way through.

Performing it proved harder than writing it. "It was both draining and energizing," Olesker said. "Catharsis is perhaps the word. At times I choked up and struggled to get through the show."

What changes in his career?

Edinburgh listed Making the Cut as theatre rather than comedy — "a leap into the unknown," Olesker said. Full houses followed. He embedded himself in the city's small Jewish community and found "intimate personal conversations with audience members who I think found it moving seeing a Jewish story reflected on stage."

Olesker calls this "an incredibly strange time to be Jewish," noting that Jews of all stripes are re-examining their identities. The show matters partly for that reason: "I consider it first and foremost a love story that has Judaism in it," he said. "It's also a Jewish story through and through."

His next project with Gonzalez is a full play. The Wedding(s), premiering at London's Park theatre in late spring, follows two hapless brothers managing clashing celebrations at a ramshackle wedding venue. "It's a farce with a heart," Olesker said — a sign that the comedy wrestler is now building a durable theatre practice.