No Joke
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2. Cited by Rudolph Herzog as a prime example of German Jewish humor in Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany, trans. Jefferson Chase (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Melville House, 2011): 6.
3. Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, trans. Shlomo Noble with Joshua A. Fishman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008): 1:181.
4. All examples, except where indicated, are taken from Nachman Blumental, Words and Expressions of the Khurbn-period [Yiddish] (Tel Aviv: I. L. Peretz Publishers, 1981).
5. Cited in ibid., 163; Samuel D. Kassow, Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 256–57.
6. Kassow, Who Will Write Our History? 256–57.
7. Dzigan, The Impact of Jewish Humor, 183.
8. Jerry Z. Muller, “Why Do Jews Succeed?” Web site Project Syndicate: A World of Ideas, March 29, 2010, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-do-jews-succeed-.
9. Yosef Guri, Lomir hern gute bsures: Dictionary of Blessings and Curses [Yiddish] (Jerusalem, 2005), 106.
10. Felix Mendelsohn, The Jew Laughs: Humorous Stories and Anecdotes, intro. A. A. Brill (Chicago: L. M. Stein, 1935), 173.
11. Many of these jokes are collected in David A. Harris and Izrail Rabinovich, eds., The Jokes of Oppression: Humor of Soviet Jews (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1988). See also works on Russian humor by Emil A. Draitser, including his autobiographical Shush! A Memoir: Growing Up Jewish under Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), and other referenced works in these chapters. Nowadays, collections and studies of Russian anekdoty are keeping pace with those devoted to Jewish humor.
12. Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope: A Memoir, trans. Max Hayward (New York: Atheneum, 1970), 14.
13. For illustrations of Sholem Aleichem, see Susan Tumarkin Goodman, ed., Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). The Jewish sources and subjects of Chagall’s art are most thoroughly considered in Benjamin Harshav, Marc Chagall and the Lost Jewish World: The Nature of Chagall’s Art and Iconography (New York: Rizzoli, 2006).
14. These jokes and versions of others cited in this chapter can be found in David Brandenberger, ed., Political Humor under Stalin (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2009), 3. This invaluable overview reminds us that study of the subject is still in its infancy.
15. This joke and the following in Harris and Rabinovich, The Jokes of Oppression, 41, 46.
16. James von Geldern and Richard Stites, eds., Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917–1953 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 212. The editors cull their anecdotes from five sources, but many can be found in or are clearly adapted from earlier collections of Yiddish humor.
17. Seth Graham, Resonant Dissonance: The Russian Joke in Cultural Context (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2009), 60.
18. Ted Cohen, Jokes (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999), 22. Cohen attributes this to Rabbi Elliot Gertel, but I have found and heard it elsewhere.
19. Harris and Rabinovich, The Jokes of Oppression, 126.
20. Di zelmenyaner hobn oysgearbet in meshekh fun doyres an eygenem reyakh—a min veykhn gerukh fun tsugelegenem hey mit nokh epes. Moshe Kulbak, The Zelmenyaners, trans. Hillel Halkin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 4.
21. Ibid., 23.
22. Ibid., 38.
23. Ibid., 144.
24. Ibid., 265.
25. Isaac Babel, “Di Grasso,” trans. Peter Constantine, in The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, ed. Nathalie Babel (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 699.
26. Ibid., 700.
27. Ibid., 702. A considerably soberer reading is offered by Gregory Freidin, “Fat Tuesday in Odessa: Isaac Babel’s ‘Di Grasso,’ ” reprinted in Harold Bloom, ed., Isaac Babel (New York: Chelsea, 1987), 199–214.
28. Isaac Babel, “Our Great Enemy: Trite Vulgarity,” Pravda, August 25, 1934. Reprinted in Isaac Babel, The Lonely Years, 1925–1939, ed. Nathalie Babel, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew and Max Hayward (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1964), 396–400.
29. A total of about two hundred thousand individuals served time for this offense, according to Roy Medvedev. Cited in Graham, Resonant Dissonances, 8.
30. Jurek Becker, Jacob the Liar, trans. Melvin Korfeld (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 92.
31. Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960), 290.
5. Hebrew Homeland
1. Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say about the Jews (New York: Quill, 1998), 173. This is an excellent guide to Jewish joking.
2. Sholem Aleichem, “Chava,” in Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Schocken, 1987), 69.
3. Theodor Reik, Jewish Wit (New York: Gamut, 1962), 26.
4. Shimen Dzigan, The Impact of Jewish Humor [Yiddish] (Tel Aviv: Orly, 1974), 317.
5. Mentshele, the Yiddish diminutive of mentsh, was widely used in Yiddish literature, popularized by the 1864 novel of Mendele Mocher Sforim, Dos kleyne mentshele [The little man]. The present wordplay, coined by the Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, follows the pattern of compression of Heine’s “He treated me famillionnairely.”
6. William Novak and Moshe Waldoks, eds., The Big Book of Jewish Humor: 25th Anniversary (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 137.
7. Shmuel Yosef Agnon, In the Heart of Seas, trans. I. M. Lask (New York: Schocken, 1947), 72.
8. Ibid., 20–21. I have slightly modified the translation.
9. Gershom Scholem, “S. Y. Agnon: The Last Hebrew Classic?” in Commentary 67 (1966). The article was a review of Agnon’s A Guest for the Night.
10. S. Y. Agnon, speech, city hall, Stockholm, December 10, 1966, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1966/agnon-speech.html.
11. Elliott Oring, Israeli Humor: The Content and Structure of the Chizbat of the Palmah (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 180–81. Most of this collection is culled and translated from Dan Ben Amotz and Haim Hefer, Yalkut ha-kezavim [Hebrew: A pack of lies] (Tel Aviv: Metsiut, 1979). I have made slight changes to the translation.
12. Oring, Israeli Humor, 156. For Oring’s discussion, see ibid., 71.
13. Bemedinat Hayehudim [In the land of the Jews: Israeli humor in the 20th century], directed by Gavriel Bibliyovits et al., eleven-part series (Tel Aviv, Matar Plus, 2006).
14. See, for example, Edna Ofek and Ira Cahanman, “Humor as a Common Denominator in Immigrant Society” [Hebrew], in Bikoret Ufarshanut 21 (December 1986): 69–85.
15. Judges’ statement, http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/PrasIsrael/Tashas/Hagashas/NimukeiAshoftimGashash.htm. Professor Aliza Shenhar served as committee chair. For a coffee-table anthology of the comedy group’s most popular expressions, see Gavri Banai, Az ma haya lanu sham? [All-time favorite phrases of the Gashash] (Ben-Shemen: Modan, 2004).
16. Givat halfon eina ona [Hill Halfon doesn’t answer], written by Assi Dayan and Naftali Alter, directed by Assi Dayan (1976).
17. Ibid.
18. Limor Shifman, Televised Humor and Social Cleavages in Israel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes of the Hebrew University, 2008), 111. See especially chapter 4.
19. Ofra Nevo and Jacob Levine, “Jewish Humor Strikes Again: The Outburst of Humor in Israel during the Gulf War,” Western Folklore 53, no. 2 (April 1994): 145.
20. Ofra Nevo, “The Psychological Contribution of Humor in Israel during the Gulf War” [Hebrew], Israel Journal of Psychology and Related Sciences 1994 (4): 41–50. .
21. Franz Kafka, diary entry, October 24, 1911, in Diaries, 1910–1913, trans. Joseph Kresh (New York, Schocken, 1948), 111.
22. Amir Gutfreund, Our Holocaust, trans. Jessica Cohen (New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2006), 3.
23. Ibid., 4.
Conclusion
1. Vladimir Karbusicky, Jewish Anecdotes from Prague, trans. David R. Beveridge (Prague: V Ráji, 2005), 14–15.
2. Ibid., 11.
3. Ibid., 96–97.
4. Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960), 131.
5. Henri Bergson, “Laughter,” in Comedy, intro. and ed. Wylie Sypher (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), 84.
6. Saul Bellow, “Op-Ed: Papuans and Zulus,” New York Times, March 10, 1994.
7. Angel Wagenstein, Isaac’s Torah, trans. (from Bulgarian) Elizabeth Frank and Deliana Simeonova (New York: Handsel Books, 2008); Adam Biro, Two Jews on a Train, trans. (from French) Catherine Tihanyi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Joseph Skibell, A Curable Romantic (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2010).
8. Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 115.
9. Ibid., 138–39.
10. Michael Brenner, “When Humor was Still at Home in Germany” [German], in Humor, ed. Gisela Dachs (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), 13. To Heine, Liebermann, Lubitsch, and Tucholsky, Brenner adds the caricatures of Thomas The-odor Heine, reviews of Alfred Kerr, revues of Friedrich Hollaender, literary parodies of Robert Neumann, political lyrics of Erich Mühsam and Walter Mehring, critical writings of Karl Kraus, reportage of Egon Erwin Kisch, aphorisms of Peter Altenberg, cabaret numbers of Fritz Grünbaum, Anton Kuh, Mynona, Roda Roda, Peter Hammerschlag, and Fritz Kalmar—as well as the studies of jokes by Freud and Reik.
Index
Abaleh, kah oti l’luna park (Vilozhny), 212–15
Abbott, Bud: Abbott and Costello, 192, 201
Abraham, 11, 22, 65, 94–95, 114–15, 185
absurdities, 28, 82–83, 89, 99, 130, 145, 206, 208, 210
accents, 86, 89, 121, 125, 144, 164
accommodation, Jewish, 147, 178, 190, 204. See also passivity
Adams, Joey (Joseph Abramowitz), 123
Adler, Hermann, 13
“Afn Pripetchik” (Warshawski), 61–62
aggression, 47, 86, 111, 137, 175, 251n6; anti-Israel, 240, 242; anti-Jewish, 49, 163, 239; Arab, 219; Israeli, 184
aggressive humor, 30, 39, 50, 136, 175, 195. See also Judenwitz
Agnon, S. Y. (Shai), 18, 88, 188–94, 197; “Agunot,” 188; A Guest for the Night, 192, 263n9; In the Heart of Seas, 189–92; Only Yesterday, 18
agunah, 188
aliyah (immigration to Israel), 136, 184, 191
Allen, Woody, 104, 130–31, 134, 136, 237
All in the Family, 235–36
Alterman, Natan, 197
ambiguity, 42, 51, 79, 87, 119, 133, 203, 255–56n20
American humor, 5, 12, 17, 28, 96, 103–4, 117–18, 129, 131, 134, 142, 144, 206, 238
American Jews, 103, 117–18, 127–31, 232, 237
anachronism, 94, 96, 189
anekdoty, 158, 165, 260n11
anti-Gentile humor, 92, 136–39
anti-Jewish humor, 89, 105, 114, 164
anti-Israel politics, 207, 239
anti-Semitism, 17, 35, 37, 49, 61, 89, 96, 131, 135–36, 145, 232–33, 241–43, 251n6; Christian, 9, 16; in Europe, 4–5, 35, 143, 189, 209; joking and, 2, 5, 114; in the Soviet Union, 156–57, 163–64; in the United States, 17, 127
Arabic language, 5, 20, 194, 198, 210
Arabs, 117, 127, 166, 182, 192, 194, 204–10, 219, 240, 243
Ashamed Jews, 240–42
Ashkenazim, 199–200, 209, 211
assimilation, 50, 54, 60, 107, 113, 131, 157–58
Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists (Warsaw), 143
audiences: 54, 64, 79, 103, 106, 144–45, 174–75, 179–81, 211, 213; academic, 26; considerations of, 10, 229; Jewish, 7, 94, 96, 125–26, 155, 218, 233–34
Auschwitz, 151, 213–14, 218–19, 221, 224, 238, 241
Awake and Sing! (Odets), 86
Baal Shem Tov (Israel ben Eliezer), 69
Baba Buba, 209–10
Babel, Isaac, 27–28, 161, 172–76; “Di Grasso,” 172–76; “Gedali,” 27
badkhen (wedding jester), 13, 67
Banai, Gavriel “Gavri,” 199, 201. See also Hagashash hahiver
baptism, 29, 38, 48, 50, 57. See also conversion to Christianity
Bar Kokhba, 146
bar mitzvahs, 106, 128, 211
“Baths of Lucca, The” (Heine), 40–44, 59
Beavis and Butt-Head, 234–36
Becker, Jurek, 176–79; Jacob the Liar, 176–77
Beer, Haim, 217
Begin, Menahem, 202
Bellow, Saul, 98, 115–17, 131–32, 212, 235, 237, 246–47, 256n29; The Adventures of Augie March, 132
Ben Amotz, Dan, 197
benefits of joking, 28, 65, 102, 115, 141, 178, 214, 242–43; physical, 24–25, 28, 102
Ben-Gurion, David, 188, 195–96, 198
Benny, Jack (Benjamin Kubelsky), 130
Berg, Gertrude: as Molly Goldberg, 130, 239
Bergner, Yosl, 59
Bergson, Henri, 230
Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich, 165–66
Berle (Berlinger), Milton, 123
Berlin, 12, 29, 94, 167, 176
Bernstein, Ignatz, 83, 85
Bettauer, Hugo: The City without Jews, 145
Bialik, Haim Nahman, 197
Bible, 13, 18, 20, 22–23, 38, 43, 65, 76, 85, 94–95, 137, 168, 170, 184–85, 190, 195, 238, 257n3. See also names of individual books; Torah
Biro, Adam, 238
Bishop, Joey (Joseph Abraham Gottlieb), 123
bitul Torah, 234–35
Bloch, Chaim, 79
Bolshevism, 12, 27, 157, 161, 169
Borat, 232–33
Börne, Ludwig, 29, 50, 91
Borscht Belt, 17, 122–30, 147, 233
bourgeois comedy, 45, 70–71
Brenner, Michael, 242, 246
Brenner, Yosef Haim, 64
British humor, 107, 111–13, 117, 239–42
British Mandate, 194
Broadway, 66, 126, 243
Brooks, Mel (Melvin Kaminsky), 63, 123, 179–81, 232; Blazing Saddles, 232; The Producers, 179–81
Brown, Nacio Herb, 231
Bruce (Schneider), Lenny, 25, 123, 130, 137–38
Buber, Martin, 51, 53
Bunker, Archie, 235–36
Burns, George (Nathan Birnbaum), 123
Buttons, Red (Aaron Chwatt), 123–24
Caesar, Sid, 130
Cahan, Abraham: The Rise of David Levinsky, 124
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 11, 219–20
capitalism, 87, 157, 240, 254n12
caricatures, 16–17, 63, 74, 265n10. See also stereotypes
Catch-22 (Heller), 132, 208
Catholicism, 41, 43–44, 48, 70, 131, 140, 198, 226, 258n11
Catskill Mountains, 122, 124, 126–28, 139, 144
censorship, 187; Polish, 146; Russian, 17, 60, 84, 97, 160; Soviet-German, 176–77
Chagall, Marc, 66, 162, 261n13
Chaplin, Charlie, 179
chizbat, 194, 197
chosenness, Jewish, 21–23, 33, 43, 88, 99, 105, 153, 228
Christianity, 4, 9, 16, 21, 29–30, 34, 42, 57, 90–92, 107, 114, 118, 222, 229–30, 257n3; Jewish mockery of, 130, 136–39. See also conversion to Christianity; Protestantism; Catholicism
Chumash lider, 94–95
Churchill, Winston, 226
chutzpah, 121, 193
Chwolson, Daniel Abramovitch, 92
circumcision, 83, 91, 125, 156, 169
Coen Brothers: The Big Lebowski, 131
Cohen, Sacha Baron, 46, 232–33
Cohen, Ted, 82
comedians, 25–26, 28, 63, 76, 136, 139, 220, 232; Jewish, 12, 122–24, 127–30, 144–47, 156, 185–86, 202–3, 213–14, 217, 233–34, 236; See also names of individual comedians; professional comedy
Communism, 17, 149, 155–58, 163–65, 168, 172, 175–76, 222, 225–27, 240
comprehension of jokes. See understanding jokes
concen
tration camps, 17, 148–49, 219, 221, 224, 238
contradictions, 21, 33, 75, 99, 157, 217
conversion to Christianity, 29, 37–38, 40–44, 48, 50–51, 57, 91–92, 107, 137, 212
conversion to Judaism, 108, 131, 257n3
Court Jester, The (Kaye), 231
Costello, Lou: Abbot and Costello, 192, 201
cuckolds, 98, 132, 182
Curb Your Enthusiasm, 236–37
curses, 64, 78, 85–86, 158. See also Yiddish cursing
czarism, 17, 60, 72–73, 163–64, 230
Daily Telegraph (London), 12
dangers of joking, 10–11, 25–26, 28, 102, 141, 160, 178, 241
Daniel Deronda (Eliot), 106–7
Darwin, Charles, 53
David, Larry (LD), 46, 130, 236, 238–39
Davies, Christie, 13, 250n10
Day of Atonement. See Yom Kippur
Dead Sea Scrolls, 255n14
death: as subject of jokes, 222–24
death camps. See concentration camps; gulags
Diaspora, 183, 185, 197, 208–9
Dickens, Charles, 107, 112; Oliver Twist, 107
Diderot, Denis, 70
Diogenes, 49, 153
displacement: Jewish, 40, 59, 67 (see also exile); as joke technique, 2–3, 33
Dosh (Kariel Gardosh), 196
double meanings, 2, 31, 226, 230, 236
doublespeak, 150, 167
Druyanov, Alter, 217–18
Duck Soup (Marx Brothers), 230
Dzigan, Shimen, 143–47, 155–56, 185–86, 201; The Impact of Jewish Humor, 143; Jolly Paupers (Freylekhe kabtsonim), 146; “The Last Jew in Poland,” 145
Ecclesiastes, Book of, 181
education, 86, 157, 219; Jewish, 62; military, 199–200. See also literacy
Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, The (Rosten), 118–21
Egypt, 20, 204–5, 207, 211
Ehrenburg, Ilya, 160–61; The Stormy Life of Lasik Roitschwantz, 160
Eichmann, Adolf, 216
Elazar, Rabbi, 81
Eliot, George, 106–7
Elkin, Stanley: Criers and Kibitzners, Kibitzners and Criers, 132
England, 17, 100, 104–13, 115, 117–18, 239–41
Enlightenment, 20, 51, 68, 70, 80, 145, 209. See also Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment)
Eretz Nehederet (A wonderful country), 211–12
Esther, 23, 65, 95–96; Book of (Megillah), 23, 95, 105–6, 151, 209