Modi, the Messiah of Comedy?

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Photo by Tyler Essary via Modi - Facebook

Modi

Modi

Modi has a suggestion for how to spend your disposable income and help people lighten their mood in the process.

“Be the friend that brings the friends to the comedy show,” he says. “When you see a comedian coming to town, especially me, buy six, eight tickets; you’ll find people to bring, and you'll see that it’s always going to be someone who really, really needed it.” 

Hearing Modi shill tickets to his own shows, such as his 8 p.m. headlining performance on Tuesday Nov. 14 in the main room of The Improv, doesn’t sound so much as self-interest as it does evangelistically therapeutic. That impetus derives from the kind of energy he wants to spread. 

And he has a name for it. “Mashiach energy,” Modi says of his coinage for the positivity he wants to embody and convey, “came to me after COVID when I started doing live shows and seeing the relief in people’s faces and happiness and unity. Just to see an entire room united in laughter is what I believe Mashiach (“messianic” in Hebrew) energy is. I do it through comedy. Some people do it through writing. Some people do it through singing. So, that’s what Mashiach energy is to me.”

Out-front Jewishness

If his name and messianic neologism don’t make it apparent enough, Modi is Jewish. His ethnic and religious identity may be at the roots of stand-up comedy in the United States, but not every comic of Modi’s heritage plays up his distinctives much as he does. His out-front Jewishness has made him a favorite among fellow Jews internationally. Around the time of the Hamas attack that instigated Israel’s current war, Modi played there and in Paris. Aside from resonating with audiences with whom he has so much in common, however, Modi sees the role of the Jewish comic as valuable to others, too. 

“I’m very Jewish, and my voice is very Jewish, but I make it so that everybody can understand and, actually, there’s humor in explaining it to people who aren’t Jewish that are in the audience,” he says of how he makes his act relatable to comedy fans of most every persuasion. “It’s a window into the Jewish world. You get to see and hear a Jewish voice, a Jewish opinion about something,” he explains further. 

As for any preconceived ideas a listener may have about his people group, Modi counters, “Whatever stereotypes you have in your head, they’re either solidified or they’re exposed to just be a stereotype and, again, you have fun with it. You’re opening a portal into the Jewish world for goyim (non-Jews) to see, and they love it.”

Modi takes inspiration from comedic forebears such as Alan King and Jackie Mason, but now, “the Jewish world is different. And I think I’m representing it when I’m up there. It’s a stronger generation. It’s a generation that has a nation, a generation that has an organization around the world called Chabad, with ambulance services in certain communities.

Modi wants to give his listeners a break from troubling news. “I’m not mentioning what’s happening in Israel and I’m not mentioning the word Hamas because right now, people just need a break from that.” He is, however, open to referencing wrongs done to Jews in the past, hoping others may be educated as he does. 

“All the jokes I do about the Holocaust and Hitler—it’s not about the Holocaust,” Modi explains regarding one of the more controversial topics he has broached. “It’s a reference to it where it reminds people of it. So, when I say the words ‘Holocaust Museum’ in a joke, people who’ve never heard of the Holocaust or a Holocaust museum might actually Google it or visit one and learn about it.”

Even amid the heaviness in that topic, Modi wants to be a source of upliftment. “I, again, believe that seeing a comedy show is Mashiach energy.”

Here Modi spreads some of that energy as his makes funny fodder of flyover country and a certain cable TV reality show...