{"id":948468,"date":"2026-10-27T18:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T18:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/948468\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T18:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T18:52:09","slug":"viral-comic-modi-to-get-a-documentary-with-a-boost-from-mayim-biyalik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/948468\/","title":{"rendered":"Viral Comic Modi To Get a Documentary With a Boost from Mayim Biyalik"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOver the past few years you may have noticed a Jewish-themed comic popping up in your social media feed. The often funny clips come from Modi<\/a>, a category-flouting gay Orthodox Jew and former Merrill Lynch trader who is now playing some of the country\u2019s most prestigious venues.<\/p>\n

Now Modi is getting the next feather in his media cap: a documentary.<\/p>\n

Filmmakers Seth Kramer and Daniel A. Miller, Emmy nominees who have specialized in outsider performers and their effect on an in-audience, are directing the movie, with The Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik (and self-confessed Modi superfan) serving as both onscreen commentator and executive producer. The filmmakers have finished principal photography and are editing now with hopes for a 2027 sale and release.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t know Modi personally before but he\u2019s all over our Facebook feeds, so we thought it would be great to make a movie about him,\u201d Kramer said, half-kidding, in a phone interview with his co-director.<\/p>\n

The resultant indie-financed film centers on two Radio City Music Hall performances last spring while tracing the arc of the 55-year-old (full name: Modi Rosenfeld) from a childhood cutup on Long Island (where his family immigrated from Israel when he was seven) to New York venues like the Comedy<\/a> Cellar to his current status as both viral star and last of the Catskills comedians.<\/p>\n

Much of Modi\u2019s comedy centers on differences between various kinds of Jews, a friction that elicits knowing laughters from his (largely, but not wholly) Jewish audience. At his shows he likes to pick a non-Jew to explain various cultural idiosyncrasies to, which is has the effect of both broadening the tent and giving a more clear-eyed perspective to those already inside it. (You can see some examples at his special here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile many comics are Jewish, very few contemporary performers make Jewish subculture and its deep nuances the subject of their material.<\/p>\n

\u201cModi sees it as his mission almost to bring people together to provide a kind of community,\u201d says Miller. \u201cHe calls it \u2018Moshiach Energy,\u201d\u2019 referring to the Jewish concept of Messiah as a savior from scatteredness and division.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHis shows bear a resemblance to a spiritual revival from the 19th-century \u2014 people laughing like you\u2019ve never seen because they feel seen in a way they\u2019ve never been, especially in a time like this,\u201d says Kramer.<\/p>\n

Inspired by a childhood of watching Jackie Mason on Broadway (and with a dose of George Carlin and Louis C.K. thrown in), Modi will veer from the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazic customs to to the personalities presiding over a Jewish fundraiser to the motley crew on an El Al flight. He will occasionally dabble in antisemitism-related themes, such as \u201cWhen someone says something bad against Jews the worst that can happen is they make them visit a Holocaust museum. Which is the stupidest idea in the world. You\u2019re taking someone who hates Jews into a Holocaust museum. They come out of there \u2018Wow! That was amazing! I want a T-shirt!’\u201d Also: \u201cAntisemitism \u2014 that\u2019s hating Jews more than you\u2019re allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n

More often than not, though, he addresses antisemitism by not talking about it at all. Instead he simply showcases a demographic with many different flavors and foibles, laughing at the bully instead of pleading with him.<\/p>\n

For all is cultural insiderishness, Modi deftly stays away from most politics both Israeli and American, and even will ask audiences not to cheer or jeer when he\u2019s making, say, a Donald Trump joke, preferring to go for an equal-opportunity vibe. Though clearly proud of his birth country, he rarely jokes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He closes his shows with Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, but more in a way of general hopeful peace and coexistence. (The title means \u201cThe hope.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Bialik, who is known as both a traditional Jew and comedy nerd, has been a fan of Modi\u2019s for years. When the filmmakers contacted her, Kramer says, she instantly had a lot of thoughts about what made Modi\u2019s comedy tick and soon came on as an executive producer.<\/p>\n

Modi\u2019s fame has been increasing, going beyond his often Jewish-centric events to shows at the Beacon, a podcast and an appearance on<\/a> The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier in the year, though he notably worked non-Jewish material at that gig.<\/p>\n

\n\tKramer and Miller, who were nominated separately for Emmys for WWII related films on PBS among other projects, have done a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish work through the Ironbound Films banner they founded with a third partner Jeremy Newberger. They include Fiddler on the Moon: a cheeky\/serious piece featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson about Judaism in space that aired on<\/a> PBS last year and the well-received pair of environmental films The Anthropologist and The Linguist. They are perhaps best known for the 2012 Sundance and CNN hit Evocateur, about the proto talk show shock-jock Morton Downey Jr., which as with Modi looked at a frank and deft media personality who became a hero to a dedicated audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cMorton Downey also spoke to a put-upon group that felt passionate about him because they felt seen,\u201d Miller said. \u201cBut seen in a very different way. Modi really is trying to galvanize with positivity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past few years you may have noticed a Jewish-themed comic popping up in your social media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,5864,5649,75,324652,324653,45905,337],"class_list":["post-948468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-comedy","tag-documentaries","tag-entertainment","tag-jewish-stories","tag-mayim-biyalik","tag-modi","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}