An Orthodox Jew who works as an entertainer can find life on the road challenging. So it helps when someone like comedian Danny Lobell meets kind people.
Like the man who overheard that Lobell was Jewish and offered to take him by cab to where he could get kosher food. Lobell said he would pay half the fare, but the non-Jewish man refused, saying, “It’s my pleasure to help a Jew keep kosher.”
And like the man who wanted to book Lobell for a weekend gig, and made the deal minus Friday.
“It’s definitely more difficult, but the more you do it, the more ways you find to adapt,” said Lobell, who walks to venues on Shabbat and might eat at a vegan restaurant if kosher facilities are not an option.
Lobell will make his first Milwaukee appearance at 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, as part of the Milwaukee Comedy Festival at Next Act Theater, 255 S. Water St.
Growing up as a sheltered kid in an Orthodox family in New York, Lobell knew he liked to make people laugh ever since being the class clown in kindergarten. He began using so many different funny voices as a youngster that his best friend once asked, “What does your real voice sound like?”
While he didn’t get much exposure to comedians at home, he enjoyed watching Jerry Seinfeld on television and was determined to be like him. He thought Seinfeld’s was the only form of stand-up comedy.
As a teenager, Lobell thought he would have a chance to meet his inspiration when he entered the Funniest Jewish Comedian Contest at Stand Up New York. But to his disappointment, there was no Seinfeld, “only a bunch of middle-aged Jews from different temples telling jokes off index cards.”
From there, the now 32-year-old Lobell formed his own brand of humor. He combines telling jokes and stories — he still uses funny voices — that he has written for audiences around the world.
Having determined he wanted to entertain, he did not have much interest in college. He said he attended Baruch College in New York “so if I failed as a comedian, my parents couldn’t say, ‘If only you would have gone to college.’”
His parents have become more supportive of his career choice in recent years. “I don’t think they ever thought I could become a doctor or a lawyer,” Lobell said. “My father just wanted me to have a job with a steady income, like a security guard.”
As his comedy has evolved, so has his Judaism. He said he “moved away” from observance in college, but eight years later he met a girl, Kylie Jane Wakefield, who became his manager, and she chose a path toward an Orthodox conversion. He “reluctantly” began going to conversion classes with her, and eventually the passion for his religion was reignited.
At the time of this interview, they were scheduled to be married July 30, less than two weeks after Wakefield was to step into a mikveh (ritual bath).
The two moved to Los Angeles in June 2013. “We drove across the country with $300 and no plan,” he said. “A year into living in Los Angeles, I found myself completely out of work, unmotivated, discouraged, displaced and depressed.”
So he became creative in his work, not only as a storyteller but also as the creator of “Modern Day Philosophers,” a podcast in which he periodically invites a different comedian to speak with him about philosophy.
Among those on the show have been Carl Reiner discussing Moses Maimonides, and Jackie Mason dissecting Martin Luther.
He doesn’t label himself a Jewish comedian. “I’m just a comedian,” he said.
His goals have evolved. One early ambition was simple: to someday wear a tuxedo.
And now? “I would like very much to regularly play theaters, to put out a comedy album every five years [his second album is due out in November] and I would like to write and direct some comedy films,” he said.
Perhaps while he is in town, he’ll stop at a Starbucks, as he did when he was 15 years old trying to get out of the rain in New York. It happened that the coffee shop was having an Open Mic, so Lobell signed up.
“The guy in charge asked if I was a poet, and I said no. He asked if I was a musician, and I said no,” Lobell recalled. “So he asked what I was planning to do. I hadn’t thought about it, but I said I could tell a funny story.”
That story got laughs, and a career was born.
For more information about the festival, including tickets, visit Festival.MilwaukeeComedy.com or call 414-278-0765.
Lee Fensin, retired sports editor of The Freeman in Waukesha, is a contributor to the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
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