Remembering Bob Saget, Stand-up Comic, TV Sitcom Star, and Host of "America's Funniest Videos"

Bob Saget, whose comedy career included playing a wholesome dad on the 1990s sitcom Full House, hosting America's Funniest Videos, and performing raunchy standup comedy, died Sunday at 65 after a show in Orlando, Florida.

As Shira Hanau wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,

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, you’re not an entertainer; you have to stop doing this.’ I couldn’t stop.”

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. “I’m self-loathing, too,” he quipped as he and other members of the cast sounded groggers to drown out Haman’s 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.

Saget did not consider himself to be very observant. But he did feel sense of spirituality on a trip he took to Israel with his parents in the 80s or 90s.

“It was quite a gift and there were many spiritual things that happened throughout and that I think is still the closest I’ve felt, because you can actually see it and feel it in the air in Israel,” he said.

Having lost his sisters and both of his parents — his father in 2007 and his mother in 2014 — at the time of his conversation with Sanderson, Saget talked about the difficulty in feeling spirituality or belief in God after experiencing so much loss.

“I go back and forth with my belief system, by the way. I’m not the best, most observant Jewish person you’ve ever met or talked to, and yet I’m Jewish and proud to be,” he said.

Here's a sample of Saget's comedy -- a skit on Saturday Night Live where he played a coach of a high school football team. 

Enjoy!

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