I thought I saw Arthur Goldberg the other night at USC. The late Supreme Court justice died in 1990, but his ghost surely hung over the Trojan campus Wednesday during Sen. Joseph Lieberman\’s speech at the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life.
The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, Jackie Mason, Woody Allen and, of course, Seinfeld. The history of American comedy is the history of America\’s funniest Jews. But while being Jewish and funny has never been mutually exclusive, comedians in days of yore mostly kept their Jewishness offstage. Times are changing, and with multiculturalism comes a new brand of Jewish comedian.
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