Noam Osband. (Photos by Jim Whetstone)

By Stephen Silver

Noam Osband has been a journalist, filmmaker, musician, anthropologist and even a street performer outside of Eagles home games. Of late, he’s been a stage performer, presenting his show, “Circumscribed: A True Tale of One Father, Two Sons, and Thousands of Foreskins,” at fringe festivals around the country. It’s a show about his late father, who was a mohel, and Osband’s memories of him and his reflections as he became a father himself.

In September, Osband will bring the show to his adopted hometown of Philadelphia for the first time, with four engagements as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The 60-minute show will be performed at Studio 34 (4522 Baltimore Ave.) in West Philadelphia on Sept. 5, 6, 27 and 28. Osband spoke with the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent in mid-August, shortly before he left to travel to Israel for a family bar mitzvah. His father is buried in Jerusalem.

A native of Brookline, outside of Boston, Osband is now in his second stint of living in Philadelphia, having first come to town to earn a Ph.D. at Penn, before he and his wife and son returned two years ago.

“It’s a story about my relationship with my father and … about the relationship of parents and kids. So, my father was a mohel, and he circumcised me. He did my brothers, friends and family. We used to bury foerskins by the tree near the garage,” he said.

Osband didn’t have much interaction with non-Jews until he went to college, at which point he realized that some of the things he had experienced were truly unique.

“Nobody else had a foreskin tree near their garage, but I never thought about how odd it was until I got to college,” he said. “And I would sometimes tell people the story, and they’d be like, are you crazy?

“It’s a show about growing up with a father who was a very loving and very good father, but eccentric in really good ways and really loved getting us involved in ritual and a lot of esoteric Jewish ritual. And then he died young. He died when he was 51. And then in the years afterwards, me looking for father figures who were not really great father figures.

And then the show sort of ends in me becoming a dad myself and wrestling with whether or not I was going to circumcise my own son.”

He describes it as “a storytelling show” in which everything said on stage is “100% true,” including lots of family photos, audio and video, even footage of the performer’s own bris.

“It is not rare in comedy and storytelling that you embellish stuff, but I think almost to a fault, I cannot embellish,” he said. “It’s hard for me. So, truly, all the stories are real.”
In addition to his work as a mohel, Osband’s father, Michael Osband, was a pediatrician, pediatric hematologist and oncologist at a time when childhood leukemia survival rates were much lower than they are today. Michael died when Noam was 20 years old.

“I think it’s in part because his work was so real and so heavy that he enjoyed bringing the sense of magic and wonder into the world with us,” Osband said.

Osband’s father was also very involved in his synagogue, at one point stepping up to help lead services during a time when the shul was without a rabbi.

“He could make jokes with very serious people that nobody else could make, I think in part because he was known as this very, you know, also sort of serious, respectful person. But he just had this other side to him, too, that really rubbed off on me, who’s a performer and likes doing comedy stuff,” Osband said.

The “Circumscribed” show arose from a letter Osband found from when he had gotten in trouble at camp, and ended up sharing the letter on a live show and podcast called “Mortified,” where people share embarrassing letters from the past. That one drew a strong response.

“I would sometimes have these stories that I would tell about my father that were sort of very funny. And then I thought, ‘There’s a show to do.’ I thought, ‘Oh, well, there’s this through line about parenthood and about what we offer our kids. Then also there’s a through line about circumcision, which was such a big deal for him,’” he said.

“Circumscribed” won the Audience Choice Award at the 2025 New York City Fringe Festival.
“I think it’s a fun show because most people who’ve seen the show are not Jewish. And I’m explaining halacha and random Jewish things, and it works. I think there’s this level, which is if you have a Jewish background, there’s a certain fun element to hearing funny stories,” he said.

Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.