Gary VandenBergh

Will Elder

MAD Magazine’s Yiddishe kup

It’s a year today since we lost a cultural icon whose name is barely known. Like the Marx Brothers, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen, Will Elder brought a Yiddish sensibility to American culture. The long-time Englewood resident was the artist who put the mad in MAD Magazine. Along with the late Harvey Kurtzman, another Yiddishe kup, he brought distinctly Yiddish thought processes to the youth of America in the dull 1950s. Meshugge Villy, as he was called by his family growing up, was a seminal figure in infusing American culture with a healthy dose of Jewish humor. And he was my father-in-law.