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Before ‘SNL,’ there was Sid Caesar — and a roomful of Jewish writers
(JTA) — Sid Caesar once dominated American television so completely that it was hard to imagine Saturday nights without him. In the early 1950s, his live sketch-comedy program “Your Show of Shows” drew tens of millions of viewers. That show and its other iterations — “The Admiral Broadway Revue,” “Caesar’s Hour” and “Sid Caesar Invites You” — launched the careers of Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen, and helped invent television comedy as we know it.
Caesar and an ensemble cast that included Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca performed movie and musical parodies, domestic skits featuring warring suburbanites and bits highlighting Caesar’s knack for “speaking” foreign languages in convincing gibberish. A parody of the hit show “This Is Your Life” has often been called the funniest sketch in the history of the form. Caesar and Reiner’s “Professor” routine — featuring Caesar as a German-accented know-it-all who knows very little — is the often uncredited precursor to Brooks and Reiner’s more enduring “2000-Year-Old Man.”
And yet, as David Margolick recounts in his new biography, “When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy,” Caesar’s fame proved surprisingly fleeting. Caesar died in 2014 at 91. But well before then, his name had faded, even as his influence endured.
In a recent public conversation held as part of New York Jewish Week’s “Folio” series, Margolick — a longtime journalist and author — reflected on Caesar’s rise, his Jewish sensibility, the brutal pressures of early television, and why the man who changed comedy so profoundly all but vanished from popular memory.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
For people who may not even know the name Sid Caesar, why is he worthy of a biography?
That’s the problem Mel Brooks raised when I interviewed him, and it actually became the epigraph of my book. He said to me, “People are going to say, ‘Gee, this is really good and really interesting. Just one question, David: Who’s Sid Caesar?’”
For people who lived in the 1950s, American television comedy really started with him. There were vaudeville leftovers and radio shows early on, but Sid Caesar was the first true television comic — someone whose skills were suited to television itself. There was an intimacy to his comedy that wouldn’t have worked in a big theater but worked on a small screen.
And the influence is enormous. Mel Brooks wrote for him. Larry Gelbart [creator of the TV series “M*A*S*H”] wrote for him. Neil Simon wrote for him. Woody Allen wrote for him. Carl Reiner worked with him and went on to create “The Dick Van Dyke Show” [based on his experience on the Caesar shows]. The tendrils of Sid Caesar’s comedy reach into sitcoms, “Saturday Night Live,” Broadway and film.
One challenge of the book was to explain how momentous he was — and the other was to explain how someone so influential could fall into such obscurity.
Caesar is often associated with the Catskills, the upstate New York Jewish vacationland that was a proving ground for any number of Jewish comedians. How did his early life shape his comedy?
The Poconos [in Pennsylvania] were actually just as important as the Catskills in Sid’s case. The producer who really shaped his programs, Max Liebman, came out of Camp Tamiment in the Poconos, not the Catskills. That mattered.
Sid wasn’t a stand-up comic. He started as a musician. People noticed he was funny while horsing around during musical routines. His comedy was more sophisticated than wiseguy stand-up — it was sketch comedy, with music, dance and character work.
And then there’s Yonkers [Caesar’s hometown just north of New York City]. His family ran a restaurant where the workers sat by ethnicity — Germans at one table, Slavs at another. Sid bused tables and absorbed the sound of all those languages. He said he could listen to a language for 15 minutes and imitate its musicality.
He didn’t really speak them. He’d sprinkle in a few words — ‘like chocolate chips in cookie batter,’ he said — but it sounded convincing. Ironically, the languages he avoided were Yiddish and Hebrew, the ones closest to home.
What was happening in television when Caesar arrived in 1949?
Television was empty. It was the electronic corollary of the American frontier. They had hours to fill and no idea how to do it. That’s why people remember watching wrestling. Comedy was going to be central, but nobody knew what kind. Caesar’s early shows weren’t pure comedy — they were variety shows with comedy at the center. Television comedy was still gestating.
And like Hollywood earlier, television became an opening for Jews. The people running the country didn’t quite know what to do with it, and there was a void desperate for talent.
The shows weren’t overtly Jewish — yet they clearly resonated with Jewish audiences. Why?
They were very careful not to be explicit. The word “Jew” was never mentioned. Max Liebman bragged there was no Yiddish on “Your Show of Shows.” They wanted to lie low. But Jewish viewers recognized something. The irreverence. The skepticism toward authority. Rooting for underdogs. Making fun of pomposity and power.
As Sid Caesar said to me, “The Jews knew. The Jews knew what we were doing.” They were winking — communicating without saying it outright.
Food seems to be a recurring theme. I love a later skit when a famous bullfighter is on his deathbed and he and his entourage are putting in their deli orders.
Food is a leitmotif in Caesar’s comedy. There are sketches about wanting food, not getting food, getting less than the other guy, struggling with unfamiliar food. I wrote that his humor was Jewish “in its obsession, born of privation, with food in all its forms.” And they treated food with respect. No food fights. The food was always real.
I asked [food writer] Mimi Sheraton what distinguishes Jews and Italians around food. She said the Italians care about food every bit as much as Jews do — only without the panic. That captured it perfectly.
“Your Show of Shows” ended in June 1954, after five seasons and at the height of its success. Why?
Sid wanted control. He was making $25,000 a week in 1953 — roughly $300,000 a week today — but he was working under Max Liebman. He wanted to emphasize comedy, resented losing time to singers and dancers, and wanted to be the sole star. He was also competitive with [his co-star] Imogene Coca.
The pressure was enormous. Ninety minutes live every week, no margin for error. That stress began to eat him alive.
The legendary writers’ room, especially the one for “Caesar’s Hour,” where all seven writers were Jews, is often romanticized, in films like “My Favorite Year” and Neil Simon’s play “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.” What was it really like?
It was not a picnic. It was a room of incredible tension. These writers were fighting for their lives. They were working in the shadow of the garment district. Entertainment was an escape from a life pushing a cart on Seventh Avenue. They were desperate to survive.
Frank Rich once tried to write a book about them — his version of “The Boys of Summer” [Roger Kahn’s book about the great Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the 1950s]. He abandoned it and told me, “Instead of the boys of summer, I found the angry Jews of winter.”
What led to Caesar’s fall from the center of television and American popular culture?
As television spread into the hinterlands, the audience changed. Sid didn’t play well in Peoria. People thought he was elitist, talking down to them. Lawrence Welk [host of a variety show featuring anodyne pop music] crushed him. Caesar did devastating parodies of Welk — brilliant but futile. Television tastes were shifting.
At the same time, the pressure destroyed him. Drinking, pills, exhaustion. You can see it on screen — the faltering diction, the loss of confidence.
Your book shows a star who was often aloof, difficult to work with, and often addled by booze and drugs. What was Caesar like when you met him?
I interviewed him in 2008. He was very frail, confined to home, but mentally sharper than he’d been in years. One thing he told me stuck with me. He talked about success — that moment when he realized he could have anything he wanted: “Even sturgeon at Barney Greengrass, even if it was $5 a pound.”
That was success to him: never having to hold back. It came back, once again, to food.
What does comedy today owe Sid Caesar?
Larry Gelbart once said, “You want to know what’s missing from comedy today? Jews.” There are still Jewish comedy writers, of course. But in Caesar’s day, it was seven Jews working together, “working our brains out,” as Gelbart put it.
There was an unabashed Jewish essence to that comedy — a shared sensibility — that doesn’t quite exist anymore. Comedy is more variegated now. Something essential was diluted.
And yet, it all started with Sid Caesar.
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Trump Says He Is Likely to Reject Peace Proposal as Iran Has ‘Not Yet Paid a Big Enough Price’
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman. Photo: May 1, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
US President Donald Trump said that he had yet to review the exact wording of a new Iranian peace proposal but he was unlikely to accept it, because the Iranians had not yet “paid a big enough price.”
Trump’s remarks on social media concluded a day in which he publicly mused about the possibility of restarting airstrikes, the latest mixed signal as he seeks to end the war he launched more than two months ago.
On Sunday, Israel ordered thousands of Lebanese to leave villages in southern Lebanon, an escalation of a war between Israel and Iran’s Hezbollah allies that has run in parallel to the Iran war and could further complicate wider peace efforts.
Iran has said talks with Washington cannot resume unless a ceasefire also holds in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March to attack Hezbollah after the Iranian-backed Lebanese group fired across the border in support of Tehran.
Lebanon and Israel agreed to a separate truce last month, but fighting has continued, though on a smaller scale. The Israeli military issued an urgent warning on Sunday to residents of 11 towns and villages in Lebanon’s south, urging them to evacuate their homes and move at least 3,300 feet away to open areas.
The military said it was conducting operations against Hezbollah following what it described as a violation of the ceasefire, warning that anyone near Hezbollah fighters or facilities could be at risk.
PEACE APPEARS NO CLOSER
The United States and Israel suspended their bombing campaign against Iran four weeks ago, but appear no closer to a deal to end a war that has caused the biggest disruption ever to global energy supplies, roiled global markets and raised worries about the possibility of a wider global economic downturn.
In his post on social media, Trump wrote: “I will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity, and the World, over the last 47 years.”
On Saturday, a senior Iranian official had said Iran’s proposal would first open shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and end a US blockade of Iran, while leaving talks on Iran’s nuclear program for later.
Though Trump had already said on Friday that he was not satisfied with the Iranian proposal, he said on Saturday he had yet to hear all the details.
“They told me about the concept of the deal. They’re going to give me the exact wording now,” he said. Asked if he might restart strikes on Iran, Trump replied: “I don’t want to say that. I mean, I can’t tell that to a reporter. If they misbehave, if they do something bad, right now we’ll see. But it’s a possibility that could happen.”
IRAN’S PROPOSAL APPEARS TO CONTRADICT WASHINGTON’S DEMANDS
Iran’s proposal to delay talks on nuclear issues until later appears to contradict Washington’s repeated demand that Iran give up its stockpile of more than 400 kg (900 pounds) of highly enriched uranium as a condition to end the war.
Washington says the uranium could be used to make a bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful but it is willing to discuss curbs on it in return for the lifting of sanctions, as it accepted in a 2015 deal that Trump abandoned.
Reuters and other news organizations have reported over the past week that Tehran was proposing to reopen the strait before nuclear issues were resolved. The senior Iranian official confirmed that this new timeline had now been spelled out in a formal proposal conveyed to the United States through mediators.
While saying repeatedly he is in no hurry, Trump is under domestic pressure to break Iran’s hold on the strait, which has choked off 20% of the world’s oil and gas supplies and pushed up US gasoline prices. Trump’s Republican Party faces the risk of a voter backlash over higher prices when the country votes in midterm congressional elections in November.
Iranian media said Tehran’s 14-point proposal included the withdrawal of US forces from areas surrounding Iran, lifting the blockade, releasing Iran’s frozen assets, payment of compensation, lifting sanctions and ending the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, as well as a new control mechanism for the strait.
Iran has been blocking nearly all shipping from the Gulf apart from its own for more than two months. Last month, the US imposed its own blockade of ships from Iranian ports.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential diplomacy, the senior Iranian official said Tehran believed its latest proposal to shelve nuclear talks for a later stage was a significant shift aimed at facilitating an agreement.
“Under this framework, negotiations over the more complicated nuclear issue have been moved to the final stage to create a more conducive atmosphere,” the official said.
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Most Jewish voters rate Mamdani poorly, new poll finds
As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marks four months in office, a new survey of New York City’s Jewish voters suggests he has done little to ease concerns among a community that overwhelmingly did not support his election and remains uneasy about his handling of antisemitism and Israel.
A Mercury Public Affairs poll of 665 Jewish voters who cast ballots in last year’s mayoral election found that 58% rate his performance as “poor” or “fair,” compared to 32% who say “excellent” or “good.” Among the 18% who described his performance as “fair,” a majority — 56% — said they disapprove, while 24% approve.
The poll sponsored by The Jewish Majority, an advocacy group led by AIPAC veteran Jonathan Schulman, was conducted from Feb. 17 to 28 in English and Yiddish via landline and cell phone. The sample has a reported margin of error of plus or minus 3.7%. It included a diverse cross-section of the city’s Jewish electorate: 30% Orthodox; 32% Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist; and 20% unaffiliated.
The results published Sunday underscore a political reality that has shadowed Mamdani since taking the helm of the city that is home to the largest concentration of Jews in the U.S. He won just 26% of the Jewish vote in the 2025 election, compared to 55% for Andrew Cuomo and 8% for Curtis Sliwa, according to the poll. His support was strongest among younger voters ages 35-44 (34%) and unaffiliated Jews (42%). He drew just 7% among Orthodox voters.
Antisemitism and Israel loom large
A central tension in Mamdani’s relationship with Jewish groups has been his effort to separate his views critical of Israel from his repeated commitment to protect Jewish New Yorkers.
Mamdani, who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism, has so far declined calls from Jewish leaders to acknowledge the community’s connection to Israel more directly. That comes into sharper focus now as the Jewish community marks Jewish American Heritage Month. Mamdani is not expected to march in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade on Fifth Avenue on May 31, a choice likely to reinforce perceptions of that distance. This year’s parade theme is “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists.”
Last month, Mamdani vetoed a City Council bill requiring safety plans for protests near schools, while allowing a separate measure protecting houses of worship to become law. Mamdani said he shared concerns raised by progressive groups and labor unions that the legislation could impact their ability to organize and potentially limit demonstrations, particularly on campuses. He also faced backlash from Zionist Jewish organizations on his first day in office after revoking executive orders tied to antisemitism and campus protests.
At the time the poll was taken, an overwhelming 84% of respondents said they had supported the Council’s initial proposal to establish a safe perimeter around houses of worship to prevent harassment and intimidation, while preserving First Amendment rights. Only 7% opposed it.
According to the survey, 82% of respondents said they are concerned about the rise in antisemitism in New York City, and 58% said they believe the increase is linked to the normalization of anti-Zionism.
A majority — 61% — said Mamdani’s refusal to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the Intifada” has emboldened pro-Hamas protesters. Nineteen percent disagreed.
Mamdani stands firm
The Jewish Majority spearheaded an open letter during the mayoral election, signed by more than 1,100 Jewish congregational leaders opposing what it described as “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization” among figures like Mamdani.
Four months in, Mamdani is showing little sign of changing course, sticking with the coalition that brought him to power even as many Jewish New Yorkers say their concerns remain unresolved.
“I am deeply committed to protecting Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani told the Forward last week. “It’s part of a commitment to ensure that public safety is delivered for each and every New Yorker. And I also believe that as we deliver that public safety, as we show an absolute rejection of antisemitism across the five boroughs, we can also do these things while protecting our fundamental constitutional rights.”
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After a Maryland teacher’s death, her 200-piece Judaica collection finds new life in a Jewish museum
(JTA) — As Rae Ann Kaylie sat on her mother’s couch in the wake of her death, the Judaica felt overwhelming.
Over 50 menorahs adorned the shelves. A dozen seder plates had been meticulously hung alongside a trove of Jewish art on each wall. And countless dreidels, kiddush cups and shofars filled every corner of the 1,100-square-foot home in Rockville, Maryland.
There were so many hamsas hanging near the entrance, Kaylie joked, “Whoa, Mom, what on earth? Like, how much evil eye do we have in here?”
For 35 years, Kaylie’s mother, Deborah Brodie, had amassed a collection of over 200 Jewish ritual objects, which she had used as a hands-on classroom for her Hebrew school students with special needs. Among the collection, Brodie had also obtained a Torah from Ebay, which her students used to practice for their b’nai mitzvah.
“She wasn’t the one who was like, ‘Oh, don’t touch it. You’re going to break it,’” Kaylie said. “She was like, ‘Touch it, here, take a bunch,’ you know what I mean, and that was really cool about her entire collection.”
Brodie — known as “Bubbie Cookie” to her family — had not built the collection alone. Her longtime partner, Jay Brill, whom she met through a Washington Jewish Week personals ad in 1986, was alongside her throughout the journey, traveling with her to all 50 states to sell Jewish jewelry and a computerized Hebrew-learning program they created together.
Over the years, the couple attended both B’nai Shalom and Shaare Tefila Congregation, two Conservative synagogues in Olney, Maryland. Toward the end of their lives, they attended Chabad of Olney, whose rabbi officiated their funerals.
But after Brodie, 76, and Brill, 74, died in February just 19 days apart, Kaylie said she and her family were faced with a painful question: What would happen to the couple’s lifetime of Jewish devotion in their absence?
“We all picked something we wanted, but then, you know, you don’t want to sell it, you don’t want to make any money off of it,” Kaylie said. “It was just trying to figure out, like, what can we do to further her passion, her vision?”
The answer, Kaylie said, arrived through Instagram.
Earlier this month, Kaylie sent a simple message to Nick Fox, who operates a social media series titled “Millennial Inheritance,” writing, “Hey, you want to see a lot of menorahs?”
Since October, Fox has documented dozens of inheritance stories across his social media channels, featuring people grappling with their late parents’ vast collections of Breyer Horse figurines, salt and pepper shakers and Christmas decorations.
But while Fox said the mission of his page is not necessarily to help people find homes for inherited collections, Kaylie’s story felt different.
As he viewed images of Brodie and Brill’s home, Fox, who is Catholic, said that he immediately flashed back to childhood memories attending his classmates’ bar mitzvahs and receiving souvenir hamsas from their trips to Israel.
“It was the fact that she was actively grieving and really had no idea what to do, and I think the fact that I was raised how I was, where I was, that I had a knowledge of what this stuff was and what it meant,” Fox said.
Just days later, Fox posted a short video for his 200,000 followers featuring snippets of the sprawling collection along with a call to help find it a permanent home that would “love it the way Rae Ann’s mom did.”
As the post garnered hundreds of comments offering ideas for the collection’s future and tributes to Brodie’s contributions to Jewish education, it was also making its way through Washington’s Jewish community.
The morning after the post, Jonathan Edelman, the collections curator for the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, said he woke up to dozens of messages from people urging the museum to find a home for the collection.
“It was so meaningful that so many people in the broader community, and who have never stopped in our museum, tagged us and said, you know, this should be the home of this sort of wild story and this amazing collection,” Edelman said.
By the following weekend, Edelman had travelled to Brodie’s home to meet with Rae Ann to view the collection himself. But even after seeing Fox’s post, Edelman said he was unprepared for what awaited him inside.
“It was incredible, floor-to-ceiling Judaica like I’d never seen in anyone’s home before,” Edelman said. “It wasn’t just thrown on a shelf. It was so thoughtfully laid out. I mean, she had seder plates and hanukkiot hanging on the wall, which is no easy task to do…it felt like a museum quality display. It was really impressive.”
Edelman quickly reported back to the museum, which opened in June 2023, telling them that he believed he had stumbled upon an “incredible opportunity” to launch its inaugural education collection.
Now, the Capital Jewish Museum has plans to house the entirety of Brodie and Brill’s collection in its second-floor education and program space, the Community Action Lab, where visitors will be able to interact with the Judaica firsthand, just as Brodie encouraged her students to do in her home.
The museum also plans to photograph the collection so it is accessible online, and lend individual pieces to schools and organizations in the area for educational use.
“When I heard her mother’s story, you know, we were doing the same thing. Our goal was Jewish education, and she did it as an individual, we’re doing it as an institution,” Edelman said. “It means so much for us to honor her mother’s memory by doing the work that she dedicated her life to…it feels particularly special.”
But while Fox said he was not surprised by the outpouring of support and suggestions from the Jewish community, he said other Jews that inherit large quantities of Judaica should not look to Kaylie’s story as a roadmap.
“This is absolute best-case scenario, but it also makes it so very unique, because there aren’t going to be a lot of collections that museums usually are going to take on,” Fox said, adding that people should not assume that inheritances will find a place in a museum.
Instead, Fox said he encouraged people that inherit Jewish collections to consult their local Jewish community centers or synagogues to see if they might have a use for them.
“In the case of someone having a tremendous amount of Judaica, I think the best way would be to tap into your network, first, talk to people that you know that are in your community,” Fox said. “And then if it goes nowhere, then you have every right to, you know, if you’re looking to sell it, or if you’re looking to donate it, I think the big ask would be, what would your relatives want done with that stuff?”
Rachel Steinhardt, a California resident who organized a large-scale Judaica drive for people impacted by the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, recommended that people who find themselves with inherited Judaica they cannot keep turn to local Facebook groups or Judaica rehoming communities such as L’dor V’dor Judaica or Heritage Judaica.
“New Judaica is great, but people definitely value something that has been touched and loved and appreciated over the years…you want something that has a little soul in it,” Steinhardt said. “So I think that even something that’s not of value, other people can appreciate that it has been loved and want to acquire it.”
Reflecting on Fox’s decision to spotlight her mother’s collection, Kaylie said that he had been a “guardian angel.”
“He didn’t have to do that, and really, it’s because of him that we’re able to have my mom’s legacy be how we could have wanted it,” Kaylie said.
Edelman said he expects the collection to be installed in the museum sometime this summer, where it will be displayed alongside a plaque honoring “Bubbie Cookie” and “Zayde Jay,” names the couple were referred to by their families.
For Kaylie, imagining the future museum visitors handling her mother’s kiddush cups and menorahs felt like “exactly how she would have wanted it.”
“When we lost Bubbie Cookie, we said the legend of Bubbie Cookie was over,” Kaylie said. “And now, for the legend and the legacy to move on, I mean, it’s unreal. It’s, I have no words, I can’t even articulate it. It’s just amazing.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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