 |
Moshe KasherAmerican stand-up comedian, writer and actor
Date of Birth: 06.07.1979
Country:  USA |
Content:
- Moshe Kasher: Stand-Up Comedian, Author, and Actor
- Mental Health and Substance Abuse
- Stand-Up Comedy Career
- Kasher moved to Los Angeles in 2008.
- Writing
- Acting
- Podcasts
- Personal Life
Moshe Kasher: Stand-Up Comedian, Author, and Actor
Early Life and EducationMoshe Kasher was born in Queens, New York, and moved to Oakland, California with his mother and brother when he was one year old. He grew up in the Temescal and Piedmont Avenue neighborhoods of North Oakland, and his family lived mostly on disability benefits and food stamps.
Mental Health and Substance Abuse
Kasher, the son of deaf parents, has been a sign language interpreter since age 17. His parents met at the 1967 World Games for the Deaf, but they separated when Kasher was nine. When Kasher was four, his father Stephen, a former artist born to secular Jewish-communist parents, became an Orthodox Hasidic Jew in the Satmar community in Brooklyn; Stephen's grandfather, from Hungary, was a Skver Hasid from New Square. Kasher would spend summers with his father in Sea Gate, Brooklyn, until his death when Kasher was 20. His father lived with Gaucher's disease. Kasher's brother is a rabbi.
In his autobiography, "Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16," Kasher wrote about being in and out of psychiatric hospitals from age 4 and abusing drugs from age 12 to 16. He was expelled from four different high schools. In an interview with SanDiego.com, Kasher called himself "pretty straight now," stating he had been sober "since pretty early on." He got clean at age 16 and later became a sign language interpreter.
Kasher attended a local community college in the Bay Area, where he studied theater and wrote several long monologues. He later transferred to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he earned a degree in religious studies with an emphasis on Judaic studies. Prior to his comedy career, Kasher considered becoming a professor of Jewish history in college.
Stand-Up Comedy Career
In 2001, Kasher attended an open mic comedy night in New York City where Chelsea Peretti, a comedian and writer who Kasher had gone to junior high with in Oakland, performed. Inspired by her performance, Kasher contacted Peretti and asked to tag along to future shows, offering to introduce her. She took him to an open mic at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco for his first time on stage.
Kasher spent the early 2000s performing primarily in the Bay Area, regularly appearing at the Punch Line and Cobb's comedy clubs in San Francisco. In the mid- to late-2000s, he participated in several comedy shows with fellow comedians Brent Weinbach and Alex Koll.
Kasher moved to Los Angeles in 2008.
2009 proved to be a significant year for Kasher's comedy career. He was named "Best of the Fest" at the Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival that year; his Aspen performance earned him an invitation to the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal later that year. This was followed by an appearance on Comedy Central's "Live at Gotham." Kasher also released his comedy album, "Everyone You Know Will Die, and Then You Die!" through Rooftop Comedy Productions in April 2009; the album was named one of iTunes' Top 20 Comedy Albums of 2009 later that year. Kasher was also recognized by iTunes as the Best New Comic of 2009.
Kasher's stand-up has been featured on television programs such as "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" in 2010 and John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show in 2011. He has appeared on "Conan," "Larry Wilmore's Race, Religion, and Sex" on Showtime, and has also made frequent guest appearances as a panelist on "Chelsea Lately."
Kasher has performed at international festivals. In addition to the aforementioned Rooftop Comedy and Just For Laughs festivals, in 2010, he appeared at the Fun Fun Fun Fest and South By South West festivals in Austin, Texas, as well as at Cat Laughs in Kilkenny, Ireland, and the Sasquatch! Music Festival in George, Washington. In 2011, he appeared at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in Melbourne, Australia. Kasher has also been a frequent performer at the SF Sketchfest festival in San Francisco, California.
Beyond his 2009 iTunes award, Kasher was named "Comedian to Watch in 2010" by Punchline Magazine, and was also named one of Shalom Life magazine's "Top 20 Jews in Arts" in 2011. John Wenzel of The Denver Post also ranked Kasher as number two on his list of the Top 10 Comedy Shows He Saw in Denver in 2011.
In January 2012, Kasher taped his first solo comedy special for Netflix, "Moshe Kasher: Live In Oakland," at The New Parish nightclub in his hometown neighborhood of Oakland.
In September 2016, Comedy Central ordered Kasher to write and host a series of talk shows titled "Problematic," which premiered on April 18, 2017.
Writing
Kasher is a published playwright, author, and essayist. While still in college, Kasher's long monologue, "Look Before You Leap," was included in the anthology "Male Monologues: Volume Two," published in 2003. In 2011 and 2012, he published several essays in Heeb magazine. In 2012, he published his autobiography, "Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16," published by Hachette Book Group's Grand Central Publishing. He wrote an episode titled "Forgive Me" for the television show "The New Normal."
Acting
Kasher has played small roles in the independent films "Sorry, Thanks" (2009) and "Wishmakers of West Hollywood" (2010). He appeared in episodes of the Fox sitcom "Traffic Light" in 2011 and the NBC sitcom "Whitney" in 2012. Kasher played the role of Ruben - a deaf, wheelchair-bound gay man - in an episode of the American television drama series "Shameless", which aired on March 18, 2012.
Podcasts
In 2011, Kasher launched a podcast titled The Champs with Neil Brennan (co-creator/writer of "Chappelle's Show") and DJ Dougpound (Doug Lussenhop of Tim and Eric Nite Live!). Kasher said the following about the podcast in a 2011 interview with SanDiego.com: "It's just Doug dropping sound effects and beating me up, and Neil sort of moderating an hour of ridiculous banter. We have a rotating black guest, there's a different black guest every week." Guests on the show have included actors and comedians Wayne Brady and David Alan Grier, musician Questlove, adult film star Lexington Steele, and professional basketball player Blake Griffin. The show occasionally deviated from its guest format, featuring guests such as comedian and actor Bobby Lee, former adult film star Sasha Grey, former Major League Baseball player Jose Canseco, and actor Aziz Ansari. In 2014, The Champs was named "Best Podcast" as part of LA Weekly's "Best of LA" issue. The podcast ended in 2016.
In October 2014, Kasher launched a new podcast on the Nerdist Podcast Network. The talk series Hound Tall is a monthly live podcast dedicated to a single topic. It's an "hour-long conversation with an expert and a group of comedians, they learn everything there is to know about stuff." The first episode focused on harems, with author of "Some Girls," Jillian Lauren, as the expert, and comedians Pete Holmes and Beth Stelling forming the comedy panel.
On July 15, 2019, Kasher launched the podcast "Endless Honeymoon," which he co-hosts with his wife, Natasha Leggero, on platforms including Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, and YouTube.
In 2020, Moshe and his brother Rabbi David Kasher started their own podcast, "Kasher vs. Kasher," to explore life during the coronavirus pandemic.
Personal Life
In October 2015, Kasher married fellow comedian Natasha Leggero, who converted to Judaism. In February 2018, the couple had a daughter.
