Noam Shuster-Eliassi

Shuster-Eliassi was born to an Iranian-born Jewish mother and a Jerusalem-born father whose parents were Holocaust survivors from Romania.[3] 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][3] In this community, she learned Arabic quickly and was often mistaken for an Arab.[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.[3] She played a part in Talya Lavie's 2006 short film "The Substitute" before attending Brandeis University on a scholarship.[3] Through an internship with Women's Equity in Access to Care & Treatment (WE ACT), she went to Rwanda to help women get medical treatment.[3]

Shuster-Eliassi became a co-director of Interpeace, an organization founded and later discontinued by the United Nations, when she was in her early 20s.[3]

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.[2][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]

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][3]