Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews

From Kirkus Reviews
Rabbi Telushkin (An Eye for an Eye, 1991), rooted in the tradition of reverence for past learning, has gathered lots of hoary jokes and aged wisecracks, together with a few more recent japes, that make Jews laugh. To coreligionists, they'll seem like old friends; to others, the gags and their elucidation may be more in the nature of revelation. Another book of ethnic gags? Hold the cry of ``gevalt!'' because Telushkin has an unstated agenda. True to his calling, he uses the funny stuff to instruct. In this collection (in which some bits are, naturally, funnier than others), everything stands for something else--but all of it carries explanations. The exegesis of the jokes becomes a little primer on a religion and a way of life mystifying to strangers and sometimes just as puzzling to nominal adherents. It's a truism that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle applies to humor--observing and analyzing it alters it. That effect can be seen here as Telushkin trots out Jackie Mason and Sigmund Freud, as well as Leo Rosten and a host of Unknown Comics for a higher purpose. The tales of the wise rabbis, the fabled fools of Chelm, the anti-Semites, the schnorrers, and the big shots all serve to illustrate his lessons. Was the shtetl a forerunner of Catskills on Broadway? Why are comedians so often Jewish? Why are Jews so often comedians? Why ask questions? Just listen to the rabbi and his jokes. Fine, funny fare for Jew and non-Jew alike. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description

Here are more than 100 of the best Jewish jokes you'll ever hear, interspersed with perceptive and persuasive insight into what they can tell us about how Jews see themselves, their families, and their friends, and what they think about money, sex, and success. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is as celebrated for his wit as for his scholarship, and in this immensely entertaining book, he displays both in equal measure. Stimulating, something stinging, and always very, very funny, Jewish Humor offers a classic portrait of the Jewish collective unconscious.


About the Author
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is a widely known spiritual leader and scholar. He is the author of many highly acclaimed books, including Jewish Wisdom, Biblical Literacy, Jewish Humor, and The Book of Jewish Values. He lives in New York City with his family, and lectures throughout the United States.


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Sigmund Freud once wrote of Jewish jokes: "I do not know whether there are many other instances of a people making fun to such a degree of its own character." Why this should be so is the subject of Jewish Humor, an erudite, opinionated, and hilarious examination of comedy as the mirror of culture, woven around more than a hundred of the best Jewish jokes - some classic, some newly minted - ever compiled. The jokes are analyzed by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, a well-known authority on Jewish life who is as celebrated for his wit as for his scholarship. Through humor, Telushkin identifies the keystones of Jewish character: family love and torments; relations with God; the push of antisemitic oppression and the pull of assimilation; chutzpah and its flip side, self-denigration; the love of learning, the passion for arguing, the commitment to justice - and others. The specific issues Telushkin addresses include how Jews cope with persecution and discrimination (read how the most common antisemitic canard is punctured on page 107); how Jews view money and financial success (for the funny, shorthand version, see page 34); what Jews think about sex (there's a complex of jokes on pages 86-97); how Jews see rabbis and other religious leaders (the truth is bared on pages 149-159); what Jews think about violence (the one kind they like appears on pages 97-104); what Jews think about assimilation and intermarriage with non-Jews (take a guess or take a look at pages 125-145); and how Jews see other Jews (judge by the joke on page 82). Insightful, sometimes stinging, and always funny, Jewish Humor offers no less than a portrait of the Jewish collective unconscious. It is destined to become the classic work on the subject.


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