Comedian and musician Ami Kozak looking to make some noise and laughs with Chabad of South Hills

A comedian often known for mimicking other people’s voices is seeking to share his own. Ami Kozak, a New Jersey-based musician and stand-up, is aiming to delight Pittsburghers with a night of laughs at Chabad of the South Hills on Feb 15.

The upcoming event, Kozak’s Pittsburgh debut, will showcase the performer’s talents.

Likening the show to a “full-range experience,” Kozak said attendees can expect a “combination of stand-up, commentary, impressions and a little bit of music, too.”

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Speaking by phone from New Jersey, the entertainer acknowledged that parts of the program might feel like “inside baseball,” since his material often draws on Jewish life and politics. Still, he said, even audiences unfamiliar with those references — or his recurring online riffs — can expect “a good time.”

Kozak, host of the 20,000-subscriber podcast “Ami’s House,” skillfully blends thoughtful commentary with playful humor in both his episodes and social media posts. Recent episodes of “Ami’s House” have touched on why Vice President JD Vance refrained from mentioning “Jews” when commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, what’s transpiring in Iran and what to make of famine in Gaza.

Through various social media channels, Kozak — who boasts 500,000 followers between Instagram and TikTok — routinely shares his impersonations of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, President Donald Trump and Prince Harry. The gags are typically 90-second spurts mocking each figure.

Less a dichotomy between earnestness and flippancy, Kozak said his approach is intended to inform. “I find satire to be a pretty effective tool in exposing what’s going on.” And while he’s known for parodies, Kozak said he’s happy to “make fun of anything and everything that comes to mind.”

For instance, a YouTube sketch dropped about a month ago featured Kozak as the host of “Jewish Jeopardy” and included barbs against stereotypical members of Jewish denominations.

Whether it’s poking fun at recognizable tropes within the Jewish world or calling out political “villains,” laughter is a useful tool, Kozak said. “You can always make a point and say something, and people may or may not agree with it; but when people laugh at something, it’s kind of inherently a signal of agreement.”

When people laugh, the subconscious is revealing what’s “going on in a situation,” he continued. “It’s like a show, not a tell.”

Understanding an audience, and its reactions, is nothing new for Kozak, 39. The Berklee College of Music graduate is a member of the band Distant Cousins and has created music for national advertising campaigns, as well as films and television. In 2024, Kozak and the group toured with artist Matisyahu and were praised by Jewish Journal, which called Distant Cousins’ songs “catchy and give off a feeling of spiritual cleansing even if you’re an atheist.”

Though similarities exist within Kozak’s comedic and musical worlds, the differences may be most interesting.

“Musical challenges have to do with actually really learning music, which is really difficult, learning how to play an instrument, perform, sing, connect with other musicians.” Those activities, Kozak said, take years, “but once you can do those things, playing live, becomes a lot easier, no matter what happens in the room. Comedy is the other way around, where it’s pretty easy to just pick up a mic and get on stage and actually start doing it, but to do it well, you have to fail in front of people over and over again, and that’s something you never have to do with music.”

“Your goal in comedy, with an audience, is laughter. Your goal in music is silence,” he continued. “In a sense you want a crowd to be rowdy after the song is done, but you want their focus and attention. And that can be true in certain comedic instances, but you are working with a frequency of laughter, which is the currency in comedy, whereas the currency of music is like attention and silence and focus and engagement. So a silent room feels amazing when you’re playing  music, and a silent room when you’re doing comedy for too long, can start to feel pretty tense.”

Kozak, who’s been a musician longer than a comic, admits he’s still mastering the art of comedy. And while he’s confident Pittsburghers will enjoy his upcoming show, he’s also looking forward to sharing a bit more about his background.

After growing up in Englewood, New Jersey, in a Modern Orthodox household and attending yeshiva day schools, Kozak studied in Israel for a year before attending Berklee. He moved to Los Angeles for nearly a decade, where he worked in advertising and started a band.

Stuck at home during COVID, Kozak said he began posting impressions on TikTok. After the events of Oct. 7, he decided to use his platform to shed light on his “personal experience as a Jew, as a Zionist Jew, as somebody who knew a lot about this one topic that became the center of pop culture.”

The endeavor developed, and while he began speaking out about politics, he
also became a “sort of part-time side hustle advocate for Israel and the Jewish people,” he said.

Though Kozak admitted he doesn’t know much about Pittsburgh or its Jewish makeup, he’s eager to learn more and welcome Pittsburghers to a community he’s “creating in this social media space.”

More than a fan base, Kozak is striving to build a dedicated collective: a strong community with “1,000 true fans,” he said. It’s what “every artist is trying to do.” PJC

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.