His name is Max Cohen, but to his 200,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, the 24-year-old content creator is better known as Murray Hill Boy.
Cohen is making a name for himself on social media by humorously sending up Jewish scenes and stereotypes, making funny videos about how Jewish moms place their bagel orders, what color war at Jewish camp is like, and the do’s and don’ts of rushing a Jewish frat.
A frequent target of Cohen’s parodies — and the first of his skits to go viral — are the various kinds of people one encounters in the Manhattan post-graduate playground that is Murray Hill. Cohen parodies a host of Jewish (and Jewish-coded) Murray Hill types, including recent Big 10 graduates who play Jewish geography on their first date, finance bros talking about how busy they are and the overgrown frat boy who’s ordering shots at a sports bar on Third Avenue using his dad’s credit card.
It’s a particular New York City scene that Cohen, a Long Island native, knows well. Like many recent college graduates seeking the thrills of city life but not quite ready to move on from the built-in social scene of a dorm or frat house, Cohen moved to the Midtown East neighborhood after graduating from Tulane University in 2022. In the two years he lived in Murray Hill, Cohen observed the neighborhood’s hyper-specific social scene — one packed with Tri-State Jews who recently graduated from universities with large Jewish populations, such as Syracuse, Michigan and Tulane.
Specifically, Cohen noticed that many of Murray Hill’s new Jewish residents were generally overjoyed by the chance to mesh their various groups of hometown friends, camp friends and college friends — the majority of whom ran in similar affluent and suburban Jewish circles. Cohen was working as a paralegal at the time but quickly realized how well parodies of these Murray Hill denizens would translate to social media.
And so, in January 2024, Cohen posted his first TikTok video, satirizing a sleazy guy at a generic Murray Hill bar, using the name Murray Hill Boy. The name, he said, was a no-brainer.
“I was obviously aware of the cultural phenomenon that is Murray Hill,” Cohen said in an interview over pickles and matzah ball soup at the 2nd Ave Deli — which, as it happens, relocated from Second Avenue in the East Village to East 33rd Street in Murray Hill in 2007. “Murray Hill Boy is kind of my way of saying, ‘I’m Jewish and I’m New York City-based,’ without actually having to say it.”
The neighborhood’s reputation as a tight-knit haven for recent grads is a longstanding one. As a 23-year-old Murray Hill resident named Adam Goldberg told the New York Times in 2011, “Everyone knows everyone. If I don’t know them, I’m sure I have a friend who knows them.” The article describes the neighborhood — which extends roughly from the East River to Fifth Avenue between East 42nd and East 34th streets — as “something more challenging than a dorm, though not much more,” where “recent college graduates can find themselves among fellow alumni, meet up for familiar drinking rituals and flock to the frozen-yogurt shops and sushi bars that help them stay fit and find a mate for the next stage of life.”
When Cohen arrived in the neighborhood, he had no intention of becoming a social media star. Instead, his plan was to work, hang out with his friends and apply to law school. His goal was to eventually become an attorney — a dream he’d had since he was a kid.
“In my elementary school yearbook, they asked every kid what they wanted to be, and it was under your picture. Everyone wrote ‘MLB player,’ ‘football player,’ ‘ballerina,’” he said. “I wrote ‘lawyer.’ From the get-go, I was brainwashed into being a really good Jewish son. Or maybe I genuinely thought I wanted to be a lawyer.”
Nonetheless, Cohen said being a paralegal left him “creatively unfulfilled.” His friends urged him to take up TikTok due to his knack for performance and comedy, despite him finding it “cringy.”
“My friends were like, there’s so many people on that app who aren’t as funny as you, or don’t have the same comedic timing, or that are as good looking who are doing it, just try it,” Cohen said.
The gambit paid off. “I made my first cent from TikTok in May, and I quit my job at the end of June,” Cohen said. “As soon as I was able to turn a dollar from something I liked, I went for it.”
Around the same time, to save money and neutralize the risk he took by quitting his job, he moved back in with his parents in his hometown of East Rockaway, which he described as a “very small, not very Jewish” village on Long Island’s South Shore. It is adjacent to the Five Towns, a heavily Jewish area in Nassau County.
Cohen, who attended a Reform Hebrew school growing up, as well as a summer camp that was predominantly Jewish, acknowledges that ramping up a Jewish-centric social media account in the aftermath of Oct. 7 was a challenge. “There were a lot of people looking at Jews in a really negative light,” he said.
Cohen said that although he gets his fair share of antisemitic comments, “I don’t pay them any mind.”
More difficult to process, he said, are the comments he gets from well-intentioned Jews who question whether it’s the “right time” to parody Jewish culture. His response? “There’s always room for Jewish joy.”
While Cohen’s characters have exaggerated and sometimes stereotypical personalities, Cohen insists his portrayals are inspired by his love for his Jewish family and friends — after all, they helped shape him into who he is today.
“I always strive to put Jewish people in a positive light — I’d say that it’s like the one thing I try to stick to no matter what,” Cohen said of his videos. “Being funny, of course, is the second most important thing. But if you have good comedic timing and good physical comedy, I can take the ordinary and mundane parts of being Jewish and make them funny in a non-offensive way.”
Though he has fans of all ages, one demographic, in particular, is the most ardent.
“My most vocal and impassioned and arguably delusional fan base is the Jewish moms,” Cohen said. “I love Jewish women. I look at these powerful, badass women who don’t have a f–k to give, and I’m like, ‘That’s so me.’”
One of his most favorite characters to portray is a socially striving Jewish mom, Lisa Cohen, who shares a name with his real-life Jewish mom. “She’s so outrageous, she doesn’t have to follow the rules of society,” he said of the character, adding that his actual mom is nothing like that. (In his sketches, Lisa Cohen is married to Larry Cohen; in real life, his dad’s name is Ari.)
Speaking of his parents, Cohen said they were not initially supportive of his content creation dreams.
“They were devastated,” he said. “I mean, it was so much news. First, it was not taking the LSAT. Then it was, ‘I’m quitting my law job.’ Then, ‘I’m pursuing content creation.’ And then, ‘I’m moving back home.’”
He added: “From a Jewish parent’s perspective, bad news after bad news after bad news.”
These days, however, Cohen says his parents are “so happy and so proud” of his work. Cohen signed with a manager last summer and said he’s making “over triple” what he earned as a paralegal. His work days consist of writing and filming video content, negotiating brand deals and speaking at synagogues, JCCs and youth groups across the Tri-State area.
One thing Cohen is most proud of as Murray Hill Boy: He’s also used his platform to touch on topics that he wished he had seen more of on the internet when he was a teenager. Cohen has used social media to speak about his coming out as gay when he was 16, what it was like being gay in Jewish fraternity, and what it’s like being gay and Jewish.
Initially, Cohen didn’t plan to post about his sexuality. But after one too many DMs from Jewish moms wanting to set him up with their daughters, he knew it was time.
“I wanted to be true to myself,” he said. “How awesome would it have been for a young Max to have seen a figure like that?”
His aim, he said, is to demonstrate “there’s not one flavor of gay, just like there’s not one flavor of Jewish.”
While his official residence may be in Long Island, Cohen said he comes into the city nearly every day for various influencer events, filming collaborations and dates — one of which he’s off to after our interview, our matzah ball soups slurped to the dregs.
As the conversation wraps up, Cohen leans into the microphone recording our conversation, emphasizing one thing he’d like to ensure gets on the record: “I’m single,” he said.
Cohen pauses for a beat and decides there’s another misconception he’d like to clear up. “I’m 6 feet tall,” he added.
Readers, do with that what you will.
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