Jewish comedy, p.37
Jewish Comedy, page 37
164 Renata Adler: “Screen: The Producers at Fine Arts,” New York Times, Mar. 19, 1968; “Anyone for a Good Cry?” New York Times, Mar. 31, 1968.
164 Pauline Kael: Cited in Parish, 181–182; See James D. Bloom, Gravity Fails: The Comic Jewish Shaping of Modern America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 121.
164 the new, edgy comedy: Holocaust and Holocaust comedy being the apotheosis of this; see Gilman, “Is Life Beautiful?,” passim.
164 When Brooks started pitching it: Parish, 173.
165 licensed to laugh: Wisse makes a similar point in No Joke, 181.
166 “Had there been black people”: Quoted in David Gillota, Ethnic Humor in Multiethnic America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013), 57.
166 going around in blackface: Gillota, 57.
167 Godwin’s Law: Mike Godwin, “Meme, Counter-Meme,” Wired, Oct. 1, 1994.
167 “There’s a weekend in Poland”: Quoted from Eyal Zandberg, “Critical Laughter: Humor, Popular Culture, and Israeli Holocaust Commemoration,” Media, Culture, and Society 28:4 (2006), 561–579, 572.
168 Difficult People: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/08/27/difficult_people_reviewed_the_show_may_not_be_great_but_its_jewish_jokes.html.
168 “Historically Accurate Disney Princess”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5wFS6Gnkk4.
168 shows how blurred: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/178143/rachel-bloom.
170 Howard Stern was your man: Compare Hoberman and Shandler, 201–202. In 1998 Stern, who’d previously called himself a half-Jew, announced he was all Jewish.
170 the role of the ethical: See Berys Gaut, “Just Joking: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Humor,” Philosophy and Literature 22:1 (1998), 51–68, 67; J. P. Steed, “ ‘Can Death Be Funny?’: Humor, the Holocaust, and Bellow’s The Bellarosa Connection,” Saul Bellow Journal 19:1 (2003), 30–44, 34.
171 the documentary: The Aristocrats (2005), dirs. Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza.
5. The Divine Comedy
173 The holiday of Purim: The exact interrelationship between the holiday and the book which provides its backstory is not our purview here; for more, see Kovelman, 90–91, and Sandra Beth Berg, The Book of Esther (Ann Arbor MI: Scholars Press, 1979), 3–4.
174 God goes unmentioned: On this, see, as one of many, Michael V. Fox, “The Religion of the Book of Esther,” Judaism 39:2 (1990), 135–147.
174 a laugh of irony: See Exum and Whedbee, 123–124.
175 Incongruity theories: See Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane (London: Kegan Paul, 1907), Book 1, section 13, p. 76, who writes that “the cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.” Earlier philosophical efforts in this vein come from Kant (“Laughter is an affectation arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing”), and Francis Hutcheson (that “which seems generally the cause of laughter is the bringing together of images which have contrary additional ideas”; Reflections on Laughter, 1750). On this progression, see John Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1983), esp. 15–19.
175 Isaac becomes a living example: Isaac also, to some critics, becomes an exemplum of humor himself: see Joel S. Kaminsky, “Humor and the Theology of Hope: Isaac as A Humorous Figure,” Interpretation 54:4 (2000), 363–375.
175 a kind of structural irony: For comments on how this sensibility plays out throughout the entire book of Genesis, see Good, Irony, 81–114.
176 “Laughter is madness”: Ecclesiastes 2:2, 7:6, 7:3.
176 life is Not Funny: Compare Friedman, “Humor in the Hebrew Bible,” 266; Edward L. Greenstein, “Sages with a Sense of Humor: The Babylonian Dialogue between a Master and His Servant and the Book of Qohelet,” in Richard J. Clifford, ed., Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamia and Israel (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 55–65, 62, 64; and Etan Levine, “Qohelet’s Fool: A Composite Portrait,” in Radday and Brenner, 278–294.
176 “No doubt you are perfect men”: Job 12:2–3. Compare James William Whedbee, “The Comedy of Job,” Semeia 7 (1977): 1–39, passim; Brenner, “Semantic,” 41n9; Good, Irony, 214–215.
177 Sisera’s mother: See Judges 5:28–30. On irony in the book of Judges more generally, see Lillian Klein, “Irony in the Book of Judges,” in Athalya Brenner and Frank H. Polak, Words, Ideas, Worlds: Biblical Essays in Honor of Yaira Amit (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press: 2012), 133–144.
178 “could have interpreted only”: See Radday, “Names,” 61–63, quote 61, and Radday, “Esther with Humour,” in Radday and Brenner, 295–313, 296. This wasn’t only a biblical approach: as far back the fourth century, the Roman aesthetician Donatus suggested that “names should fit.” See Levin, 73.
178 the root-and-variation structure: See Ernst Simon, “Notes on Jewish Wit,” Jewish Frontier 15 (1948), 42–48.
178 “measure for measure”: See Marcus, 16.
178 even more explicit: For more traditional interpretations in this vein, see Reines, “Laughter,” 179.
178 All this was fine: Compare John Morreall, “Sarcasm, Irony, Wordplay and Humor in the Bible: A Response to Hershey Friedman,” Humor 14:3 (2001), 293–301, 300–301.
180 “Jerusalem sinned”: Lamentations 1:8. On how terrible a fate the idea of being a laughingstock and a byword is in the Bible, see Psalms 44:14–15, and compare Jemielity, 26.
180 “Will anyone think”: Cited in Wisse, No Joke, 105.
180 placing God back into the narrative: For a contemporary examination of this approach, see Gordon H. Johnston, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gallows!: Irony, Humor, and Other Literary Features of the Book of Esther,” in David M. Howard Jr and Michael A. Grisanti, eds., Giving the Sense: Understanding and Using Old Testament Historical Texts (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2003), 380–406, 392–395; compare Walfish, 74–94.
180 sending the angel Gabriel: See BT Megila 16a and Bickerman, 183.
180 “He who sits”: Psalms 2:4.
181 “But as for You”: Psalms 59:9.
181 “the Lord laughs”: Psalms 37:13.
181 “since the day”: BT Avoda Zara 3b; see also Kovelman, 87.
181 “mouth will be full”: Psalms 126:2; compare Reines, passim.
181 was to be discouraged: See BT Berakhot 31a for one example; for various positions, including the question of “excessive laughter,” see for discussion Feldman, “Lomdus,” 414–415.
181 recast a rare positive comment: BT Shabbat 30b; see also Craven, 71.
182 “the oven of Akhnai”: BT Bava Metzia 59b.
182 follow the majority: Exodus 23:2.
183 venahafoch hu: Esther 9:1. On the structures of reversal in the book of Esther, see Johnston, “Gallows,” esp. 389–390; and Berg, 104–113.
183 “a serious and good”: Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 29.
183 “One should strengthen”: Cited in Feldman, “Lomdus,” 410.
184 “This sharp irony”: Cited in Feldman, “Lomdus,” 409. The verse is Exodus 14:11.
184 A man went to his tailor: A version of this joke can be found in Spalding, 14–15. Or the complaining man who, when told by his rabbi that God would provide, responds: “Oh, I know, I know; I just wish He would provide until He provides.” From Pollack, 33.
185 The Hasidic rebbe: A version of this appears in Spalding, 90.
186 a tailor tells the rebbe: One version appears in Ausubel, Folklore, 160–161.
186 “It grieved me”: Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (New York: Schocken, 1987), 81.
187 “What does it say”: Tevye, 5.
187 “Mrs. Cohen arrives”: See version in Spalding, 160–161. Or, in the song of the great Yiddish singer and performer Aaron Lebedev in the show Der litvisher yankee, “I spared no effort to get to America/ Thinking I’d become a rabbi and grow a beard./ I had a beautiful pair of peyes, like every observant Jew,/ Now, instead of the beard, I’ve lost the peyes, too!/ Now, you may ask me, what’s it all about and how can it be?/ The answer, my friends, is this;/ What can you do? It’s America!/ That’s how people look here./What can you do? It’s America!/ Here the Jews look just like goyim!” Cited in Roskies, “Ideologies,” 164.
189 “I, a demon”: Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Last Demon,” in Collected Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 179–187, 179. Compare discussion in Robert Alter, “Jewish Humor and the Domestication of Myth,” in Jewish Wry, 25–36, 26–27, 30–31.
190 “I would call the attitudes”: Bellow, “Introduction,” 12.
191 Herzog: Saul Bellow, Herzog (New York: Viking Press, 1964); Mr. Sammler’s Planet (New York: Viking Press, 1970).
191 “an existing humorist”: Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Crumbs (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 375.
191 Bernard Malamud: See S. Lillian Kremer, “Mentoring American Jews in Fiction by Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth,” Philip Roth Studies 4:1 (2008), 5–18, esp. 5–8.
191 largely overlooked novel: On God’s Grace, not set in America, see now Estelle Gershgoren Novak and Maximillian E. Novak, “Bernard Malamud’s God’s Grace as Ironic Robinsonade, Ironic Akedah,” Prooftexts 34:2 (2014), 147–169.
191 Malamud’s protagonists: On the ironic, dark, and twisted endings of Malamud’s tales in this respect, see Sanford E. Marovitz, “Malamud’s Early Stories: In and Out of Time, 1940–1960, with Humor, History, and Hawthorne,” Studies in American Jewish Literature 29 (2010): 114–122, 114–115.
191 Stanley Elkin’s kibitzers: Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers (New York: Random House, 1966); The Living End (New York: Dutton, 1979); The Rabbi of Lud (New York: Scribner, 1987). See, on Elkin, Maurice Charney, “Stanley Elkin and Jewish Black Humor,” in Jewish Wry, 178–195; and Daniel Green, “The Rabbi as Vaudevillian: Stanley Elkin’s Comic Rhetoric,” Contemporary Literature 34:1 (1993), 88–102.
192 “Doctor Spielvogel”: Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint (New York: Random House, 1969), 36–37.
192 great comic cosmic writer: On Roth’s comic vision more broadly, see Lawrence E. Mintz, “Devil and Angel: Philip Roth’s Humor,” Studies in American Jewish Literature 8:2 (1989), 154–167.
192 “a Jewish nightclub and vaudeville comic”: Philip Roth, Reading Myself and Others (New York: Penguin, 1985), 80.
193 Goodbye, Columbus’s title novella: Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1959).
193 young Roth’s bridling: See Roth, “Writing About Jews,” Commentary 36:3 (December 1963), 446–452.
195 wrongness and wrongness: Evoking Roth’s famous line in American Pastoral that “the fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again.” Philip Roth, American Pastoral (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 35.
196 the comic side: Although not only on the comic side: there’s something akin to this when we look at the arrival of the unearthed but long-buried African American identity of Coleman Silk in The Human Stain, or even the anti-Semitism of a Lindbergh-influenced alternate world America in The Plot Against America.
196 Operation Shylock: Philip Roth, Operation Shylock (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993); The Great American Novel (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973); The Breast (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).
196 “Virtuous reader”: Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 112.
197 “ ‘Only in your imagination’ ”: Portnoy’s Complaint, 212.
197 Sabbath’s Theater: Philip Roth, Sabbath’s Theater (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995); Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (New York: Theatre Communcations Group, 1993).
197 domesticated: The last term is Alter’s; see Alter, “Jewish Humor,” passim.
198 Mordechai Schmutter: Mordechai Schmutter, A Clever Title Goes Here (Lakewood, NJ: Israel Bookshop Publications, 2009).
199 Robert Smigel: Sacks, Kicker, 249.
199 reappearing: Zoglin, 70–71. In that same routine: “And the Gentiles, as is their wont from time to time, threw the Jew overboard.” Quoted in Haunted Smile, 226.
199 Shalom Auslander: Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir (New York: Riverhead, 2007); Hope: A Tragedy (New York: Riverhead, 2012). This could be compared to the kind of quotidian comic metaphysics of the Israeli writer Etgar Keret (see, for example, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God [New York: Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press, 2001]), in a manner which might suggest some hints about how Jewish theology manifests in a thoroughly Jewish and secular society.
200 “What did Jesus Christ say”: Hope: A Tragedy, 40–41.
6. The Tale of the Folk
202 the comedy turns from satire: On irony more generally in Esther, see Stan Goldman, “Narrative and Ethical Ironies in Esther,” JSOT 47 (1990): 15–31.
203 Abraham actually laughs: A technical note: some of the story’s complexity in this regard seems to stem from its composition as a combination of two different texts from two different biblical authors.
203 There’s Miriam: Numbers 12; Judges 16; the Book of Judith. On Judith, see Craven, 74–75.
204 Michal: 2 Sam 6.20–22; See Brenner, “Semantic,” 43.
204 “It is better”: Proverbs 21:19; 25:23.
204 “Let not the testimony”: Antiquities 4.219; cited in Athalya Brenner, “Are We Amused?: Small and Big Differences in Josephus’ Re-Presentations of Biblical Female Figures in the Jewish Antiquities 1–8,” in Are We Amused?, 90–106, 91.
204 presented an image: See Brenner, “Are We Amused?,” 98–99. Brenner intriguingly suggests this position is related to Josephus’s family life (104), but acknowledges this is unprovable.
204 chases after Joseph: Genesis 39:12, 14, 15, 18. Eunuch: Saris, 39:1; Compare Yehuda T. Radday, “Sex and Women in Biblical Narrative Humor,” Humor 8:4 (1995), 363–384, 374–375. See also BT Megila 11b.
205 empowered women: For a slightly alternative view, see F. Scott Spencer, “Those Riotous—Yet Righteous—Foremothers of Jesus: Exploring Matthew’s Comic Genealogy,” in Are We Amused?, 7–30. On Tamar’s activity, see Mary E. Shields, “ ‘More Righteous Than I’: The Comeuppance of the Trickster in Genesis 38,” Are We Amused?, 31–51.
205 First Esdras: See 1 Esdras 3.5–4.41 and Craven 69–70.
205 “Ten kabs”: Cited in Heller, 111.
205 “Take heed”: Joseph Ben Meir Zabara, The Book of Delight (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 57.
206 “Of Seven Maidens”: Judah Alharizi, The Book of Takhkemoni (Oxford, UK: Littman, 2001), 195–200.
206 a remarkable facility: This last phrase is Raymond Scheindlin’s; see his introduction to his translation in David Stern, ed., Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives From Classical Hebrew Literature (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 269–294, 271.
206 portraits remain remarkably similar: And there are many examples in Ashkenazic and Sephardic folktales: see, for example, Reginetta Haboucha, “Brides and Grooms: A Judeo-Spanish Version of Well-Known Literary Parallels,” Shofar 11:4 (1993), 1–17.
206 “Epitaph”: See J. Chotzner, Hebrew Satire (London: Kegan Paul, 1911), 23–26. Quatrain from Yeiteles (1763–1813), 161.
206 “Eshes chayil”: Marion Aptroot, “Western Yiddish ‘Yontev-Bletlekh’: Facing Modernity With Humor,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 15:1 (2008), 47–67, 56, 58–59.
207 A joke book: See Holt, 8–11.
207 Freud was a great lover of jokes: See Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (London: Hogarth Press, 1905); and Elliott Oring, The Jokes of Sigmund Freud: A Study in Humor and Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 2–3.
207 “Anti-rites”: See Mary Douglas, “The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception,” Man 3:3 (1968), 361–370; Critchley, 4–5; Berger, Genius, 26–27.
207 “infinite aggressions”: See Holt, 35.
208 “I do not know”: Freud, Jokes, 112.
208 developed an entire theory: See Reik, passim, esp. 41, 218–220, 226, and Martin Grotjahn, “Jewish Jokes and Their Relation to Masochism,” in Werner M. Mendel, A Celebration of Laughter (Los Angeles: Mara Books, 1970), 135–137.
208 Jewish jokes were based: Compare Wisse, No Joke, esp. 10, 33.
208 some of these claims: This was seen in works like Siegfried Kadner’s Race and Humor (1930, reprinted 1936, 1939) and J. Keller and Hanns Andersen’s The Jew As Criminal (1937), which suggested that Jewish murderers were protected and camouflaged by their ability to provoke laughter! See Mel Gordon, “Nazi ‘Proof’ That Jews Possessed the Worst Humor in the World,” Israeli Journal of Humor Research 1:2 (2012), 97–100.
208 “the Jewish joke, however”: Grotjahn, 139. Also, not all of the jokes these individuals analyze live up to their masochistic billing. On this, see Christie Davies, The Mirth of Nations (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 53–67.
208 better taken as part of the whole: For a fuller assault on this hypothesis, see Dan Ben-Amos, “The ‘Myth’ of Jewish Humor,” Western Folklore 32:2 (1973), 112–131.
209 “You tell a joke”: Immanuel Olsvanger, Royte Pomerantsn: Jewish Folk Humor (New York: Schocken Books, 1947), 3. This translation from Irving Howe, “The Nature of Jewish Laughter,” in Jewish Wry 16–24, 16–17.
211 the rabbi who goes to play golf: Adapted from Pollack, 124–125.
211 “A rabbi, having asked for advice”: Adapted from Ausubel, 72.
211 witty sense of self-consciousness: Compare Cray, esp. 338.
212 “Keep your distance”: Exodus 23:7. The story is ascribed to the Vilna Gaon in Ausubel, Folklore, 358.
212 “Tit for Tat”: Alfred Kazin, ed., Selected Stories of Sholem Aleichem (New York: Modern Library, 1956), 212–228.
