SNL's best Jewish sketches

A very subjective list in honor of the show's 50th anniversary.

SNL is celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend with a 90-minute live special featuring the show’s most iconic faces. And obviously, I am celebrating by rounding up some my favorite Jewish sketches throughout the years. Honestly, I know the moment I hit send on this I’ll be lamenting one I’ve forgotten, though it helps that our friends at JTA have put together a list of 36 unforgettable Jewish SNL sketches.

I’ve already previously put together a list of the best Hanukkah sketches from SNL, including that iconic Adam Sandler Hanukkah song, so no Hanukkah songs here, though my #1 on this not-at-all scientific list is Festival of Lights-adjacent. Read through my favorites and chime in with your own below!

“TV Funhouse: Christmastime For the Jews”

This is my all time favorite Jewish SNL sketch, and I was honored to briefly chat about it with its creator, Rob Smigel, last year, who said how thrilled he was to work on the song with Darlene Love. It’s just so true about the Jewish experience of Christmas in New York and all over the country, and also wonderfully unhinged (the circumcising squirrels line always gets me).

When Babs came on Coffee Talk:

Mike Myers may not be Jewish (though Gilda Radner did play his mother in a commercial when he was 10), but he did play one of my favorite Jewish SNL characters. I would lay my life down for Linda Richman, and I’m so glad she got to meet her idol, Barbra Streisand, who luckily must have gotten over the vicious and brilliant impression Laraine Newman did of her back in 1977.

When Molly Shannon and Jerry Seinfeld became the original “Nobody Wants This”:

Long before Adam Brody’s Rabbi Noah fell in love with a shiksa (his word, not mine), Jerry Seinfeld’s Jewish day school student Lenny fell in love with Molly Shanon’s Catholic high school student and nervous sweat sniffer Mary Katherine (one of my all time favorite SNL characters). The “Fiddler” references in this sketch are *chef’s kiss.*

Gilda Radner’s Jewess Jeans:

Gilda Radner’s Rhonda Weiss in this sketch was the OG Jewish American Princess and a style icon. She was also part of Gilda and SNL writer Marilyn Suzanne Miller’s mission to make Jewish women more visible and glamorous on screen. Miller was recently asked which SNL character she’d want to see in a movie, and she answered:

“Rhonda Weiss, who I wrote for Gilda. A Jewish girl, her name was a sorority sister’s of mine; not sure why I thought I had the right to use her real name. Jewish women were and are not represented in the history of American film. It would have been very interesting to see what would have happened to her. The idea of centering a film around a typical kind of Jewish girl that existed then would have been more than terrific. Until Barbra Streisand, there were not a lot of Jewish women who were attractive and multifaceted, and you could go at them in a million ways. It wasn’t done and still hasn’t been, really. She was attractive — Gilda and I both felt like Jewish women, while they’re not Annette Funicello or Sandra Dee, they’re women too.”

I do love Gilda’s Rhonda. I need everything she’s wearing. I need to be her. May Gilda’s memory be for a blessing.

Andy Samberg’s Mort Mort Feingold:

It’s really hard to choose a favorite Andy Samberg SNL moment (OK, it’s maybe the Lonely Island sketch “Iran So Far”) and even a favorite Jewish moment (I mean, remember when he played a Jewish immigrant coming on a boat to America opposite Justin Timberlake??), but I do love his Mort Mort Feingold, taking out the sting of that old Jews-run-Hollywood stereotype and bringing out a really adorable balding Jew dealing with tax paperwork instead. The sketch does manage to even call out Mel Gibson for his vile antisemitism, though Mort Mort does agree to work with him at the end for a certain %%%. Somehow even that he does adorably?

Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy’s Passover speech:

Of course, Vanessa Bayer’s Jacob the Bar Mitzvah boy’s dad and Seth Meyers’ podiatrist is played by Billy Crystal. This sketch is truly a gift from the Jewish SNL deities.

Honorable mention #1 — Scheinwald Studios:

Listen, I can’t write a Jewish SNL list without including one of my favorite Jewish cast members of all time, Rachel Dratch. Here she is playing the very sleazy old Jewish Hollywood exec Abe Scheinwald, a sketch that doesn’t feel great after the Harvey Weinstein scandal, but still has some very noteworthy acting, especially her crunching on a giant tub of coleslaw:

Honorable mention #2 — Sabra Price is Right:

This sketch has aged badly in so many ways but I’ll never not be grateful to have Tom Hanks’ Israeli accent in it.

What’s your favorite Jewish SNL sketch? Let me know in the comments!