Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

Bob Saget, the comedian and actor famous for playing a wholesome sitcom father figure but who never lost his flair for raunchy comedy, has died at 65. Saget died shortly after performing in Orlando, where he had delivered a show with his trademark mashup of dark humor and dad jokes that he first developed while misbehaving in Hebrew school.

As a performer, Saget alternated between the raunchy standup comic known for darkly funny bits peppered with curse words and the wholesome dad that he played on the 1990s sitcom Full House, bringing together his audiences of children and adults in his role as host of Americas Funniest Home Videos.

Even before he got to Hollywood, Saget honed his comedy as a misbehaving Hebrew school student at Temple Israel in Norfolk, Virginia.

Well, a lot of it was rebellion, Saget told the Atlanta Jewish Times in 2014. In my Hebrew school training, I would spend more time trying to impress the girls in the class. I remember the rabbi taking me up to his office and saying, Saget, youre not an entertainer; you have to stop doing this. I couldnt stop.

He never did.

Saget was born in Philadelphia in 1956 to Jewish parents but spent much of his childhood in Norfolk. After studying film at Temple University, Saget moved to Los Angeles and became a regular at the Comedy Store, the legendary comedy club famous for launching the careers of comedians like David Letterman and Jay Leno.

In 2021, Saget participated in a Purim spiel, or comedic reading of the Purim story, to benefit the Met Council, in which he played the villain of the story, Haman. Im self-loathing, too, he quipped as he and other members of the cast sounded groggers to drown out Hamans name.

Saget recalled his Jewish upbringing, including his Hebrew school experience and the Jewish foods his bubbe cooked, in the foreword he wrote for the 2011 book, Becoming Jewish: The Challenges, Rewards, and Paths to Conversion, by Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben and Jennifer S. Hanin.

I was born a Jewish boy. I was circumcised. Thank God by a professional. That is not something you want done by a novice. Or someone doing it for college credit. So I became Jewish instantly upon birth, he wrote.

Read more:

Bob Saget, comedian and actor, dies at 65 - Jewish Community Voice

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