11-04-2025
From Crown Heights To The Laugh Factory: How One Comedian Is Navigating Hollywood As An Orthodox Jew
Menachem Silverstein performs at the legendary Laugh Factory in Los Angeles
Audiences are shocked every time Menachem Silverstein takes the stage at L.A.'s famed Laugh Factory — or any comedy club for that matter. With a yarmulke prominently sitting atop his head and tassle-like fringes of a religious garment (known as tzitzit) hanging down the sides of his pants, the 32-year-old comedian and scriptwriter sticks out like a sore thumb. And that's just the way he likes it.
'It's an interesting thing where people find me funny, but they also kind of don't know what to do with me,' confesses Silverstein, who grew up in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish enclave of Brooklyn's Crown Heights (aka the epicenter of the Chabad movement). 'They don't know how to handle me.'
At first glance, Silverstein may seem odd to anyone not familiar with the ins and outs of observant Judaism. He strictly adheres to the dietary laws of kashrut, doesn't work on the Sabbath (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday), and practices shomer negiah (a form of modesty in which men and women are unable to touch unless they are married). But following a certain — and sometimes idiosyncratic — religious code doesn't make a person any less human than someone else. 'When people get to know me, they're like, 'Oh wow, he's normal!'" Silverstein explains. "'We can hang out with him. We can have him part of our show.'
Indeed, a big part of his comedy routines are all about breaking down archaic stereotypes and rampant conspiracy theories by calling out 'the ridiculousness of anti-Semitism in order to bring awareness to it and be able to start a conversation," he says. For instance, one of his jokes centered around the preposterous claim that Jews control the weather was conceived during a rainy drive to one of his shows. 'I'm thinking to myself, 'Do you understand that people blame the Jews for this? You think I would do this? Do you understand how inconvenienced I am right now?!' And then I'm thinking, 'Jews don't even like the rain. God took us out of Egypt and we didn't want to cross the sea. We didn't want to swim in the water. The Jews literally get to the ocean and say, 'We'll go back. We hate water.' And that started turning into a joke.'
As someone who refuses to hide his Jewish identity and support for Israel, however, Silverstein has become easy prey for anti-Semites, who regularly DM him pictures of Adolf Hitler or come up to him on the street and say, without a trace of shame, 'Another Holocaust is coming for you Jews.' These incidents have only increased since the start of Israel's war with Hamas in 2023, though such normalization had already begun with the backing of highly influential public figures like Kanye West.
Menachem's strategy to combat the hate is to refocus the generalizations of anti-Semitic rhetoric into 'these personal stories" of online and in-person abuse that establish him as a flesh and blood individual, rather than the representative of a religious monolith. "Instead of putting it as this broad picture, it's like, 'I'm just a guy and I'm getting hit with anti-Semitism. It's a problem. Let's talk about it.''
But how exactly did a guy raised in the insular and prominently Yiddish-speaking Lubavitch community end up a comedian/writer/actor trying to make it big in Hollywood?
Generally speaking, those who follow the path of Chabad path forged by Menachem Mendel Schneerson (otherwise known as 'the Rebbe') take great strides to limit their exposure to secular culture as much as possible. Mainstream movies, songs, fashion styles, and even the internet are considered unnecessary distractions from spiritual matters and are, therefore, taboo. Men are usually given two occupational routes: rabbi or businessman. Similar to the disagreemen between Jacob Rabinowitz and his father in The Jazz Singer, the idea of wanting to be anyone else, let alone a comedian, is unthinkable.
Silverstein had a much different experience growing up, given the fact that his parents were both Baalei teshuva (irreligious Jews who become more observant later in life).
Menachem Silverstein
'There was definitely a dichotomy," he remembers. 'We were raised in an ultra-ultra-Orthodox community where all of my friends were Orthodox Jews. But then we'd go and visit my cousins and my grandparents, who are not religious whatsoever — no kosher, no nothing. I always felt like there was the crossover, where you could live in both worlds. A lot of my friends wouldn't watch TV or movies, but when I went to my grandparents' house, they'd be like, 'You have to watch this.' I watched old episodes of Get Smart and Gilligan's Island, and was like, 'This is the greatest thing I've ever seen.' [Then I realized]: 'Okay, I can be a religious person and watch TV. That's possible.''
In addition, his parents made sure their children were well-versed in matters of English and mathematics (subjects not always emphasized in Hasidic communities), even if it meant having to meet with private tutors after a long day of studying Torah and Talmud at yeshiva. This gave Menachem a major leg up on his peers and allowed him to pass his Regents exams (New York's version of the GED) and receive a high school diploma.
That, coupled with his love and knowledge of pop culture, sent Mr. Silverstein down the path of a professional screenwriter and comedian. Even he realizes it was a highly unusual career choice for someone of his background. 'I'm from yeshiva. I didn't grow up writing,' he says. 'I learned how to write scripts by downloading them, reading them, and seeing how they were formatted. Whenever I had a question, I would Google it.'
Menachem Silverstein
Nevertheless, he forged ahead and continued to write scripts while simultaneously dipping his toes in the world of comedy. 'I was like, 'Listen, I don't know if people want to see somebody with a kippah and tzitzit on stage,'' he admits. ''It's a little too aggressive.' I did some open mic stuff in New York, but never really took comedy seriously."
It wasn't until he and two other creatives were trying to line up a comedy series at Amazon, that Silverstein began to really hone his comedy chops. 'As we were pitching it to this producer at Amazon, they were like, 'Oh, and you'll be one of the comedians? An Orthodox Jewish comic, that's hilarious!' ' And I was like, 'Sure…'" The project never materialized (in classic Hollywood fashion, the executive who originally signed off left the company), Menachem 'was left with a comedy career."
His big break came via a recommendation to perform at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles from friend and fellow comic, Tehran Von Ghasri, 'who put his ass on the line for me,' Silverstein notes. Fortunately, Tehran had nothing to worry about, however, once Menachem crushed his first set at the venue, paving the way for a fruitful relationship with the club's founder, Jamie Masada, and its president, David Fuhrer.
'From a comedy perspective, that was the biggest pinch me moment," says Silverstein, who made Laugh Factory history by being the first person to wear a yarmulke and tzizit on the hallowed Laugh Factory stage. 'A lot of clubs see it as weird and different. I feel like Jamie really took a swing on me. I'm forever grateful to him. And now I get to produce my own shows there.'
The general public found him 'funny and unexpected,' but the pious folks back home in Brooklyn were not all sold on the idea of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish comedian flaunting his religiousness in such a secular environment. Some even considered it a chillul hashem (basically a negative action of one Jew that consequently reflects badly on all Jews). 'I had some people from my community who were so impressed," Silverstein reveals. "Like, 'Wow! You're a comedian at the Laugh Factory? That's so cool!' There were definitely older Jews who were like, 'How dare you wear your yarmulke and tzitzit on stage? How dare you bring you Judaism into a dark place like that?' I kind of looked at them like, 'I'm doing comedy. Would you like me to take my kippah and tzitzit off? Either I'm wearing them or I'm not wearing them, what would you like?''
ComedianMenachem Silverstein performs a set at LA's famous Laugh Factory
Despite the fact that standup is his current calling card, Silverstein's ambitions lie beyond the spotlit stage. His greatest goal at the moment is to become a showrunner of his own series, a job that would allow him to not only retain creative control — 'I'm OCD and anal retentive" — but also reconcile his love of entertainment production with the realities of an Orthodox lifestyle. By virtue of the fact that he cannot work Friday nights or Saturdays, as well as certain high holidays, means that a lot of writing, and acting job are simply unavailable to him.
Like the successful guys at BoulderLight, though, Menachem doesn't allow his religious lifestyle to keep him out of the business. It just requires him to do more of the legwork himself by scheduling his own comedy tours with producing partner, Erez Safar (founder of Laugh Through The Heartbreak), or else leveraging Laugh Factory guests (like Lost co-creator Jeffrey Lieber and The Vigil producer Daniel Finkelman) into creative partners.
Contacts like these helped land him pitches at the likes of Sony, Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Quite the journey for a Lubavitch kid from Crown Heights, who taught himself to write screenplays? 'The first time I had a meeting with Lionsgate, I honestly thought that I'd walk in, they'd have my script with red doodles all over it and say, 'You thought that you were a writer? Hilarious!'" Silverstein says. "I expected them to call me out on being a fake writer. But when I got there, they actually were like, 'Wow, this is one of the best treatments we've ever read.' And I was like, 'Oh, so I am a real writer.'"
While he initially avoided writing too much Jewish-related material at the start of his career, lest he be 'pigeonholed" into a specific niche — "If I'm the Orthodox Jew, I can only ever write [on a show like] Unorthodox or Shtisl — Menachem has come around on the idea of letting his identity infuse itself into his work, however subtle.
'I always write something that I want to watch,' he concludes. 'Whatever show or movie I write, it's something that would excite me if I saw a trailer for it. Nowadays, I go a little bit wherever the wind may take me. If the story needs to be overtly Jewish and if someone likes it, great. If someone doesn't, they don't. And if the story can be subtly Jewish or not at all, then I'll kind of lean in that way.'
