Friar's Club Encyclopedia of Jokes

by Barry Dougherty

  She says, “Yes?”

  He says, “Veil, get ready—dey’re bringin’ it to ya!”

  I knew a fellow named Otto Kahn. He was a very rich man, and his close friend was Marshall P. Wilder, who was a hunchback. They were walking down Fifth Avenue and they passed a synagogue. Kahn stopped for a moment and said, “You know, I used to be Jewish.”

  Wilder said, “Really? I used to be a hunchback.”

  —GROUCHO MARX

  Reuben and Meyer were both gin rummy addicts. One day they met in the card room at the country club, and it just happened to be the day after Reuben’s wife had been discovered in bed with Meyer.

  “Look,” said Reuben, “I know you’ve been screwing my wife, but I still love her, so let’s settle this in a civilized way. We’ll play a game of gin and the winner gets to keep her.”

  “Okay,” agreed Meyer, “but just to make it interesting, let’s play for a penny a point.”

  A devout Jew, Mrs. Feinstein offered up her prayers each week in temple. One week she prayed especially fervently. “Lord, I have always been a good Jew, and I’ve had a good life. I only have one complaint: I’m poor. Please, Lord, let me win the lottery.”

  The next week, Mrs. Feinstein was a little more strident. “Lord,” she prayed, “have I ever missed a High Holy Day? Have I not fasted every Yom Kippur? Why must I go to my grave a pauper? One lottery win is all I’m asking You for.”

  The third week, Mrs. Feinstein made no bones about her displeasure. “A faithful Jew such as myself, Lord, always observant, always dutiful, asks for one little favor, and what do I get?”

  A glowing, white-bearded figure stepped down from the heavens into the temple. “Now, Mrs. Feinstein,” boomed God, “don’t you think you could at least meet me halfway, and buy a ticket?”

  A Jewish guy’s idea of oral sex is talking about himself.

  —ABBY STEIN

  How many Jewish women does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

  Three. One to call the cleaning lady, and the other two to feel guilty about having to call the cleaning lady.

  What did the dyslexic rabbi say after a particularly rough day?

  “Yo!”

  A man struck up a conversation with an attractive woman at the bar, and when she went to the ladies room, he beckoned the bartender to come over. “Listen, I’d really like to get lucky with this girl,” he explained, “but I think I’m going to need a little help. Got any Spanish Fly to put in her drink?”

  “We’re out of Spanish Fly, but I can let you have some Jewish Fly for half the price,” said the bartender.

  “Jewish Fly? Never heard of it,” admitted the horny guy. “But I’ll give it a shot if you recommend it.” So he paid for the little packet and poured the contents into her cocktail.

  Sure enough, the women grew friendlier by the sip. Halfway through the drink, she began holding his hand, and by the time the glass was empty, she was stroking his thigh. “What say we get out of this joint?” she whispered in his ear.

  “Great!” he replied with a gulp. “Where to?”

  “We’ll pick up my mother, go shopping, and talk about medical school.”

  One Sunday, an old Jewish man walks into a Catholic Church and sits down in a confessional.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” he says humbly. “Yesterday afternoon a beautiful girl with gigantic breasts and a cute little tush valked into my delicatessen and started making nice to me. Veil, what can I tell you, I closed the store and for the next six hours I fucked her. I vas like a crazy man or something.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Epstein,” interrupts the perplexed priest. “But you’re Jewish. “Why are you telling me?”

  “Telling you?” yelled old Epstein. “I’m telling everyone!”

  I know a guy who wanted to get in the temple on Yom Kippur, but without a ticket, they don’t let you in. He said, “Look, I just want to say something to someone.”

  The guy at the door says, “You gotta have a ticket.” He says, “Let me in for one second, I just have to say something to somebody.”

  The guys says, “Okay, I’ll let you in. But if I catch you praying. . . .”

  —PEARL WILLIAMS

  I’m from a very liberal Jewish family. My parents believe in the Ten Commandments, but they believe you can pick five.

  —BILL SCHEFT

  This Hasidic Jew from New York decides to go to Birmingham, Alabama, to see what it’s like there. When he gets off the bus in Birmingham, he notices that all the kids are staring at him. Not being accustomed to being stared at, he find, this a bit unnerving, so he turns to the kids and says, “Watsa mattah? You nevah saw a Yhankee before?”

  It’s the yearly party at the temple and they’re having the drawing for the door prizes. Goldstein wins third prize and gets a color television set. Rosenberg wins second prize, goes up to collect, and is presented with a plate of cookies. He comes back to the table and says, “Goldstein, I don’t understand it. You won third prize, you got a color TV. I won second prize, I got a goddamned plate of cookies.” Goldstein says, “Rosenberg, you don’t understand. The cookies were baked by the rabbi’s wife.”

  Rosenberg says, “Fuck the rabbi’s wife.”

  Goldstein says, “Shh . . . that’s first prize.”

  A blind guy goes to a Passover seder.

  The hostess hands him a piece of matzah.

  He says, “Who wrote this shit?”

  A Jewish couple have a son who is very bright but a bit troublesome. At the age of five they send him to a yeshiva and within a week they hear that things aren’t going well. After a couple of months they are asked to take him out of school, since he is not setting a good example for the other children.

  Things go from bad to worse. They send him to the local public school and by the end of the first term they are asked to remove him because he’s a serious behavior problem. Then they send him away to military school and, to their dismay, there, too, he’s considered incorrigible.

  Finally, in desperation, the parents take him to the only place left—the local parochial school. A week passes, and then another, and a month goes by and they don’t hear anything from the school. There are no compaints about his performance, no reports of trouble. Their curiosity is really aroused when he comes home at the end of the term with a report card showing three Bs and the rest As. And at the end of the second term he has straight As on his report card, and his performance has been so good that he is the top student in his class.

  Finally, his mother can contain herself no longer and she says to him, “What’s going on? We send you to the yeshiva and they throw you out. The public school can’t deal with you, and even at military school you were considered incorrigible. But now, with these Catholics, you’re not only behaving yourself, you’re getting wonderful grades.”

  “Well, Mama,” says the boy, “I wasn’t impressed by those other places, but the first thing I see when I go into this school is a Jewish guy nailed to a cross and I know it’s time to get my act together.”

  I belong to a reform congregation. We’re called Jews R Us.

  —DENNIS WOLFBERG

  A Jewish man is on his deathbed, and very feebly, his eyes closed, he asks, “Are you there, dear wife?”

  She answers, “Of course, my love.”

  Then he asks, “Are you there, beloved son?”

  “Yes, of course I’m here, Father,” the son replies.

  The man opens his eyes, gathers all his strength, and says, “Then who the fuck is minding the store?”

  What does the Jewish Superman say?

  “Up, up, and oy vey!”

  God offered his tablet of commandments to the world. He first approached the Italians. “What commandments do you offer?” they asked.

  “Thou shalt not murder,” God replied.

  “Sorry, we are not interested,” said the Italians.

  Next God offered the tablet to the Rumanians.

  “What commandments do you offe
r?” they asked.

  “Thou shalt not steal,” God replied.

  They answered, “Sorry, we are not interested.”

  Next God offered them to the French.

  “What commandments do you offer?” they asked.

  “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,” God replied.

  “Sorry, we are not interested,” they answered.

  Finally God approached the Jews. “How much?” they asked.

  “They are free,” God replied.

  “We’ll take all ten of them!”

  Did you hear about the Jewish guy at the nudist colony?

  He got an erection, walked into a wall, and broke his nose.

  What’s the ultimate Jewish dilemma?

  Pork on sale.

  An old Jewish beggar was out on the street with his tin cup.

  A man passed by and the beggar said, “Sir, could you spare three cents for a cup of coffee?”

  The man said, “Where do get coffee for three cents?”

  And the beggar replied, “Who buys retail?”

  A young Jewish boy starts attending a one-room school in a small town. The teacher decides to use her position to try to influence the new student. She asks the class, “Who was the greatest man that ever lived?”

  A girl raises her hand and says, “I think George Washington was the greatest man that ever lived because he is the father of our country.”

  The teacher replies, “Well . . . that’s a good answer, but that’s not the answer I am looking for.”

  Another young student raises his hand and says, “I think Abraham Lincoln was the greatest man that ever lived because he freed the slaves and helped end the Civil War.”

  “Well, that’s another good answer, but that is not the one I was looking for,” says the teacher.

  Then the new Jewish boy raises his hand and says, “I think Jesus Christ was the greatest man that ever lived.”

  The teacher’s mouth drops open in astonishment. “Yes!” she says. “That’s the answer I was looking for.” She then brings him up to the front of the classroom and gives him a lollipop.

  Later, during recess, another Jewish boy approaches him as he is licking his lollipop. He says, “Why did you say, ‘Jesus Christ’?”

  The boy stops licking his lollipop and replies, “I know that the greatest man that ever lived was Moses, and you know it’s Moses, but business is business.”

  I come from a very wealthy family. I was bar mitzvahed in the Vatican.

  —LONDON LEE

  Did you hear about the new brand of tires—Firestein?

  They not only stop on a dime, they pick it up.

  A ship drops anchor off a small island that doesn’t even seem to be on the charts, and the captain goes ashore to investigate. He walks inland a little way and is astonished to come upon a little town. There are houses and shops, flower gardens and vegetable gardens, even a fountain, but the place seems to be deserted. Then a short, bearded man walks out of one of the houses.

  “Who are you?” the captain asks. “How did you get here?”

  “My name is Irving Schwartz,” replies the man. “I was shipwrecked twenty, maybe twenty-five, years ago and I’ve lived here all this time.”

  “And you built this town, all these buildings, by yourself?”

  “Sure. What else did I have to do?”

  “It’s amazing,” says the captain. “But Mr. Schwartz, I see that you’ve built two synagogues. Why is that?”

  “Every Jew,” replies Mr. Schwartz, “has the right to have one synagogue he wouldn’t set foot into.”

  —ARTHUR HALE

  What is a Jewish pervert’s favorite pick-up line?

  Hey, little girl, wanna buy a piece of candy?

  Justice

  Mrs. Swindon declined to serve on the jury because she was not a believer in capital punishment and didn’t want her beliefs to get in the way of the trial.

  “But, Madam,” said the public defender, who had taken a liking to her kind face and calm demeanor, “this is not a murder trial. It is merely a civil lawsuit being brought by a wife against her husband. He gambled away the twelve thousand dollars he’d promised to spend on a sable coat for her birthday.”

  “Hmmm,” mused Mrs. Swindon. “Okay, I’ll serve. I could be wrong about capital punishment.”

  The three-time crook felt a wave of panic come over him as he surveyed the jury in the courthouse. Positive he’d never beat the murder rap, he managed to get hold of one of the kindlier-looking jurors, and bribe her with his life savings to go for a manslaughter verdict.

  Sure enough, at the close of the trial, the jury declared him guilty of manslaughter. Tears of gratitude welling up in his eyes, the young man had a moment with the juror before being led off to prison. “Thank you, thank you—how’d you do it?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” she admitted. “They all wanted to acquit you.”

  A judge was instructing the jury that a witness was not necessarily to be regarded as untruthful because he changed his statement from one which he had previously made to the police. “For example,” he said, “when I entered my chambers today, I was sure I had my gold watch in my pocket. But then I remembered that I left it on my nightstand in my bedroom.”

  When the judge returned home, his wife asked him, “Why so much urgency for your watch? Isn’t sending three men to get it a bit extreme?”

  “What?” said the judge, “I didn’t send anyone for my watch, let alone three people. What did you do?”

  “I gave it to the first one,” said the wife. “He knew exactly where it was.”

  Juries scare me. I don’t want to put my fate in the hands of twelve people who weren’t even smart enough to get out of jury duty.

  —MONICA PIPER

  Three sailors were stranded in a life raft with the captain after their ship had sunk in a typhoon. After going through the emergency rations, the captain gravely announced that there was only enough food for three people. “One of you will have to swim for it, I’m afraid,” he said, averting his eyes from the sharks circling the raft, “but to make it fair and square, I’m going to ask each of you a question. If you answer correctly, you stay; if you blow it, out you go.”

  The three sailors nodded their agreement, and the captain turned to the first sailor. “What was the boat that was sunk by an iceberg?”

  “The Titantic,” answered the sailor with a sigh of relief.

  “How many people were killed?”

  “Three thousand, four hundred and seventy,” blurted the second, mopping the nervous sweat off his brow.”

  “Correct,” noted the captain, turning to the third sailor. “Name them.”

  Judge: The charge is the theft of sixteen radios. Are you the defendant?

  Defendant: No, sir. I’m the guy that stole the radios.

  Rubin and Katz, two judges, were each arrested on speeding charges. When they arrived in court on the appointed day, no one else was there, so instead of wasting time waiting around, they decided to try each other. Motioning Rubin to the stand, Katz asked, “How do you plead?”

  “Guilty.”

  “That’ll be fifty dollars and a warning from the court.” Katz stepped down, and the two judges shook hands and changed places.

  “How do you plead?” asked Rubin.

  “Guilty.”

  Katz reflected for a moment or two. “These drunken driving incidents are becoming all too common of late,” he pointed out sternly. “In fact, this is the second such case in the last quarter of an hour. That’ll be one hundred dollars and thirty days in jail.”

  Judge Lipsky was presiding over a case of insurance fraud in which millions of dollars were at stake. It had taken almost a year for the case to come to trial, so she was especially eager that matters proceed without a hitch. She was, therefore, appalled when the court convened on the fourth day and the jury box held only eleven people. “And where is the twelfth member of the jury?” she inquired briskly of the forema
n.

  “Well, Your Honor, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, as you may know. The missing man is Brendan O’Rourke, and he’d never pass up marching in the parade. But don’t worry—he left his verdict with me.”

  A little old man was escorted into the witness box. After being sworn in, the judge asked him to explain what happend. The man began to discuss his day work, and how things weren’t going well, and how he was getting irritated by constant phone calls from his wife. As he rambled on, often incoherently, the entire courtroom seemed to be ready to nod off. Finally he ended by saying, “And then she hit me on my head with a maple leaf.”

  “Surely that couldn’t have caused you any injury?” said the judge.

  “Are you kidding?” exclaimed the old man. “It was the maple leaf from the center of our dining table, which seats ten!”

  K

  Kindness

  A lonely stranger went into a deserted restaurant and ordered the breakfast special. “When his order arrived, he looked up at the waitress and asked, “How about a kind word?”

  She leaned over and whispered, “Don’t eat the meat.”

  “Now, Bruno,” said the teacher to the aggressive youngster, “what do you think your classmates would think of you if you were always kind and polite?”

  “They’d think they could beat me up,” responded the kid promptly.

  A farmer in a beat-up old truck was driving to town when he spotted a hiker carrying a heavy backpack and a big suitcase. Being a caring man, the farmer pulled over and asked the young man if we wanted a ride. Even though the truck looked like it was about to fall apart, the young man put his suitcase in the cab and climbed aboard. But the farmer was confused when he noticed that the man was still wearing the backpack.

  “Why don’t you take a load off, sonny, and put that pack in the back with your suitcase?” asked the farmer.

  The hiker responded, “That’s very kind of you, sir, but I wasn’t sure if the truck could carry the extra weight, so I thought I’d carry it myself.”