Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

March 5, 2020

Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner: The Duo Who Helped Bring the Jewish Comic Sensibility to America

The almost-one-hundred-year-old men.

Few people did more than Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner to introduce the raucous Jewish humor of the borscht belt to the American mainstream; although the resorts and hotels where they began their careers are long gone, the two—at ages ninety-three and ninety-seven, respectively—have not lost their comic verve. Hadley Freeman describes an interview with the pair, who have been fast friends since the days when they began performing their 2,000-Year-Old Man routine together:

SaveGift