Growing up in a Jewish household on New York’s Upper West Side, I was raised on a steady diet of soup, guilt and sky-high expectations, where academic and professional achievement wasn’t just encouraged — it was the 11th commandment.
This expectation to excel wasn’t just delivered one day in an impassioned speech; it was the unspoken foundation of our family life, as integral to our identity as summer camp, or pretending to dry-heave when my grandma brought out the gefilte fish.
For my family, like many descendants of Jews who narrowly escaped extinction, education was the ultimate asset — because it was believed to be one that couldn’t be confiscated. As the eldest daughter and cousin on both sides (a blessing and a curse), I was expected to work hard, get into a good college and land a prestigious job. And I did just that: graduating cum laude from Dartmouth, earning a masters in Public Health from Columbia and securing a position as a research scientist at a top NYC university hospital by age 24.
And I thought I was happy! Why shouldn’t I be? I had the perfect CV, got to publish academic research papers and study a topic I’d always been interested in: maternal and newborn health. I’d been fascinated by reproductive health ever since a baby was born in a taxi outside my family’s apartment when I was seven, after which I went on a steady rampage of dissecting and amputating my American Girl Doll until she was nothing but a squishy torso. It seemed, in some ways, completely natural for me to pursue the career path I was on. I hoped I’d be a shoo-in for PhD programs and would be called Dr. Adelman by my 30th birthday — a sentence I had written on a post-it note that hung above my desk for years.
But as I settled into this adulthood reality, a nagging question persisted: How and why did I end up here? Had I chosen this path to impress my parents and strangers at parties? Was I drawn to the comfort of clear-cut success metrics — applications, report cards, annual reviews — rather than genuine passion? The daily reality of scientific research was very different from the exciting career I’d imagined, and my days mostly consisted of meetings and spreadsheets. I’d always had a creative streak, but I never took it seriously… until I did.
These questions led me to write what, two years later, turned into “EGG,” a comedic coming-of-age solo show investigating why I became a scientist — and why I left.
Writing the show helped me realize that my desire to control my outcomes had pushed me to become a scientist of my own existence so much so that I became an actual scientist. As a child, I believed I could protect myself from life’s uncertainties through meticulous and studied control; I highlighted my school handbook at the beach over summer vacations, attended my own parent-teacher conferences instead of taking the day off and took so many practice SATs that my tutoring company ran out of tests (they said I’d set a record, and now I still know all this useless information about the Nixon administration and a type of long division that’s been recalled. Did you know you could recall math?!).
These obsessive behaviors weren’t really about learning – they were attempts to make the scary, unpredictable world feel manageable. But no matter how many flashcards I made, the anxiety never truly subsided; it just morphed into new forms of control-seeking behavior, including my career path which, to me, was akin to a conveyor belt.
On my first day of work at my lab, I peered through a microscope at millions of sperm cells frantically swimming in a petri dish. Their desperate flailing reminded me of myself — always striving, competing, trying to be chosen. But a year into my job, I learned something that changed my perspective: In reality, it’s actually the egg that chooses the sperm, not the other way around. The egg sits calmly, evaluating all potential matches before making its selection. This revelation hit me hard. I’d spent my whole life acting like those frantic sperm cells, when I could have been more like the egg: patient, selective and confident in my own power to choose. This understanding gave me permission to explore paths I’d previously rejected — including stand-up comedy. For the first time, instead of frantically swimming toward what I thought I should want, I allowed myself to sit back and consider what I actually needed.
As I began exploring comedy, I initially felt like I was betraying my upbringing. Jews value humor, sure, but not as a career path, and certainly not instead of a prestigious science job. How could I justify abandoning medicine for something as frivolous as making people laugh? And would that be betraying the satisfying sense of tikkun olam my job helping people gave me?
Yet the longer I pursued comedy, the more I recognized its deep roots in Jewish tradition. Humor is about transforming truth and pain into something joyful — what could be more Jewish than that? I discovered that many traits instilled by my upbringing were assets in this new world: the chutzpah to take the stage, the quick wit honed over countless Shabbat dinners, the ability to find humor in life’s absurdities.
“EGG” takes audiences through my hard-to-swallow realization: Sometimes, getting off life’s conveyor belt is the only way to find true happiness, even if it means choosing joy over validation from others. You can’t plan or predict your entire life, and if you try, you might end up as your own test subject, accidentally disproving your own hypothesis.
Embracing comedy felt like a testament to the Jewish tradition of questioning and reinterpreting our heritage. Is this what I really want? Is it ever too late to start over? What does authenticity mean? These questions, once terrifying, became the foundation of my new path.
A year after my departure from the lab, I know I’m no less Jewish for abandoning science. If anything, being a comedian feels more authentically Jewish to me. Even if in a different way, I do feel that I’m still participating in tikkun olam — whether through science or comedy, the goal remains the same: to make positive impacts, to work hard and to connect with others.
As I say at the end of “EGG”: “As I get older, I can look at all my choices, not just the ones I think are the ‘right’ choices or the ones that got there first, but truly all my choices, and know that, like the egg, I’ll pick well, whatever I choose.”
This sentiment, I believe, is the ultimate fulfillment of my Jewish upbringing — the ability to think critically, choose wisely and forge my own path while still honoring the values and traditions that shaped me. It’s about recognizing that sometimes, the most Jewish thing you can do is to question everything — even your own expectations — and find the humor in the journey.
“EGG” is touring in 2024-2025 and will be running in NYC for one night only on Nov. 11 at 7pm at Caveat Theater as an official selection for the New York Comedy Festival.
