Carl Reiner—comedy legend, avid tweeter, and Hillary Clinton supporter—turns 92 today.

Reiner was born in the Bronx in 1922 to Irving and Bessie, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Austria, respectively. He stumbled into the entertainment industry by accident when his brother told him about a free drama workshop being put on by the Works Progress Administration. (Thank you, Roosevelt!) Originally Reiner aspired to become a serious dramatic actor, but he switched to comedy during WWII, when he worked as an entertainer in the U.S. army. And the rest, as we all know, is history—he went on to star in Your Show of Shows, create The Dick Van Dyke Show, and play the straight man, brilliantly, to Mel Brooks’ 2000 Year Old Man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGTPPrkgovw

In 1943, Reiner married Estelle Lebost, a visual artist (and later, cabaret singer). They had three children and were dedicated to each other until Estelle’s death in 2008. (Fun fact: director son Rob cast Estelle in When Harry Met Sally, where she famously delivered the “I’ll have what she’s having” line.)

Last year, in an interview with Moment Magazine, Reiner mused on the connection between Jews and comedy:

I think all people who are victims of prejudice, downtrodden people, have two things to do: They can moan or they can make fun, they can lift their spirits by finding the humor in the horror, and the Jews have been able to do it since Moses’ time. Some of the greatest comedians of all time were black: Burt Williams—he was a Broadway star in the Follies—Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby and, of course, Chris Rock.

On God, he had this to say:

I became an atheist after Hitler came. I said, what is this? If there was a God, would he not be hearing 18 million people, 16 million Jews, or 20 million other people, saying, “Please God, don’t do this, make him stop?” God was so busy doing what? Striping zebras or fixing the long necks of giraffes?

And, happily, his friendship with Mel Brooks endures. They have dinner together every night, where they kvetch about their physical ailments and talk about what’s good on TV (they’re both fans of  Downton Abbey). Says Reiner of Brooks, “I’m so in awe of his brain that I flatter him within an inch of his life. And I mean it. There’s nobody like him.”

Until 120, boys.

p.s. Bonus clip! Carl Reiner tells William Shatner about his father’s insane but ingenious do-it-yourself dentistry. Amazing anecdote.

Related: The Last Of The Old Jewish Comedians: An Interview With Drew Friedman
Watch the New Mel Brooks Documentary Online

The post Comedy Legend Carl Reiner Turns 92 Today appeared first on Jewcy.

“Being rather bizarre-looking and being very short, I needed another tool so that I would be accepted,” Mel Brooks told the camera in 1981’s I Thought I Was Taller: A Short History of Mel Brooks. “I used comedy.”

The rest, as they say, is history—and now you can see it from start to finish. Brooks is the most recent inductee into PBS’ illustrious American Masters series, and PBS has graciously posted the entirety of Mel Brooks: Make a Noise online:

Mel Brooks: Make a Noise journeys through Brooks’ early years in the creative beginnings of live television — with Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows — to the film genres he so successfully satirized in Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs — to the groundbreaking Broadway musical version of his first film, The Producers. The documentary also delves into his professional and personal ups and downs — his childhood, his first wife and subsequent 41-year marriage to Anne Bancroft — capturing a never-before-heard sense of reflection and confession.

Watch it here:

Watch Mel Brooks: Make a Noise on PBS. See more from American Masters.

Previously: Mel Brooks’ Most Jewish Movie Ever
Why I Love Mel Brooks

(Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Viacom)

***

Like this post? Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new Jewcy stories in your inbox every Friday morning.

The post Watch the New Mel Brooks Documentary Online appeared first on Jewcy.

Oif a meisseh fregt men kain kasheh nit: Don’t ask questions about fairy tales.

PISCES (FEBRUARY 21-MARCH 20): Pisces, symbolized by two fish swimming in opposite directions, exemplifies the dual nature of this mutable water sign. One fish swims toward the spiritual—the world of the dream, the unconscious mind—while the other fish swims toward the material world.

Fish-themed Judaic tales include Jonah and the whale and the Leviathan. In 6 B.C., a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Pisces even gave Jewish astrologers hope for a messiah.
 
Perhaps the most romantic and certainly the most intuitive of all the signs of the zodiac, you can be weak-willed in matters of the heart. Wise, sage givers of good advice, you are sensitive to beauty and can be overwhelmed by the feelings of others. Your heightened psychic awareness gives you a keen ability to suffer with others—this combined with your patience and listening skills makes you an excellent therapist and friend, but can have the ill effect of distancing you from your own life and feelings. With an innate receptiveness to everything that’s going on around you, it can be hard to see where others end and you begin.

While Passover begins on the day of the first full moon after the vernal equinox (the cusp between Pisces and Aries), Purim (February 23-24) is in many ways associated with Pisces—the Hebrew month of Adar corresponds with Pisces, and Purim itself has many fish themes.

The new moon on March 11 will be in Pisces; on this day there will be six heavenly bodies in your sign: Mercury, Mars, Venus, your ruling planet, Neptune, and the moon as well as the sun. With so many planets in Pisces, you’ll have the world at your feet (Pisces rules the feet)—lucky you!

Famous Pisces Jews: Gilbert Gottfried, Samm Levine, Bugsy Siegel, Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner, Ron Jeremy, Albert Einstein, Lou Reed, Billy Crystal, David Cronenberg, Jerry Lewis, Philip Roth, Yitzhak Rabin, Shalom Alecheim, Rashi, Renee Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor (converted), Joe Lieberman, Zeppo Marx, Kurt Weill, Ira Glass, Harry Winston, Diane Arbus, Rashida Jones, Judith Butler, Chelsea Handler.

ARIES (MARCH 21-APRIL 20): “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” was once the catchall phrase to explain the eternal debate—but hey, the 1990s called, and they want their dichotomy back: Mars and Venus are two faces of the same coin. Your ruling planet Mars returns to your sign on March 11, where it will stay until April 20, while Venus enters your sign on the spring equinox, balancing out aggressive Mars with its lovely light and helping you roll with the punches.

TAURUS (APRIL 21-MAY 20): Your ruling planet Venus will be in compassionate Pisces from February 25 to March 21, inspiring you with dreams of a grand romance. But don’t tempt the gods—zindik nit—focus what you need to do for yourself first before succumbing to the gantseh tsimmes (big confusion) that love can bring. Only you can take control of your life, and outside forces often serve as distractions from doing what you need to do.

GEMINI (MAY 21-JUNE 20): Gemini shiksa goddess Marilyn Monroe said, “it is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not,” and you should take her message to heart. Effusive Geminis are rarely unlovable, but your mazik (troublemaker) tendencies may make you seem like a stranger in a strange land if you fight against them. With your ruling planet Mercury in retrograde until March 17 and in dreamy Pisces until April 13, you will be compelled to confront your spiritual side—which you may have been willfully ignoring for fear of losing yourself. 

CANCER (JUNE 21-JULY 20): Gossiping is the worst habit and the biggest calumny—Loshen horeh iz di ergsteh mideh un gresteh tsoreh—and if anyone’s guilty of it, it’s you. We all know that old habits die hard, but with Mercury in retrograde you may want to watch what you say a bit more carefully. The new moon in your fellow water sign—creative, free-wheeling Pisces—on March 11 pit the two sides of your nature against each other. Loose lips may sink ships, but loosening yourself up won’t do anyone any harm.

LEO (JULY 21-AUGUST 20): No matter how hard you try to be inscrutable, the hitsik (hothead) wildcat within you betrays your true nature every time. Temper, temper you imperious beasts! With so many planets in even-keeled Pisces, you just may get the balm you need to keep moving forward. Remember, if you can’t do as you wish, do as you can—Az me ken nit vi me vil, tut men vi me ken.

VIRGO (AUGUST 21-SEPTEMBER 20): All eyes will be on you with the full moon in your sign on February 25. This is a great time to allow yourself a moment in the spotlight for once; after all, too much modesty is half conceit—tsu fil anives iz a halber shtolts. However, with Mercury in retrograde (and in your polar opposite sign, Pisces), you’ll still do well to conduct yourself with the reticence and charm you know best. That does mean you can’t get all farpitzed and let the world bask in your glow.

LIBRA (SEPTEMBER 21-OCTOBER 20): Venus is drifting through languorous Pisces through March 21, encouraging you to patteren tseit (lounge around, waste time) more than usual. This combined with your capacity for dissimulation conceals your true intentions and desires. Libras may have the reputation for being lighthearted lovers, but the mask you wear may be doing you more harm than you think. While it’s great that you can keep a positive mental attitude, suppressing your darker side keeps you from letting others into your heart.

SCORPIO (OCTOBER 21-NOVEMBER 20): Your reputation precedes you, saucy Scorpio—you’ll get what you want by hook or by crook. Oi, a shkandal! (Oh, what a scandal!). While you may not be as thoroughly unscrupulous as your sign suggests, with so many planets in Pisces, another water sign immersed in the waters of the unconscious, your hulyen (hellraiser) impulses could get the better of you. Reign in the danger, but never deny your true nature.

SAGITTARIUS (NOVEMBER 21–DECEMBER 20): With your ruling planet Jupiter still in mischievous Gemini and so many planets in dreamy Pisces, you’d be wise to guard your saykhel (common sense) closely. Surrounding yourself with mamoshes (people of substance) may help you avoid finding yourself at the wrong place at the wrong time. However, if you have a tendency to lead others on, at least have the decency to operate with transparency: if you’re all talk, make sure your partners-in-crime know it. No one likes a con artist!

CAPRICORN (DECEMBER 21–JANUARY 20): Your mantra has been Me krechts, me geht veyter—I complain and I keep going—for longer than you’d care to admit. Saturn’s retrograde through July 7 forces you to confront, and hopefully resolve, issues that have been plaguing you. If you can face your demons head on, you may find that the wild card’s been up your sleeve all along, and the fact that you can keep surprising yourself should be more than enough to get yourself going again, you alter bok (old goat).

AQUARIUS (JANUARY 21-FEBRUARY 20): If you’ve been feeling more kalamutneh (dreary, gloomy, troubled) than usual, you may worry that you’ve reached an impasse in your love life. Fear not, this deadlock may resolve itself at the eleventh hour. Until then, you may just have to grit your teeth and accept that to leiden (suffer) is your fate right now. Focus on all the great things you’ve got going on rather than the bad hand life seems to have dealt you. After all, as Ru Paul says, “If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

What’s Your Sign?
Aquarius, Sign of Contradictions
Capricorn, the Cardinal Earth Sign
Sagittarius, the Adventurous Archer
Stinging Scorpio
Lovely, Lawful Libra
Virgo, the Anxious Maiden
Leo, King of the Jungle

(Art by Margarita Korol)

The post Jewcy Horoscopes: Pisces, the Dual-Natured Water Sign (Feb. 21-March 20) appeared first on Jewcy.

According to the Internet, Krusty is supposed to be based on Jerry Lewis, and indeed both make funny faces, are beloved by the French, and have substance addictions. But we are trying too hard if we don’t point to the resemblance most obviously suggested in the Season 3 episode in which Krusty, asked to say grace at the Simpsons’ Evergreen Terrace abode, proceeds to recite the motzi and, prompted by Lisa’s characteristic prying, reveals that his real name is Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofski. (“A Jewish entertainer?” wonders Homer. “Get out of here.”) He is Al Jolson, which is to say he is also Al Jolson’s character in The Jazz Singer: an entertainer who has betrayed his father—”my father was a rabbi,” sighs Krusty, “his father was a rabbi, his fathers’ father was a—well, you get the idea.” To a lesser extent, he is the comedian Jackie Mason, who also comes from a long line of rabbis, but who clearly does not feel so weighted by that burden that he couldn’t guest-star as the voice of Krusty’s father, Rabbi Hyman Krustofski.

There is betrayal: Rabbi Krustofski is shamed that the sandwich named after his son at Izzy’s Deli features “ham, sausage, and bacon with a smidge of mayo—on white bread” (maybe they should call that the Ted Danson). There is, of course, reconciliation at the end: Bart’s quotation (supplied by Lisa) from the Babylonian Talmud fails to move the rabbi, who easily ripostes with a different authority; but a melodramatic line about Jewish persecution from the autobiography of Sammy Davis, Jr., leaves the rabbi with no response. Mason won an Emmy for the part. In a post-Golden Age episode (Season 15), he returns, and Krusty gets bar mitzvahed.

But that’s about it. You most likely don’t remember Krusty saying the brucha (his word). You remember him betting against the Harlem Globetrotters (“I thought the Generals were due!“); taking a break to show an Itchy & Scratchy sketch; nearly killing Bart by merchandising shoddily made cereal that has o-shaped pieces of metal in it; hosting an unfortunately named Krusty Komedy Klassic at the Apollo Theatre; and, of course, having unleashed the sinister Sideshow Bob on the world.

Ultimately, we see Krusty as the Simpsons do: as an entertainer. In fact, Krusty is one of the earliest Simpsons characters, tracing his origins all the way back to Matt Groening’s shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show—and even there, in the The Simpsons‘s Mesozoic Era (they looked like this), he is not a stand-alone character, but somebody the Simpsons watch on television. From the beginning, he’s the TV actor within the TV show—the other prominent example being local news anchor Kent Brockman, born Kenny Brockelstein.

Because in the world of The Simpsons and in the Simpsons’ world, that’s who the Jews are. And so Krusty’s Jewishness ultimately says the most when it articulates what makes The Simpsons distinctive. You would probably have to go back to the mid-1960s and The Andy Griffith Show—and cede the rule-proving-exception of South Park, which owes a self-acknowledged, tremendous debt to The Simpsons—to find a quality and popular television series that isn’t either set in a major city or among a milieu from a major city: in either case, among people for whom Jews are neighbors, bosses, friends, or enemies—just other people. The Dick Van Dyke Show had Carl Reiner playing Sid Caesar. Mary Tyler Moore’s boss was Ed Asner. The doctors in M*A*S*H* are sophisticated city-folk transplanted to a warzone. Dallas was in Dallas, Cheers in Boston, The Cosby Show in Brooklyn. Oh, and then Seinfeld happened, and you can take things from there.

But there was and is The Simpsons. We don’t know what state Springfield is in, but we do know that it’s the sort of small American town that actually doesn’t typically have many Jews (Krusty grew up “on the Lower East Side of Springfield,” literally ghettoized). If they do have Jews, they are likely to be entertaining you on television. More than any other show, Jews can watch The Simpsons and watch them watching Krusty, and watch Krusty through their eyes, to feel like real Americans. Or, at least, the sort of Americans that would eat a ham sandwich with mayo—on white bread.

Previously on Network Jews:

Schmidt from FOX’s breakout hit New Girl

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at Tablet Magazine. He tweets here.

The post Network Jews: Krusty the Clown, Jewish Entertainer on ‘The Simpsons’ appeared first on Jewcy.