This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
Late Night with Seth Meyers could have been called Late Night with Seth Trakianski.
Meyers’ great-grandfather was Moses Menachem Trakianski, but changed his surname to Meyers when he immigrated to Pittsburgh, where he became a peddler. Meyers discovered this family lineage in a 2019 episode of Finding Your Roots, the PBS ancestry show hosted by Henry Louis Gates.
“I found out that I had descended from Lithuanian Jews,” the 50-year-old Meyers recalls in his new comedy special, Dad Man Walking. “Lithuanian Jews are famous for coining the expression: We’ve got to get the f— out of Lithuania.”
Meyers spends a good chunk of the special, which debuted this month on the Max streaming service, talking about Judaism — including his marriage to Alexi Ashe, a Jewish attorney.
“My wife argues that I should convert to Judaism,” he tells the audience at the Vic Theatre in Chicago, where the special was filmed. “Her argument is, everybody already assumes that I’m Jewish,” adding, “Every Jewish person I’ve ever met has said, ‘You’re Jewish, right?’”
The couple began dating in 2008 and got married in a Jewish ceremony in 2013. They have three children. “We have a tricky conversation coming up with our children,” Meyers said, “because my wife’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors. And obviously, that’s something we’re going to have to explain to them one day.”
Meyers’ second son, Axel Strahl Meyers, is named after his wife’s grandparents, whose last name was Strahl. “They met the day after they were liberated,” Meyers explained when announcing the birth in 2018. “They met in the hospital in Austria and, on days like this, when someone was born, you just have such an appreciation for everyone in your lineage who lived so that you could have this moment.”
It is perhaps this family connection, and the fact that he has Jewish ancestry himself, that fuels a series of jokes about Nazis in the special.
“Can we admit now that having to show a vaccine card to get into a restaurant during COVID was not, in fact, like living in Germany during World War II?” he asks and proceeds to tell a story about a waitress apologizing while asking for proof of vaccination.
“I’ve seen a lot of movies about Germany during World War II and I don’t remember a single scene where the Gestapo behaved that way,” Meyers said. “I don’t remember a single scene where the Gestapo kicked in the door and was like, ‘We demand to see your papers. And we are so sorry that we are still doing this whole “see your papers” thing. This is so irritating for us, too. This is like, for real, our least favorite part about being in the Gestapo. It’s just our boss is such a Nazi.’”
Jew-ish jokes
He also spends a lot of time in the new special talking about his wife’s family.
“When I was growing up,” Meyers said, “the rule at the dinner table was never speak unless spoken to. If you do speak, have it be relevant to the conversation at hand, and certainly never talk until the person who is currently talking has finished. Whereas, I feel like in my wife’s family, the rule was as soon as you think of something, say it out loud.”
After telling several such stories, he deadpans: “My wife’s family is Jewish, which I haven’t said yet, but I have told you.”
He added: “I really want to stress, these jokes are pro-Semitic. I love my Jewish wife, I love my Jewish children. I have incredible in-laws.”
This is not the first time he’s talked about his wife’s parents. “They were so excited when they first met me,” he said in his 2019 Netflix special, Lobby Baby. “They were so happy that their daughter had met a nice Jewish boy.” And then he had to break the news to them that “to be named Seth Meyers and not be Jewish is false advertisement.”
He said that over the years, he’s become “Jewish enough” for his in-laws. “And I believe that’s the only religion that that happens in. Which is why it’s great that it’s the only religion that ends with -ish.”
