On July 24, 2021, Jackie Mason died at age 93.
Mason was also widely known to be a strong supporter of Israel.
When Mason turned 25, he was ordained as a rabbi as well.
“I came from a religious family,” he once said in an interview withTablet Magazine.
“I was so absorbed with religion that I didn’t think about material things.
We weren’t involved with Jewish contests, with status.
There was no status among the Orthodox Jews.”
During that time, he started to become interested in comedy.
“I became attracted to it because I was a rabbi,” he told Tablet Magazine.
“And I started to tell jokes in my sermons.
And I also didn’t want to get up at eight o’clock in the morning.”
That summer, Mason went to the Catskills and took up a job as a busboy at a hotel.
Mason started telling jokes about his job at amateur nights, and became a hit.
By the time the season was over I was playing Grossinger’s and the Concord.
AsThe Famous Peoplepoints out, it took Mason over a decade to revive his career after the incident.
Still, Mason made a comeback with “The Jerk,” a comedic film that became commercially successful.
Mason is survived by Jyll Rosenfeld and his daughter, Sheba.
