Sid Caesar, Brought Jewish Humor to Middle America, Dies at 91

Caesar told "The Jewish Chronicle" in 2010: "There's a lot of fun that you can bring out in being Jewish. But I didn't want to make fun of being Jewish. There's a fine line… I used to see people davening in shul and they'd snap the book shut when they'd finished. Like they'd won a race. Then look around to see if anyone else had finished. I used to find that very funny… Jews appreciate humor because in their life it's not too funny. We've been trodden down for a long time, thousands of years. So we've had to turn that around because if you take it all too seriously you're going to eat yourself. And we're very good at being self-deprecating. Either we do it or somebody's going to do it for us. We might as well do it first."

http://forward.com/articles/192680/sid-caesar-brought-jewish-humor-to-middle-america/?p=all