Jewish comedian Danny Lobell doesn’t know much about Kansas City, except that the Royals won the World Series Championship and we’re famous for barbecue, but plans to bone up on it before he visits here in February. He will entertain at Congregation BIAV’s Purim Gala taking place from 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28, at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
“I’m very much looking forward to coming to Kansas City,” he says. “I love going places I’ve never been before, love learning about places I don’t know about, so it’s especially exciting for me to be coming there and I love meeting Jewish communities in these places that I wouldn’t otherwise have exposure to.”
Los Angeles comedy talent scout Joe Robinow, son of BIAV members Jay and Margie Robinow, suggested Lobell for the Purim Gala.
“Danny is one of the greatest and funniest observant Jewish comedians,” he says. “I am very lucky knowing him and being his friend. Not only is Danny a great comedian, he is also a hilarious writer and radio host.”
Lobell hosts two popular podcasts — Modern Day Philosophers and The Mostly Bull Market.
Robinow says “Danny is quickly rising in the ranks of the comedy world and I am fortunate that I get to know him during this time in his life.”
The theme of the Purim Gala is baseball and barbecue. How will he tie them all together?
“I don’t have specifically written material about baseball and barbecue; I always do a lot of improvising on stage,” he says. “It’ll come to me; there’s always a way. Just off the top of my head right now I think about how the Jews almost struck out but in the end we were able to pull a championship. And barbecue is delicious and Jewish victory’s delicious.”
Not bad right out of the gate.
He says he has a lot of written material he does as well, but doesn’t write material specific to certain events. He plays off the crowd and the situation. For example, playing a show in St. Paul, Minnesota, he had the crowd in stitches when all of a sudden everyone stopped laughing and he didn’t know why.
He asked the crowd how he lost them and everyone pointed to a giant spider that was right behind him on the stage.
“So I started using it in the act, a two-man act of me and the spider, one of the all-time great comedy heroes — Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and Danny and the spider. So you never know what you’ll be able to draw on until you’re actually there,” says the 32-year-old comedian. “Basically every crowd is different and every gig is different, every situation is different.”
While not all of Lobell’s jokes reference Judaism, he says he looks at the world through a Jewish lens, so he feels that 100 percent of his humor is Jewish. A person’s sense of humor is ingrained in who he or she is.
“I feel like in the same way a black comic uses black humor, a Jewish comic uses Jewish humor,” he explains. “Jewish humor has been defined now in so many different ways — do you talk about being Jewish a lot; do you use Yiddish references? There are so many ways to define what Jewish humor is. But in the greater scheme of things, everything I see in life is filtered through a Jewish eye, a Jewish brain.
“Everything that influences the way I see the world is based on a Jewish upbringing, so even if the joke itself doesn’t necessarily reference a Jewish thing, although some of them do, I still see it as Jewish humor. The way I perceive things is very specific to the fact that I’m Jewish. I think a lot of it is analytical in a way that a Talmudic scholar would look at things.”
Lobell loves making people laugh, which is obviously why he became a comedian. Plus, he says it’s a mutual experience — it’s great for the audience and the performer.
“I can’t think of a better thing to do with my life, I’ve tried,” he asserts. “It’s kind of like being a doctor without medical school. I imagine it’s even better because I’m sure a doctor feels good when they heal somebody, but I don’t think they feel as good as a comedian when they get a roomful of laughs”.
Lobell maintains he would appoint himself one of the class clowns in school, and since none of the others have dedicated their lives to it, he wins — he was the funniest. He even cultivated a lifelong friendship with the principal by being a class clown. He was kicked out of class so many times, they built a rapport. “I’d actually have him laughing; I think he looked forward to it.”
“It’s been confirmed because he was at my wedding and he said ‘I used to look forward to it when you got sent to my office’ and I said ‘I knew it!’ It brightened up his day. I never would have been friends with him now if I wasn’t the class clown back then.
“And another thing,” Lobell continued, “people think the class clown is a lousy student and they’re wasting their education. But in some cases, such as mine, we’re really just getting a head start on our career, the same as the kid who is passionate about math might become an accountant. The class clown is also starting at a young age toward a career in comedy in many cases. In that respect we’re just ambitious go-getters.”
Lobell’s background is a bit unusual. His mother is a Scottish Jew from Glasgow, Scotland. She moved to the United States when she met his Jewish American father.
“My mom’s family is still in Scotland and have been for many generations, dating back over 150 years,” he says. “There’s a book on the Jews of Glasgow and my family is prominently featured in the history of serving the city of Glasgow.”
Lobell lives in Los Angeles with his wife. He’s a Sephardic Jew and says Sephardim do not differentiate between Reform, Conservative or Orthodox. He’s Shomer Shabbos and keeps kosher, “so it would be easy to call myself Orthodox, but I really just see myself as a Jew. I don’t like the way the divisions break the Jewish people up into these groups. I love all Jews and relate to all Jews.”
For more information, to volunteer or to make reservations for BIAV’s Gala Fundraiser, contact Joel Krichiver in the BIAV office at 913-341-2444 or email .