Why Is This Proud Persian-Jewish Comedian Receiving Death Threats?

Comedian Dan Ahdoot never wanted to be pigeonholed. His act didn’t focus on his Persian-Jewish identity or only talk about one subject. He made jokes about whatever he thought was funny and silly. His only goal was to make people laugh.

But things got serious this past January when one of his bits about Israel went viral. Mayim Bialik posted a side-by-side video of herself enjoying his bit on catchy protest chants. In it, she is laughing so hard that she cries at Dan’s joke, where he talks about how the pro-Palestinian chants are much catchier than a pro-Israel chant, which would undoubtedly be filled with every fact about the conflict and not rhyme at all.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Dan yells. “I’m like, this is the new, ‘From the window to the wall!’ Yeah, it’s a little genocidal, but the beat slaps!”

 

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He continues, “You listen to ours? They’re awful, because Jews like to convince you with a bunch of facts and minutia, rather than just sticking to a catchy tune.” He then goes on to list the history of the conflict since 1948 in a nerdy voice and has the audience cracking up.

On X alone, Mayim’s video received 23 million views. The original video – posted on Dan’s Instagram – got over 1,400 comments, most of them filled with hate towards him.

“I was shocked that Mayim posted it,” he said. “I woke up one day and my phone was exploding. At first, it was really awesome, and then it got really wild. I was shocked at the amount of hate and death threats I received. Social media is such a cesspool when it comes to this.”

Dan called his friend Bari Weiss of The Free Press and asked her how she dealt with hate.

Mayim Bialik cracking up watching Dan’s video

“She said, ‘Turn your phone off for three days, and it’ll go away after that,’” he said. “If anyone knows how to deal with this, it’s Bari.”

Once Dan decided to look at his phone again, he saw someone had posted his address and slipped in a death threat.

“The social-media-death-threat people have gotten really smart,” he said. “They can’t actively call for you to be murdered, so they said, ‘Oh, what a shame it would be if Dan Ahdoot got murdered at 285 Englewood Road.”

Dan has been safe because he believes that the people who write these hateful messages are going to stay behind their computers.

“Most people on social media just like to make noise and that’s it,” he said. “I’m not saying that as a challenge, if anyone is reading this. Please do not come to my house.”

While the disapproval of strangers didn’t faze him, what did bother him was a comment from a casting director who worked with Middle Eastern and North African actors. This casting director tagged ABC in a post, saying, “We don’t want you working with a Zionist.” Ironically, the show Dan worked on with ABC was a positive show starring an Iraqi-Muslim doctor, based off his best friend.

“They’re a casting agency, and they shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I wrote, ‘I guess you’re for Middle Eastern voices as long as they’re not Jewish.’ Being a Middle Eastern Jew is very inconvenient to some people. I reported them to SAG and WGA because it was harassment. They were trying to get me fired.”

During the backlash Dan also saw a distressing comment from a comedian he thought was his friend.

“He reposted the video with a really nasty comment,” Dan said. “I reached out to him publicly and was like, ‘I thought we were friends. We worked on a shoot together and I gave you a ride home. If you had an issue with me, you could have told me yourself and not just piled onto this group of people calling for my death.’ He wrote back, ‘Just because you gave me a ride, I have a right to say what I want. I can give you gas money if you need it.’ People then piled on, saying, ‘Wow, a white man gives a black man a ride home and he thinks he is immune from genocide.’ First of all, I am not white, but I let it go because it was entering a stupid place.”

What offended Dan the most was that this came from a fellow comedian.

“As comedians, we’re in a fraternity, and we’re putting ideas out there that people won’t like,” Dan said. “It’s our job. I would never publicly shame a pro-Palestinian comedian. I have a lot of buddies posting this stuff and I’d never take one of their bits and say, ‘This guy is disgusting.’”

Dan has a diverse group of comedian friends, like one who is a Harvard graduate and lawyer and one who served time behind bars. He believes they all live by a free speech code and that should not be canceled.

“We share ideas,” he said. “It’s a safe space.”

Coming Up in Comedy and “Cobra Kai”

Despite the recent controversy, Dan is living his dreams. The comedian, whose parents left Iran before the 1979 Revolution to go to Israel and then America, grew up in Great Neck, New York, a Persian-Jewish community.

“My dad sells Persian rugs like a good Persian man does, and my mom is in the antique jewelry business,” he said. “It was a really nice, suburban upbringing, and I was close enough to New York City.”

Dan was on track to become a doctor and make his parents proud. But after studying pre-med at Johns Hopkins University and getting into med school, he decided to pursue comedy instead.

“I gave my parents a heart attack that lasted 20 years,” he said. “Once I started making money in comedy, everything was fine.”

At first, Dan was in improv classes in high school and on a sketch comedy team in college, but he didn’t like that he had to run his sketches by other people for approval. So after college, he moved back to New York, got a day job and did standup at night. He was able to quit his job after he got steady gigs playing college Hillels.

“I’d reach out and say, ‘I’m the only Jewish Iranian comedian the world has ever seen,’” he said.

After landing the prestigious Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, he moved to LA and started getting on television. He got his biggest role on “Cobra Kai,” a show his Jewish friends created. On it, he plays Anoush, a car dealer and friend of Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Maccio), the main character in “Cobra Kai” and “The Karate Kid.”

“My friends wrote the role of Anoush for me,” he said.

Dan now gets recognized, sometimes in the funniest of places.

“I went to a kosher restaurant in Queens with my parents and everyone there was excited to see me,” he said. “The Bukharian community seems to be huge fans of Cobra Kai.”

Making People Laugh

Dan is proudly Jewish and pro-Israel; he’s emceed the Friends of the IDF gala in Los Angeles for the past 10 years and he toured around Israel with Comedy for Koby this past summer. However, he doesn’t lead with his ethnicity or political issues.

“I’m not the type of comedian you will learn anything from,” he said. “I want you to leave happy, and maybe even slightly dumber.”

For now, he hopes to keep the laughs going in America and bring his comedy back to Israel when possible.

“I’d love to go back,” he said. “Anything I can do to help bring some laughter and levity to the situation, I want to do.”