Mason, Topol--Why They Went

Performers Jackie Mason and Topol talked here this week about leaving Broadway to lend support to Israel.

Comedian Mason, who canceled three days of his one-man show, “Jackie Mason: Brand New,” to visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, said: “I found it difficult to be on stage telling jokes. What I was saying and doing was irrelevant.”

He toured missile damage sites and talked to families whose homes were destroyed. “Doesn’t it make you feel better to have a friend come to see you from thousands of miles away?” Mason, who left New York on Sunday night, was scheduled to go back on stage Friday after canceling four shows.

Topol, the star of the Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” also left his show and was taking a week off from the musical to visit family and friends in Tel Aviv.

“Chapeaux (hats off) to Jackie Mason, who interrupted his show,” Topol said in a brief telephone interview. “He’s a New Yorker. This is my home. I had to be where my heart is. We’re very good friends, Jackie and I. We had lunch in New York on Friday and I left Saturday night.”