Comedy roasts took off in this current era of unscripted cable television because they’re cheap to produce. The format is reliable, simple: A mix of comics and celebrities take turns lobbing potshots at each other and at the primary target, who finally gets them all back in a no-holds-barred routine that closes out the night. 

The challenge posed by “The Roast of Antisemitism,” which was taped Wednesday before an audience of about 1,900 — plus about a dozen armed security guards — at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, is that the target was not a household name with the grace to be teased, but a concept. No one was there to see antisemitism take the lectern. Instead, said Elon Gold, a standup and impressionist who emceed, this night was to show the world that “we’re fighting back.”

Its producers aim to sell it to a streaming service, but to date have not announced a deal for the show, which felt like a standup special held at a shul banquet. The crowd — almost entirely Jews, if spot surveys by the comics were any indication — was loose, lively and delighted to be in on the joke. A few of the acts, in particular Modi, Jeff Ross and Gold, clearly reveled in the assignment. And like a shul banquet, it was way too long.  

The comedy itself? It was safe, shallow and sometimes repetitive, and frustratingly broad. Kanye West, Louis Farrakhan, Mel Gibson and Roger Waters were all name-dropped, but without venom. No one brought more than a few seconds of material on anything that’s happened lately. No one cut deep, though there were at least four circumcision jokes.

But the jokes could still be funny. Ross — real last name Lifschultz — a standup whose eminence in Comedy Central events of this ilk have earned him the nickname of “The Roastmaster,” came prepared. Backed by live piano, he performed an epic, original song called “Don’t F-ck With the Jews” that had the whole crowd singing along. Modi (full name Modi Rosenfeld), an Orthodox standup whose best material riffs on Jewish life, exulted in making fun of “goyish” — which he pronounces guh-yish — culture.

A few of the comics flopped. Michael Rapaport, ostensibly one of the headliners, stumbled through half-baked material from his phone and held the crowd in a half-cringe for what was probably 10 minutes but felt like double that. A video piece by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (a puppet, for the uninitiated) was hard to hear and flat besides. And the audience seemed more mystified than amused by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Rachel Bloom’s drive-by performance of a song from her show.

As you might have suspected, the best jokes were not roasting antisemitism — they were also teasing Jews. Or doing both: “What is antisemitism?” Modi asked not long after taking the mic. “It’s hating Jews more than you’re allowed.” This is where the event hit its stride — as, basically, a safe space for Jewish self-deprecation. I wished the comics had done that more, and interrogated our own cultural position harder — that they had played with the audience, not just to it. Not to go full Jewish mother, but what they lacked most was ambition.

This article was originally published on the Forward.