A wonderfully pious and devout Jewish woman, a woman of rectitude and goodness, agrees reluctantly to undergo plastic surgery following her husband’s death. She goes along with the urgings of her friends and family to do so, hoping it will provide her with a new beginning, a new lease on life. No sooner does she leave the hospital following her full face-lift than she is struck down by a car and killed. When she meets her Maker in heaven, she does not hesitate to ask God why, given what a good Jew she has been and how many kind and charitable deeds she performed, she had to die so soon and so violently after having just gone under the knife. God shrugs his shoulders and says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”
This is truly a heretical joke suggesting that an omnipotent and all-seeing God could make a mistake—though an almighty God, the sages might argue, could not be concerned about something as insignificant as plastic surgery or one widow’s life. It is also, of course, a joke about the limitations and possible consequences of literally changing faces. But ultimately the woman’s piety and devotion are rewarded with meeting God in a heavenly afterlife. Despite the lord’s failure to recognize her, the woman is sent to heaven. However, God almighty in the joke may be as susceptible to human error as humans, a chilling thought to believers, but one not so difficult to accept in a post-Auschwitz world.
Two minks are about to be slaughtered.
One mink turns to the other and says, “See you in shul.”
The animal jokes, as we have seen, are often akin to Aesop fables. This mink joke, for example, is funny for the obvious reason that many Jewish women were known to dress up for shul (synagogue), especially for High Holiday services. Mink coats were not uncommon for more affluent women to wear in pre-PETA days. But the joke has another layer that is much darker when one thinks, with minks going to the slaughter, of the Holocaust. The joke may be healthy as well as mordant because the minks, though destined to drape the arms and shoulders of Jewish women at shul, nevertheless herald success and prosperity for Jews who have managed to arise, like the phoenix, from the ashes of the Shoah’s crematoria and now wear mink coats. Plus they actually attend services!
The Yiddish theater in New York of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was known as a refuge for the many hardworking Jewish women from the sweatshops. An audience of mainly Jewish women is waiting one night to see the Yiddish Valentino, an iconic actor named Abramowitz, who makes many of the women swoon. The theater owner, Pishocks, steps onto the stage and in solemn and heavy tones delivers the message that the great, magnificent, beloved thespian Abramowitz has died. The audience is stunned. The women are sobbing gut-wrenching sobs. A male voice from up in the balcony shouts, “Give him an enema.” Pishocks looks up at the balcony in disbelief. “Are you crazy?” he shouts. “Don’t you understand? Abramowitz, the great Abramowitz, is dead! How, in the name of God, could giving him an enema possibly help?” Whereupon we hear back from the balcony the voice shout, “It couldn’t hurt.”
The joke about the icon Abramowitz dying is not only about the man in the balcony, whose innocence borders on stupidity; the joke also has embedded in it an element of Jewish character that looks for an absurd solution while stubbornly refusing to acknowledge tragedy. In that sense, it evokes the poignancy of a joke like the one about the Jew who is looking to escape Hitler’s Germany as the Nazis are rounding up Jews for the slaughter. He goes to a travel agent in Berlin and asks about passage to different parts of the world, only to be told by the agent, who points to a global map, that Jews are not allowed to travel anywhere on the planet. No country is accepting them. The Jew then asks the travel agent, “Perhaps you could show me a different globe?”
Then there is the joke about the Jew reading Der Stürmer, the hateful Nazi paper. A friend and fellow Jew cannot understand why he reads such evil propaganda and asks, “Why are you reading that odious paper Der Stürmer?” The Jew answers, “I read the regular Jewish papers about pogroms, assimilation, riots in Palestine, and then I read Der Stürmer about how we Jews control politics and are taking over the world, and I feel much better.”
Do such jokes resonate in today’s world? Do they resonate to Jewish American youth like the kids at my synagogue who drew portraits of Abraham alongside those of Steven Spielberg? Perhaps. But mostly they throw us back to another time and place. And yet they seem, also, to reveal to us, like the enema joke, something believed to be elemental about Jews and suffering.
Though anti-Semitism obviously continues to live in America, and is once again escalating across the globe, a document from the Warsaw ghetto had in it (in Yiddish) a tragically funny line. The line speaks to Jewish survival in the face of adversity, even horror. It was written before the Shoah ended, but is as relevant today as it was then: “God forbid that this war should last as long as we are able to endure it.”
There are a number of so-called Holocaust jokes, many out of Europe, obviously forged in bigotry. Alan Dundes, the folklorist and anthropology professor at UC Berkeley, who was known as Professor Joke because of his widely popular classes on humor, helped bring them to public attention. Like the one about the ashes of exterminated Jews in ashtrays of German-made Volkswagens. Or the one about asking a Jewish woman for her number by telling her to roll up her sleeve. Or the reason Hitler fainted? He saw his gas bill. Or yet another hideous one asking what the difference is between a Jew and a pizza. Pizzas don’t scream. Jokes like those, if one can even grace them with the word “joke,” are more apt to be heard among hate groups or told by genuine anti-Semites or seen on neo-Nazi websites.
When The Producers first appeared in 1968, its famous song-and-dance routine, “Springtime for Hitler,” which joked about the Nazi führer and Germany’s master race, caused a furor. Many were taken aback at the perceived bad taste of using swastikas, Heil Hitlers, and a storm trooper goose-stepping set to a Busby Berkeley–style musical number. Of course Mel Brooks, like Charlie Chaplin before him in The Little Dictator, was not only poking fun at Hitler and Nazis—he was satirizing Broadway producers, his two being Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, and their attempt to produce a surefire failure in order to get out of debt.
It is the early 1980s and a young, enterprising German reporter working out of Buenos Aires is told that Hitler, though in his nineties, is still very much alive. Moreover, the reporter is informed, the führer can be seen going into diatribes once a week in an Argentine rathskeller where a few of his old Nazi comrades congregate and continue to feed on his every word. The reporter’s informant, a distant relative of his among the group of old Nazis, tells him he will let him know when Hitler will next be in the rathskeller.
When the time comes, the reporter manages to slip in to see, in utter disbelief, a number of old Germans toasting and adoring a little old man who is immediately recognized by the reporter, even after much aging and a decidedly morphed appearance, as the once leader of the Third Reich.
The timbre of his voice and his gestures, though ragged and timeworn, are clearly and unmistakably those of the Nazi führer.
Hitler is speaking with age-ravaged histrionic fury to the small claque of old ex-Nazis about how all Jews must be exterminated and, he adds, all acrobats. He bangs his fist on the table in front of him and bellows, in German, in an old and cracked voice, “If Germany is to rise again as our fatherland is destined to do, we must eliminate all the Jews, every single one of them, and each and every one of the acrobats.”
The young German reporter is mesmerized and nearly numb in disbelief. It really is Hitler! What a story! What an exclusive for him! He cannot contain his feelings of good fortune, knowing that his career as a journalist is now assured. But he also cannot contain his curiosity. He shouts out in German to Hitler, “Why the acrobats?” Without hesitation, Hitler points to him and shouts out to all, in German, “I told you, no one gives a fuck about the Jews.”
Is this too out of bounds for humor? Should the subject of the Shoah and, by association, all that the Nazis viciously perpetrat
ed, be off-limits for jokes? These were bigger questions back when The Producers first appeared, but they endure. Is it good or bad for the Jews?
Though jokes that seem ill-spirited often are, the reception of many Jewish jokes on sensitive or touchy subjects depends on who tells and who hears them. You be the judge. But please bear in mind what a boyhood friend of mine’s uncle Meyer said while eating a lot of greasy, schmaltz-(chicken-fat-) laden Jewish food. Uncle Meyer looked up from his dish of schmaltz herring and said, “Schmaltz may have killed more Jews than Hitler.” This is also the kind of food that prompted me once on air to tell food journalist guru Michael Pollan that he was fooling himself by saying we all need to eat simple, healthy diets like our grandparents and great-grandparents. “Are you kidding?” I said to Pollan. “You’re an Ashkenazi Jew! Your grandparents and great-grandparents probably ate tons of schmaltz and greasy, high-cholesterol food. You think with all that gribenes and schmaltz and fatty brisket, they weren’t clogging their arteries?”
It is Yom Kippur, the holiest and most sacred day in the Jewish calendar. The synagogue is full. A Jewish man tries to enter the sanctuary but is told by the shammash (sexton) that it is forbidden to enter without a ticket. The man pleads with the sexton that it is vital for him to speak to his business associate Eli Ratner. The shammash shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I cannot let you in without a ticket.” The man says, “I just need twenty seconds. No more. I have to tell Eli Ratner something that is vital and cannot wait. Please let me in. It will be a mitzvah if you do. I promise I will be in there for only twenty seconds, not a second more.”
“Okay,” says the shammash. “But you have to also promise me you won’t pray.”
Yom Kippur is the day to atone for all sins, to suffer for them really, which Lewis Black says is the main thing he’s carried with him from his Jewish upbringing. As a kid, Black said, Yom Kippur had a profound effect on his innocent mind, especially with the organ playing “Kol Nidre,” which he called one of the spookiest pieces of music ever written. He added that when you hear it, you are surprised “bats and shit aren’t flying around.”
Millions of Jews still worship and pray in ways that go back hundreds, even thousands, of years. But with a few notable exceptions, and for better or worse, modern synagogues, like Jewish philanthropic organizations, have taken on ways that are far from European and diasporic roots. Despite their needing a ticket to pray, the value of praying to God and seeking forgiveness on the highest holy day remains inseparable, for many observant and even nonobservant Jews, from a day of fasting and serious lamenting one’s transgressions.
And yet, like Lewis Black, many Jews continue to carry a burden of suffering, and it is expressed not only on Yom Kippur but every other day as well. Think of the great neurotic Jewish comics—Woody Allen, Buddy Hackett, Joan Rivers, Larry David, Howard Stern. Also Richard Lewis, who went pacing around the stage like a caged animal and built a career out of saying he was in pain. His actual alcoholism revealed that he wasn’t entirely joking. He spoke once on the Letterman show of going off to a place in Santa Barbara for psychological relief called Wounded Jew.
Now, that is funny! And funny, as many of the great Jewish comics have demonstrated over and over through the years, beats the hell out of suffering.
VII.
Separate & Distinct
“So Sue Me”
When John Paul, the Polish pope, was pontiff, there was a joke about him calling a fellow Pole in to get an estimate on a job to decorate a room in the Vatican. After measuring and assessing the room, the Polish decorator says he’ll do the job for $3,000. The pope asks for a breakdown of the estimate and the Polish decorator tells him, “One thousand for labor. One thousand for materials. And one thousand for me.” The pope says he will need to get additional estimates. He brings in an Italian decorator, who goes through the same measuring and assessing and says he will do the job for $6,000. The pontiff asks the Italian decorator for a breakdown of the costs and the Italian decorator says, “Two thousand for labor. Two thousand for materials. And two thousand for me.” Finally, the pope brings in a Jewish decorator, who says to him, straight out, “I will do the job for nine thousand dollars.” The pope asks the Jewish decorator for the cost breakdown and the Jewish decorator says, “Three thousand for you, three thousand for me, and three thousand for the Polish decorator.”
A wealthy Jewish couple go to the UK to find themselves a high-toned British butler. They find the most elegant one in the entire British Isles and bring him home to their spacious, affluent home in the U.S. suburbs. An anglophile’s dream of a butler named Edwin, he is now in their employ, living in their home, and serving them. His first Sunday on the job, they tell him they are having friends over named Silverman, and they would like for him to set the table for four while they go out for their regular Sunday walk. When they return home they see that the table is beautifully set for eight. They are puzzled by this and the husband asks the butler: “Edwin. We told you the Silvermans were coming and asked you to set the table for the four of us. Why is the table set for eight?” Edwin answers, “Sir. The Silvermans called while you were on your walk and said they were bringing the bagels and the bialys.”
The old line about the key to success, “Dress British. Think Yiddish,” gives sartorial props to the Brits but features Jews as being the smart tribe, the ones with Yiddish kops. Another old joke tells us that the difference between the British (one can easily substitute Gentiles or WASPs) is that Brits leave without saying good-bye while Jews say good-bye without leaving. Jokes of this kind separate Jews from “the other,” whoever or whatever the other might be. Even a quick, silly joke, one that asks the question why the bee wore a yarmulke. The bee wore a yarmulke, of course, so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a WASP.
There was, a while back, a whole subgenre of jokes described as WASP jokes, essentially about perceived Jewish differences from WASPs:
A WASP calls his parents and tells them he is sorry but he won’t be able to fly out to visit them on the weekend as promised. Their response: “Fine.”
A WASP sees another WASP on the street and asks, “How’s business?” The second WASP says, “Fine.”
A WASP sees a suit in a clothing store window on sale for $469. He goes into the store and asks the salesman if the price is the same as the one in the window and the salesman tells the WASP there is no sale. The WASP says, “Fine.”
Many of the jokes involving comparisons between Jews and those of other backgrounds serve, as we have seen, to highlight Jewish difference, often Jewish superiority. But the question arises, if Jews feel superior to others, why do so many have inferiority complexes?
The subgenre described as WASP jokes really involves Jewish jokes in disguise. Such jokes distinguish a separate identity for Jews based on timeworn stereotypes about Jews having overly possessive parents, kvetching about business, and looking for lower prices.
Is the joke about the Vatican contractors anti-Polish? Yes. Though the Pole in the joke can be viewed as the most honest of the three decorators, the joke creates a hierarchy based on stereotyping. The joke also has a strange albeit twisted chauvinistic pride in the Jew being more cunning and manipulative about money, which is often celebrated—despite its being at the root of much anti-Semitism.
Let’s, again, go back to Jackie Mason and imagine his inflected and unique voice with its distinct cadences saying, “I know a guy. He’s half-Jewish and half-Italian. If he can’t get something wholesale, he steals it.” Or, “I know a guy. He’s half-Polish and half-Jewish. He’s a janitor. But he owns the building.” Mason, in effect, elevates Jews and the Yiddish kop, by using stereotypes of Italians being crooks and Poles being janitors, just as the WASP jokes elevate Jews by portraying WASPs as unflappable compared to Jews, far less emotional, warm, or enterprising, though also not as neurotic.
Mason made use of a barrage of stereotypes—even angering my sweet friend Rita Moreno by saying he went to Puerto Rico eve
ry year to visit his hubcaps. He built a career on Jew-versus-Gentile jokes . . . for example, Gentiles want the key to the toilet in the workplace while Jews want the key to the vault. Or Gentiles live in homes full of tools that make their homes look like a workshop, while Jews own fancy, expensive art pieces that make their homes look like museums. Jackie Mason made use of the same type of over-the-top stereotyping shtick with Jewish men and black men.
The sad fact is, many Jewish jokes have prejudiced or bigoted views embedded in them, where Jewish chosenness is highlighted, often at the expense of another group—or other groups, as we plainly see in a good deal of Jackie Mason’s shtick. Lenny Bruce had a famous bit that I mentioned a while back called “Jewish and Goyish,” in which he went through a whole list of differences, including the famous: “If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn’t matter even if you’re Catholic; if you live in New York, you’re Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you’re going to be goyish even if you’re Jewish.” In other words, being Jewish means being cosmopolitan rather than provincial, which means goyish.
Larry David’s character in Curb Your Enthusiasm discovers, and for a while believes, he was adopted and is really of Christian ancestry, and as a result everything, especially in his character, is altered. He becomes, in effect, nice, passive, forgiving, generous, and unassuming. In other words, he becomes, with Jewish stereotypes in mind, the WASP anti-Jew.
Jews in jokes who try to act like Gentiles invariably give themselves away, as in the joke set in London in an upscale new deli. An older Jewish lady enters and asks the man behind the counter for a pound of lox and is told (use snobby British accent here): “Madam, please, we call it Nova Scotia.” Then she tells him she wants blintzes, and the snobby British counter guy tells her to please only refer to them as crêpes. Finally, she asks for a pound of chopped liver, and once more he rebukes her and tells her she must say pâté. So the older Jewish lady orders a pound of Nova Scotia, five crêpes, and a pound of pâté and asks that it all be delivered to her home on Saturday morning. Whereupon, the seemingly highbred, snobbish counterman says, “But, if you please, madam, we never schlep on Shabbos.”
Let There Be Laughter Page 15