Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson - Moshe and David Kasher

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

Comedian Moshe Kasher and Rabbi David Kasher sit down with Kate and Oliver this week on Sibling Revelry. They discuss their childhood split between Oakland and a Hasidic neighborhood in Brooklyn, growing up with deaf parents, how they got into their respective careers, and much more.Executive Producers: Kate Hudson and Oliver HudsonProduced by Allison BresnickEdited by Josh WindischMusic by Mark HudsonThis show is powered by Simplecast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. September is a great time to travel, especially because it's my birthday in September, especially internationally. Because in the past, we've stayed in some pretty awesome Airbnbs in Europe. Did we've one in France, we've one in Greece,

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on the IHeart Radio app, podcast or wherever you get your podcasts do you want to hear the secrets of psychopaths murderers sex offenders in this episode i offer tips from them i'm dr leslie forensic psychologist this is a podcast where i cut through the noise with real talk when you were described to me as a forensic psychologist i was like snooze we ended up talking for hours and i was like this girl is my best friend let's talk about safety and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones listen to intentionally disturbing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kate Hudson.

And my name is Oliver Hudson. We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationship. And what it's like to be siblings. We are a sibling rivalry. No, no. Sibling rivalry. Don't do that with your mouth. Sibling, revelry.

That's good. This episode was so much fun. Oh, my God. And I loved it because it was spiritual and funny and irreverent, but still like. I didn't even know. know what to expect. Yeah. We haven't even introduced these guys.

So let's everyone maybe take a guess, okay? What happens when you mix a comedian and a rabbi? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. You get two brothers. You get Moshe and David Castro. That's what you get. Oh, it's so great.

I mean, what an amazing coupling. And David is so wonderful. I was like, can he be my rabbi? I need David some David in my life, you know? It was just so cool and down to earth and funny. And just watching and listening to the two of them who are just so different yet so connected and so the same, but have had way different paths in their lives. Oh, my gosh.

I mean, Moshe was like a mess. Yeah. I mean, and their story, which I really don't want to get into. is fascinating. It is. Because, and I don't do it, let's just not even say anything. But let's, so Moshe, he is the host of a pot, of the endless honeymoon podcast, which he does with his wife. Yeah.

And then David is the author of Parsha Nut, 54, Journeys into the World of Torah Commentary. So you couldn't get. Right there. Yeah. But he's very modern. and the way he talks about, you know, our religion, our, our religion, Oliver, not practicing religion, but what we were born into is, uh, it's just like really refreshing and easy to comprehend. They were great.

This was great. I loved it. Their parents, we don't want to give anything away. Okay. Don't say anything. No, but we got to say one thing. I know what you were about to say it. Yeah.

You know, both their parents were deaf. Both of their parents were deaf. Yes. That's right. And, you know, they divorced and early age, blah, blah, blah. But just hearing how they got through life and the different paths that they took is just fascinating. Really fascinating. I love this.

And again, you know, it's one thing when we're talking to specialists and you and I get to kind of banter in our sibling way with the things that we love and are passionate about or just share things we're passionate about. But when we actually sit down with siblings like this that have stories that are. or kind of make your jaw drop, going, what? Yeah. How great. Like, how was that? You know, it's like, I don't know. This was one of those episodes that made me love that we decided to do this with each other.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Check it out. You're going to love it. Hey. Well, hello. You guys are in the same room.

See, I would have manipulated this to make sure we were in the same room. room, too, but I was told we didn't need to be. I know we didn't need to be, but I wish we were. Is this your podcast room? Yeah, I thought, like, at some point, you know, like, if at any point there's a lull in the conversation, I can kind of lean and do a... I like it. You know, I like it.

You know, this podcast isn't really that dynamic, but you know what? Well, I'm so excited to have you guys on. Yeah, I just got off the phone with Bobby Lee, by the way. He said to say hello. Oh, awesome. I love Bobby. He's one of the greats. He's the best. He was our first, no, second podcast we ever thought.

And one of our most listened. Him and our, his brother, who's, like, secretly better than Bobby. I know his brother, too. This is going to be right on theme. I'm secretly better than most of them. Perfect. You know what's funny about David and I is, depending on what, circle we're in, he's my brother.

See, you guys are in the same field. But depending on what circle we're in, he's my brother or I'm his brother. So if we're in a Jewish thing, they go, oh, you're David's brother. But if we're... But literally anywhere else in the world. Yeah.

But you guys both have podcasts, right? That's true. So you kind of are in the same I guess. Line of work. Yeah. Sort of. It's like, yeah. It's a difference of scale. And then you did it together in the pandemic.

So in the pandemic, you guys started doing a podcast. We did do that a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How was that? Her Venn diagram finally started coming together. I mean, the truth is like every rabbi kind of wants, you know that thing? Every comedian wants to be a rock star.

Every rock star wants to be a comedian. Yes. It's kind of like every rabbi wants to be a comedian. And I think these days every comedian. What is this narrative? Oh, no, no, David, David, David, David, David. David, David, he's spot on. I mean, I was literally about to say that most rabbis that I know.

How many rabbis do you know? I've been to a million bar in Batmitsvas. They're all telling jokes. Like, it's a joke fest. They love it. Yeah. Rabbis do a bad humor. But I think Moshe's narrative is sort of like, you know, David kind of wants to be like me.

You know, like, I get it. But every comedian these days kind of wants to be like a kind of a thought leader, or kind of a spirit thought leader, you know, everybody. So, you know, like, all I want to do is minds and hearts of the youth of tomorrow. Right. But I wanted to start with this in reading all your guys' stuff. So your dad, hold on, your dad, orthodox, and then your mom atheist. Did I get that right?

No, dad's Hasidic. Hasidic. Well, orthodox. I mean, yeah. Is that correct? Like, how does that even work? Well, let's get to that. How's that a possibility?

Well, both those things are kind of true. You want to tell it most? Well, yeah, we've been lying about our background, and so, like, we can't keep track of the story. And so in that way, we're kind of true, but we kind of didn't make it up. Well, basically, my father, both my parents are, every time I answer this question, I start having to go back into the old country. Like, it's so hard to answer these questions without going back to our great-great-grandfather. Oh, wow. Who was a Hasidic Jew, and he had, like, how many kids, David?

She had four children. They had four kids and they all stayed religious except for our grandmother. She rebelled against the family. My great-great, no, my great-great-grandfather came here. He left the family in Hungary and to go like slaughter kosher chie. Oh, we're Hungarian. We're Hungarian Jews. Oh, all right.

Yeah. We're Hungarian Jews. That's such an important distinction. It's such an important distinction that we're Hungarian Jews. They go, oh, we're Hungarian. Back then we would have rounded you up. Right. So he came over before the war

And by the time he called for them She was the oldest She was like fuck this guy You abandoned me in Hungary I don't want anything to do with you I don't want anything to do with religion I'm out So she became like a civil rights activist

Communist Jew of the Lower East Side kind of type Really? Literally Literally A card carrying American Communist Party member civil rights marcher person just nothing to do with religion and she married a Yiddish novelist named David Kacher which is David's namesake and they were like activists and whatever then they had my father who was born death and and he so he had an ambient sense of Hasidic Judaism in his

life but he was not a religious person he was a beatnik and David you can jump in at any point but an artist and a freak and a weirdo and a painter in the Lower East Side. And he met my mother because she's deaf. They got married. They continued their beatnik life together. And then when I was nine months old and David was three,

my mother said she was going on vacation back to her hometown of Oakland, California, and we never returned. And in the wake of his family, leaving him behind, my father went back to the thing that was his kind of, You know, but his net, I guess, his spiritual net, he became a born-again Jew.

He then became a Hasidic Jew by marrying into an extremely hardcore sect of Hasidic Judaism. And so it's not like we were raised in an atheist Hasidic household. It's that my dad fell into a stream of extreme religiosity. They were like, yeah, I think I would say that they like, when they were together, they practiced sort of a traditional but light Jewish practice. But then when they split, they each sort of changed their lives drastically, like restarted their lives by shifting that variable. And my dad's approach was to become sort of ultra-Orthodox.

And my mom's approach was just to say, like, forget all this. I'm starting over back, you know, back in my hippie, you know, home country of California. And where are you guys now? We're both in Los Angeles. We're both in Los Angeles. You could have been in the same room, but we just didn't get it together to do that. We haven't, David and I, to be honest with you, David and I, this is the first conversation we're having. We're estranged. So this is the first conversation we're having an overt. Very uncomfortable. Are you, your dad is still in New York? No, he's in heaven. Oh, okay, so your father died. Long time ago. Long time ago. Like 20, is it like three or so years ago now?

Yeah. I was, yeah, 22, 23 years ago. But here's the good news about him being dead. But you had a reconciliation of sorts, didn't you? What's that? Didn't you have a reconciliation of sorts? Because wasn't he sort of not the greatest dad in the world? You know? No, I wouldn't characterize him.

Well, the thing is, now that he's dead, he can hear. And so he can hear this podcast. I know. I know. No, my dad was a very complicated. No, it was complicated by divorce. We were kind of that classic 80s divorced family and then my dad really wanted us.

Actually, I would say he was an impressively active East Coast Hasidic Jewish father. He wanted us to come move, to be with him and never stopped that fight. But I, as I got older, wanted that less and less. And I think David, your trajectory maybe was a little different. David really wanted, I think, to be there. I was always really into it, yeah.

This was a typical 80s. father's move? Because our 80's father was the exact office. There was no fight. What I mean is more that, oh, that there was a divorce and our families didn't get along and that the tension in the family was not because my mom was bad or my dad was

bad to us, but more that they fucking hated each other and were like openly fighting, proxy fighting via us. Right, okay, got it. You were like the staff bullets, right? We were just talking about this like the other day, whether, like, you know, that's

like half of marriages end in divorce. Yeah. And there's like, I'm not sure that that's actually a true statistic. We were like debating that, but it felt, the 80s is definitely the time where it felt like a true statistic and felt like everybody's parents were divorced. And also it was like, there was so much divorce that felt like nobody knew how to do divorce. Like everybody was so bad at it and everybody's so angry at each other. It was like just, if you had divorced parents, it just sucked.

And I think it did for us. Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. So you guys grew up in Oakland for the. most part. That's right. And we would go to Brooklyn for our summer vacation. And literally, this is true. We would go from the airport to the Hasidic Jewish barbershop. The barber would give us, like, he would try to decalifornia-fi our haircut. It was kind of difficult because, like,

there was supposed to be growth here, you know, because this is a Hasidic neighborhood. But we didn't have that growth because we had the kind of classic California bowl cut, which I guess I kind of am rocking these days again. But, and then we would literally, I mean, this seems made up, but we would put on slacks and a dresser and a velvet yarmulke, and then we would go into the Hasidic neighborhood

and we would sort of pretend that we knew what we were doing. And David was a master chameleon, and I just couldn't get it together. Like, I spent all those summers so aware that I didn't, like, people could tell that I listened to Too Short, you know, like I just knew

they knew, you know. But I also, I also, they're like, oh, that's good, too short. I can, like, when you were saying that, I could see you as a little boy. Like, I could see you with the young, I could see you in that moment. David, I wanted to know what you were going to say, but the thing that was really difficult for me was that I didn't know Hebrew like at all. Like I didn't, so I couldn't pretend. And this neighborhood was so hardcore that an English prayer book was like a red, it was like a scarlet

letter like everybody would be like why would you that none of that makes sense and david very quickly learned hebrew and he could follow along in the hebrew prayer book and i would have to carry with me to temple this kind of like neon sign saying this kid there's something wrong here i mean i was just i was just really into it you know what i mean like i was into it from the start like that was just looking back i was just the kind of person probably was just drawn to religion but i was probably a master Kamele. I was a good faker too, but like I most just sort of hated it and I was like this is cool, what is this? I have

this like moment, I guess what five years ago or something where I was like, I just need to know more about where I come, like who I am, like who I am, like where I come from and what we are. My, our grandma was very, was very real, I mean, she, you know, put a napkin

over her head every Friday and lit candles and would say the prayer and we just like, you know, did what we had to do like we went to temple but we didn't know what the hell was going on you know and then when she died it kind of died with her and so i just had this whole thing i was like i had all these messages happening and signs so i was like i need a rabbi found rabbi levy and the one thing that made me so happy about us was i said to i'm like here's the thing i am not religious i have a hard time with religion, I want to challenge everything that you are going to teach me. And he's like,

yes. He's like, this is what we, our tribe is really good at. Challenge it. Challenge me. And that was like my entry into learning about our religion. I think though, as a kid, like to be thrust into what would be like from like a California non-religious kind of world into like something so intensely strict. I mean, isn't that kind of traumatizing a little bit? Yes.

Yeah, I think it was. I'll take my experience of it, which is I think that, you know, I mean, I was drawn to it for sure, but I also was like that was our time with our dad. And I just I wanted to be close to my dad. I wanted to impress my dad. I wanted to like, you know, be seen as good in my father's eyes. And

like, there was, he happened to live in such a way that there's like this entire infrastructure of rules to follow that would make you good and an entire community of like, you know, in retrospect, like not that friendly, you know, group of people, very judgmental kind of like a kind of oppressive culture. But it was a way of, like for me, I just sort of used that adaptation to be like a good little boy to my dad. That's a big part of it for me. What about you most? Well, I think the story that I, well, I'm thinking of two stories. one is when you know the classic thing you ask a kid what do you want to be when you grow up

what i wanted to be when i grew up at that time was a a rabbi do you know what a rabbi is a rabbi isn't a rabbi a rabbi is like a rabbi with a cult right like a rabbi's like a rabbi with a following i if you'd ask me when i was like nine what do you want to be when you grow up i would have said i want to be a rebbe or a baseball player now i don't care about sports and i don't really care that much about religion either. Like, they were both projections of insecurities. Like, I didn't like baseball. I didn't want to be a baseball player, but I wanted to be like a man and tough.

And I didn't want to be religious, but I wanted to be, like, fit into my dad's thing or whatever. So that was who, that was the kid that I was. But at a certain point, I started to realize, like, I don't think I'm going to pull this off. Like, because there's this whole thing. an ultra-Orthodox Judaism that you are either, it's kind of binary. Would you agree, David? You're either you are frum, which is you are religious and fully in, or you just kind of like,

or not. And I started to realize that I wasn't, it wasn't going to happen for me. And I went on this drive with this rabbi. There was a rabbi in town that was teaching me Hebrew. And to his credit, I mean, it was very sweet, like that he found out I didn't know how to read Hebrew and he would bring me into his house on Sundays and teach me the alphabet. And it's like, this dude was like a Talmudic master. Like, it's like Alan Turing teaching some kid the multiplication tables.

Like, he had better things to do. Yeah. Than that. But, and I, I was frustrated and I remember I was failing. I just couldn't get it. And this is a memory. He goes, don't worry about it. He calls in one of his sons.

He's like, don't be ashamed. Hold on. Shmuli or whatever. He calls his son in and his son comes in. He's like, yes, Tati? He goes, say the American alphabet. And the kid goes, this is an American. American kid. The kid goes, um,

A, G, G, T, Lee. Like, he doesn't know the fucking alphabet. And the rabbi goes, it's fine. You don't know Hebrew. He doesn't know English. Everybody's fine. Oh, my God. That's not cool. Like, he would humiliate his son to make me feel more connected to my people.

But it's also an illustration of the fact that we lived in, during the summers, in a community and our family was the kind of community where someone could grow up. an American and have, like, a strong accent and no real, like, strong command of England. We're, like, we have cousins who, like, learned English as a second language in New York, you know? Right. We have cousins.

We have people you, I think if you went to them and you were like, go Yankees, they'd be like, this is the Yankees. Like, what? Nah, no, everybody knows to be here. And maybe, this is the other thing about David and I. Our narratives of this time are really informed by the people we've become. Right. And, like, when David was said,

I think they had a traditional Jewish upbringing, you know, sort of, I always think, like, they were doing drugs in the Lower East Side together until my mom left my dad. Like, we really have a different window into what was going on, even though none of us know. Anyway. But all the while, your father is, is both of your parents are deaf. Right. So how are you communicating with them? Did you immediately know sign language growing up?

Yeah. That was our first language. That was, yeah, in a way, that was our first language. If you had caught us early enough, we would have been like, A, B, G, we didn't know English either. You knew sign language. People always asked me how I learned to talk, and I always say, I learned from my brother. The interesting question is how did he learn to talk? I was going to ask that question.

How did you learn to speak? Well, I mean, I think it is like growing up with parents to speak a different language. Like, eventually you just pick it up from people around. There are obviously other people speaking around. But my dad once said that he came into the living room and saw me like singing along with a television commercial. So I guess I learned to speak from TV. Like, you know, God bless TV.

Well, and everything around and people. And obviously you go outside and you hear, you know, people talking. Yeah. But what age did your mom sort of pick you guys up and get out of there and go to Oakland? How old were you guys? I was nine months old. Yeah. So your age difference is three and a half years.

three and just a bit yeah so you're little when she when she took you out of there yeah so we really led like a bi-coastal life you know it wasn't like divorced parents it was like two parents on two sides of a continent practicing two entirely different like religions and lifestyles and in certain ways value systems and so we're just so talk about your mom a little bit because you know we know what your dad was doing over on the east on the east coast there um sort of that born again But your mom in Oakland was, was she just this sort of free-spirited, you know, let's just get after it, type of mom? 100,000 percent.

Our childhood was as, what's weird was the six weeks. Our childhood was as California hippie. Like, I was talking, we went to a hot spring the other day, my wife and I, and there was naked people everywhere, and my wife is from Illinois and a little less comfortable. And I was like, we were talking about that. And I was like, oh, the amount of naked hippies I saw by the time I turned 10. I mean, it couldn't be quantified. Like, I, about this feels sexual to me at this hot spring because, you know, this was the, the landscape of my childhood.

I mean, would you say, David, I mean, disability rights marches, pro-choice marches. Yeah, I mean, we were just in it, in the hippie, the hippie zeitgeist for sure. That's so fun. That's so colorful. And that was part of it, too, is that my mom was sort of a disability rights activist along with it. So it's definitely like it was political and civil rights and like, you know, that bled over it into other people's civil rights. It was definitely that kind of, you know, old, because she was a born again hippie. Like she went back to that culture and really lived it.

That's funny. You're living just two completely opposing lifestyles. It's just so interesting. And did you, where did the rebellion sort of come from? It feels like, Dave, you went to your dad's side in the sense of how it is from a psychological place. Like, how do I get love from him, right? So how do, how do my dad sort of accept me? Let me follow in his footsteps so he loves me.

That's my psych 101, right? But like, Mom, you know, Mosch, would you say that you are more like, let's follow, let's follow that road? You know, because obviously it's well documented, all the shit that you went through. Dude, when I was reading over the bio and the laundry list of, I'm like, what the fuck? I mean, the amount of places that you were at before 12 years old, 13 years old is crazy, the institutions. Well, I mean, I think for me, I think that David's found, I mean, David is a rabbi. And he's like an, not to toot his horn, but he's an unbelievably talented and brilliant rabbi. He's good at what he does.

And so I think whether that was fate or. or what he manifested through willpower, David fell into the thing that he was supposed to eventually land in very early on. And for me, but I think he, correct me if I'm wrong, David, you probably have the same feeling. For me, my child was typified by this feeling of I don't belong anywhere.

And I, you know, I was not deaf but not hearing, not Hasidic, but not not. I was in, we both grew up, you know, really broke in Oakland and local public schools, which was like 90% black at the time. So it was not black, but not. So every space that I entered felt like I'm not this enough. I just, I can't find my groove in any kind of, it was a kind of walking imposter syndrome. And so that type of person, that type of kid is like absolutely destined to fall into,

drugs and rebellion because that is the the obliteration of getting high when you're when you're that young all of that stuff melts away is like i could care less where i belong i have found where i belong and it's like right here so that to me my destiny in in the same way david's was to find you know religiosity my destiny was to find a way out of that feeling of like hyperdifference and I found that in rebellion. And so I was 12 when I found the bad kids at the back of the school and they were all, they were the same as me. Even though they were nothing like me, they were the same as me.

They didn't fit either. It's like drugs or God. Those are the two options. What about both? So you... That's also about it. I mean, they think they link sometimes. Yeah.

Not the way I did, though. They link sometimes. Of course. So, but take us to... through a little bit of that. So, like, you started, you started to kind of dabble in drugs in the house. How soon did that become, like, an actual real problem? And was your mom even aware that it was happening at the time? You know, I remember my mom telling us about her experiences on acid, you know, and she, I believe, was trying to do a cautionary tale. And I remember listening

to that and going, I'm doing that. That is something that I'm doing. Right. But I was, Yeah, I was like in seventh grade was the first time I got high. So I guess I was like 12. And I, you know, it's funny. We're talking about our backgrounds and our mutual backgrounds. There was a summer where I got high and then I went to, I went to immediately to Brooklyn because it was like the timing. It's like the end of seventh grade, I got high for the first time. And then I was off to the old country.

And I remember like knowing that. my life was different and that this was no long there was no part of me that want to be a rebbe or a baseball player that summer all i want to do is get back to oakland and continue doing whatever that was and up to it including like sneaking in and drinking the shabbat wine and like like trying to recreate that experience or i remember we were walking through washington square park and like one of those like uh weed dealers was like you know trying to you know those unsolicited weed dealers i don't even know if they still do that but you know they're people's park in Washington Square Park where they'd be like, you know, you need any weed or whatever.

And I remember going, my dad was with me and I remember going like, I want some weed. Like, that was all that I want. I want, that's the thing I'm supposed to be doing. And then after that, I don't think I went back to New York after that summer for a few years. So the, because I got into so much trouble so instantly, by the time 8th grade came around and I was fully in my life, I, in the middle of that year, I dropped out of school in eighth grade. I started getting arrested in the middle of that school year. I went to a mental institution.

Like, you were you just like, were you vandal? Like, what were you stealing? Yeah. You were just stealing things. Stealing to sell, to buy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was just in a little, you ever see kids?

Yeah, yeah, of course. Watching Square Park? That was us. Yeah. I watched that movie like a documentary. It was like, oh, there's a, wow, I didn't know, wow, I didn't know. got to go to raves. Kids like this got to go to raves on the East Coast.

That seems really fun. That was the only difference was that they actually went to a cool party. What was your tag? I wrote Sake, S-A-K-E, and I think, D-I-S-E, D-E-E, Dice, yes. The tags are so funny. Some pronounce it's sake. Mine was, because I was, I loved, I was tagging, like, I mean, I'm so ridiculous.

I'd tag like the Pacific Palisades, though. You know what I mean? I got up in the Palisades. He literally tagged. Your name was 401K, right? He literally tagged like on sunset and like Capri. Right. Like the post office box.

Foe, P-H-O-E was my tag. P-H-E. I think culturally appropriative too. But early days, same with sake. Same with sake. Oh, yeah, that's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

We were both just passionate about Asian cuisine. You know, that was our big. Sock and foe, you would be. David, did you ever? You never did, did you? Me? No, no, I never did. No.

Either of the good kids in the family. Yeah. I just remember Oliver, I mean, even, I was like, almost, I was three years younger, I was like, you're, you're ridiculous. Like, you're a joke. I got up there. I was, like, eight.

I was like, this is absurd. It was cool. And then, and then, and then he had a, a dance crew. A dance crew, like, hip-hop was like, you know. Ooh. Like break dance? Yeah, we were called the Rice Krispy Snapcrapckle and Pop. And we used to go battle all these other dance crews at these underage clubs.

Yeah, it was Do you guys Do you have been any video? You got to attach that to this But like for more I wish No link here No way

It was 1990 Yeah but we have so much video Yeah No but it was Early 90s Embarrassing identity crisis details There was a time When I was very young

Before I really got in the trouble When I wanted to I thought I'd start rapping And I was like well I'll be a rapper And then I was like What will my rap name be M. My name's Moshe, but my first name is an M as well. That's for the Patreon-only listeners,

what that name is. It's Mark. But it was Mark Mosas is my name. So I thought, M-M, M-M, I'll be M-N-M. No. That'd be a nice rap name. So I really was like, I am M. This is before Eminem happened. I was like a kid in Oakland going, my name is M&M. I could have been, you got to sue him. You got to sue him. You got to sue him for copyright, you get so much. Even a fraction. But I was heavily into that, too. Like, we used to just get so high and sit in the car and just freestyle over breakbeats. Like, that was our night.

That's what we did. Yeah, but you're actually really good. Huge fat farm clothes, triple five soul, like gerbo jeans. Like, everything was so massive. This is so familiar to me. Kate, you know the embarrassment that we fell. It was just so absurd. Ollie had like a Nissan.

It had a Honda prelude. And that shit, I put all every dime I had into the sound system. The thing would like come off the ground. Yeah, it literally like was this tiny little weird car that like just vibrated through the palisades. It just would be like, I just love the whole culture. I just still love it. But I was just so obsessed with it.

But you're a good freestyler. We still, and you know what? Moshe was too. I got to say. While we're sounding out our siblings, most of it was good at it. Listen, I mean, these are embarrassing times, but, you know, it's funny, you're talking about this stuff and, like, all of the, that stuff sounds fun, like dancing and cars and sound systems, like, my first interlude with that, that, I feel like you were actually sort of entering the, the fun parts of hip hop culture. And, like, my, the kids that I grew up with in Oakland, like, none of it was fun. It was just kind of gross.

And it was, it, it, later, when I got sober and my turn my life around, which was still very young, then I started, I became like the rave impresario of San Francisco, all sober. And that was actually where things got fun. That's where the triple five soul and the nice sound systems, the good times and the, the, dancing that's where that all happened but the other stuff just sucked kind of and it made things worse because david seemingly was thriving the entire time i was just about to ask that i was about i was about to ask that like about david like when you're watching your your younger brother go through this like how are you handling this i mean because you're not really you don't have the capacity

to sort of you know sit down with him and have real conversation you're still young yourself because he was so young i mean yeah for sure i think at first i just thought he was so stupid Like, I was just, first of all, like, it's not like I did nothing, but it was, I never got caught for anything. But I just thought it was like, like, if you planned well, you didn't get caught for things. But also, he was just so chaotic that nobody was paying attention to me. But I just felt like, why are you always getting caught? Why are you always screwing up? And I don't think it was until, right, like, I was a kid too.

And I don't think it was until like the end of high school and the beginning of college and then being in college and hearing reports from back home and starting to realize like, oh my gosh, there's like a real problem. here, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, where were you in college? I went to Wesleyan. In Connecticut. Okay, so you were on the other coast. Across the country. Yeah. Yeah. How is that for you?

Good. Yeah. I mean, I think I was trying to still kind of trying to get back to the East Coast, back to my dad. Like, that was a big propulsion for me. But then once I got to college, I think that was the time when I escaped all of the religious question. I remember growing up. up. I don't know if you felt this way, Moshe, but I felt like, okay, I'm going to be 18. Like, I felt like the divorce were the terms of the divorce were the terms of my life. And so, like, I had to go back and forth between these two very different worlds. And then I had this

feeling from when I was a little kid, like, when you're 18, you have to decide whether you're going to be religious or secular or, you know, a hippie or a, you know, more traditional. Did you put this on yourself, though? Or was this? I think I just thought, like, oh, well, once you're 18, you decide for yourself. And, like, I had been always going back and forth, but I would have to, like decide this and side with one parent. That's just the way I think I saw the world. I also think, David, that our dad and our family was set up in such a way, that it was like, your mother has kept you from the kingdom.

Right. And that's just the way it is. But there is a time at which you can walk through the gates and you can be this kind of person. I don't know if my dad did it purpose. He never laid a religious trip on us once. his credit like it was never about like you're sinful living that life back there never it was always like this is so awesome and it's so it's too bad that you can't be in it with us and so I think on some level yeah I knew that it was a rejection earlier in my life than David did

David didn't ultimately I think feel that rejection but I knew I wasn't going to do it but I do think there was a crossroads that we all that we knew we were facing and it was what was our destiny going to be was it going to be in this world of God? or in this world of Californianess or whatever. I mean, I, yeah, and so I went to college, I felt like, oh, now I'm 18. I'm going to decide one of these or the other. And then, like, very quickly, I think my college years were my wild years because suddenly I was like, oh, I don't have to think about this stuff at all.

I mean, it's interesting the way you described it, Moshe, like, kind of being chaotic and wild is a way of not actually thinking about, like, making major choices about your life and who you are. And college was definitely, like, an escape. And then soon after college, my dad died. And then that kind of catapulted me back into all these questions. And I was very quickly, like, in grief, but also in trying to figure everything out, I was like in a yeshiba, like a seminary in Israel.

And I just sort of dove in the deep end and then found my way back to somewhere in the middle. And that's sort of how you not dealt with your father's death, but he propelled you to sort of, you know, go that way. Yeah, it was all wrapped up for me because, like, I do think I was really drawn to the spirituality behind it all, but it was all embodied in my father and what he had wrote, because we hadn't really grown up that way.

He was just this figure in the distance that was like living this life. And so, yeah, like, it's very hard for me to separate. I mean, at this point, I, you know, I think I have my own relationship to it. But at that time, it was like the grief for my father and the religious legacy that he left behind and what I was trying to be in the world.

All of that just felt like totally jumbled up and I was just kind of trying to like stumble my way through it. How did he pass away? He had cancer. I chilled him. Oh, I didn't know you're... Oh. There's a bummer.

You're religious. Yeah, that kind of... So, yeah. But when you... Oh, sorry. When your dad died, when dad died, though, how did you handle it? You know, I mean, was that... Well, this is interesting in hearing...

I mean, I know David's narrative with this, because I watched it, and I saw it happen. And then... But what's interesting is that our paths, I mean, David and I have been, we're very close. And like our paths were intertwined obviously, literally, but also like, you know, because we had this singular childhood experience, I feel like both David and I, even though our angles were slightly different, we both had the sense of like, you're the only other human being on earth that understands this thing that were, that were, that were, this battle we're in with the deafness and that siddickness and the kind of bizarre soup that was our. our background. And so we were very close as a result of that. But, you know, I had my thing and he had his thing. And when my dad died, you know, at that point I was sober and I was like on a path of self-improvement and stuff. And I think that both David and I sought solace in the religion of

our father. Like I know for sure that was when I was able to grief through the strictures of religious Judaism was the thing that got me through it because religion's like religion all religion but especially Judaism is like the absolute perfect thing for grief because they tell you what to do and when you're in that kind of grief you truly don't know what to do and so david and i would go to temple to say like the mourners prayer on friday nights and david will go every day but i would go on friday nights and and i got to forge my own what felt like my own connection to that religion for the first time in my life. And that stuff that happened to me in those grief years

are still ambiently a part of my life. And that's when I sort of started to feel like I could wear the religion. It wasn't dichotomous. You know, I felt dichotomous. It felt like there was a choice. And then in the end, there wasn't a choice. And I could wear it like a loose garment and I could forge and create my own relationship with this thing.

And that's still in my life today. still right yeah yeah but mosha you just you just said a really deep thing i think i mean and especially since we have some eye towards like a sibling relationship like what you said about how especially in a divorce you have one other sibling you really feel like that's the person who gets my life and like we have this very divided kind of life but mosh was the other person who really understood that and though we made totally different choices around it i think you're right mosh that it was so it was so clear to me why someone would deal with with that data the way Moshe did, and I think clear to him, like, how I might make the choices

I would make. And I think it, that's, that's a lasting, like, that's a thing that I think stays with. Like, I have a, I have a great appreciation for, like, a rejection of religion. And I think Moshe has a certain sympathy for an embrace of religion in a way that somebody else in our path might not because of that sibling understanding. Interesting. Interesting way to say that. You have sort of compassion for rejection of religion. That's really interesting, actually, given what he was raised in a secular world. Yeah. I mean, he's, you know, and I think like, and I was, I'm a secular guy that was raised in a religious world in some bizarre way.

Like, I would even take it a step further, David, and say, I don't, I not only understand why you make, why your life led you on the path that it's led you on. I've always kind of, I feel like you're doing it for like in my name in a weird way. Like I honor the choice 100% because I'm like, oh, he did it. Like he did the thing. He went that route that was offered to us. It was never going to be me. I just always felt it wasn't just not going to happen. That wasn't going to happen for me.

And so I'm not only like, I get why you did it. I'm like grateful that you did it because it like carries on that part of the legacy. of our family in a way. Right, that's interesting. He sort of took the bullet in a sense as you did the comedy route. So, you know what I mean? That's another way to say it.

But you get to take care of the comedy, you know. You're doing it for me. He's doing it for me. Exactly. For both of us. Exactly. I'm surprised he doesn't write bits for you. I know.

Do you write bits for David? Do you write any bits for David? For his like. No, the truth is David is, uh, we both. have the skill of the other person to some degree. Like, I do know how, I do know and am passionate about, like, sincerity. And, you know, if you read my book, like, a lot of that is non-comedy and it's actual, you know,

it's a tough, it's a tough read in some ways. And David is definitely genuinely a funny rabbi. Like, he genuinely is a funny person. I mean, it's, so I think we both know, I've never written a joke for David. but he's probably written a joke for me. He came up with a ride on my hook. Yeah. For the sake of doing it.

Just write him like a quick five. Just to see. I'll tell you this. I'll tell you this. When I hear him do a sermon at his temple, I definitely am punching it up in my mind. Of course. That would have been a great place.

Totally. But I'm so aware of bad rabbi humor that I'm a great admirer of comedy, but I actually do my best not to bring it on the pulpit because it just feels like Yeah, most of the time. Looking at you two brothers, and as we always said this in the beginning, you know, you guys, oh, we're in such different parts of the world as far as sort of what we do for a living, but rabbis are performers at heart. I mean, every temple I've been to, every sermon I've seen, it's a performance.

I mean, it's a performance. Yeah. Well, and the trippy thing, I think, is that we also are both verbal performers for a living, and our parents were death, and that's kind of striking. that we both kind of talk for a living and we didn't, that wasn't our first you know, like language experience. Do you sign as you do your, when you're working?

No, no, no, no. If I, yeah, I can't do both at once. So if my mom is there, I have an interpreter there. But Moshe, isn't that what you did for a minute? You were an interpreter. I was an interpreter for a long time, yeah. Before I became a full-time comic, I was a sign language interpreter.

And it was, that was the best. That was the greatest comedy. It was my, you know, it's funny because we grew up, like I said, like we grew up pretty, we grew up on welfare, pretty damn poor, like, and I was an eighth grade dropout, you know, and I never kind of got past that until I finally at some point went to college. Like, the economic futures were not bright for me, but in reality, I went from, I had two jobs. I had sort of, I went, I was a bear. I dressed up in a bear costume, so I got my start in show business early.

That was my first job was bear costume. And my second job, which I did until I became a full-time stand-up, was a sign language interpreter. And so, like, the weird fallout that kind of created, you know, the economic depression in our family. In the end, made me as a very young person, 17 is when I started interpreting, have a pretty good job for a person my age. Like, I always, like, it gave me this, like, kind of, and it was the thing that got me directly to being able to chase my dream of being a comedian because it was, I was making enough money and I could take time off when I wanted. It was kind of the perfect job. How cool. So, real quick, just going over, thinking about the sort of where you went and the rehabs you went to and the sort of institutions that you were put into, you know, do you think that it was overkill?

do you think that you needed a response to me yeah do you think that it was that you were getting put into these institutions do you think that it was you were just being thrown around and is into the system in a sense and not actually being taken care of on a one-on-one personal basis and i'm only saying this because when i read all your stuff there were so many of them i'm like holy shit you know what's going on here well uh that's a complicated question for me to answer because the answer is definitely both yes and know because on the one hand you know as a sound language interpreter i got the opportunity to like interpret it up at middle schools you know and so i would be at a middle school and be looking at the kids and going okay i wasn't like that i was i was genuinely a really troubled kid like i could look at that and go yeah i was on a different vibration of trouble than the kids i'm looking at here i'm sure they i'm not saying they had it easy but i just in terms of the outline loudness of my chaos, I was really, really a troubled kid. On the other hand, like, you know, we said that she got to be a born-again hippie,

but the truth is my mom's religion was therapy, and that's just, that was the truth. The 80s analysis. They called it, it was an analysis. I remember that was mom's time. Yeah, and she, she worshipped at the altar of therapy. And so her answer to me starting to get in trouble was just increased therapy, like more therapy. And so I was in at a certain point in my youth, this is true. I was in therapy eight times a week, more times than there are days. I had, I had, I was in an after school rehab five days a week. I was in individual therapy, family therapy, and then there was a group therapy session for like wayward boys or whatever. So I was And then what happens is, you know, a lot of, like, there's a lot of talk of, like, the prison, the school to prison pipeline that happens to a lot of, like, communities of color and black communities and Latino communities, that's a very real. And this, you know, everybody knows about that phenomenon. For me, I got into this thing that I don't know how many other people have ever experienced with. It was the special education to prison pipeline. Like, what, because we, my mom's worshiped at therapy, the, the, the, the,

the problem that was me had to be solved through therapeutic means. And so I was put into institutions and put into therapy and put on medication and everything had an increase and then put into the special education system because they decided I had learning disabilities. So once you get shunted into the special education system, you go down this road that I went further down that road than a lot of people go. But it can be a very dark road, especially if you are in fact not being served. you know, like if you have real learning disabilities,

it can be really liberating. But for me, maybe I did have those things. But all of a sudden, I started going to a special education class. Then I got kicked out of that school. So I went to like a special education school. Then I got kicked out of that school. So I went to this thing called a SED school, which is a severely emotionally disturbed school,

which was literally like a mental hospital, but in an educational setting. Did you felt like you fit into that setting, though? I mean, did you feel like you were severely? no i knew i didn't belong there but i also didn't have the ability to do anything in the regular setting that would like get me to get my shit together and so i was like lost and i could see where it was going you know i really like look down the road and i go oh i see where this lands me i'm i'm and that was sort of one of the big realizations i had before i got sober is like i kept saying

and actually David is a perfect person to have on for this realization because David was the road less traveled. You know, I was just look at him and I would go, oh, okay, I'm just like I'm a couple decisions away from becoming David. Like I'm just, and he went to this school called CPS, which was a really good school. And I just had this illusion that I was just going to get it all together and I'll just be at CPS. Like I get the scholarship he got.

Like my destiny could be that. And I just couldn't do it. Like, I just couldn't do it. And, you know, I dropped out of eighth grade. I flunk ninth grade, I dropped out of, I flunked ninth grade, I think three times. So it was like, you know, I was on the road to become in that, like, you know, cool senior with a beard and a Camaro, you know, with your, your Nissan, you know, like impressing all the, all the frets. I just, and I had. Yeah, it was bad for a while.

It was bad. And I just had this realization, like, oh, nothing is going to change if I don't change. something. And that was sort of the beginning of the unraveling of my illusion that the people around me were my problem and that if they just leave me alone, I could get it together. And so then I got sober and everything changed. And now I'm 42 years old and I've been sober a long time. And now looking back on that, the answer is definitely, it could have been done differently and I do think that I wasn't served by the amount of like, you know, force-feeding waterboarding of torture, of therapy and, and medication and special education and

therapists, it just made me, the more analyzed I got, the more diseased I felt. So the answer is both yes. It could have been different, but nobody could have made the right choice. Where did, David, how did you fit into that in this period? I know you were at college, but like, Was there anything that, like, did you feel a desire to intervene or try to help or were you just trying to? Yeah, I think, yeah, like I said, I think when we were young, I was just like sort of eye roll like, what's wrong with you? Like, get it together. And then I started like, yeah, once around the time that everything was kind of crashing and burning, I started to feel worried. Like maybe this is, like, maybe it was going to have a brother just like not going to not going to turn out well.

and I was already in college at that point so I was kind of far from it and God bless my mom I mean she just you know she may be over-therapized them but she threw everything she had at you know supporting him and

did you ever fear that he was going to not make it meaning he's going to end up dead yeah or dead or like yeah maybe dead but but maybe like in just like a loser like or just like just barely floating above the surface or maybe in jail or maybe, yeah, like just someone who's not going to do well.

And I, you know, Moshe's like a brilliant guy always has been. And I could see, like, it was obvious that he, you know, it is like one or two decisions away, except that like Moshe would make the wrong decision so consistently that after a while, it's like a thousand bad decisions leads to just like a bad life. So, yeah, I mean, it's like the sad part in all this is that I was like a lock to be the most successful sibling, like that was always my inheritance and then they like turned all of this into a comedic career

and now like, he's the big guy. I was gonna ask that much like when you're going through all this shit and you're being sort of thrown and thrown therapy at you to institutionalize did comedy play a part in sort of getting through this in any way or were you so, were you not even there yet? Or was funny

still a part of who you were? Were you funny? A hundred percent. If you are going to be, of all the different places I didn't fit, if you are going to be the white boy in the black school, like you've got very limited choices for social survival. One is to be as white as you possibly can and like sort of cove up and just be like, we're waiting until we get into the private high school.

And that was not, that's David. And the other is, other would be to be, you know, to be like, find a way to be fully accepted by the kids there. And that wasn't quite going to be. So the third option was just to get, be able to get some attention by being funny. And I 100% think that, you know, the, like the foundations of my stand-up are my years in AA and my years in the Oakland public school system, figuring out how to come back when somebody makes funny you because, you know, the kids in the school, they were funnier than I was. So I had to have to figure something out. Yeah, isn't a beautiful thing, though. I mean, without.

without everything that you've been through, you wouldn't have what you have and be who you are. I mean, that's very cliche to say. But it's just the truth. You cut your teeth on your own experiences, really. You cut your teeth on your own pain. You know, I mean, it's pretty rad. Yeah, the crazy thing about listening to Moshe's comedy

is that, like, he's... I mean, it's like, there's a comedic style and it's embellished, but he's, like, just telling... Like, I know that he's just telling the truth up there. You know what I mean? It's just like, he tells stories in a funny way, but there's like... He's just, like, telling his story.

on stage. Well, they say that a lot of people say I'm like the number one truth teller in comedy. That's like what a lot of people say about me and stuff. So that's the thing that everyone always says. Yeah. You want to put that in the blurb for the podcast or something like that. Number one truth teller. But I mean, I think David did that too.

I mean, I think David alchemized his pain and his alienation to fight for this really interesting spiritual path. I think we all kind of do some version of that. And, like, to circle back to your last question, like, could it have done different? I was thinking about it, like, yes, my mother could have done it differently and it would have been better, but no human being would have been able to make the right decision based on the input they were getting from me. Nobody could have done it, but it could have been done. While you've been telling your story, I've been putting myself sort of in your mother's shoes because I have a 15-year-old and a 12-year-old boy. And I can't even imagine if they're dropping out of fucking eighth grade and not in nine.

I mean, like, I don't know, I don't even know how I would handle it. I don't know how I'd handle it. I don't, I don't know empathetically how I would even, what I would even do. You would kill them? I mean, maybe I'd kill them. I don't know. Screaming, like, you know. You would definitely have more anxiety.

Oh, yeah. I'd probably just run. You definitely would. I'd probably go find our biological father and just live with him. One of the hardest things in life. You know, but then is to watch your children's struggle. Oh, God. And you know that it's coming from something painful.

I mean, all of that must have been just so challenging for her, you know? She definitely did a hero's job. Yeah. Yeah. And there's the famous, every person with deaf parents has this experience, although I might have had a slightly more acute, which is that you, as you're navigating through systems like this, you know, there needs to be an interpreter.

everywhere. Every therapy session, every, every arrest, every arraignment, every court hearing, every rehab thing, all of these needed an interpreter. And half the time, they just didn't remember to get one. And so I had the unique experience of being asked to translate a meeting about which I was the subject and my behavior issues were the subject. And so you have to, that's a fun experience to do because you kind of figure a way to, you kind of soften manipulated a little bit. All of a sudden, you're like not telling the whole truth. But he's a good kid. He's a good kid.

But no, you can't go he's a good kid because our mom's not dumb. So if you were like he's a good kid, she'd be like, why the fuck did you bring me into this meeting then? So you got to be like, you know, he's not a good kid. But like, honestly, he's misunderstood in many ways. He's a good tagger. I'm going to go out on a limb here. The amount of therapy.

I might not have had eight days a week of therapy, but not far, not far. Pretty close. But the, I will say. say that there must have been something, especially when you're younger, to be doing that, you become your own witness. So like as you're having to translate what's going, it's like your reactivity has to stop because you're translating. So you actually are processing and probably processed a lot of that differently than most children would. That's just me thinking about the brain. That, that as actually like a better explanation.

for like the kind of very verbal qualities of our lives, you know, or in our careers, then I was just like, I was just sort of wondering about that. Like, oh, we bet we had deaf parents. But actually, we're doing translation all the time. And I think you're right that that mode is like of switching back and forward. I mean, you're saying it has a therapeutic effect, which is you're able to observe. And it also, I think, just as a cognitive, like, you become a translator. Right.

Yes. And then you see, as we know, like when you become your own witness is when change can happen. or where it starts. And so that, just the very fact that that was a part of the experience might be something interesting. Might be that moment when you said, you know, when you were saying I was reading, you know, when you were saying it just happened like one day. It just like was like, oh, that's it. It's done.

You're saying maybe it was like subconsciously being laced in through all of that stuff. I mean, I think that is interesting. And I, yeah, to what do I owe? I mean, because I grew up with a lot of kids that did die or did go to prison. And a lot of the people that I, you know, got sober with didn't make it. And like, I always think there's that big question. Like, to what do I owe the clarity? Is it because I'm so smart?

Is it because I'm destined for good things? Like, was the guy sitting next to me not destined for that? Is destiny was to die? Like, what is it that granted me the privilege of perspective? And maybe it is that. Maybe it is all the like, the experiential perspective that was forced down my throat gave me that little bit of extra thought to be able to... Or it trained your brain.

It just possibly trained your brain to be able to take the space instead of constantly be doing reacting. I don't know. It just came up for me. I'm, it's... But I think it's also, it's not just the interpreting. It's also like, well, the other stuff, like about living in two different realities growing up. And I think a lot of us have this, like, you know, all kinds of, like, switching from culture to culture and code to code and just sort of like, growing up in a kind of a mash-up society, I think that like that does train our brains in a certain way to be like, yeah, I think there's something good about it.

For all of the confusion that it can cause a kid trying to, like, you know, make their way in the world, there's also something that, like, it fosters a certain kind of sensitivity, tolerance, maybe awareness that you don't have if you just grow up kind of monolithically. It's really, really spot on. Do you guys have kids? Sorry, you have kids? I don't. I have a kid. I have one kid.

How old is your kid? Four and three quarters, she will tell you vociferously. you'd sell her. She's five. We have a four-year-old. We have a four-year-old. It's the funniest age. I just love it, especially for girls, because they're just becoming completely their own person. Do you have fear raising kids? Yeah. Well, I, you know, on the one hand, I don't because I go, I really feel, even when we have this conversation, I've had this conversation, obviously, I've talked about my past a lot because I wrote a fucking book about it. But I always feels like I'm,

I'm reporting on a stranger on some level. Like, it always feels like, I don't even know that kid anymore. Like, it feels, I feel like I've done, I've come so far and it just doesn't feel like my reality. Like, it's in my, that whole idea, like, it's in my DNA kind of, yeah, every time my kid takes a turn into a behavioral new zone where she becomes a bigger brat, I go, okay, we're here. It's arrived.

Karma, now this is. her new thing. She is now this. This is the beginning. This is not a phase. This is the new... This is it. But also, she is so much like Moshe. I mean, not in any of these. No bad, like, predictors yet. For sure, she's doing great.

But as a character and as like an energy, she's just so Moshe's child. That's so cute. But I know you mean with the phases, it's like, oh my God, now this is who this fucking kid is. And now I'm screwed. And then you notice in three, four or five months it just shifts you know but you do worry

it's like nature nurture you know is that is that DNA in there you know and do we have this is I always say yeah yeah well we just we interviewed this woman who found out she had 35 siblings and so that nature

nurture came into question and she was like the truth is there's a lot of nature like they have so many similarities like across the board it was just like weird, weird stuff. The thing about nature and nurture in our situation is I have adjusted the nature, the nurture so hard, like, you know, even if she was coiled in such a way to be the exact

same spring as me, she's not flying to Brooklyn and pretending to be an acidic Jew. She's not, doesn't have parents that hate each other from across the coast. She's, it's all different. So we've adjusted enough. elements that I feel like she's got her own, she might be troubled. I mean, the way that she smokes weed does trouble me a little bit.

She knows what happens to happen, but I think if you can give it a track record that I, I mean, a runway, I think that will allow her to sort of forge her own thing. Well, I feel like nurtured Trump's nature. I mean, I always said this well before the Dahmer thing even came out. I'm like, if Jeffrey Dahmer was a baby and he came into our fans, family. Would he still have eaten people? Probably not. Maybe. I don't think so. I don't know. How do you want to think about it? We would have, if Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell

raised Jeffrey Dahmer. You know, I mean, like, I just, he would probably be, you know, on like party of five. Oh, but for the Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Jeffrey Dahmer household. Everything would have been better. I just, you know, I don't even know how to respond. Yeah, but he would have eaten at his castmates. So it would, it would. And it was a death.

Has your kid made it into your stand-up yet? Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, that's the bad news about being a person that tells stories about myself on stage and things that happened to me. I wish I was more of a classic observational comedian. I really am like waiting around for shit to go down so that I can write a new joke.

And I gave birth to an endless supply. So, yeah, everything I'm talking about right now, for better or for worse, is something that happened between us. And then is your wife, is she off limits or does she allow you to, because she's funny too, obviously. But does she allow you just to go, whatever you've got to do, say? Say what you've got to say. Her entire act is about how I'm a sloppy fucking idiot.

So no, she's not off limit. It's like, she's also just a true teller. her off. Oh, she does, she annihilates you. No, I told Natasha early on in our, and by the way,

now, now, how about this? For a plug. You know, we work together a lot on our podcast. Yeah, that's honeymoon.

Look at that. That's so fun. We do a lot relationship advice without any qualifications, but like the, the early on in our relationship,

I told her you can say anything you want about me on stage. and I probably meant, and I'm going to be doing the same. But she loved that because I feel like the, I don't have, this is how the bills get paid and so she can talk as much shit about me. Now, when she starts talking shit about me in the kitchen, when we're actually one-on-one, that shit bothers the fuck.

She brings that exact argument to the stage and humiliates me in front of a crowd. I'm like, right on, honey. So when the argument starts in the personal home, you just say, hey, hold on, just take it to the stage. If you could craft that into a good bit and then do it in public on TV even, I'm into that. Right, and then I'll hear you, I'll hear you, and I will extrapolate what I need for our relationship from the bit,

but just don't do it right here. So before we're going to wrap up, I want to do the speed round soon, but I just, I wonder, like, having a rabbi as a brother, do you seek, his advice. Is he your rabbi? Is your brother your spiritual counselor? A hundred percent, yes. And I don't think it's because he is a rabbi. I think it's, I think, are you ready for some trite bullshit? I think he's a rabbi because he is the kind of

person that I would always go to with a spiritual problem. I think that he, my brother, went way beyond the trauma of our childhood and has become a really brilliant and introspective and deep, powerful thinker about the human condition and about the spiritual quest that is life. And so I think that's why he became a rabbi because he was destined to be one. And I'm lucky enough that I have a brother that gets to answer those questions. Cool. Oh my God, that's so nice.

Beautiful. That's so nice. I really thought you were going to say the opposite. Like 100 No, because, like, we are just, we're so just brothers to each other. There's nothing else we can be. I mean, like, I'm as likely to ask Moshe for advice about something as he is to turn to... You know what I mean? But I appreciate that, the description. I am something of an avatar. No, but David played every character in Avatar, too, and...

But, no, David does come to me as well, and because I'm not bad at... advice either because you know endless honey because you're on an endless honeymoon I think I meant that specifically is like David I don't come to David

as my rabbi I come to David as the person who I would take my biggest issues with because he is my brother and I feel like other people are lucky enough to have him as a spiritual counselor too how about that? That's nice. One more question do you believe in God Moshe?

that's a uh it's not a no yeah i'm sort of with you you know i i i i it's not a no but so i i don't want to open a canon one's because we all got to go here but agnostic atheist is agnostic and correct me if i'm wrong it's like there's something but i just don't commit to anything is that kind of what agnostic means i asked a rabbi oh yeah that's the rabbi absolutely well yeah agnostic meaning like not having knowledge. Like I don't, I don't, I don't know the answer to the question. I do think on some level, that's not far from like Jewish belief. Like I think on some level, our core message is like, yeah, there is a God.

We have no idea what it is. Like nobody ever could. It's so far beyond. Yes, we've had experiences of this God. But like, we don't, you can't describe it. You can't pronounce its name. It's so far beyond. So like there's a kind of agnosticism that I think is embedded in Jews.

Judaism. That's interesting. Yeah, there's something really remarkable about the, the Jewish story. It's like, why are we still here? And like, there's some, like, there's some, like, we have impressive representation in some ways. Like, you know, it's like, like a borrow the term from the black community, but like Jewish excellence. Like, I feel like there is some of that. And it's, it's, it's something I'm proud of. But I do think, look, it's not like inherent like in our cells. I don't, I don't think that. I do think that it's like, it's the wisdom of. of like having of historical experience. But I also think like it's a certain path.

And there is something mystical about that path because as I said, at the heart of it is of this mysterious force that we don't claim to really fully understand. But we kind of like committed early on to this idea that if you could tap into that force, like it would be life-giving. And it would like, it would be life-stabilizing.

And it would be like it would help you build communities and it would help you like find rhythm in the world and find meaning. in the world and that that energy has sustained us through history so i do i do really think that like we are people tapped into something really early on and it's been driving us through history in this really in this really incredible we're a remarkable way isn't that kind of the theme what we've been talking about this whole time is this is on a macro cosmic level like you are the product of your bizarre story and your trauma and you're good and your bad and your defeats and your wins and your losses

it forges you into this person or this society or this people. I think the same thing is true with almost every marginalized community. Like the oppression creates, unfortunately, dynamism, too. And so it's all a big mess of you are, you are. This is the nurture that the Jewish people have had created a very interesting people. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's true.

It's true. I've just had a tough time with organized religion. I just never understood it. It always felt elite to me because who's to say. that one is right and the other is wrong. I never understood that, ever. David is. You're in luck.

I'm here to tell you. No, because we're a very disorganized religion, you know? Like, there's no official dogma. There's no actual leader of the religion. Like, you know, Kate was saying early on that a rabbi told her that, yes, like, questions are encouraged here. And it's like, they're not encouraged. Like, that's, like, they're the foundation.

Like, it's like, that's our holy work, you know? like the easy to kind of like the most famous way to say it is that the name Israel means like the one who struggles with God, right? And so that's like that's the idea. Like we're just still like still grappling with this concept and talk. We've been talking about it for thousands of years now. And that's, that's the religion is the talking about it and the asking the questions. You know, not so much the answers. Because like I said, on some level we believe like it's so beyond any answer we could give. Yeah. I want to keep talking about it

Okay, speed round Okay, one word to describe each other as kids I say about him Yeah Chaos Oh Perfect One word to describe each other now

Chaos No, I'm joking. David? I'd say brilliant. I'd say brilliant. I love you guys. Who was the favorite? I mean, I can answer.

I mean, who is the favorite? We were just talking about this. Depends on which parent you have. I was about to say. That's right. So I'm going to assume. My dad liked him. Yeah.

My mom liked me. My mom liked the chaos on some. level, too, you know? So, yeah. Who is more social? Motion. Yeah, me. For sure. Who's bossier? Motion. Yeah, me.

Who's the most book smart? Oh, duh. Come on. I mean, yeah, you're a rabbi. That's like an unfair. By a factor, yeah, by a factor that isn't even quantified. What was your first? David is famous. Yeah. That's the job.

That's the job as books. That's the job. David's famous for being at a party, like a good party and like cracking open a Aramaic tomeic tomb in the kitchen. And you'd be like, most is more social. What was your first concert?

Oh, mine is so embarrassing. What is it? Was it Warren? I think it's Warren. Warrant, the band Warrant, and Trickster and Fire. house, higher opening,

and it was at Great America. Pretty great. Wait, Warren is the best. Wait, hosted, hold on. We haven't given you the best detail. Hosted by the one and only

Polly Shore. Wow. Oh, yes. Told Polly that recently, and he was so stoked. He was so excited. I remember that concert because David took me

and there was this hot rock girl and I was like probably nine and she goes, do you like the concert? And she spoke to me. And I was like, Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was great.

It was great. Love to Warren. I think our actual first concert was Paul McCartney, and it was with, we were even younger. I think that was before Warren Trickster and Firehouse. That's much cooler. Paul McCartney might even be better than Warren Trickster and Firehouse. I don't think so. But not in Polly Shore.

No, not been Polly Short. Polly Short. First celebrity crush. Oh, um. Winona forever. Oh, Winona's good. Oh, Winona Ryder. Yeah.

Me too. Really? Oh, God. Noxema girl. Nicole Egert was mine, but. It's just two completely different vibes. You're like, Nicole Egger, but Winona Ryder. I just saw Heather's and I was like, oh, yeah, I remember when I was in love of her.

What was Moshe's? I would say the Noxema girl. Remember her? Oh, dude. Anybody familiar? I actually might. Yeah. Wait.

Yeah. You might literally go. Noxema. Is that like Nikki Taylor? No. Noxema. That's so funny. I will never forget Knoxima.

I used Noxema. Did you use Noxema? I don't know. Look up Noxema girl. Look up Noxema girl. She was an icon. I don't know what happened to her, but she was definitely. Song of your childhood.

Like, what is... Sweet out of mine. That's a good one. I would say, um, probably like get in where you fit in by, by too short or, uh, nothing but a G-Tang. I think those are, you know, probably the, yeah. Rebecca Gayhart.

Rebecca Gayhart. Is the Knoxie McGee. Yeah. You know her? Can you introduce me? She is pretty. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, she would like. Okay, favorite book, Desert Island book. Favorite, well, okay, favorite book. Oh, wait, this is the name of my podcast, best book ever. It's the Torah. I got to say the book. I'm obligated. My favorite book.

Is that hard? That's hard. It's different than my Desert Island book, you know, because, like, favorite book means one I want to read again and again, which maybe that would be something like, you know, Lord of the Rings. or the Narnia Chronicles, but probably my favorite book I ever read is Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay.

Speaking of Jewish trauma. Oh, yeah. That's a wonderful book. That's maybe my favorite book ever. Okay, you do this last question. Two-part question, number one being you guys answer these, you know. So if there was something that you could take from your brother,

some piece of light, something amazing that you wish that you had for yourself what would that be and then if you could sort of alleviate something from your brother to make his life just a little bit better what would that be well i mean the what i would take from david is uh that one's easy i would take his ability to study a topic and in depth because i i have a bit of the add you know i can't focus in me and so david's ability to deep dive and read and read and read i would definitely take that what would i alleviate from him oh man um this is hard because david's an extremely private person so uh maybe i would alleviate that that's a good way to cheat and cop out of this question i would um i would just want i would maybe maybe

uh uh the that any sense that he's not exactly where he's supposed to be i would i would take that you know just the the the yeah I think that's a good right politically yeah um I think I would um what I would take from Moshe is his his confidence like he just has always been very sure of like of who he is and what he what he thinks and not really cared so much if other people like didn't think the same thing and that's very powerful and I've never had that. And the thing I would alleviate him from his, maybe his pessimism, his fear of like the future and the state of the world. I'd, maybe, I'd want to lend him some optimism. Okay. Beautiful. I would never work. It's not going to happen.

You guys are the best. How can you teach me how to sign thank you? And it was very easy. It is. Okay, that's going to be another one. Good? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Also, you're born to get. Thank you. And then how about hope to see you again? Oh, gosh. Hope a little harder. Hope? Hope. To see you.

You. Again. Again. And then we'll teach you a new one. We could. Us too. Me too. It's a good one.

This is a very California one, you know. I love that. Do you do a lot of drop-ins at the comedy store and all that stuff? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. That's my home club in town. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would love it.

Any show ever. Yeah, that'd be great. Also, you guys should come buy a car sometime if you ever want to check it out. We need every Saturday. Yeah. Did wrote a book. It's called Parsha Nut and it's available on Amazon right now. It's a real deep dive.

into his biggest passion, which is the Torah reading of every week. And it's a real deep, real powerful, but not as deep and powerful as this bad boy right here. The endless. This is perfect. This was so great. This was so fun. Thank you for taking the time. It went very long, but it was interesting.

It was great. I could have talked to you guys forever. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Same here. Great, great meeting. Yeah, great meeting you guys. Really good to meet you.

All you guys. See ya. Bye. Bye. Sibling Revelry is executive produced by Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. Producer is Alison Bresnick. Editor is Josh Windish. Music by Mark Hudson, aka Uncle Mark.

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