 Today's podcast is brought to you by WarbyParker.com. Get a free five-day home try-on at WarbyParkerTrial.com forward slash David Feldman show. Five pairs, five days, 100% free. The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad pathetic This is going to change your life. I swear to you. People who do my show get sucked into a vortex of need that they have to disconnect their phone. Do you know Neil Brennan? Sure. We're recording by the way. What I do is I find young comics who remember me as a beautiful little comic from the 90s. They look up to me and then I just keep having them on my show over and over again until they feel trapped. That's what happened with Neil. I feel trapped already. This is my first time. Did Neil Brennan say, will you do my podcast is the new, hey, can you drive me to the airport? Yeah, but we've actually expanded that to be because so many people have their own TV shows now. My wife was saying that it's actually, will you appear on my TV show is the new, will you do my podcast, which was the old, can you drive me to the airport? How far we've come? Yes. Moshe Casher is a comedian and author of the 2012 memoir, Casher and the Rye, the true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became a drug addict, criminal, mental patient, and then turned 16. That's great. It gives you all your needs. I owe you an apology. I just started reading the book and I have not finished it yet, but I have a lot of questions to ask you. I never got around to it until I found out you were doing the show and I'm beating myself up. How dare I not have finished this? You also have a stand-up special on Netflix called Moshe Casher live in Oakland. True. It's on Hulu now actually. We started on Netflix and we migrated over to Hulu. All right. I got a lot of questions to ask you, young man. Let's do it. Okay. You remember, by the way, David, the first time we met because I do. Go ahead. I was doing a guest spot for you at Rooster Teeth Feathers. Yes. I would say the primary chicken-themed comedy club in the United States of America. That's probably the best one, probably. Well, by the way, Heather runs a great club. Yeah. Cock-a-doodle-doo she does. Yeah. It's a good club. In fact, the trivia about that place is it's where the world's first video game was placed. It was the bar that Pong was placed. So the people for the first time ever could play video games at a bar. Really? Yeah. That is true. Wow. And you were headlining, and I... What were you saying? I was headlining when the world's first video game was being tested. Yeah. You actually headlined the world's first video game. And I remember very distinctly that between the early and the late show, we had about a half-an-hour conversation where you really had a conversation with yourself, where you were trying to convince me... You were vacillating between trying to convince me to change my name to a less-Jewy name. And then you would argue with yourself. You would go, Moshek, you can't go by Moshek. You have to change your name. Antisemitism will destroy... You know what? No, Moshek, don't change your name. Don't change your name. You have to be true to who you are. No, I'm crazy. Change your name. Definitely you have to change it. I wasn't even really participating in the conversation. I remember that. I remember it over a course of a few days, or maybe... I thought you were opening for me all week. Maybe I was. Maybe that's right. That could be correct. I think what happened was you came in, you said your name was Moshek Asher. I didn't know you. I didn't know what you did. And I said, change your name. And then I saw your acting. This guy's fantastic. Don't change your name. You don't need to. Life is tough and we're a thick-necked people. And it went back and forth. And I've been going back and forth about changing my name since I was named David Feldman. And let me ask you, who is Mark Kasher? Well, Mark, as it says in my book, Mark is my legal first name. My middle name is Moshek. So you changed your name. You changed your name. Yeah. No, I did. Well, it's a complicated story that I don't love talking about, but I'll talk about it. If you don't want to talk about it, that's okay. No, we can do it. I'm just saying you opted for a very Jewish name. Well, I guess that's true. Technically, basically I was raised by my mother who divorced my father. I'm going to get to that. I'm going to get to all that stuff. Believe me, I got a lot of questions to ask you. All right, well, it's all connected in the name. I'll tell you later. Okay, so you changed it. You know what I found out? The name is very important, by the way. You know, Anthony Weiner, there's a whole syndrome now where the name is the thing, which goes all the way back to Shakespeare and beyond. I mean, how you're named influences your character in a play. And in life, there's a lot to a name. You know Mark Hirshon? No. He reviews comedy podcasts. I've known him for years. He used to book comedy in San Francisco and he's good friends with Dana Carvey. He used to have a job up in San Francisco for a company that named companies. He would come up with names. Uh-huh, yeah. He came up with Mass and Gil Douche. Good for him. He comes up with names. You know, Haagen-Dazs is a made-up name. I don't think Haagen-Dazs is an old name, but it's a made-up name. Speaking of naming names, your mother was a communist? My grandmother and my grandfather were both card-carrying members of the American Communist Party. Yes, not my mother. I see. And I just thought I'd mention that. But I will get back to that in a second. But here's the thing about changing names as opposed to naming names. Jews, when they moved to Israel, changed their name. Like the biggest Jew of all Jews, Ariel Sharon, who, you know, Zionist. His real name was Schnersen. And he changed his name, or the family changed his name. When Jews moved to Israel, it's a tradition to change your name to evoke something of the land as opposed to... Something hebraic. Yeah, I know what you mean. My friend, his last name is Weintraub. And then he moved to Israel and he changed his name to Geffen. And then he decided Israel wasn't for him. He came back. He changed his name to Weintraub. Again, he re-nebishized himself. But in the tradition of Geffen's, everywhere he does have sex with underage boys, pretty much consulant. So, yes. You know, I had the guests on my show, the director of the documentary, A Known Secret. Which is about... It's a documentary about pedophilia in Hollywood. Oh, correct. You were great in that, by the way. Thank you very much. Thank you. I mean, it wasn't a sympathetic picture, but you had a lot of humanity. Thank you. And the person whose name you just mentioned was listed in the movie, along with Ariana Huffington's husband, who go to boy parties. Right, I've heard such things. I'm sure they're not true. No, it's in the movie. It's in the movie. It's in the movie. I'm not saying it, but the movie. The movie. I just thought I'd bring that up. And that's, you know, going up against some real power there. Not Ariana Huffington's husband. Well, maybe. Hey, so, yeah, you would think Jews in Israel would go with wine trap, right? Because that's where it's safe to be a Jew. You think it'd be a reverse, right? Well, the whole thing about Israel leaving aside all the trappings of the other side of politics there, is that Israel, its whole thing was like, post-Holocaust was like trying to slough off that nebishy, you know, weak victim sheep to the wolves of society image of the Jew. And so people move to Israel and they think, you know, I don't want to be this little, like, asthmatic nerd anymore. I want to be this tough, sabra soldier. So what's in a name, right? Everything. So they changed their names to Barack and Ariel Sharon and things like that in the hopes that the image of the world would catch on. And it did. It worked, right? Well, in a way, I've wrestled with this because I was raised to believe that there were two types of Jews. There's the one who goes into the oven and the one who fights back. And I've come to realize as I've gotten older that it's in all of us, that I'm the Jew who gets marched into an oven and the Jew who fights back. It's in all of us and we wrestle with this all the time. Am I the Jew who's going to fight or am I the Jew who's going to take it? Although I do know some Jews who just fight. Yes. Am I the Jew? Yeah, there's three kinds of Jews. The Jews that goes to the oven, the one that fights and the one that argues with the Germans. They negotiate a peaceful release. But they would go like, why are you putting three in the oven? You could put four and you could save money on the heat. I would say that not only are there the both kinds of Jews in us, but unfortunately, and I think this is the thing that most people don't want to admit even deeper, is that there's also probably the German in you too. There's the Jew that goes in the oven, the Jew that fights back and then there's the German that sits there while people and their neighbors are being destroyed and killed. Unfortunately, there's all of that in all of us. Yeah. I think. And there's another really stark passage in Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. Have you read that book? No. I don't even know who Victor Frankel is. Victor Frankel was a Holocaust survivor who then went on to become a very famous psychiatrist. And he wrote a book, a famous book called Man's Search for Meaning that was about his sort of psychiatry and his psychological analysis of people through the lens of his experience as a Holocaust survivor. And there's this really depressing passage in there, the only thing I remember from the book, where he says that basically, in order to make it through the concentration camps, you had to be so cutthroat and selfish that the person that was sharing his bread with his neighbor was so sensitive that he would die because you needed the whole heal of bread. You couldn't eat half a piece of bread and survive. Basically, the only people that survived, he said that every survivor knows that the best of us perished in the camps because it took a degree of selfishness and cutthroatness to make it through that kind of experience. It was just a very depressing picture of what it takes to survive, basically. You know, I've thought about that. I didn't know that anybody ever dared to write about that because I grew up with survivors, the children of survivors, and they were really messed up kids and the parents were either haunted or aggressive. They were either very... The women tended to be very quiet and shy. The fathers tended to be these really tough guys. You did not want to mess with them. I often wondered about that. There's the haunting eyes. What did you do to survive? Do you ever wish you weren't born Jewish? No. No, I've never wished that. I wish you weren't born Jewish. I wish you weren't born. Going back to Rooster Teeth Feathers, I think we concluded that I was insane and you shouldn't listen to me. I was never going to change my name. That was what was funny about the whole thing to me. I was just observing you, I admired very much and you're obviously... We don't like throwing the L word around, but I really thought a lot of you comedically and your reputation spoke for itself, but it was very interesting to watch this comedian who I admired so much have an argument with himself about what I should do. When I was never considering changing my name to the first place. That's projection, I guess. I automatically assume how could he not be wrestling with this? What's really interesting, David, I think right now we're dealing with you're from a generation where Jewish people, you're probably the youngest person in the generation where Jewish people almost de facto would change their name. I think right now we're watching the last generation of gay people in show business pretend to be straight their whole career. I think that that doesn't have social currency anymore and doesn't really make sense, but I do think that there's people my age who are a little bit older who are kind of the last generation of the gay comedian who will pretend his entire career to be straight and younger gay comedians are like, why would I do that? That doesn't make sense. I'm not straight, you know what I'm saying? It has no currency for them, so I think we're kind of seeing both of those things happening. Yeah, it is a generational thing. I'm 58 and so 1967, was that the sixth day war? You weren't born yet, but you talk about the name changes and the guys who won't go into the ovens. I'm old enough to remember the sixth day war when the Jews had these very masculine Air Force pilots and all my mother's friends and my sister were like, who are these Jews? Are there Jews like this? The sixth day war is classically, that's where the Nebish Jew died. I mean, he lives again in the spirit of all American conservative Jews, but yeah, the sixth day war is when they say all Jews looked and were like, wow, we can be tough, we can be cool, we can be... And it's interesting because my father went off and fought in World War II, came back and was a progressive liberal, Martin Luther King, against the Vietnam War, no gun in the house, all wars wrong, and a lot of the guys like the Sherman brothers, did you ever see that documentary? No, I think I did. Anyway, a lot of the Jews who liberated the camps from America came back and just resumed to be... They went off and fought and then resumed being Nebishes when they came back to America. That's kind of cool, actually. I mean, it's just... So are you a Nebish? I'm neither. I was raised in Oakland with my mother and so my primary cultural influence would not be American Judaism. It would be African-American Oakland culture. So I was only really super-Jewy six weeks a year. So I would say my primary cultural influencer would be hip-hop culture and trying desperately to be black when I was young. I got a lot to talk to you about that. I was watching you on Ari Shafir's series. My first question... I'm going to get to Jews, blacks and what I call stolen valor. I have a nephew who's Jewish who wants to be black and I've accused him of stolen valor, which is a crime. That's a very interesting comparison. Stolen valor is the thing where people pretend to be military, military accolades that they don't deserve. Yes, yes. And when my nephew talks to me about what he's been through, I take off your purple heart, my friend. But first let me ask you... That's interesting. It's like a culture war. You're stealing valor from a culture war. Yeah, yeah. But let's get back to my line of questioning. Is... Ari Shafir is one of the funniest people I've ever met. He is one of the most daring comedians I've ever seen. If I hear he's on stage and I'm in the lobby, I'm coming in to see what he's up to. My question for you, Moshe Kasher, is... is he good for the Jews? Is Ari good for the Jews? You know, I mean God. Is Ari Shafir good for the Jews? I'll tell you what I love about Ari's worldview, which I think is good for humanity and also bad for humanity, in speaking about the Jew that is both a victim and the perpetrator and also the guy that fights back. Ari is truly one of the only, like, active nihilists that I know. Like, I really think he does... And he has a similar upbringing to yours. Yeah, he went to Yeshiva, yeah. He truly does not care what people think about people's feelings. I couldn't say that for myself. I care what people think a lot. So I don't know if he's good for the Jews, but I think he's probably good for society. I mean, anything that makes people uncomfortable, I think is probably good. Um, but when... Okay, let me... Because I'm older than you. Yeah. And, you know, Jews and show business police their own. You're aware of that, right? That's interesting. Tell me more. I'm listening. Well, the Jews and show business traditionally did not allow... Like, they canceled the Goldbergs because it made them uncomfortable eventually. Not the show with Jeff Garland. There was a show on in the early 50s called the Goldbergs. Which was a very... Do you know about the show? No, I don't. Well, when I was growing up, my self-hating Jew... The self-hating Jews I knew were very ashamed of the Goldbergs and they equated it with Amos and Andy. Oh, sure. And the network executives who tended to be Jewish quietly canceled the Goldbergs even though it was popular because it was ghetto and Molly Goldberg kind of reinforced certain really sweet stereotypes about Jewish women and Jewish people and... Oh, did they give a good head? Uh, well, yes. That's what they were talking about in the 50s, right? You know, I called Sarah Silverman when Bill Cosby was breaking. I said, here's a joke. Why don't you do it? If you are so into women being lifeless during sex, why don't you go on J-Date? And she said... I'm not going to do that joke. That's an ugly stereotype about Jewish women. Jewish women are great in bed. Is that true that Jewish women are great in bed? I think what the conventional wisdom is is that Jews are not as trapped by this idea of sexual original sin so that they're not constantly freaking out about how dirty and slutty they are. And I would say that stereotype does hold true that you don't find women racked with sexual guilt. They're busy being guilty about everything else, not calling their mothers and things like that. But sexual guilt for being sexual, I would say, is a uniquely Christian situation. What about below jobs, though? Monica Lewinsky notwithstanding there was this stereotype when I was growing up, maybe because it's not kosher, that good luck getting a Jewish woman to perform oral sex. But that's not really true, right? Well, I lost you for a second there. Go back. You were saying Monica Lewinsky. You're the luckiest person who's involved with the show right now. I said Monica Lewinsky notwithstanding Jewish women, the cliche is the joke was Bill Clinton found the only Jewish woman who performs oral sex. That was one of the jokes that was going around at the time. But that's not really a fair stereotype, right? I mean, I don't know. We should go on to the field and do some research. Going back to policing our own. So when I asked you if Harry was good for the Jews, Harry Sheffield was good for the Jews, Jews who work in show business traditionally have been very concerned about how Jews are represented in television and movies, right? Yeah, I guess that's true. There's always been a person who feels that poking fun at stereotypes by embodying them is only a good thing. I do a lot of Jewish stuff in my act where I kind of lean into stereotypes in such an absurd way. I have a whole bit about how Jews ejaculate molten gold. I'm saying to that degree of leaning into a stereotype. And I have been criticized when you say things like that, it gives fuel to the fire of people's stereotypes about us. And I always feel just the opposite. The racist stereotypes are so completely absurd that the best way to combat them is to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yes, we do actually drink unbaptized Christian baby blood to make crackers. That shines a light on how absurd stereotypes about Jews and about every stereotype. I always say that white supremacists would be hilarious if they weren't every six months, you know, sort of incredibly dangerous. Most 95% of racist stereotypes are so absurd to the point that they're actually humorous. And so I don't think anything's particularly awful or bad for the Jews, because I think it just shows how totally we're not a monolith. And so I think the story and every other Jewish comedian that likes to lean into, you know, stereotype and the absurdity therein is actually probably good for society. I guess that's my thought. Yeah, we're not a monolith. I was watching the documentary 13. It's on Netflix about the 13th amendment. It's kind of interesting. One of the African-Americans being interviewed said the civil rights movement gave black people the right to be a complicated right. And I got the chills when I heard that it just went the right to be a complicated human being, not to be the friendly Negro, the magical Negro, the harmless Negro, the right to be a complicated, mentally ill African-American who was off his meds one day and the cops shoot him. I mean, you know, the cops do not allow black men to be complicated. Well, that's exactly right. I mean, the whole idea of white panic, you know, the police brutality as a result of white panic about what black men are and represent, it's just that. It's that not only are black men and black women not allowed to be complicated internally, we are we like to think of them. And it's the same thing with Jews being either nerds or heroes. We like to think and society likes to think of black people and Native Americans and every other person that we have oppressed and objectified as an idea rather than an individual. And so it makes it a lot easier to say, uh-oh, that person's scary, not that person is Thomas. And Thomas is having a bad day, you know what I mean? Blacks and Jews, uh, one of the things that amazed me when I became 20 was that there was tension between blacks and Jews. I didn't know that. I grew up in a liberal paternalistic household where my parents took pride in the Jewish participation in the civil rights movement and, you know, without the Jews there'd be no civil rights and uh, but it was paternalistic and there was a lot of tension between blacks and Jews that I had had no idea. It was so complicated that I can remember Jesse Jackson who I'm a huge fan of in 1984 I believe it might have been 88. Maybe it was 88. He was running for president and he referred to New York as Jaime Town. Right, right. You might be too young to remember that. No, it was offensive to Jews everywhere because we call it Kikebill and we knew that you should have said that. Not okay. And then it turns out his campaign manager was Jewish, you know, and that the two of them were referring to it as Jaime Town and it's, you know, it's like we say to the blacks what am I supposed to call you now? An Afro-American? What is it today? An African-American? Black? Colored? What is proper now? And Jaime Town, he honestly I believe didn't know that it was offensive. So blacks and Jews, you grew up in Oakland the Black Panthers come from Oakland. It's God's country. I lived in Oakland. It's right next door to Berkeley. It is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and it is also the the original sin of San Francisco. It's the liberals are white and they live in San Francisco and they'll elect Willie Brown to be their mayor. He's African-American but across the bay is where we put the blacks. You won't find too many black people in San Francisco. It is really a city, you know, limousine liberals. This is like the, you know, the limousine city for liberals where if you want to see black people, you would go to Oakland. Is that a fair statement? Oh, I would say it's more than fair, yeah. I mean, there are two historically African-American neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Fillmore and Hunter's Point. Hunter's Point is like kind of hilarious because where's O.J. from? I think he's from Hunter's Point. Yeah, he's from Hunter's Point and literally to get to Hunter's Point, you actually have to cross a bridge within the city limits of San Francisco. It's like it couldn't be more metaphorically segregated, you know. But yeah, to get to a true and vibrant and large African-American community, you have to cross the bridge and get into Oakland where you're the first person that's ever described as being one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But I agree. That's my hometown. I love it there. It's industrial. It's industrial and it's complicated and tower of powers from there and you know, the Black Panthers and the Hell's Angels started there and it's a complicated city and I like the idea of it being the kind of original sin of the Bay Area. But I will say that the blacks and Jews conversation isn't really being had there in the same way that it's being had in New York and Crown Heights and shit like that because in Oakland Black the African-American community ruled the roost and Jews were not, were just there was no truly activated Jewish community. As far as I was concerned or experienced, it was Oakland was a city that was ruled by Black culture and hip-hop culture. When I was being raised there and even though there were always white people there and there's a white community, you know in my, in public schools like the movies where the Black kids and if you wanted to emulate the popular kids, you basically tried to pretend you were Black or if you were a white kid that just wanted to get into a private school you would just sort of keep your head down and try to my brother is one thing, my brother he's a rabbi, right? He's a rabbi, yeah, yeah and he went to private high school and basically didn't, he never kind of fell into the trappings of like trying to make it in that hierarchy of social dynamics which I tried very hard to make it in which was basically just a bunch of white kids pretending that they were like the popular kids in school by pretending that they were Black. Yeah and I want to discuss this with you because I've got a nephew and another nephew and a friend who has a son and it's very complicated and and again I'm not going to be an apologist for Donald Trump but I'm going to be an apologist for Barack Obama who says you really have to talk to the other side, you have to understand them you can't hate them because that's not going to get you anywhere and so I'm not defending racism or anti-Semitism but you grew up gravitating to ghetto culture right? I guess that's a fair assessment, sure I mean you celebrated and you wanted to be a rapper and you made your own gang because of methamphetamines you were using methamphetamines I guess well I would I mean we were no no I would say I mean I've done that kind of I've done speed before but I wouldn't say that that was the primary thing we were doing we were just mostly we were a graffiti a graffiti writing sort of Nair Duel, juvenile delinquent gang of white kids that wanted desperately to be Black I would say that is a more fair characterization okay so I'm wrong for saying what I'm about to say but I've said it because I don't think my friend's son who's 16 and a couple of my nephews etc etc should be acting like rappers I think they should be in school not doing drugs and this is a function of old age and latent conservatism but I maintain that as I said earlier it's stolen valor and that celebrating the ghetto as opposed to trying to get out of it can sometimes not be the best use of your time is that a fair statement well I mean I think it depends on what you are saying is the ghetto and what you're characterizing as the ghetto I mean I think that you know just as I talked about in the documentary in 13 whatever the ghetto is the sort of quote unquote the prison of the ghetto not the actual prison which is connected to the ghetto but the prison of poverty and education that is unavailable at higher levels and fresh produce in the ghetto you know all that kind of thing that is the actual real politic of people who actually live in the ghetto not people that are emulating that culture that's all connected to this sort of system of you know soft Jim Crow that has been enforced by the laws and sentencing laws and you know gerrymandering and stuff like that so I think people that actually live in black neighborhoods that are disenfranchised and impoverished are starting to rightfully so say you know what it's not ghetto it's our culture even though we've been you know mandated here by a system of poverty and oppression that was enforced upon us we celebrate what's in here we celebrate the beauty that's come out of it we created hip hop we created the black panthers we created you know all of this like really dynamic culture within this sort of this heavy framework of oppression so celebrating that I think it's kind of beautiful but you know it's interesting but I understand the point that you're making which is why would you celebrate being oppressed and impoverished but you know I think the people that are actually in that neighborhood don't have another choice but to embrace and love the thing that they are and that has come out of it isn't that what Hasidimism is I mean the ghetto is a Jewish the Italians created the first it's an Italian word right that's right I've actually I've been to that ghetto I believe the first one is in Venice and they would sequester the Jews into a particular neighborhood and close the doors at night and then in the morning they would open up the doors and allow the Jews out into the streets to go you know participate in commerce and make them money and then come back you know what Hasidism is an interesting parallel because the actual Hasidic Jews of today have created a ghetto a mental ghetto post-holocaust they've created let me ask you about this because you Hasidism it was supposed to be a celebratory it celebrated the ghetto it was a very joyous religion at one time correct yeah originally Hasidic Judaism was supposed to be a kind of celebration of the primitive form of Judaism in the I think 16 or 1700s it was sort of a reaction to the trappings of it was a kind of a Protestant Reformation for Judaism it didn't end up kind of working out that way and what it is now is you know after the Holocaust the Hasidic Jews thought to themselves well you know what the world is shit all these people want to kill us why don't we just wall ourselves off mentally and pretend we still live in you know medieval Europe even though we're living in Los Angeles and New York we'll just live in these neighborhoods never interact with not so when you you know to the people that tell me they've met Jews you know Hasidic Jews they were unfriendly and awful and rude to them you know I understand that might be their experience and it might be true for them but I think they're missing part of the picture which is you know it's a it's a unfriendliness that is due to desperation and I say there might be a parallel that's true in the white person you know going in there and saying why am I being treated as an other or why do black people you know say white people are the devil why do black people constantly talk about how awful white people are it's like well what the hell would you do if you were you know 400 years into your experience here that started with slavery then it had a nice middle passage of Jim Crow and now has this you know cops killing black guys in the street and sending everybody to prison well wouldn't you hate and you are a nice white person but you are not you in fact have made yourself into a monolith just to come back to the idea of a racial monolith you know white people made themselves into a monolith by making black people a monolith so if you think black people are aggressive well they think that you are oppressive and here we are right right by the way there was a Jew meeting I'm serious I know that's for a fact because something happened with the ortho's in LA about 15 years ago and I'd be walking around Lebray and Fairfax and all of a sudden they'd say hello to they would be friendly there was some I think word came down from I don't know Schnersen some rabbi from the great beyond say hello to everybody don't be you know your parents Hasidic or ultra and I've noticed this well I mean it all depends by the way on what branch of Hasidism you ascribe to you know my father happened to fall in with a group of Hasidic Jews that were luckily enough the least friendly Hasidic Jews of all of them and that's really saying something as I say in my stand up act I say you know think about this you know of all the bearded Amish penguin looking so if you've seen on film and TV my father joined up with a group of them that is the most outside the margins of society there should be like being among the fattest of all Walmart shoppers it's fairly intense you're gonna become a college professor in Jewish history I read at one point that was the plan but then I realized that I didn't really care that much about doing research I kind of wanted to it was the same impulse that sent me to being a stand up I wanted to sit in front of people and tell stories about it because I'm really fascinated by Jewish history and so anyway yeah I mean my dad married a woman that is from a branch of Hasidic Judaism known as Satmar and they are definitely the least for better or worse they are the least friendly of the Hasidic Jewish groups and that's a particularly unfriendly group of people Are they friendly to each other? They are friendly to each other definitely and yeah sure I guess I mean they but they're they're a very intense subsection do you know who the Neutracharta are those are the Jews who are they are anti-Israel Jews Hasidic Jews have you ever heard of these people? I know that the Orthodox were against the founding of Israel so there yes and that has held true through to this day there's an ambivalence about Israel existing outside of the Messianic rival that was the that was the ideas who are you to create Israel only the Messiah can create Israel and there is a small and loud group called the Neutracharta that actually actively protest the Jewish state the Israeli state they march with the Palestinians they were they had like a cabinet seat in Arafat PLO cabinet you know anyway those people are a offshoot of the Satmar so just to show you how kind of fringe they can be even though Satmar are a pretty big group they engendered this you know pretty pretty out there group of Hasidic Jews so that is the people that I was lightly raised around do you believe in God? I don't know maybe yeah I'm pretty agnostic what about you? Yeah I do do you write G-dash state or do you write G-o-d? I write G-o-d I think that's kind of an absurd custom it has no actual even Jewish basis there's a really interesting book that my dad got me when I was young called the Jewish book of why do you know about that? No. It's a cool book it's like a two volume book that basically asks all the questions about Orthodox Judaism or just Judaism in general and it's just but it was written in like 1950 so it's an old school book and it just says you know why don't Jews eat pork? why do Jews you know do this? why do Jews do that? and then one of the questions in there was why do Jews write G-d? and I remember that it said oh this is like a custom that is based on a superstition that has no actual basis in Jewish you know religious law but it's a passing fad and it will end soon well that guy was wrong that passing fad became known as sort of a permanent reality and people think that it's a part of the religion of Judaism it's not it's based on some kind of interpretation of stuff that's in the religion but the other day I saw this complete lunatic on Facebook which is where those people live that Christian lunatic talking about like transgender people and how gross they are and this is a Christian a non-Jewish Christian but a person that's like connected to you know these Christians that are kind of like think that they're connected to Old Testament Judaism they're like really into that they're called evangelicals yeah and she was writing G-d so it's like it went from Jews you know over leaning into unnecessarily you know a rule that wasn't even there so now Christians are doing it and it's a totally no I don't but I thought Jews were like not allowed to paint God you can't worship false idols and that was the origin of G-d that saying the word God would be as bad as painting the face of God and worship false idol actually I think what it is I could be wrong but I think what it is is that you aren't supposed to destroy the word of God right and if you write it in Hebrew you're supposed to like bury a Torah scroll that you're done using because you don't want to burn it or something like that and then people just like spilled it over into writing it in English but I don't care about things like that I'm not I'm not I like Judaism and I consider myself Jewish but I don't really have a lot of patience for stuff you know what about you do you write G-d I do I went I went to an Orthodox Hebrew school so it's just real I'll write G-A-W-D God if I'm writing a sketch yeah I have to write God I'll go G-A-W-D which is actually the most Jewish way you can write it down to is God oh my God more Jewish than you think how do deaf parents how do deaf people fuck that's a great question David I know you don't like the F word but is it okay on your podcast yes and you know what there have been a lot of things I don't like the F word did I give you a hard time about that no I think someone else warned me before I opened for you don't say the F word David he doesn't like that yeah I don't I really don't I think it's lazy and oh you did give me a hard time you said I remember this is years later after the change your name you told me you came up to me and after I just had gotten through doing a set that I think it was maybe in Montreal or something you were going on later you told me you don't say the F word and then I just thought to myself David I've been doing stand-up at this point for almost 10 years don't you think I've mashed all the possibility the mathematic possibilities here don't you think at this point it's a deliberate choice that I'm making but yes I say the F word on stage and were you what happened was I when you started doing stand-up in San Francisco I had already left and there was a group of young stand-ups in San Francisco that did me because they would open for me or they would do guest sets and I would say you can't say the F word I had like my little mini crusade about the F word what was your reaction did you find me being arrogant old honestly what was your take if I'm being totally honest I thought that it was a that it's an old-fashioned modality and I kind of honor it for that I think that's kind of cool in a way I don't necessarily follow the logic because from my perspective like who care like it doesn't really matter from my perspective if it's you know would that joke be funny with or without saying fuck is like it's such an old fashion way of looking at language that I don't it doesn't resonate to me but I also think it's kind of cool that it's that there are people working that it does resonate with I like you know I know Ryan Stout for example I think that he's probably your your biggest fan and starting out I think you know Ryan yeah of course yeah yeah and Ryan subscribe to that as well that you know swearing was lazy and it was a crutch and it was and I think that's cool I think that's I like I honor the old school idea about clarity but I don't resonate with it because you know obviously you're vulgar without being without swearing so somebody else would look at your act and think oh yeah the guy doesn't swear but he engages in you know every other kind of filth possible that's lazy so is that guy right and you're wrong I I don't know I don't care I was at a doing a college the other day and I drove in and as I was at a place called John Carroll University and I said yes to the gig and then as I was driving in I was looking at the clock tower and I was like oh that tower is a little too tall there's a cross there wait who the hell was John Carroll no I'm at a Catholic school and I literally had a Catholic priest in a frock no joke stand up in the middle of my act and say if you were a great comedian you'd be able to work clean and literally a Catholic it's like a joke you know like I have a guy in a frock telling me to work clean and you know what's wrong with that what do you mean what's wrong with what are you implying that he molests little boys so he has no right to tell you about language that a guy who molests boys should not worry about what comes out of his mouth more of what goes into it there is that great hypocrisy hypocrisy which is how could a guy who was affiliated with the Catholic church ever have anything to say about the naughty and body nature of my language when the system that he's affiliated with literally covered up the rape of little boys but that's neither here nor there I just think like nothing about vulgarity is resonant to me I understand immaturity but it's like I always think vulgarity is such a funny concept because the person that is telling you your vulgar is there only as a result of his father getting horny one night and fucking his mother until he came inside of her and then came this person who's yelling at you about how vulgar talking about sex is well but my father didn't fuck my mother he made love to her no that's where you're wrong so I listen I think that being having rules and strictures about language and subject matter is an interesting idea and I think it's cool that people care but why David Feldman I will ask you why are you right about saying the F word on stage but the person that looks at your act and says though you're not swearing you're talking about really disgusting things that too is a crutch why is that person not right as well alright well first of all we're nearing the end you'll come back? yeah absolutely alright so I'll answer that or I should say fucking A I'll come back oh shit hold on David is that Natasha? no it's a delivery man hold on one second while we're waiting for Moshe to deal with the delivery man and listen to his dog barking the F word I believe I believe I'm hearing the F word in Maltese that is oh and the C word and the N word this is a very vulgar Maltese this is the David Feldman show and you can subscribe to us on iTunes and follow me on Facebook and friend me on Twitter and you should pick up Moshe Cashier's book Cashier in the Rye the true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became a drug addict criminal mental patient and then turned 16 I assume that Moshe has now come back and your puppy your dog, I speak Maltese your dog was barking the F word the C word and the N word did you know that? I did know that and that's because I told him I was on your podcast they aren't fans I'm a huge fan but they don't care for what you do okay before you go I have a question that I have two quick questions yeah I one of the reasons I don't use the F word I agree with you it's an old fashioned conceit in that I always said well you can't get on TV if you do the F word so why not tell your jokes without the F word that way every time you're on stage you're testing material to get on network television and the landscape has changed so that you can now show your jokes with the F word and still get on TV because a lot of networks allow the F word so that is a function of a different generation so I agree with you on that so I'm willing to say yes I'm old school because I'm still trying to get on The Tonight Show you don't need to get on The Tonight Show to be famous anymore so that's old school but I still believe the F word is freighted it's a beautiful word and when you say it you kind of turn the audience it's presumptuous to say the F word in front of strangers because if you came and met my family you wouldn't say the F word sure right but isn't that that is innately a part of a social contract yes you might have started to stand up in a time where the social contract was that you don't say the F word actually I think you started to stand up in a time where to do a set you had to get up in front of the cave in front of the gray fire you took the cave bear skull and that's how you do it no I'm just kidding but at that time it was true that to say the F word you were vulgar and less than I think like I said I don't I mean when you met Natasha's parents yes did you go hey have a fuck you're doing there yeah but that's a I think that's a flawed analogy because I'm not meeting your parents when I'm on stage I'm coming up and doing a performance for you as the character that I am and my character is a guy who was raised in you know a city or in a culture where saying fuck was like not a big deal that's the performance I'm giving over it's just like you know when Frank Sinatra gets on stage and sings a song he doesn't say fuck even though he probably does in his personal life but when I go see Snoop Dogg he's gonna talk about fucking girls and you know what I'm saying it's just a different but that said I don't roll my eyes when you say you know don't use the F word I think it's cool I think that sensibility is cool and and good that there are people that are old school and care about that I just don't so before we wrap it up I'm not gonna get into an argument as much as two Jews talking we could go 90 minutes arguing over this and do you know that you ever read the story in Afghanistan that there were two in Kabul that there were two temples I'm not making this up do you know about the two temples in Kabul no look it up it was the hardest I ever made I used to work for Bill Maher the hardest I ever saw him laugh because his mother was Jewish and his father was Irish Catholic and I found a story in the New York Times about there were two Jews left in Kabul and this must have been 2005 and two separate temples they hated each other they both accused the other one of collaborating with the Taliban it's one of the funniest stories and it was on page two of the New York Times Jews love an argument you are the one I don't want this to sound sexist you were the one who got Natasha am I allowed to say that she's a much coveted human being and she converted to Judaism and has embraced it do you mind if I ask you a personal question sure I maintain no she's Jewish has it gone downhill I'm not going to go for that joke go ahead what do you got I maintain that Jews could convert to Roman Catholicism that it wouldn't be that hard for you to become a Catholic or me to become a Catholic there's a lot of pop in circumstances there's a lot of ridiculousness inexplicable intellectual papal bulls that come down that require a lot of thinking and loopholes and explanations and hypocrisy that you and I could find kindred spirits in the Catholic Church do you agree I do agree you know what's funny is have you ever tried telling this theory to a actual Catholic because they are they just don't see you I mean a lapsed Catholic they just think you're the biggest fool ever for saying I actually find Mass to be really nice and beautiful I think the problem with being Catholic actually is that as beautiful as Mass is the same every single time and they get really tired of it but I find it kind of beautiful I've always liked it yeah and yeah we're running out of time and the gift that Catholics have the Jews don't have is you can really be a self-hating Catholic and celebrated you know when nobody said nobody's ever said you're a self-hating Catholic that's not that's not a curse but if you're called a self-hating Jew that's like they're really coming down uncle Tom so that was your personal question do I think Jews could become Catholic easily when you were getting married did it occur to you that maybe since you got Natasha which is a you got her she got me David you won Natasha I don't think you understand she won me I was the lone wolf no she's the one that fell the great beast I've learned no I've learned but did it ever occur to you was there ever a discussion that Moshe could become a Roman Catholic you go back to Mark I got so lucky in that Natasha could not have been less affiliated with her Roman Catholic roots and I never asked her particularly to convert but she was into the idea if we're gonna have a family of having a family that had some connection to traditions that's why she converted and also I forced her to do that and that's the other reason but no I never considered becoming Catholic and I do find it a little presumptuous to ask a woman or for a woman to ask a man hey I know you love me why don't you come into my tradition so I guess I just got lucky she volunteered she volunteered I mean I know she knows that I'm sure she knew I would not have been disappointed about that but she volunteered right so she is the Jew that would have walked willingly into that oven and said this is what I signed up for my father said to me don't marry a rich woman you'll work for every penny and he said if you're gonna marry because I did marry out of the religion and I had a successful marriage for 30 years until whatever but my father said do not make her convert don't ask her to convert because you will be in temple for the rest of your life oh amen that is true is that true is Natasha no I I happen to not have a lot of trauma when it comes to Judaism but that is the primary thing about the convert is that the convert to any religion does not have the historical childhood trauma to go along with their religious experience so they go yeah why wouldn't we just go to temple all the time because there's no horrifying memory of being humiliated as a child okay I've made a decision we have to wrap it up okay you're gonna start saying the F word no I've decided how long have you been doing comedy oh 13 years maybe oh you're a man that's right I think you should not change your name thank you I'll tell you why well you did change your name you were Mark and you went to Moshe and actually the bad news is I have changed my name again you know Moshe fucking cashier so that's your will before you go here's the thing I didn't change my name and I'm glad I didn't because I will always have an excuse for never making it perfect me too we have that comment thank you I know how busy you are Moshe cashier your book which I'm gonna finish I'm ashamed to tell you I started reading it last night and I went wow this guy you're really un-being serious cashier in the ride the true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became a drug addict criminal mental patient and then turn 16 how do people follow you on twitter and facebook and what is your website yeah you can go to moshecashier.com at moshecashier I have a brand new show coming out on comedy central this spring winter spring so it's called problematic check that out thank you for having me on I admire you greatly I admire you greatly thank you sir say hello to Natasha for me we'll do we'll tell you about a podcast that I listen to to my friends host it and I think you should listen to it Andrew Goldstein maybe you remember him as my Jew on some of our more popular episodes of the David Feldman show Andrew Goldstein is a brilliant comedy writer from MTV and Matt Matt Goldich writes for late night with Seth Meyers brilliantly funny comedian and comedy writer they have a new podcast you can download it on iTunes it's called sorry I've been so busy you know everyone always says they're so busy but what exactly are they so busy with well in their podcast sorry I've been so busy writer comedians Matt Goldich and Andrew Goldstein talk to their interesting and funny friends to find out what they've actually been so busy with everything for major life and career events to everyday minutia sorry I've been so busy is the only podcast that will never blow you off unless something comes up