By Todd Krieger

Confession: I didn’t grow up the biggest Mel Brooks fan. This feels like admitting you never liked your grandmother’s brisket, permissible but vaguely shameful. But his influence on Jewish comedy is unmatched, and more important is his impact on what it means to survive as a Jew through laughter rather than capitulation.

You’ve got Larry David mining his neuroses, Woody Allen turning anxiety into an art form, the Marx Brothers weaponizing chaos. Put them together, and you might approach the ripple effect of Brooks’ career. From the Borscht Belt to “Blazing Saddles,” his contribution takes entertainment to an existential plane, a primer on not simply surviving but thriving by unpending paradigms of power and persecution. That wit and genius are on full display in Judd Apatow’s “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!,” now streaming on HBO Max.

The title of course is a riff on Brooks’ breakthrough “The 2,000 Year Old Man,” created with fellow Jew (and onetime Reboot interview subject)  Carl Reiner. While the two-episode series serves as a master class in longevity, love, and success, it’s really a meditation on the Jewish experience, rooted in the understanding that if you don’t laugh at the things trying to kill you, they’ve already won.

Walk This Way

Brooks, né Kaminsky, was born in 1926, raised in Brooklyn, and came of age in a world where being Jewish in America meant something specific: you knew your place, and your place maybe wasn’t so great. He cut his teeth in the Catskills alongside Jerry Lewis, in rooms where Jewish comics performed Jewishness for Jewish audiences.

Then he moved into television’s early days, into Sid Caesar’s writers’ room for “Your Show of Shows” with Reiner, and Neil Simon. This wasn’t just a job. It was a petri dish where Jewish writers sat together, figuring out how to make America laugh without explaining themselves, how to be Jewish on television when television wasn’t sure it wanted Jews.

This tight-knit camaraderie would later be replicated for a lifetime when he, Norman Lear, Larry Gelbart (creator of M*A*S*H) Reiner, and non-Jew Dom DeLuise all began to vacation together once they all made it out to the West Coast, forming what would come to be known as the ‘Yenem Velt’ (translation: the other world).

Constantly generating material, competing with the other Jews in the room, Brooks took ownership of his own special version of Jewish comedy. It was humor not as apology or self-deprecation, but a kind of aggression. Wit as a weapon. Wordplay to humiliate your enemies, not charm them.

Two quick biographical details: Brooks faced antisemitism in the army and once physically clobbered a fellow soldier. He cleared landmines with a kind of Yossarian fatalism. That combination of moxie, dark humor about death, refusal to accept humiliation, still lives inside so much of his work, so much so you could see his mug in a Yiddish dictionary alongside the definition for chutzpah.

It’s Good to be King

While Woody Allen intellectualized anxiety, and Lenny Bruce used wit like a scalpel to eviscerate everyone, including himself, Brooks did something different. He looked at the things that were supposed to terrify Jews—pogroms, Hitler, the psychological violence of gentile respectability—and said: you’re not terrifying. You’re ridiculous.

He put Hitler in a musical. A musical! Not a dark meditation on evil, but a farce. “Springtime for Hitler” flips the script and makes a mockery of terror through an over-the-top production of such epically poor taste you can’t help but fall on the floor laughing. “Don’t be stupid, be a smawtie; come and join the Nazi Pawty,” indeed.

The documentary is wall-to-wall Brooks moments with farting cowboys in “Blazing Saddles,” the knockers joke in “Young Frankenstein,” Brooks singing and dancing his heart out as Torquemada in the Spanish Inquisition. There’s also countless talk show appearances: Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, French TV, Spanish TV. It’s Brooks as a one-man emissary, performing Jewish resilience for audiences who didn’t always understand they were watching something deeper than shtick.

Watching these clips now isn’t just that Brooks is wonderfully funny and outrageously alive. There’s a showmanship of a man constantly perfecting his art form, the Jewish comedian at the top of his game akin to a top professional athlete having his best season.

Brooks’ hits created permission structures for everyone who came after. Ben Stiller credits Brooks for “Zoolander,” particularly how he commits to absurdity while playing it straight. The courage to be earnest in the service of something deeply silly.

The Zucker Brothers watched Brooks and understood: we can break every rule. Without Brooks, no “Kentucky Fried Movie” or “Airplane.” Without the Zuckers, no “South Park.” Multiple generations refusing to respect boundaries, understanding nothing is too sacred to mock. This is the genealogy of Jewish irreverence, passed down like a recipe.

We don’t need no stinking badges

Watching four hours of Mel Brooks mainlining life is probably one of the best things one could do in these heavy times of racial, political and religious division. Could the outrageousness of Brooks live in today’s world of “rage bait”? Sadly, probably not.

But what is a fed-up, funny, fiery person left to do when not marching in the streets or tilting at windmills in Facebook posts. We can all learn to embrace the lessons Brooks has taught us again and again. Rejoice in the indefatigable spirit of parody, satire as a means to defeat the darkness, oppression and lack of imagination of the oppressor. For, as much as his work is a gift that lives on for generations, in the end it is Brooks’ life that is the miracle we all can benefit from.

Todd Krieger is a writer and marketer fascinated by technology and its impact on culture. He lives in Marin, where he is raising two daughters, riding his road bike, and seeing as much live music as possible.