Jackie Mason – The ‘Equal Opportunity Abuser’
During the course of his six-decade career, Jackie Mason was declared one of the greatest comedians of all time by Mel Brooks; played hundreds of sellout shows on Broadway and in London; won a Tony, an Emmy, and was even nominated for a Grammy; and performed for the Queen and the Queen Mother. He also had career-damaging feuds with the TV host Ed Sullivan and the singer Frank Sinatra, the second of which would end with Mason’s Las Vegas hotel room being strafed with bullets.
Mason, who has died aged 93, was a pioneer of a modern, personalized form of comedy. Much of his material focused on the differences between Jews and gentiles, and he seemed to delight in teetering on the edge of racism and – oddly, for a man who called himself “the ultimate Jew” – anti-Semitism.
He had no qualms about stereotyping Jews as neurotic, brash, money-minded, materialist and food-obsessed. He had no problems with the notion of Jews being thought of as cerebral rather than practical. He claimed that he had never bought anything in a supermarket and knew nothing about business. “It’s a fact,” he would say, “that gentiles make better coalminers than Jews. Did you ever see a yarmulke with a light on top?”
His comedy targets ranged from expensive restaurants and Lamborghinis – he regarded flashy cars as even more ridiculous than most possessions – to sushi, which he suggested was invented by two Jews who wanted to open a restaurant but could not afford a kitchen.
Mason regarded comedy as a serious business because it involved telling the truth as he saw it, even if that cost him in notoriety. He was also disarmingly honest about his own motivation for being a comedian. “I am definitely a sick egomaniac,” he said many times. “I definitely need the stage. I definitely need the attention.”
He became a darling of the resurgent right in America, but eschewed personal property, condemning the hoarding of wealth and claiming to give away two-thirds of his personal fortune. He was a friend of Rabbi Meir Kahane, but would distance himself from Kahane’s views on Arabs, then align himself with the same views in the next breath.
Mason lived wholly for his work; the joke was everything for him. He would simply shrug and say, “I’m an equal opportunity abuser.”
Brian J. Goldenfeld
Oak Park, CA
Keeping Us Laughing
I read with interest the well-written and informative article (“Jackie Mason’s Last Interview? July 30). The Jewish Press published an article about the Maza family synagogue on March 20, 2020, featuring the Union Hill Congregation/Rabbi Joseph Maza Torah Center in “A Shul With A Story.” While Jews are known for our self-deprecating humor, Jackie was the epitome that kept us laughing for decades. To think of Jackie in shamayim, I can’t help but chuckle at the new possibilities for the expression der mensch tract,un G-tt lacht (man thinks and G-d laughs).
Judy Waldman
Via email
My History With Jackie Mason
Regarding “Jackie Mason’s Last Interview?” (July 30), the Maza family (Jackie’s family name) was a prominent family over the years and many people had various connection to them. Here are some of my personal recollections as I remember them.
On the Lower East Side during the years when I lived there, Jackies father was a prominent rabbi, and I remember we sometimes learned with him on Shabbos in their Henry Street apartment. I had his brother Gabe as a counselor in summer camp in Deal. His brother Rabbi Joseph was a rabbi in our area in Central Jersey for many years, and he and his wife Shirley were very active in our community. His son Avi was a very good friend and classmate of our son Marc in their yeshiva days, and Avi still lives in Highland Park. As an aside, Joseph (or Joey as Shirley called him) was almost as funny as Jackie, so it may have been a family trait.
As far as Jackie himself, my recollections of him go back to about the late 1940s and early 1950s, before he became a professional comedian. In those days, like today, kids hung out in groups and his friends were called the “Purple Gang” and he was called “Belter.” I have no idea where these names came from.
They would often congregate on a street corner (Clinton and East Broadway) near a restaurant called “Checker’s Corner” across the street from the Young Israel where my friends would meet. Since we were in such close vicinity, there was some interactions and mingling between the groups. For example, Jackie called my brother Morris “the accountant” (which he was). I remember them poking fun at people walking by, but in a good natured way, not nasty, since everyone knew they were very funny.
The last time I saw him was at the Mr. Broadway Restaurant in Manhattan in 2019, as seen in the picture, with my grandson Coby. The last words I told him, which I think could serve as a very respectable epitaph of his life: “Jackie, you made a lot of people laugh for a lot of years, and that was very important.”
He was a one of a kind and will be missed.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, NJ
Keep Kashrus Out of Politics
The op-ed by Rabbi Moshe Taub, “Ben & Jerry’s Should Remain Kosher Certified, July 30) opened my eyes to aspects of the issue that I have not seen discussed. Rabbi Taub captured the complexity and nuances of the dilemma of how to react to the proposed BDS boycott and took into account the matter of the kashrus certification. He convinced me of the importance of navigating this issue without unnecessarily involving and perhaps harming kashrus agencies. The existence of such agencies is, as Rabbi Taub pointed out, not something to take for granted. “The kashrus industry is a miracle. We are but a tiny minority of this country, and yet so much of what we find in stores across the United States is marked as kosher. It is an important reminder not to rock the boat, or to feel so secure in our present reality as to use it as a tool for a public revenge ploy.”
I learned that we should appreciate the difficult struggle to establish kashrus agencies when I read the book by Roger Horowitz, Kosher USA: How Coke became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food.
Rabbi Taub is not indifferent to the danger of BDS, but as he noted, “While we must make noise about this decision, our dollars and voices may be our best instruments. Bringing undue attention to our gigantic kashrus framework in this country, however, may only come back to harm us – and Israel – in the long run.”
Another article by Rabbi Moshe Taub, “Jackie Mason’s Last Interview?” (July 30)” was touching and respectful. Thanks are due to Rabbi Taub for going out of his comfort zone to conduct the interview and make it public. The parts about Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, are short but revealing. I would have been dismissive about Jackie Mason had I not read the interview. It reminds me to look for the beauty in all Jews, no matter who they are.
Shira Leibowitz Schmidt
Kiryat Sanz, Netanya, Israel
B&J: Broadly Objectionable Beyond Kashrus
While the central argument in Rabbi Moshe Taub’s op-ed (“Ben & Jerry’s Should Remain Kosher Certified,” July 30) is legitimate when it comes to most non-kashrus considerations, you would think that what Ben & Jerry’s did is so far over the top and broadly objectionable (and objectionable beyond just the Jewish community, as evidenced by numerous American anti-boycott laws) that it shouldn’t apply here.
Ultimately this is a moral dilemma in which each choice leads to some bad results, but the threat of BDS (not just its direct application, but the delegitimization of Israel every time the BDS cause is made to appear mainstream) ought to outweigh, by far, any bad results to the kashrus scene.
Jerry Dobin
Brooklyn, NY
Thank You for the CPAP Info
Thank you for the notice regarding the recall of Respironics CPAP machines in last week’s Health & Living supplement. I would not have known about it except for reading it in The Jewish Press. Fortunately when I provided my serial number to customer service I learned my model was not recalled.
The article also provided detailed information about sleep apnea, how CPAP machines work, and issues regarding ozone cleaning that I never learned despite several years of treatment.
Phil Kouse
Via email
Julia Haart Is Trying to Proselytize
For the most part I concur with Dr. Chani Miller’s characterization of the Netflix show My Unorthodox Life (“Dear Julia Haart,” July 23). Much of what Julia says, you suggest, is not about her particular story, but rather “it’s the way she chose to tell it.”
Respectfully, however, employing a poetic license in her narrative is one thing, but from my take of the series, it seems that it’s her agenda not merely to celebrate the choices of those who seek their own paths in life, but to engaging in proselytizing.
After having told her other children she will accept the choice of her youngest son, Aron, to remain religiously observant after her attempt to encourage him to enjoy the fun of the secular world, she then says, in a snarky way, that she will continue to push for him to leave the fold, as it were. Clearly, that is not supporting a personal choice but waiting for the right time to push Aron from strict Torah adherence, seemingly at any cost.
Your adjective salacious doesn’t even begin to adequately describe the worst parts of this show.
My Unorthodox Life is not merely a memoir about Julia abandoning her religious path, but a transparent attempt to bring as many as she can with her.
Ronald Neal Goldman
Via email
Don’t Pander For the Sake of Unity
In pondering the need to achieve unity in the face of the severe challenges facing our people, it is well to ask how our greatest role models in history approached their various harrowing situations in their generations. I am thinking specifically of Mosheh Rabbenu, Dovid Hamelech, Queen Esther and Mordecai, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, Saadya Gaon, and the Rambam. Each had adversaries both within the camp and without.
My own approach is that pandering to the lowest common denominator among us for the sake of consensus is not the way to go.
We must not allow anti-Zionists to have any clout whatsoever in influencing the communal agenda.
Jewish unity must be based on a love of yiddishkeit and a devotion and commitment to Jewish learning and observance. That flag, I maintain, is held high more by Orthodoxy and our right wing – both in the Diaspora and in Israel – than by the liberal Jewish movements; and Orthodoxy for me does not mean “Modern,” which for me is a nod to assimilationism
Ed Yitshaq Levenson
Via email
Climate Change Is Real
In “What The Media Tells You To Believe” (July 30) Dennis Prager quotes some letters on the topic that ran in the New York Times. The letters reflect a fear of having children because of the future for them that comes with climate change.
I understand their fear, though I don’t agree with their reaction. However, it seems that Prager doesn’t believe in the dangers of climate change. He quotes three scientists on the topic.
Prager is certainly entitled to his opinion. But the issue is a serious one. Readers should know that the majority of the world’s climate experts, including those in Israel and America, believe climate change is real and human beings contribute to it. The experts also think there are things we can do to stop some changes. Many of those things are innovations that can also bring new jobs, and sources of income, to America and the world at large.
Sue Deutsch,
New York, NY