Jackie Mason R.I.P.

Comedian - and rabbi - Jackie Mason just passed away at the age of 93. I had his show "The World According to Me" on video and loved it because he was so wonderfully Jewish!

Headline at The JC: "Jackie Mason defined a version of modern Jewish life for us.  He caricatured everyone and everything, so we could all laugh with him."

"Audiences who packed to see him everywhere from The Catskills to the London Palladium would be treated  to his long monologues on Jewish life, much of which has become so celebrated it has slipped into modern Jewish parlance and has almost defined what it means to be a modern Jew: obsessed with food ('Have you ever seen the way a Jew walks into a restaurant? Like a Partner!'); terrified of bars and guns ('He knows that’s it’s not his field, and that’s it'"; and incompetent at any form of manual labour, unlike Gentiles who can change tyres and do DIY ('Whenever a Jewish car breaks down you’ll always hear the same thing – It’s stopped?! Then a fight breaks out …').Jackie Mason was the ultimate 'unwoke' comedian, who revelled in stereotypes, to show up what he considered to be important home truths and haimische wisdom."