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Jewish humour

Jewish humour is the long tradition of humour in Judaism dating back to the Torah and the Midrash, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal, self-deprecating and often anecdotal humour originating in Eastern Europe and which took root in the United States over the last hundred years. Beginning with vaudeville, and continuing through radio, stand-up comedy, film, and television, a disproportionately high percentage of American and Russian comedians have been Jewish.

The history of Jewish humour

Jewish humour is rooted in several traditions. The first is the intellectual and legal methods of the Talmud, which uses elaborate legal arguments and situations often seen as so absurd as to be humorous in order to tease out the meaning of religious law.

Hillel Halkin in his essay about Jewish humour traces some roots of the Jewish self-deprecating humour to the medieval influence of Arabic traditions on the Hebrew literature by quoting a witticism from Yehuda Alharizi's Tahkemoni.

A more recent one is an egalitarian tradition among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in which the powerful were often mocked subtly, rather than attacked overtly—as Saul Bellow once put it, "oppressed people tend to be witty." Jesters known as badchens used to poke fun at prominent members of the community during weddings, creating a good-natured tradition of humour as a levelling device. Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, a scholar of Jewish humour, argued:

After Jews began to emigrate to America in large numbers, they, like other minority groups, found it difficult to gain mainstream acceptance and obtain upward mobility. (As Lenny Bruce lampooned, "He was charming... They said, 'C'mon! Let's go watch the Jew be charming!'") The newly-developing entertainment industry, combined with the Jewish humour tradition, provided a potential route for Jews to succeed. One of the first successful radio "sitcoms," The Goldbergs, featured a Jewish family. As radio and television matured, many of its most famous comedians, including Jack Benny, Sid Caesar, George Burns, Henny Youngman and Milton Berle, were Jewish. The Jewish comedy tradition continues today, with Jewish humour much entwined with that of mainstream humour, as comedies like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm indicate.

Sigmund Freud in his Wit and the Unconscious, among other things, analyzes the nature of the Jewish jokes.

Types of Jewish humour

Religious humour

As befits a community to which religion was so important, much humor centers on the relationship of Judaism to the individual Jew and the community.

Wits

Similarly, in the tradition of the legal arguments of the Talmud, one prominent type of Jewish humour involves clever, often legalistic, solutions to Talmudic problems, such as:

Tales of the Rebbes

Some jokes make fun of the "Rebbe miracle stories" and involve different hasidim bragging about their teachers' miraculous abilities:

The lives of the early hasidim, while not funny in and of themselves, are rich in humorous incidents. The dealings between rabbis, tzaddikim, and peasants form a rich tapestry of lore.

Eastern European Jewish humour

A number of traditions in Jewish humour date back to stories and anecdotes from the 1800s.

Chelm

One popular humorous tradition from Eastern Europe involved tales of the people of Chełm, a town reputed in these jokes to be inhabited by fools (including their rabbi). The jokes were almost always centered on silly solutions to problems. Some of these solutions display "foolish wisdom" (reaching the correct answer by the wrong train of reasoning), while others are simply wrong.

Chelm tales were told by authors like Sholom Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer. A typical Chelm story might begin, "It is said that after God made the world, he filled it with people. He sent off an angel with two sacks, one full of wisdom and one full of foolishness. The second sack was of course much heavier. So after a time it started to drag. Soon it got caught on a mountaintop and so all the foolishness spilled out and fell into Chelm."

Here are a few examples of a Chelm tale:

Or,

Hershele Ostropoler

Hershele Ostropoler, also known as Hershel of Ostropol, was a legendary prankster who was based on a historic figure. Thought to have come from Ukraine, he lived in the small village of Ostropol, working as shochet, a ritual slaughterer. According to legend he lost his job because of his constant joking, which offended the leaders of the village.

In his subsequent wanderings throughout Ukraine, he became a familiar figure at restaurants and inns.

Eventually he settled down at the court of Rabbi Boruch of Medzhybizh, grandson of the Baal Shem Tov. The rabbi was plagued by frequent depressions, and Hershele served as a sort of court jester, mocking the rabbi and his cronies, to the delight of the common folk.

After his death he was remembered in a series of pamphlets recording his tales and witty remarks.

He was the subject of several epic poems, a novel, a comedy performed in 1930 by the Vilna Troupe, and a U.S. television program in the 1950s. Two illustrated children's books, The Adventures of Hershel of Ostropol, and Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, have been published. Both books were written by Eric Kimmel and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. In 2002, a play entitled Hershele the Storyteller was performed in New York City.

Humour about antisemitism

Much Jewish humour takes the form of self-deprecating comments on Jewish culture, acting as a shield against antisemitic stereotypes by exploiting them first:

Or, on a similar note:

And another example, a direct slice of galgenhumor (gallows humour):

There is also this sort of humour originating in the United States, such as this one:

This one combines accusations of the lack of patriotism and avarice:

American Jewish humour

The role of Yiddish

Some Yiddish words may sound comical to an English speaker. Terms like shnook and shmendrik, shlemiel and shlimazel (often considered inherently funny words) were exploited for their humorous sounds, as were "Yinglish" shm-reduplication constructs, such as "fancy-schmancy". Yiddish constructions—such as ending sentences with questions—became part of the verbal wordplay of Jewish comedians.

About religion

One common strain of Jewish humour examines the role of religion in contemporary life, often gently mocking the religious hypocrite. For example:

Or, on differences between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements:

In particular, Reform Jews may be lampooned for their rejection of traditional Jewish beliefs. An example, from one of Woody Allen's early stand-up routines:

Jokes have been made about the shifting of gender roles (in the more traditional Orthodox movement, women marry at a young age and have many children, while the more liberal Conservative and Reform movements make gender roles more egalitarian, even ordaining women as Rabbis). The Reconstructionist movement was the first to ordain homosexuals, all of which leads to this joke:

In Without Feathers, Woody Allen takes ignorance to an absurd level:

Often jokes revolve around the social practice of the Jewish religion:

As with most ethnicities, jokes have often mocked Jewish accents, sometimes gently, other times, not so much. One of the kinder examples is:

About Jews

Jewish humour continues to exploit stereotypes of Jews, both as a sort of "in-joke", and as a form of self-defense. Jewish mothers, "cheapness", hypochondria, and other stereotyped habits are all common subjects. Frugality has been frequently singled out:

Or,

About traditional roles of men and women in Jewish families:

Or, on parenting, (from David Bader's Haikus for Jews):

Regarding hypochondria:

Or, on kvetching,

A version of that joke is quoted in Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods, by Michael Wex, who writes,

"It contains virtually every important element of the Yiddish-speaking mind-set in easily accessible form: the constant tension between the Jewish and the non-Jewish; the faux naivete that allows the old man to pretend that he isn't disturbing anyone; the deflation of the other passenger's hopes, the disappointment of all his expectations after he has watered the Jew; and most importantly of all, the underlying assumption, the fundamental idea that kvetching - complaining - is not only a pastime, not only a response to adverse or imperfect circumstance, but a way of life that has nothing to do with the fulfillment or frustration of desire.

About Christianity

Many Jewish jokes involve a rabbi and a Christian clergyman, exploiting different interpretations of a shared textual background. Often they start with something like "A rabbi and a priest..." and make fun of either the rabbi's interpretation of Christianity or (seeming) differences between Christian and Jewish interpretation of some areas.

Or, much more succinctly,

A few more examples:

Or,

And finally, possibly the most gigantic clash of religions:

About Antisemitism

Jewish humour in the Soviet Union

In the Stalinist police state, it was not uncommon to get purged not only for telling a casual joke, but even for not reporting it to the authorities. See Russian joke in general, or more specifically Rabinovich jokes, Russian Jewish jokes, Russian political jokes; also History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union

Or Or Or, in the last years of the Soviet Union: Or

Israeli humour

Israeli humour featured many of the same themes as Jewish humour elsewhere, making fun of the country and its habits, while containing a fair bit of gallows humour as well, as a joke from a 1950 Israeli joke book indicates:

There are also jokes on different groups in Israel, such as Moroccan Jews:

Or about the Israelis' view of themselves:

Finally, in a clash of Rabbinical humor and Israeli humor:

On February 14, 2006, in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, and, in particular, to the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition, an Israeli group announced an Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoons Contest. The contest was opened to Jewish cartoonists only, who were invited to poke fun at their own religion and ethnicity.

Notes

References

San Diego Jewish Chronicle on Jewish Humour
Funny People - A Film About Jewish Humour
Harry Liechter's Clean Jewish Humour Site
Novak, William & Waldoks, Moshe Big Book of Jewish Humour, originally published by Harper Perennial (1981) ISBN 0-06-090917-X.
The Jewish jokes of a word in your eye

External links

"On Jewish Humour" a discourse in English by "the Jewish Philosopher", C. Israel Lutsky. Yiddish Radio Project (one of their few English-language recordings). 7-minute RealAudio recording.
The Jewish Mother, Slate, June 13, 2007
Modern Jewish Humor