Ori Melamed

Ori Melamed reached stand-up after working in radio, food criticism and the rabbinate, and his comedy borrows from all three. He grew up in Tel Aviv and, during his army service, worked as a morning-show editor and producer at the IDF radio station Galei Tzahal. He later reviewed restaurants for Gourmet, the food magazine of the Maariv group.

A religious turn took him into years of yeshiva study, and he received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. Food remained at the centre of his public work: from 2007 to 2014 he was the restaurant critic of the newspaper Makor Rishon, and in 2011 he presented Ochlim Kasher on the Orot channel, a programme that combined restaurant visits with talk about food and the weekly Torah portion.

On stage he turns those worlds into material. In 2012 he opened the stand-up show Kippa Levana, which deals with parenting, children, the city, religion and dogs, and from 2014 he has been part of Zubor, a panel show that brings several stand-up comedians together.