Noam Shuster-Eliassi

Noam Shuster-Eliassi (Hebrew: נועם שוסטר אליאסי; born 1986 or 1987), is an Israeli comedian and activist. She performs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

Shuster-Eliassi was born to an Iranian-born Jewish mother and a Jerusalem-born father whose parents were Holocaust survivors from Romania.^[2] Since she was seven years old, she grew up in Neve Shalom/Wāħat as-Salām ("Oasis of Peace"), a community north of Jerusalem where Jews and Palestinians live together by choice.^[2] In this community, she learned Arabic quickly and was often mistaken for an Arab.^[2][3]

Shuster-Eliassi participated in national service instead of serving in the army, then went to study acting at the New York Film Academy for a year.^[2] She played a part in Talya Lavie's 2006 short film "The Substitute" before attending Brandeis University on a scholarship, graduating in 2011.^[1] Through an internship with Women's Equity in Access to Care & Treatment (WE ACT), she went to Rwanda to help women get medical treatment.^[2]

When she was in her early 20s Shuster-Eliassi became a co-director of Interpeace, an organization founded by the United Nations.^[2] She worked on a project in Israel that aimed to involve groups that had been excluded, or had excluded themselves, from conversations about a peaceful future with Palestinians. Her outreach included ultra-Orthodox Jews, Russian-speaking Israelis, Palestinian Israelis, and even those strongly opposed to a Palestinian state, such as religious Zionists and settlers. After working with the organization for five years, the United Nations shut the program down in 2017 due to political concerns.^[1][2] Looking for another position, she applied to become a member of the Jewish-engagement and social-change leadership program ROI Community, and delivered a stand-up comedy routine at an ROI Summit talent show in Jerusalem. It was then she realized she needed to perform comedy as part of her activism.^[1]

In 2019, she went to the Harvard Divinity School for a fellowship under the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, where she was to develop her one-woman show to be performed at various nightclubs in major US cities.^[4][5] However, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, she returned to Israel, where she contracted the virus and stayed at a coronavirus hostel in Jerusalem.^[5]

She was the subject of the mini documentary Reckoning with Laughter, directed by Amber Fares and produced by Al Jazeera.^[5] The film was released in 2021.^[6][7] Their further collaboration resulted in the 2025 feature documentary Coexistence, My Ass!, directed by Fares.^[8] In Coexistence, My Ass! Fares follows Shuster-Eliassi's path from a diplomat to stand-up comedian.^[9] The movie won several awards, including the Golden Alexander Award for Best Documentary at TDF 2025,^[10] and the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression at Sundance 2025.^[11][12]

Shuster-Eliassi had a viral moment in Arab media January 2022 in response to her performance of a satirical song called "Dubai, Dubai" in perfect Arabic on the program "Shu Esmo" (שו־אסמו, الشوسمو) on the Arabic Israeli station Makan 33.^{[13][14][15][16]} Performing as "Haifa Wannabe" (playing on the name of the Arab pop star Haifa Wehbe),^[17] she delivered searing punchlines satirizing the Abraham Accords and the Emirates' normalization of relations with Israel and mocking the hypocrisy of Israel's relations with Arab countries.^[13] The song was written by the program's editor, Razi Najjar.^[14]

In 2018, Shuster-Eliassi was named "Best New Jewish Comedian of the Year" in a competition sponsored by JW3, also known as Jewish Community Centre in London.^[2]