Jewish humor

The tradition of humor in Judaism dates back to the compilation of the Torah and the Midrash in the ancient Middle East, but the most famous form of Jewish humor consists of the more recent stream of verbal and frequently anecdotal humor of Ashkenazi Jews which took root in the United States during the last one hundred years, it even took root in secular Jewish culture. In its early form, European Jewish humor was developed in the Jewish community of the Holy Roman Empire, with theological satire becoming a traditional way to clandestinely express opposition to Christianization.
During the nineteenth century, modern Jewish humor emerged among German-speaking Jewish proponents of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), it matured in the shtetls of the Russian Empire, and then, it flourished in twentieth-century America, arriving with the millions of Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe between the 1880s and the early 1920s. Beginning on vaudeville and continuing on radio, stand-up, film, and television, a disproportionately high percentage of American comedians have been Jewish. Time estimated in 1978 that 80 percent of professional American comics were Jewish.
Jewish humor is diverse, but most frequently, it consists of wordplay, irony, and satire, and the themes of it 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.
Jewish humor is rooted in several traditions. Jewish humor can be found 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. For example:
A Sephardic tradition is centered on a Nasreddin-derived folk character who is known as Djoha.
A more recent tradition which originated in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe is an egalitarian tradition in which the powerful were frequently 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. The development of the entertainment industry, combined with the tradition of Jewish humor, provided a potential route where Jews could 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 Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, George Burns, Henny Youngman, Milton Berle, Phyllis Diller, Jack Carter, Sid Caesar, Jerry Lewis, and Joan Rivers, were Jewish. The Jewish comedy tradition continues today, with Jewish humor much entwined with mainstream humor, as comedies like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Woody Allen films indicate.. The series Difficult People, starring Jewish comedians Julie Klausner and Billy Eichner, incorporates elements of Jewish humor, as does Emma Seligman’s 2020 film Shiva Baby.
In his essay which is titled Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Sigmund Freud analyzes the nature of Jewish jokes, among other things.
Because religion was such an important part of life in Jewish communities, much of the humor which was developed in them is centered on the relationship between Judaism, the individual Jew and the Jewish community as a whole.
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!"
The American Jewish community has been lamenting the rate of assimilation among its children and it has also been lamenting the absence of them as they grow into adulthood.
Jews often mock their own negative stereotypes.
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:
Some jokes make fun of the "Rebbe miracle stories" and involve different Hasidim bragging about their teachers' miraculous abilities:
Or
A number of traditions in Jewish humor date back to stories and anecdotes from the 19th century.
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 [yi; ru] 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 [Chelmaxioms] is supposedly the discovered lost manuscripts of the wise men of Chelm.
Here are a few examples of a Chełm tale:
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.
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):
This one combines accusations of the lack of patriotism, and avarice:
A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of American Jews rated humor as essential to their Jewish identity.
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:
The following joke refers to Jewish congregational rivalry and splitting.
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:
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Or, about traditional roles of men and women in Jewish families:
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Or, on kvetching (complaining),
A version of the following joke is quoted in Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods, by Michael Wex:
Wex comments:
Many Jewish jokes involve a rabbi and a Christian clergyman, exploiting different interpretations of a shared environment. Often they start with something like "A rabbi and a priest..." and make fun of either the rabbi's interpretation of Christianity or (seeming) differences between Christian and Jewish interpretation of some areas.
See Russian jokes in general, or more specifically Rabinovich jokes, Russian Jewish jokes, Russian political jokes; also History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union.
Or, in the last years of the Soviet Union:
Or
Israeli humor featured many of the same themes as Jewish humor elsewhere, making fun of the country and its habits, while containing a fair bit of gallows humor as well, as a joke from a 1950 Israeli joke book indicates:
Israelis' view of themselves:
Some Yiddish words may sound comical to an English speaker. Terms like shnook and shmendrik, shlemiel and shlimazel (often considered inherently funny words) were exploited for their humorous sounds, as were "Yinglish" shm-reduplication constructs, such as "fancy-schmancy". Yiddish constructions—such as ending sentences with questions—became part of the verbal word play of Jewish comedians.