By Mark D. Zimmerman
During Jerry Seinfeld’s recent stand-up performance in Boston, he answered an audience member’s question about the final episode of the Seinfeld television show by saying “Something is going to happen that has to do with that ending. It hasn’t happened yet,” implying that he and co-creator Larry David are working on a possible sequel. However, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Elaine, subsequently said, “I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.” Many Seinfeld episodes had Jewish arcs, featuring a rabbi, circumcision, kosher food, Jewish singles night, babka, and more. Jason Alexander, who played George, usually loved the Jewish themes, noting, “You gotta go a long way to hit my Jew button. I give you Jews are funny, and you can be really sacrilegious with me, and I’ll take every Jew joke you got, even the borderline offensive ones.” But one Jewish-themed episode did cross the line for Alexander, who objected, ultimately leading Larry David to make some changes to the script. Which episode did Alexander object to?
A. The Raincoats (Part II), where Jerry and his girlfriend Rachel make out in the movie theater balcony during a showing of Schindler’s List, with Jerry explaining that “I couldn’t help it. We hadn’t been alone together in a long time and we just kinda started up a little during the coming attractions and the next thing we knew, the war was over.” Said Alexander, “I mean, yeah, anything can be funny. But not really anything. Not the Holocaust. I told Larry he’d be doing great harm to the show.” While David left in the plot line, he did cut out some of the most obnoxious jokes which he had written about Schindler.
B. The Serenity Now, where Elaine learns what “shiks-appeal” is when her boss’s son celebrates his bar mitzvah and tries to French kiss her, leading George to say “Jewish men love being with a woman who is not like their mother.” Said Alexander, “I actually loved the concept of ‘shiks-appeal’ but the idea of Elaine and the bar mitzvah boy? It was just wrong.” David mostly left the scene intact, but he did remove one shot where Elaine smiled at the bar mitzvah boy who was coming on to her.
C. The Bris, where Jerry’s job is to hold the baby at the bris of a friend’s son, featuring a bumbling mohel who says “I could have been a kosher butcher like my brother. The money’s good. He’s got a union, with benefits. And cows don’t have families. You make a mistake with a cow, you move on with your life.” Alexander said, “The character of the mohel was disgusting…to make one who is a child-hating, self-loathing, foul-mouthed incompetent, to me was antisemitic in a hurtful way.” David ultimately cut out some of the most outrageous lines said by the mohel.
D. The Shower Head, where Jerry’s Uncle Leo interrupts Jerry to tell him that the cook at Monk’s Cafe made his hamburger medium instead of medium-rare “because he’s an anti-Semite.” Jerry responded, saying “The point I was making before Goebbels made your hamburger…” Alexander complained to David that “you just gotta be so careful with Nazi jokes,” leading David to change Jerry’s original response to Uncle Leo, which was “The point I was making before Hitler made your hamburger…”
E. The Yada Yada, where Jerry’s friend, the dentist Tim Whatley, converts to Judaism, as Jerry tells George and Elaine. “He looks at my tooth and he says, ‘oy vey, you got tsuris.’ I ask him why he’s talking Yiddish, and he tells me that he met a Jewish girl, and yada yada, he converted to Judaism.” Jason Alexander objected to the original script, where Jerry did a belly-wiggling Tevye dance while saying, “…and biddy biddy bum, he converted to Judaism.” Alexander disliked the Tevye imitation, saying “There’s no more beloved Jewish character than Tevye. I just don’t think we should make fun of that,” which led Larry David to change “biddy biddy bum” to “yada yada.”
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Mark Zimmerman is the author of a series of Jewish trivia books, under the title RASHI, RAMBAM and RAMALAMADINGDONG: A Quizbook of Jewish Trivia Facts & Fun.