God Laughed

Sources of Jewish Humor

Hershey H. Friedman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351517171
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Humor has had a profound effect on the way the Jewish people see the world, and has sustained them through millennia of hardships and suffering. God Laughed reviews, organizes, and categorizes the humor of the ancient Jewish texts-the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and Midrash-in a clear, readable, and accessible manner. These works have influenced the Jewish people in many ways, and all are replete with humor and wit. Inevitably, this oeuvre of Jewish humor has itself influenced generations of comics, as well as genres of humor. The authors use examples of Biblical humor from several broad categories, including irony, sarcasm, wordplay, humorous names, humorous imagery, and humorous situations. Because their primary purpose is not to entertain, but to teach humanity how to live the ideal life, much of the humor in the Talmud and the Midrash has a single purpose: to demonstrate that evil is wrong and even, at times, ludicrous. This may help explain why approximately 1, 500 years after its closing, the Talmud is still such a fascinating work.

Part I

Introduction

1

Studying Jewish Humor

Engaging in scholarly discourse on humor is probably the surest way to put one’s audience to sleep and—uhm—to actually not be funny. Still, we try in this volume to walk the admittedly very fine line between scholarship and entertainment.

What is humor? The bottom line is that humor has the ability to make people laugh, smile, or chuckle, at least inwardly. There are, of course, many different types of humor, including puns, wordplay, riddles, jokes, satire, lampoon, sarcasm, irony, wit, black humor, slapstick, farce, burlesque, caricature, and parody. The differences among these are not always great. In particular, burlesque, caricature, and parody are very much alike and refer to literary or dramatic works that mimic serious works in order to achieve a humorous or satiric effect. Likewise, the difference between satire and lampoon is not great.

Human beings seem to naturally gravitate toward all forms of humor. Indeed, humor has been shown to be useful and effective in many different areas of human endeavor, including medicine, counseling, education, advertising and, of course, communication.¹ Humor has many functions, both positive and negative. Humor has been found to be an important de-stressing device.² One important function of humor, according to Meritt Conrad Hyers, is to minimize the distance between the sacred and the profane.³

Scholars and other mavens return repeatedly to consider whether there is such a thing as Jewish humor. While opinions vary, we prefer to believe that Jewish humor exists, and that it has its own peculiar characteristics and unique elements. Conversely, if the Jews in a joke can easily be replaced by individuals of some other ethnicity, that should not really be considered Jewish humor. Examples that fail this test can be found among many supposedly Jewish jokes about sex and marriage.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, notes that Jewish humor is rooted in several traditions.

Jewish humour is the long tradition of humour in Judaism dating back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient mid-east, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal, self-deprecating, crude, and often anecdotal humor originating in Eastern Europe and which took root in the United States over the last hundred years.⁴

One thing is certain, a very high percentage of major American comics are Jewish. A traditional number mentioned is 80 percent.⁵ And here is what some well-known Jewish humorists have to say about Jewish humor:⁶

David Steinberg: Ethnic groups are attracted to comedy. When the Jews were in the ghetto, they became the comedians because they were the outsiders.

Roseanne Barr: If you make fun of your own in front of the dominant culture here, you can live next door to them.

Mel Brooks: My comedy comes from the feeling that as a Jew, even though you’re better and smarter, you’ll never belong.

Mel Brooks: One of my lifelong jobs has been to make the world laugh at Adolf Hitler, because how do you get even? There’s only one way to get even, you have to bring him down with ridicule.

In fact, according to Mel Gordon, the humor industry in pre-Nazi Berlin was almost entirely Jewish. The Nazi propaganda machinery considered self-deprecating Jewish humor a way to fool the public with regard to the Jewish proclivity toward criminality and was “yet another tool in the Jews unending quest for world domination.”⁷

Robin Williams tells the story of the time he was interviewed in Germany:

I was once on a German talk show, and this woman said to me, “Mr. Williams, why do you think there is not so much comedy in Germany?” And I said, “Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?”

Philologos, a columnist for The Forward, expounds on the derivation of the Yiddish expression “Man plans and God laughs.” According to his timeline, this modern proverb, originally based on a passage from Proverbs 16:9, first appeared in Latin rhyme as “Man proposes, God disposes,” then emerged in German as “Man thinks, God directs,” rhyming denkt (thinks) with lenkt (directs). Interestingly, there was no easy way to translate this rather serious proverb into Yiddish, as Yiddish did not have the word denkt, but rather, trakht (thinks). So, what to rhyme with trakht? Of course, lakht (laughs).⁸

William Novak and Moshe Waldoks provide an extensive discussion on Jewish humor.⁹ They conclude that “Jewish humor is too rich and too diverse to be adequately described by a single generalization.” They argue quite convincingly that the belief that traditional Jewish humor is “laughter through tears” is incorrect. Many Jews, especially those from Eastern Europe, had to deal with “persecution, poverty, and uprootedness” and it found its way into the humor. However, Jewish humor is much richer than that and deals with so much more including schlemiels, God, matchmaking, marriage, family, schnorrers, Talmudic reasoning, rabbis, business, etc. They try to define Jewish humor but admit that this may be an exercise in futility. In a similar vein, Stephen Whitfield observes that Jewish humor is like pornography, in the sense that: “I know it when I see it.”¹⁰

Jewish humor covers such a broad spectrum it may be futile to try to create a unified framework for classifying humor as “Jewish.” We feel strongly that any attempt to define Jewish humor will fail. Jewish humor is broad, invoking specific experiences and universal values, often at the same time. Sometimes Jewish humor may appear to be self-deprecating, but then it can appear to be poking fun at the non- Jew, for example, in the goyishe kopf brand of Jewish joke. Whitfield¹¹ correctly observes that some note its aggressiveness and some talk of its kindness. As we shall see, the Yiddish curse is actually both aggressive and sweet at the same time.

The range of prototypes in Jewish humor includes the schlemiel, the wise men of Chelm, the snide waiter, the arrogant beggar, the matchmaker, the anti-Semite, the shrew, the pompous fool, and many more. There are Chassidic stories and strange Yiddish curses. There is gallows humor, referencing centuries of oppression, the Holocaust, and assimilation. Many examples are sprinkled throughout this volume.¹² To include a joke from every conceivable category of Jewish humor would make this book much too long and, regardless, there are a number of excellent compilations¹³ as Jewish humor has been the subject of many treatises, for both scholarly and entertainment purposes.

Do you have to be Jewish to appreciate Jewish humor? Well, sometimes it helps:

In a small village in the Ukraine, a terrifying rumor was spreading: A Christian girl had been found murdered. Realizing the dire consequences of such an event, and fearing a pogrom, the Jewish community instinctively gathered in the synagogue to plan whatever defensive actions were possible under these circumstances. Just as the emergency meeting was being called to order, in ran the president of the synagogue, out of breath and all excited. “Brothers,” he cried out, “I have wonderful news! The murdered girl is Jewish!”¹⁴

Not everyone will find this bit of tragic humor funny. Focusing a joke on the tragedy of the notorious blood libel—that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood in the matzot eaten on Passover—which led to numerous pogroms in Jewish history, might be considered by some to be in poor taste. In fact, this is the problem Steve Lipman had when writing his fascinating work on the use of anti-Nazi humor during the Holocaust,¹⁵ and he has the same problem today with a book he is working on dealing with humor used by those afflicted with chronic or life-threatening illnesses.¹⁶ Those that do not suffer from these kinds of ailments find it hard to believe that, for example, cancer patients can make jokes about chemotherapy; in fact, a simple search of the Internet brings up many such jokes.

Much Jewish humor is self-deprecating. On the other hand, the joke may be about outwitting an oppressor or, even, outwitting each other. In many jokes, the Jew, using his “superior” intelligence, outwits the oppressor du jour. For example,

During the Second World War, a southern matron calls up the local army base.

“We would be honored,” she tells the sergeant who takes her call, “to accommodate five soldiers at our Thanksgiving dinner.”

“That’s very gracious of you, ma’am,” the sergeant answers.

“Just please make sure they’re not Jews.”

“I understand ma’am.”

Thanksgiving afternoon, the woman answers the front doorbell and is horrified to find five black soldiers standing in the doorway.

“We’re here for the Thanksgiving dinner, ma’am,” one of the soldiers says.

“Bu … bu … but your sergeant has made a terrible mistake, ” the woman says.

“Oh no, ma’am,” the soldier answers. “Sergeant Greenberg never makes mistakes.”¹⁷

and

Two Arab men board a short commuter flight to New York, one at the window, one in the middle of a three-seat row. At the last moment, a little Jewish man arrives, and takes the aisle seat. He kicks off his shoes, stretches his feet out and gets comfortable. At this point, the Arab sitting in the window seat says, “I think I’ll go to the galley and get a Coke.”

The Jew stands up and says “No problem. I’ll get it for you.” While he is gone, the Arab picks up the Jew’s shoe and spits in it.

As soon as the Jew returns with the Coke, the other Arab says, “Would you mind? I think I’ll have one too.”

“No problem,” the Jew says, and he goes to get another Coke. The Arab in the middle seat quickly picks up the Jew’s other shoe and spits in it. The Jew returns with the Coke, and they all sit back and enjoy the flight.

A short while later, the plane prepares to land, and the Jew slips his feet into his shoes. Immediately, he realizes what his seatmates had done. “How long must this go on?” he exclaims. “This enmity between our peoples … this hatred … this spitting in shoes and peeing in Cokes?” ¹⁸

As we will see, humorous anecdotes of this sort can even be found in the ancient Jewish sources. Well, maybe not references to peeing in Coke, but certainly to outwitting the enemies of the Jewish people. In the Talmud and Midrash, some humor shows that wicked people are outsmarted by the good people. In fact, the entire Book of Esther can be seen in that light.

Joseph Telushkin makes a powerful point about Jewish humor when he says that Jewish humor must express a Jewish sensibility.¹⁹ It must deal with a subject that is of great concern to the Jewish people. As such, many Jewish jokes address such sensitive issues as intermarriage, anti-Semitism, and assimilation, and many incorporate logic and argumentation. Novak and Waldoks also believe that Jewish humor is often substantive, that is, it is about something and is especially fond of topics such as food, anti-Semitism, family, wealth, health, and survival.²⁰

An old Jew on his death bed insists that he wishes to convert immediately to Catholicism. His friends and family argue the matter with him to no avail. Finally, they call in his Rabbi, who leans close to the dying man...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Heavenly Humor
• Part III: Humor in the Talmud and Midrash
• Part IV Conclusion
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index