Arts & Sciences Magazine

By Danna Lorch

Standup comedian Mordechi “MODI” Rosenfeld (CAS’92) foam-rolled his shoulder knots and threw back a Celsius energy drink in the greenroom at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre. The venue was packed with a crowd of 1,000 people. He could hear them chatting and creaking open their retro seats. 

The lights dimmed, and the announcer cued, “…And here’s MODI.” 

Rosenfeld, who goes by MODI professionally, stepped into the spotlight and made the audience laugh for a full hour—myself included. By the end of the first set, mascara ran down my cheeks, and my face ached. 

When we spoke a few months later, MODI, who showed up in gold aviators which he kept on the whole time, admitted, “I never imagined myself as a performer.” No one, not even MODI himself, knew that he was funny until he was in his late twenties.

From Comedy Clubs to the Borscht Belt

Born in Israel but raised on Long Island in an Orthodox Jewish home, he had a severe stutter as a kid. Somehow, when he sang, the stutter lifted. School was a struggle, too. “I had horrible SAT scores,” MODI said. “Luckily, I was the star of my school play, ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ For some reason, colleges love it when you play Tevye.” 

Though he majored in psychology at BU, a subject that continues to offer him insight into how audiences react to jokes, his elective voice classes at the College of Fine Arts also had a lasting impact. In rehearsals, he learned that by redirecting his voice to sing or speak from the front of his face to the back of his throat, he could stop tripping over L’s and S’s. 

After graduating, MODI got a job as a technician in a hospital’s psychiatric ward, then switched gears to a career as an investment banker. During lunch breaks, he entertained cubicle mates with dead-on impressions of colleagues. 

When a friend suggested he take the jokes to a local open mic night, MODI agreed on a whim. He stepped onto a stage for the first time in 1993 and brought the house down. 

“It was such an ego boost.” He was instantly addicted. 

What started as a hobby somersaulted into a career. By 1994, MODI was “passed” at  New York City’s quintessential standup venue, the Comedy Cellar, the same club where many of the big names in the industry got their start too, from Jon Stewart to Kevin Hart. That meant he became a paid regular, which he considers the “the real start” of his career. After he appeared on Comedy Central and HBO, he quit his day job in 1999 and went all-in. 

MODI deeply defined and built his repertoire after he was booked to perform in the Catskills at the kitsch all-inclusive resorts that formed “The Borscht Belt” where generations of Manhattan Jews historically summered. Sadly, “the Yiddish Alps” scene, which boomed from the 1920s through the 1960s, was peppered with closings and demolitions by the time MODI took the stage in the late 90s—and is now totally defunct.

“I was only 25 years old, the youngest comic by at least 50 years up there,” he says. For a few years, he delivered two daily shows, with sets ranging from ten minutes to a full hour. There was always a band onstage, too, and MODI often accompanied them with a song at the end. “The Catskills took me from being a comedian to being a performer.”

There, he was deeply influenced by the older comedians he met, such as Stewie Stone, Freddie Roman, and Mal Z. Lawrence. His greatest hero among them was the legendary Jewish comedian Jackie Mason, whose advice steered MODI’s career: “Know your audience, and the rest will follow.” 

Modi took Mason’s advice to heart and leaned into entertaining the Jewish community around the country, headlining nonprofit fundraisers and synagogue galas.

Much of his content still comes from that national circuit. He mocks the organizing committees’ thank-you speeches, a staple at Jewish fundraisers, and jokes about how he’s often called onstage while a gala audience is still teary-eyed after watching a video about a rare medical condition. Once, at a fundraising luncheon at a nonprofit board member’s private home, the stage was set up in front of a Holocaust remembrance statue. While this scenario would make most people cringe, for MODI, it presented an invitation to broach sensitive subjects. 

He now deliberately refers to the Holocaust in each act to raise awareness. For example, Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi “Angel of Death,” sneaks into one joke’s punchline. “I hope that people who don’t know who Mengele is will Google and learn about the atrocities,” MODI said.

Going Viral

In 2020, MODI married Leo Veiga, a millennial he met on the subway in a love-at-first-sight scenario. Until announcing their wedding, MODI hadn’t come out as a gay man because, as he told Variety in 2023, he was always out. “I never spoke about having a girlfriend or a boyfriend. I was always speaking about being Jewish,” he said. “My comedy is observational. So naturally, all my life observations right now are about living with this man.” 

With the first COVID-19 lockdown, MODI panicked, assuming that his entire schtick, which at the time was modeled around in-person performances, had shut down, too. But Veiga, a creative professional, helped MODI pivot by positioning his husband as an internet sensation, with a viral YouTube channel, bite-sized Instagram reels, and by launching a weekly podcast. And Here’s MODI celebrated its 100th episode with a live recording at New York’s 92nd Street Y in February 2024. 

When pandemic restrictions were lifted, MODI had grown so popular that in addition to bringing in money from his online work, he also started selling out theaters all over the United States, Europe, and Israel for the first time. 

On October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and war broke out, MODI—in the midst of a six-performance tour—was jolted awake by air raid sirens in his Jaffa hotel. He caught a flight back to New York City, and threw himself into pushing out even more content incorporating current events and rising waves of Jewish hate—consciously choosing to create a place for people to go for relief in between refreshing their newsfeeds for war updates. 

“If people want to laugh, they can scroll through my Instagram and YouTube, and eventually, one of my posts will make them smile. That’s how I’m helping,” MODI said. His YouTube special, Know Your Audience, invites viewers to do just that. 

That’s not to say he has shied away from addressing challenging issues more directly. His guests on Podcast Episode 111 included Leat Corinne, the cousin of Omer Shem-Tov, a 21-year-old Israeli man kidnapped at the Supernova music festival and held hostage in Gaza. Before they got rolling, Corinne laughed at one of MODI’s jokes and admitted that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. 

“It’s so important to pause for laughter, even though you guys are going through Hell,” MODI said. 

He’s convinced that comedy offers a way to cope and to heal—for everyone. Although MODI’s live shows are typically frequented by a diverse audience of Jews from different backgrounds, he feels tremendous hope when non-Jews tune in and find him humorous. 

This idea of bringing people together in light and joy is what he has hashtagged #Moshiachenergy, the kind of communal goodness that he hopes will heal the world and bring the Messiah down to earth. 

“The end of hatred will come through comedy, not by arguing about borders,” he says. “If we can all sit and laugh together, there’s a different energy in the room, and we can start to talk about things and see how similar we are.”