Jewish humor

The tradition of humor in Judaism dates back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient Middle East, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal and often anecdotal humor of Ashkenazi Jews which took root in the United States over the last hundred years, including in secular Jewish culture. European Jewish humor in its early form developed in the Jewish community of the Holy Roman Empire, with theological satire becoming a traditional way of clandestinely opposing Christianization.

Modern Jewish humor emerged during the nineteenth century among German-speaking Jews of the ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment), matured in the shtetls of the Russian Empire, and then flourished in twentieth-century America, arriving with the millions of Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe between the 1880s and the early 1920s.

Beginning with vaudeville and continuing through radio, stand-up, film, and television, a disproportionately high percentage of American, British, German, and Russian comedians have been Jewish. ''Time'' estimated in 1978 that 80 percent of professional American comics were Jewish.

Jewish humor is diverse, though it most often favors wordplay, irony, and satire, while its themes are highly anti-authoritarian, mocking religious and secular life alike. Sigmund Freud considered Jewish humor unique in that its humor is primarily derived from mocking the in-group (Jews) rather than the "other". However, rather than simply being self-deprecating, it also contains an element of self-praise.

History

Jewish humor is rooted in several traditions. Recent scholarship places the origins of Jewish humor in one of history's earliest recorded documents, the Hebrew Bible, as well as the Talmud. In particular, 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 humor traces some roots of the Jewish self-deprecating humor to the medieval influence of Arabic traditions on the Hebrew literature by quoting a witticism from Yehuda Alharizi's ''Tahkemoni''. A later Sephardic tradition centered on a Nasreddin-derived folk character known as Djohá.

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 humor as a levelling device. Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, a scholar of Jewish humor, argued:

After Jews began to migrate 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 humor 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, Eddie Cantor, Jack Carter, Henny Youngman, Milton Berle, and Jerry Lewis were Jewish. The Jewish comedy tradition continues today, with Jewish humor much entwined with that of mainstream humor, as comedies like ''Seinfeld'', ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'', and Woody Allen films indicate.

Sigmund Freud in his ''Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious'', among other things, analyzes the nature of Jewish jokes.

Types

Religious humor

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

The part left out is the fact that it was traditional to go to services, regardless of what one believed, and the rabbi was merely following that tradition. This is like the story of the boy who tells his rabbi he can't daven (pray), because he no longer believes in God. The rabbi merely tells him, "Yes God, no God: doesn't matter! Three times a day, you DAVEN!"

Assimilation

The American Jewish community has been lamenting the rate of assimilation and absence of their children as they grow into adults.

Self-deprecating

Jews often mock their own negative stereotypes.

Wit

Similarly, in the tradition of the legal arguments of the Talmud, one prominent type of Jewish humor 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:

Or

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

Eastern European Jewish humor

A number of traditions in Jewish humor date back to stories and anecdotes from the 19th century.

Chełm

Jewish folklore makes fun of the Jewish residents of Chełm (Yiddish: כעלעם, Hebrew: חלם; often transcribed as Helm) in eastern Poland for their foolishness. These stories often center on the "wise" men and their silly decisions, similarly to the English Wise Men of Gotham or the German Schildbürger. The jokes were almost always about 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.

Many of these stories have become well-known thanks to storytellers and writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Nobel Prize-winning Jewish writer in the Yiddish language, who wrote ''The Fools of Chełm and Their History'' (published in English translation in 1973), and the great Soviet Yiddish poet Ovsey Driz who wrote stories in verse. The latter achieved great popularity in the Soviet Union in Russian and Ukrainian translations, and were made into several animated films.

Other notable adaptations of folklore Chełm stories into the mainstream culture are the comedy ''Chelmer Chachomim'' ("The Wise Men of Chelm") by Aaron Zeitlin, ''The Heroes of Chelm'' (1942) by Shlomo Simon, published in English translation as ''The Wise Men of Helm'' (Solomon Simon, 1945) and ''More Wise Men of Helm'' (Solomon Simon, 1965), and the book ''Chelmer Chachomim'' by Y. Y. Trunk. The animated short film comedy '' Village of Idiots'' also recounts Chełm tales.

Allen Mandelbaum's " Chelmaxioms : The Maxims, Axioms, Maxioms of Chelm" (David R. Godine, 1978) treats the wise men less as fools than as an "echt Chelm" of true scholars who in their narrow specialized knowledge are nonetheless knowledgeable but lacking sense.
The poetry of helmaxiomsis supposedly the discovered lost manuscripts of the wise men of Chelm.

Here are a few examples of a Chełm tale:

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 programme 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. He is also the protagonist in a new series of comics for children with the titles The Adventures of Hershele, Hershele Rescues the Captives, Hershele and the Treasure in Yerushalayim, Hershele makes the Grade, and Hershele Discovers America.

Humor about antisemitism

Much Jewish humor 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 humor):

There is also humor originating in the United States, such as this joke:

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

American Jewish humor

A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of American Jews rated humor as essential to their Jewish identity.

About religion

One common strain of Jewish humor 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:

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

As with most ethnicities, jokes have often mocked Jewish accents—at times gently, and at others quite harshly. One of the kinder examples is:

About Jews

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

Or,

Or,

Or,

Or,

Or,

Or, about traditional roles of men and women in Jewish families:

Or,

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

Or

Or

Or, on kvetching (complaining),

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

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