Was Famously Jewish Comedian Jerry Seinfeld Once a Scientologist?

Jerry Seinfeld must have known what he was doing when he beeped and censored the name of his enemy during his interview with Bridget Everett on the latest season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Within hours of binging, the entire internet took out their detective coats and magnifying lenses trying to uncover who the comedian was bad-mouthing.

With the help of sleuths on reddit, we discovered he was talking about director and comedian Bobcat Goldthwait. What's more, these two comics have longstanding beef that's being going on for over 20 years now. 

On one occasion, Bobcat even mentioned Jerry was a "spooky, weird Scientologist guy banging teenage girls." But wait, is Jerry Seinfeld a Scientologist? Here's what we know. 

Chances are that whether or not you're a die-hard Larry David fan, you likely know Jerry Seinfeld as a Jewish comic. His Judaism comes up on many episodes of Seinfeld, and he even brings it up on his Netflix series often, recently saying something to the effect of how his family never hosted dinner parties, opting rather to order in Chinese food, because they were Jewish.

But digging into the longstanding drama between Bobcat and Jerry, we began to wonder whether there was any truth to the claim that he ever practiced Scientology. Alas, his dating history — which includes him falling for a 17-year-old when he was 39 — is very extensively documented. 

As it turns out, Jerry did dabble in Scientology for a bit back in the late '70s and '80s, when both Scientology and our public perception of it was vastly different from what it is today. In a 2007 interview with Parade, the comic opened up about his experience with Scientology.

"I last really studied, oh, it's almost 30 years ago," he said. "It was interesting. Believe it or not, it's extremely intellectual and clinical in its approach to problem-solving, which really appealed to me. I actually got to it from my auto mechanics teacher in high school, who was into it, and he was telling me about it."

Jerry goes on to explain how Scientology helped him in his early days of his comedy career. "In my early years of stand-up, it was very helpful," he said. "I took a couple of courses. One of them was in communication, and I learned some things about communication that really got my act going."

"It was just things about understanding the communications cycle," he added. "Understanding that really helped me on stage to understand how you have to invade the space of the audience a little bit. I learned that early on... You have to invade them just a little bit. Not too much, because then it's obnoxious. But you can't be short of them either, or you won't control them."

The technology of Scientology is another thing that drew Jerry in, initially. "That's what really appealed to me about it. It's not faith-based. It's all about technology. And I'm obsessed with technology."

We were spinning out that there could be another universe in which Jerry Seinfeld is actually as much of a Scientologist as Beck and has just put on a Jewish persona to maintain his TV brand. But no, he really is Jewish and so is his wife Jessica, and his kids have had bar and bat mitzvahs.

Phew. Glad we cleared that up.