Jews and Humor

Leonard J. Greenspoon

• Éditeur: Purdue University Press
• Année: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781612491554
• Sujet: Social Sciences
• Sous-sujet: Jewish Studies

Jews and humor is, for most people, a natural and felicitous collocation. In spite of, or perhaps because of, a history of crises and living on the edge, Jews have often created or resorted to humor. But what is humor? And what makes certain types, instances, or performances of humor "Jewish"? These are among the myriad queries addressed by the fourteen authors whose essays are collected in this volume. And, thankfully, their observations, always apt and often witty, are expressed with a lightness of style and a depth of analysis that are appropriate to the many topics they cover. The scholars who contributed to this collection allow readers both to discern the common features that make up "Jewish humor" and to delight in the individualism and eccentricities of the many figures whose lives and accomplishments are narrated here. Because these essays are written in a clear, jargon-free style, they will appeal to everyone—even those who don't usually crack a smile!

Jewish Jokes, Yiddish Storytelling, and Sholem Aleichem: A Discursive Approach*

Jordan Finkin

To begin with the straightforward statement that “laughter is universal; humor is local” is to assert that humor is an area in which cultural resonances feature quite prominently. However, although cultures do have humor, and although humor is not exclusive to the Jews, within the Jewish cultural system, and specifically within the Ashkenazi Jewish cultural polysystem, humor is Jewish. One important incarnation of this humor is the joke. There is, of course, much to say about jokes, and in surveying some of the writing on this notoriously slippery genre, I will focus on a subject that receives relatively shorter scholarly shrift: the important relationship between joketelling and storytelling. I maintain that such a relationship does exist, that it is both an intimate and a complicated one, that it was recognized by some of modern Yiddish literature’s most important authors, and that, as a result, it has exerted some influence on the development of that literature. In order to support these claims, I analyze their relation to the story “Der daytsh” (The German; 1902) by Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916), one of the great folk satirists of Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe. I argue that this story is, among other things, a long joke clothed as a literary narrative: a literary joke. The technique deployed, the specific “clothing” used, shows the cultural stitching between the Jewish joke and Yiddish literature.

The following joke, for obvious reasons, occupies a special position among those who study Jewish humor:

When one tells a joke to a farmer, he laughs three times. The first time he laughs when one tells him the joke; the second time when one explains it to him; and the third time when he understands it.

A nobleman laughs twice. One time he laughs when one tells it to him and the second time when one explains it, because in any case he doesn’t understand it.

An officer only laughs once: when one tells it to him, because he won’t let it be explained and he doesn’t understand.

But a Jew, when one tells him a joke, says: “What are you talking about! That’s an old joke!” and he can tell the joke better!²

This text is the first example found in what is, in effect, a collection of jokes, gathered by Immanuel Olsvanger and entitled Röyte Pomerantsen. There is, of course, a thematic reason why a collection of jokes would begin with a metajoke—that is, a joke about joketelling.³ However, it also reveals something of the “Jewishness” of the activity itself. One should take note of this joke’s Jewish discursive weight on one-upmanship (and the related idea designated in Yiddish as griblen zikh, to inquire probingly) and competitive engagement, which are part of the key to understanding the issue.

Olsvanger opens his introduction with a programmatic statement: “Allow me to present you with this edition of Yiddish folk tales, that I took down just as they were told to me by the Jews of Eastern Europe themselves.”⁴ Attention should be paid to two elements about the data (that is, the jokes) in this book: they are referred to as “folk tales”; and they are orally repeated and collected. How is the joke quoted above, for example, a “folk tale”? The short answer is that it is and it is not. However, we should not assume that Olsvanger was careless with his labels. This categorization indicates a terminological slippage between two concepts that overlap intra culturally but are inter culturally distinct. Jokes, stories, and folktales can be maintained as separate categories, as many Western cultures are wont to do. However, despite their recognizable proximity in semantic space, the categories within Yiddish culture are fuzzier. This fuzziness was perceived by participants in that culture (such as Olsvanger), which is reflected in the literary experiment undertaken by Sholem Aleichem.

One important similarity highlighted by this connection between folktales and jokes is the oral component. Olsvanger mentioned that he collected his samples orally from informants in Eastern Europe. The notion of a storytelling or joketelling event, performance, or exchange should not be underplayed. In fact, a two-tiered structure of story/joke and storytelling/ joketelling sustains a complicated system of cultural connections between what is narrative and what is performative. Ultimately, these correspondences drive some of the innovations in modern Yiddish literary language, as I will discuss below in relation to “Der daytsh.” In this connection, one important aspect of jokes is that they function in part by operating on the likely, even collective, assumptions of the audience and by manipulating them. In this way, jokes actively implicate the audience in the social context of joketelling.⁵ Part of this implication and manipulation of assumptions is the joketeller’s intention to “frustrate” these expectations.⁶

If the social implication of the audience in the joketelling context of performance is part of the joke’s Sitz im Leben, then its Jewish discursive content is part of its Sitz in der Kultur. Jewish discourse is a way of thinking, speaking, and writing that developed in part out of traditional rabbinic language and entered Jewish culture more generally.⁷ This feature of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi culture was an important element in the creation and development of a modern Yiddish literary language. As the study-house culture of Yiddish-speaking scholars, who were the elite of that society, came into contact with the wider culture, some of the patterns of its discourse—including vocabulary, grammatical features, and modes of argumentation—were “nativized” and absorbed into that culture. Answering questions with questions, for example, or competitive argumentation⁸ and indeed joketelling all owe some of their cultural diffusion to this principle.

Words and texts were focal objects within the Jewish reality of Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe, given the centripetal force exerted by the Talmud on that culture.⁹ Yiddish reacted strongly to the associative “logic” and multidirectional narrative orientation of its structure and style. The dialogic mode of the text was mirrored by the dialogical context in which it was studied and debated. And that context was, for lack of a better term, competitive. A piercing question that bursts a proposition is often more highly valued than a conclusive proof. Jewish discourse appears as a way of engaging, understanding, and coming to terms with a textually oriented reality based on recognized and unmarked patterns of thought and speech.

One might well ask how this works in practice once that discourse has been accommodated and absorbed into the wider culture. The answer is, among other things, humorously. A telling example from the point of view of Jewish discourse and of joketelling and storytelling is the following:

We had in our shtetl a coachman whose name was Dovidke. When one would call him “coachman” he didn’t like it at all. As he used to say: “I am no coachman! I have a wagon and a horse, and I drive; and whoever wants to ride along, let him ride! But I am not a coachman.” And as for driving he used to drive with wisdom. One night there was a big storm. And just that night he departed on a long journey. Some days later they asked him how he got through that night. So he says: “It was a difficult journey. But I drove with great acuity.” So they ask him: “What does that mean, ‘drove with acuity’?” So he says: “I drove by means of a kal-vekhoymer and a gezeyre-shove.¹⁰ So listen up. Having set out several miles that night, a wheel of my wagon gets it in its head to fall off. So what do I do? I drive with a kal-vekhoymer ! If a little cart on two wheels can go, then my wagon with three wheels will certainly be able to go! So I drove on. I hadn’t gone two minutes when another wheel fell off. So I gave it a thought and found a gezeyre-shove : just as a little cart goes on two wheels, so I will go with two wheels!—And I drove on. Another misfortune, and a third wheel fell off! Do you think I got rattled? Perish the thought! I drove on with a kal-vekhoymer : if a sled without wheels can go, how much more so will my wagon with only one wheel surely go! So I drove on! The fourth wheel then also up and fell off. So what is one to do? I drove on with a gezeyre-shove : just as a sled goes without wheels, so will my wagon go without wheels! And I drove! Don’t ask what became of me and my passengers and my wagon; but I drove!¹¹

What is here germane from this fascinating text is the practical force that manipulation of these discursive strategies is thought to exert on the world. The logical structures, embodied as tools meant to negotiate reality, are able to persuade the coachman to stay on course, throwing common sense to the winds. That a coachman—a low-status livelihood whose typical occupants were generally not textually educated—essentially still understands and employs such logic gives evidence of the diffusion and assimilation of an elite textual discourse in the wider Yiddish-speaking culture.¹²

This brings us back to the question: What is a Jewish joke? Does such a thing exist? The philosopher Ted Cohen has maintained that “Jews have no monopoly on jokes, nor on good jokes, nor even on jokes of a particular kind, and yet there is a characteristic association of Jews with a certain joking spirit.” Cohen quite rightly asserts that it is “impossible to define Jewish humor”; however, one may describe or characterize it, which he does as follows: “(1) it is the humor of outsiders; (2) it exploits a deep and lasting concern with logic and language.”¹³ This description represents part of an important shift in the larger discussion of Jewish jokes and Jewish humor. As a category, the Jewish joke received its kosher certificate as a subject of modern intellectual inquiry from Sigmund Freud in his famous study Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905). The long shadow of that work continues to this day, with its psychological readings and essentialization of Jewish humor as one of self-criticism or inwardly directed ridicule. Irving Howe’s comment that “Jewish humor was conceived as a means of internal criticism”¹⁴ is a simple and classic iteration of that premise. Although this idea persists in some areas, particularly and interestingly in the analysis of Sholem Aleichem’s oeuvre and notably in his stories about the character Tevye the dairyman, there have been diverging lines of inquiry questioning and problematizing precisely that approach. One of the earlier studies along that line was the strongly worded essay by Dan Ben-Amos, “The ‘Myth’ of Jewish Humor.” Beginning with a debunking of the accepted Freudian wisdom as an “interpretation,” and pursuing its ramifications through various disciplines, he ultimately presents his case as a folklorist’s critique of the concept of Jewish humor as a retrospective categorization rather than a sociologically verifiable reality of actual communities.¹⁵ As a folklorist, he wants to be able to test via social-scientific methods the accuracy of the persistent psychological claims.¹⁶ His conclusion is best summed up in his title.

The idea underlying Ben-Amos’s important comment—“The textual basis for the whole idea of Jewish humor, as it developed in the twentieth century, is the personal recollections or literary collections of jokes”¹⁷—is picked up by, among others, the anthropologist Elliott Oring. Arguing that Jewish humor is a construct, “an idea,”¹⁸ he tries to historicize that idea, namely the conceptualization of Jewish humor. Where Ben-Amos cites an anthological impetus in the early part of the twentieth century, noting the many collections of jokes and humorou...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Editor’s Introduction
• Contributors
• Humor in the Bible
• Why Did the Widow Have a Goat in Her Bed? Jewish Humor and Its Roots in the Talmud and Midrash
• But Is it Funny? Identifying Humor, Satire, and Parody in Rabbinic Literature
• Masekhet Purim
• Jewish Humor as a Source of Research on Polish-Jewish Relations
• Jewish Jokes, Yiddish Storytelling, and Sholem Aleichem: A Discursive Approach
• Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Karl: Immigrant Humor and the Depression
• Nuances and Subtleties in Jewish Film Humor
• The Bad Girls of Jewish Comedy: Gender, Class, Assimilation, and Whiteness in Postwar America
• One Clove Away From a Pomander Ball: The Subversive Tradition of Jewish Female Comedians
• Heckling the Divine: Woody Allen, the Book of Job, and Jewish Theology after the Holocaust
• Tragicomedy and Zikkaron in Mel Brooks’s To Be or Not To Be
• “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore”: The Musical Humor of Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys in Historical and Geographical Perspective
• The New Jewish Blackface: African American Tropes in Contemporary Jewish Humor