Jon Stewart hosts night of too many Jew jokes to support autism programs

Two years after retiring from nightly television, former “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart made a rare appearance on American cable this weekend, as the host of “Night of Too Many Stars.”

The HBO special, which featured live standup performances, sketches and short films, was filmed at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. In addition to Stewart, it featured an A-list of Jewish performers, including Sarah Silverman, Andy Samberg, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Michelle Wolf, Abbi Jacobson, and Ilana Glazer. And ahead of the new Star Wars release, even filmmaker J.J. Abrams got in on the fun and offered a sneak leak of the plot to Star Wars IX to the highest donor, who will be dubbed the “King of Nerds until 2019.”

True to form, Stewart kept the Jew jokes rolling throughout the show. One of his opening lines, while introducing Howie Mandel, was “Look at our little Jew beards!”

Billy Crystal, a trailblazer for comic fundraising, dropped in. “I was going to do a big song and dance, but nothing rhymes with ‘autism,’” he said.

Ben Stiller played Oren Tiki, CEO of Tiki Torch International. “Tiki torches are really for so much more than just white nationalist marches,” he said, “[M]y great-great-grandfather Isaac Tikiwitz . . . was the farthest thing from a Nazi.”

Stiller’s was not the only performance that addressed current hot button issues. Transgender bathroom laws were at the heart of Michelle Wolf’s standup segment, and Sarah Silverman’s pre-taped video was ostensibly to raise funds for Puerto Rico, with the word “autism” dubbed over any reference to the commonwealth and its struggle. Louis C.K., disinvited after this week’s revelations about sexual misconduct, was notably absent.

Being Jewish was hardly a requirement for “Night of Too Many Stars;” other comedians this year included Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, and Hasan Minhaj, as well as performers on the autism spectrum Carly Fleishmann, Jodi DiPiazza, and the Action Play Chorus.

Though Stewart headlined the special, which aired at 8 p.m. Saturday for American viewers, the biannual show is the creation of Robert Smigel, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer and hand behind (and beneath) Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

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Over the course of more than a decade, “Night of Too Many Stars” has raised millions of dollars to support programs that serve people with autism, a cause close to Smigel, himself the father of an autistic child.

Along the way, he’s recruited many performers from past collaborations, including Sandler, with whom he worked on “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” the 2008 comedy about an IDF soldier who relocates to New York to become a hairdresser.

In a New York Times interview this week, Smigel and Stewart spoke about making comedy out of the news and touched on their Jewish roots, as well as a controversial recent “SNL” monologue delivered by another famously Jewish comedian, Larry David. (Their verdict? “I did laugh at it,” said Stewart, describing himself as an “old Jew.”) The pair trace their connection back many years: asked where they met, Stewart joked, at “Hebrew school.”

The live show raised thousands of dollars for Next for Autism, with auction items such as “an uncomfortable meal” with Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel, a personalized voicemail greeting by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the chance to get drawn into a South Park episode. (These items are still available.)

The night was, as Stewart put it, “funny, touching, chaotic. Like life. Like life for people who have obstacles, and everybody else.”