Jay Kogen

Origins and early life

Jay Kogen was born in New York City on 3 May 1963 to a Jewish family; his father is the comedy writer Arnie Kogen, born in Brooklyn to Jewish parents, and the son grew up in Los Angeles inside the trade.

Work and career

With his writing partner Wallace Wolodarsky he joined The Simpsons for its first four seasons and the two co-wrote ten episodes, among them Homer's Odyssey, Bart the Daredevil, Lisa the Greek and Last Exit to Springfield, which is regularly named the finest episode the series ever made. Two of those ten built the character of Krusty the Clown, and the second of them settled something the show had left open: in Like Father, Like Clown, broadcast on 24 October 1991, Kogen and Wolodarsky parodied The Jazz Singer to establish that Krusty is Jewish, the son of Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky, who had disowned him for becoming a comedian.

Sam Simon rejected the idea; James L. Brooks approved it. Two rabbis, Lavi Meier and Harold M. Schulweis, were credited as technical consultants on the script, and Jackie Mason, an ordained rabbi turned comedian, won an Emmy for voicing the father. Kogen later wrote for Frasier and won his own Emmy in 1999 for Merry Christmas, Mrs. Moskowitz, the episode in which Frasier's family passes itself off as Jewish, and he has written for Malcolm in the Middle.