Mordechi Rosenfeld knew the joke about Grindr would crush if it included a Holocaust survivor.
Sitting at a center table at Reserve Cut, an upscale kosher steakhouse in Manhattan, Mr. Rosenfeld was unpacking his performance earlier that evening at an outpost of the Comedy Cellar, the club where he has been performing stand-up for more than three decades.
He had been trying some new material, including an extended riff about a personal experience on that gay dating app. Years earlier, he had unwittingly corresponded with someone who had an unexpected interest in the bedroom: World War II. Specifically, the German military.
The man who he had been messaging showed up at his apartment door in Nazi uniform. At that exact moment, Mr. Rosenfeld’s neighbor, a Holocaust survivor with dementia, exited his own apartment for a nighttime jaunt. The situation was understandably awkward: Mr. Rosenfeld acted as his neighbor’s caregiver and was frequently called on to collect him from the lobby or a hallway.
“Excuse me,” the man said, “I must have walked into the wrong room.”
Then came the punchline, energetically delivered in Mr. Rosenfeld’s Long Island accent with ever-so-slight Israeli inflection: The neighbor never again wandered away after dark.
The room, dotted with men wearing black velvet yarmulkes and observant Jewish women in wigs, exploded in laughter. The joke was a little edgy for some, Mr. Rosenfeld acknowledged, but worked because it was deeply Jewish.
“What we were talking about was not, ‘They’re hooking up and having sex’ — it’s how a Jew sees it,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. “Many comedians are comedians that happen to be Jewish. I’m a Jewish comedian.”
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The post He’s Gay. He’s an Observant Jew. His Comedy Career Is Booming. appeared first on New York Times.
