Jackie Mason, born Yacov Moshe Maza in 1931, spent his early years in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, as noted by the Jewish Virtual Library. When he was 5 years old, he and his family moved to New York City, where his father and three of his brothers worked as rabbis. When Mason turned 25, he was ordained as a rabbi as well. "I came from a religious family," he once said in an interview with Tablet Magazine. "I was so absorbed with religion that I didn't think about material things. We weren't involved with Jewish contests, with status. There was no status among the Orthodox Jews."

At 25 years old, Mason worked in Latrobe, Pennsylvania as a rabbi for three years, via The Famous People. During that time, he started to become interested in comedy. "I became attracted to it because I was a rabbi," he told Tablet Magazine. "And I started to tell jokes in my sermons. As everybody told me how funny I was, I said to myself, 'I'll try it.' And I also didn't want to get up at eight o'clock in the morning." That summer, Mason went to the Catskills and took up a job as a busboy at a hotel. He wasn't very good, but his boss liked him and offered him a job as a lifeguard instead, even though he couldn't swim. Mason started telling jokes about his job at amateur nights, and became a hit.