Let There Be Laughter

by Michael Krasny

  So what makes a Jewish joke other than the fact that it may have Yiddish words or locutions or Jewish content? There are, after all, certain jokes told about Jews that easily translate to other ethnicities or even professions. When I was a kid, I couldn’t get over how often Jews were compared to Italians. Both, I kept hearing, put great emphasis on family, food, tradition, and education. But I heard the identical thing said about Jews and Chinese. I remember hearing those analogies repeatedly over the course of my life, and I’ve wondered why I never hear Italians compared to Chinese or Chinese to Italians.

  There is the joke that asks what Jewish Alzheimer’s is. The answer: “You forget everything but the grudges.” (Another version substitutes guilt for grudges.) A good joke for Jews, perhaps, but I’ve heard Italians (especially Sicilians), Irish, and Arabs used by others telling that same joke.

  Usually I try to shy away from being too ethnocentric on the radio, but I wanted to interview Ruth R. Wisse, Harvard professor of Yiddish and comparative literature, about her book No Joke: Making Jewish Humor. We cracked a few Jewish jokes during the interview and I wasn’t surprised when emails, postings, and tweets followed suggesting that some of the jokes were applicable to certain other cultures, or were even universal. “Jews have no premium on a number of the jokes you told,” one indignant emailer wrote. Well, perhaps. At least perhaps for some of them. And, regardless, good humor indeed is, or ought to be, universal. My friend the novelist Isabel Allende swears that the humor from her native Chile is in every way just like Jewish humor.

  My wife and I spent an evening with Amy Tan and her husband, Lou, at their home a few years ago, and I was interested to hear Amy offer a joke to me about a doctor, a lawyer, and a Chinese man getting haircuts. They each had their hair cut on different days from a barber who insisted that, since it was their first haircut from him, they not pay. The barber found a gift outside his shop from the doctor the day after and another outside his shop from the lawyer after he cut the lawyer’s hair. The day after he cut the Chinese man’s hair, there were dozens of Chinese men outside his barbershop. What interested me about this joke, of course, was that it had been told, when I first heard it and many times after, about a minister, a priest, and a rabbi.

  The fact is, jokes often morph and take on different cultural identities regardless of the identity in the original version. Yet some jokes remain inescapably Jewish. There’s a famous joke that has always struck me somehow as a Jewish joke, though I have never been able to determine or pin down exactly why this is so. It somehow just is. It is the one about the man who walks into a restaurant and orders soup.

  After the waiter sets the bowl down on the table, the man asks him to try the soup, and the waiter says, “Is it too hot?” The man says, “No, just try the soup.” The waiter says, “Is it too cold?” Again, the man says no and repeats himself, “Just try the soup, please.”

  The waiter then asks, “Does it need more seasoning?”

  The man shakes his head and says once more, “No, no, just try my soup.”

  The waiter finally agrees and says, “Where’s the spoon?”

  The man says, “Aha!”

  So how do we determine a uniquely Jewish joke that won’t or can’t cross over?

  An example of a Jewish joke that cannot possibly migrate is a well-known, sweet one, set once again across the pond in Britain.

  A brilliant, religious Jewish man named Feinberg is to be knighted by the queen of England for his discoveries and achievements as a leading scientific researcher. A number of men, including Feinberg, kneel before the queen in order to be knighted. After going from one to the other, she comes upon Feinberg and cannot help but notice that he is wearing a yarmulke. Which causes her to ask, “Why is this knight different from all other knights?”

  This reminds me of the joke about young Henry, who is asked by his father to say the evening prayer and realizes he doesn’t have his head covered. He asks his brother, Korey, to rest a hand on his head until the prayers are over. Korey grows impatient after a few minutes and removes his hand. The father says, “This is important . . . put your hand back on your brother’s head!” To which Korey says, “Am I my brother’s kippah?”

  A Japanese emperor in ancient Japan puts out a proclamation seeking a chief samurai. A Japanese, Chinese, and Jewish samurai all apply and the emperor orders each to demonstrate his samurai skills. The Japanese samurai immediately steps forward, opens a tiny box, and releases a fly. He draws his samurai sword and SWISH, he neatly divides the fly into two.

  “What skill!” exclaims the emperor.

  Then the Chinese samurai steps forward, opens a tiny box, releases a fly, draws his samurai sword, and SWISH SWISH, the fly falls to the floor neatly quartered.

  “That is very skillful!” shouts the emperor.

  Then comes the Jewish samurai, who also opens a tiny box and releases a fly, draws his samurai sword, and SWOOOOSH, brings forth a huge gust of wind that blows through the room. But the fly continues to buzz around. The emperor says, “Where is your skill? The fly is not even dead.”

  “Dead?” replies the Jewish samurai. “Dead is easy. Circumcision—now, that takes skill!”

  This is yet another joke about Jewish superiority. The Jewish samurai is a remarkably able amateur mohel, the person who performs ritual circumcisions. (Old joke: A British mohel who “took tips” was knighted as Sir Cumsized.)

  It is striking how often Jews and the Japanese connect in Jewish jokes. Following the end of World War II and the defeat of Japan by Allied forces, there were many Japanese who had practiced Shintoism, the religion of Emperor Hirohito, who ultimately converted to Judaism. This prompted me, when I first read about it as a kid, to ask if we were going to start hearing Japanese people saying “shalom” rather than “sayonara.”

  A dignified-looking Japanese gentleman, complete with top hat and walking stick, goes up to a Jewish woman in Manhattan and asks if she can tell him the best way to find the library. She looks him up and down, then says, “Pearl Harbor you could find, but you can’t find the library?”

  A man is half-Jewish and half-Japanese. Every December 7, he attacks Pearl Schwartz.

  A new Jewish Japanese restaurant opens. It’s called So Sue Me.

  Even these three jokes insist on Jewish difference via stereotype—the tough, unforgiving New York Jewish woman, the aggressively sexual Jew, and the litigious Jew. Such jokes have their own special cultural provenance.

  A Jewish deli guy sees an Arab walk in, an obvious sheikh, complete with robe and headdress. The Arab asks for twenty corned beef sandwiches, and the deli guy whispers to his boss, “There’s an Arab who wants twenty corned beef sandwiches. What should I do?” His boss quickly responds: “Tell him they’re twenty bucks apiece.” The counter guy makes the sandwiches, charges the Arab twenty bucks for each, and the Arab pays in cash. The next day the Arab returns and asks for sixty corned beef sandwiches. The counter guy whispers to his boss, who quickly says, “Tell him they cost sixty bucks per sandwich.” Again, the counter guy repeats the price and gets paid in cash. The next day the same exact thing occurs but the Arab asks for and receives a hundred corned beef sandwiches at a hundred dollars each. The following day a sign goes up on the deli reading: no jews allowed.

  How would you read that joke? Jews being willing to exclude their own to meet an increasingly lucrative opportunity? Do Jews feel comfortable laughing at that joke since it does, in effect, also mean they are enterprising, pragmatic, and shrewd? Or is it too moored in the discomfort and bad taste of stereotyping Jews as money-grubbers? Or does the basic premise of an Arab buying corned beef sandwiches in a Jewish deli make it an all-too-obvious-not-to-be-taken-serious joke from the get-go?

  An Arab is nearly dying of thirst trying to cross the desert when he comes across a Jew who, there in the middle of the desert, is selling ties. The Arab is furious with the Jew, who is high-pressuring him to purchase one of the ties he has on display. “Can’t you see I’m d
ying of thirst?” the Arab screams. “You lower-than-a-rat Jew. Have you no mercy?” The tie-selling Jew then informs the Arab that over the next small sand dune a few miles ahead is a new, air-conditioned restaurant where the Arab can get all the water he wants or needs. The Arab crawls and barely makes it over the sand dune only to return hours later gasping and obviously about to die of thirst. The Jew asks him what happened. The Arab’s last words, barely audible: “They wouldn’t let me in without a tie.”

  Years after I first heard that particular joke, I heard it repeated in a version in which a man from the Taliban crawling across a desert in Afghanistan meets up with the Jewish tie salesman. Either way, it is the Jew who is the enterprising one, even in the desert, which for decades Jews in Israel have said they (like Bugsy Siegel in Las Vegas) caused to bloom.

  Another joke comes swiftly to mind, related to me by Bob Simon, the well-known Jewish CBS and 60 Minutes television correspondent who was tragically killed in a car crash on the West Side Highway in New York City. The joke takes place during the time when what came to be called “the troubles” were going on in Northern Ireland. In fact, Simon, who was on assignment, was beaten during that time by Protestant Irish thugs. Nevertheless, he savored telling me the joke about a neophyte Jewish newsman assigned to Belfast during those troubled times.

  A stranger comes up behind a Jewish newsman in Belfast, shoves a gun into his back, and demands, “Protestant or Catholic?” Knowing his life is at stake and not knowing if the man holding the gun is a Protestant or a Catholic, the Jewish newsman elects to tell the truth. “I am neither,” he says. “I am a Jew.” He hears the man with the gun cackling with laughter, then hears him say, “I must be the luckiest Arab in Belfast.”

  Simon’s joke also brings to mind a young Irish Catholic man I know who fell in love with a young Jewish woman. His mother, who was born in Belfast, was a devout Catholic. When he told her he had fallen in love with a Jewish girl, she paused, pursed her lips in a bit of a scowl, then said, “Well, at least she’s not Protestant.”

  Which leads to an anecdote about an Irish Catholic male and a Jewish female. My wife and I are in a small apartment in Berkeley where my wife’s older female cousin and her daughter are in the kitchen cutting vegetables. My wife and I are in the adjacent living room sitting on a couch listening to the daughter’s Irish boyfriend detailing to us, with relish, how he and the daughter run three miles every morning, get an endorphin high, then return to the apartment and have “incredible, remarkable, fantastic, hot sex.” No sooner do those words tumble from his mouth than the mother sticks her head out from the kitchen like a pop-up puppet and shouts, “So who needs to know this?”

  Question: Why don’t Jews like living in the wilderness?

  Answer: No running water, no electricity, no hot and sour soup.

  Philip Roth, in his novel Operation Shylock, repeats the by-now-famous joke about the Chinese waiter working in a delicatessen who speaks astonishingly good Yiddish. A customer overhears him and says to the deli owner: “That waiter of yours really speaks damn good Yiddish.” The owner quickly puts his finger across his lips and shushes the man, saying, “Shhhh. He thinks he’s learning English.”

  Where the Chinese are concerned, there is often humor tied to how much Jews love Chinese food.

  A friend of mine, who is Jewish, announced at a dinner party that his son was set to marry a young woman from China. “I’m sorry,” an older Jewish woman who was seated with us at the dinner table responded. Then she added, “Intermarriage is hard enough, but interracial marriage, that’s much much harder.” There was silence and a palpable sense of discomfort until my friend said, “It could be worse. My son could be marrying someone Orthodox.”

  (A famous joke about a man stranded on an island for decades highlights the theme of divisiveness among Jews. Over the course of time he builds two temples. When he is rescued and asked why he went to the trouble of building two separate temples, he points to one and says, “I would never worship at that one.”)

  Then there is the story of a tourist in San Francisco who sees a sign on an establishment that says moishe plotnick’s chinese laundry. He is intrigued (as I have said, I am about why the name Plotnick surfaces in a number of Jewish jokes), so he enters the establishment and sees a Chinese man behind the counter. Immediately he asks him, “If you don’t mind my asking, how did this Chinese laundry get the name Moishe Plotnik?” In a thick Chinese accent, the man behind the counter says that he is Moishe Plotnik. The tourist is shocked. “You are Moishe Plotnik? How can that be? Moishe Plotnik is a Jewish name!” The Chinese owner smiles and, in broken English, tells how he went through immigration into the United States behind a man named Moishe Plotnik. When asked his name by the immigration officer in charge, he said, “Sam Ting.”

  A Jew and a Catholic are in Mexico City soliciting charitable contributions from passersby. They stand apart by about thirty yards and each holds out to those walking by a small collection barrel for donations. The Catholic has a crucifix above his collection barrel, the Jew a Star of David. A nicely dressed American goes up to the Jew and says to him, “It’s none of my business, but as you no doubt can see, the fellow with the crucifix is getting all the money put in his collection barrel while you are getting none. Is it any wonder? Mexico is a Catholic country. Perhaps you should consider a better place.” The Jew gives the man a blank stare and then shouts down to the man with the crucifix: “Hey, Muttel, this guy is telling us how we should do our business!”

  Here are a couple of smart Jews conning Mexicans. The vexing question of whether the joke is anti-Semitic, again, has to do perhaps more with who is telling it. But the essence of the joke, which could substitute nearly any other Christian country in place of Mexico, is the stereotypic view of cunning, moneymaking Jews.

  A priest, a minister, and a rabbi, all friends, decide together to purchase new cars. The priest and the minister baptize their new cars, while the rabbi takes a hacksaw to his and cuts three inches off the tailpipe.

  There are a bevy of jokes that feature a priest, a minister, and a rabbi, most revealing Jewish distinctiveness.

  A priest, a minister, and a rabbi are discussing when conception takes place. The priest says, “At conception.” The minister says, “When the fetus is viable or out of the mother’s womb.” The rabbi says, “When the kids graduate from college and the dog dies.”

  A rabbi and a priest are in a plane about to crash. The rabbi grabs a parachute, while the priest, by mistake, takes the rabbi’s tallis bag.

  A rabbi and a priest get into a car accident and cannot agree on who is at fault. The rabbi amicably offers the priest some of his kiddush wine while the two try to come to a decision about who bears responsibility. The rabbi keeps offering more and more kiddush wine to the priest as the pair chat amicably. The rabbi does not drink, but when the priest is intoxicated, the rabbi informs him that he has called the police to come make an accident report.

  Given the long history, going back to the Inquisition, or earlier, of Catholic persecution of Jews, most of the rabbi-priest jokes have the rabbi as a stand-in for all Jews outwitting or outsmarting a priest, a stand-in for all Roman Catholics.

  There is a great old Yiddish figure of speech that parallels the well-known English one of a bull in a china shop. The analogous words in Yiddish translate to a Cossack in a sukkah. But the joke about the rabbi plying the priest with wine may also be a form of payback, a revenge fantasy for the inglorious past of Jewish persecution at the hands of priests and their minions.

  You can see how these jokes separate and distinguish Jew from Catholic. Nevertheless, each of the jokes establishes something else—which is fraternization. Regardless of who comes out on top, the Jew and the Catholic are now talking to each other and have, at least as the jokes are framed, put behind roles of victim and victimizer for interfaith mingling.

  It is a dreadful Russian winter, as unbearably cold and freezing as we find in Gogol’s St. Petersburg–s
et classic story “The Overcoat.” A crowd of Russians waits for an hour in long lines in the terrible winter until an official tells them that there is less meat than expected and all Jews must leave and return to their homes. Another hour goes by and snow is coming down hard, and the same official announces that even less meat will arrive and therefore all who are not Communists must leave and return to their homes. Then, ultimately, those remaining are told there is no meat at all and they, too, will need to return to their homes. As a couple of the Communists head on home, one of them says to the other, “The Jews always get to go home first.”

  This is another one of those Jews-can’t-win jokes—but it is one set in a specific time—in Russia when a great deal of attention was being paid to the plight of Soviet Jews and Cold War anti-communism was strong. These kinds of jokes lasted for years, especially prior to perestroika and glasnost. There was, in fact, a Russian Jewish comedian named Yakov Smirnoff who, invoking Henny Youngman’s classic “take my wife, please” joke, pointed out that if he told that same joke in Russia, he might have come home to find his wife not there.