The Ever-Dying Art Of Jewish Humor

OK, so there are these three guys in the hospital, and they’re very bad off, and the doctor is making the rounds. He goes over to the first patient, a Catholic, and explains that there’s nothing more he can do medically for him and asks him his last wish.

The doctor says fine, and moves on to the next patient, a Protestant. And when the doctor asks him his last wish, the poor guy says, “I’d like to see my family and say good-bye.”

So the doctor says OK, and comes over to the third patient, an elderly Jewish man.

Funny? Well, according to some sophisticated research, the odds are you thought so — or at least there was a time when Jewish readers would have thought so. In a survey by Psychology Today, Jews among the 14,000 readers who sampled 30 jokes rated this classic joke higher than non-Jews.

But that was more than three decades ago, and it’s reasonable to wonder if things have changed. After all, the Golden Era of Jewish Comedy, marked by scores of Borscht Belt “tummlers” who went on to national fame, including Sid Caesar, Danny Kaye and Red Buttons, are gone or have faded from the scene. Who under 35 would remember Lou Goldstein, the Grossingers fixture who made “Simon Says” his own act? (“Simon says jump up…Come down.”) He died earlier this month at 90. And how could Generation Xers or Yers appreciate the nostalgic sadness over the recent fire that destroyed the former Browns Hotel, one of the last vestiges of the Catskill Resorts that spawned generations of comics?

Jewish humor has always been easier to enjoy than define. Bill Novak and Moshe Waldoks, in their classic “Big Book of Jewish Humor,” characterized the genre as “anti-authoritarian in tone, mocking pomposity, grandiosity and self-indulgence.” Our brand of ethnic humor is also known for a sense of superiority, with the little guy outsmarting everyone else, a kind of defense mechanism to ward off aggression and hostility.

But American Jews are far less insecure these days, with little to be worried about in terms of acceptance by the majority society. Once banned from Ivy League colleges, Jews now note with pride that most of those universities have, or in recent years have had, Jewish presidents.

So without all that angst is there still an audience for jokes about Jewish mothers (and mothers-in-law), rabbis and priests, food, doctors, elusive sex, unhappy spouses, getting old and dying?

Sam Hoffman and Eric Spiegelman can prove there is. After long enjoying his father’s stories and jokes, Hoffman, now in his mid-40s, got a group of 20 of his father’s friends and relatives to come to an abandoned storefront in his hometown of Highland Park, N.J., several years ago and tell some of their “good stories” in front of his camera. Spiegelman, a native of Los Angeles, did the same there. The result was a website called, simply, Old Jews Telling Jokes, which has had millions of page views. Then came a book (same name) two years ago, a DVD, and next week previews of an Off-Broadway play (same name) co-created by Peter Gethers and Daniel Okrent, and based on the website, will begin at the Westside Theater, reinventing classic jokes and adding a few songs.

Hoffman describes the jokes on the website as “time capsules, revealing the fears and anxieties and celebrating the joys of all aspects of life.” A lot more about the anxieties than the joys, from the ones I’ve heard, and definitely not for the prudish.

There’s something especially funny, though, about hearing a wide variety of everyday bubbes and zaides — all Jewish and over 60 — with a sprinkling of celebrities like former New York Mayor Ed Koch and former New York Times public editor Okrent, telling jokes that would make a stripper blush.

Hoffman says that about a quarter of the visitors to oldjewstellingjokes.com are under 35. “For them it’s comfort food,” he told New York magazine several years ago. “It’s a visit with Uncle Steve, who isn’t around anymore. And it channels an element of the culture that isn’t religion but still makes them feel connected.”

Max Weisberg, a 65-year-old insurance salesman in Phoenix, is one of the many gifted storytellers who appear on the site. He says his adult children think he’s funny but not his humor, and he worries about the generation gap.

“How do I translate to them ‘hock mir nisht kayn chynek’ [literally, Yiddish for ‘don’t knock me a tea kettle,’ but essentially, ‘don’t bother me’]?

“Jewish humor? I think it will disappear. But I hope not,” he says, adding, “All the guys that are dead I used to love.”

Al Kustanowitz, 72, of Fairlawn, N.J., is more optimistic. A 36-year-veteran of IBM, he now spends an average of an hour a day updating a popular website he launched from home in 2009, a labor of love called Jewish Humor Central (www.jewishhumorcentral.com), which features an entertaining mix of jokes, odd news items (“Gaza Zoo Adds Stuffed Animals”), music, new comedy videos and clips from classic routines.

As “blogger-in-chief,” he says he has written close to 800 blog posts, and admits “it’s getting harder to find clean material” to use on the site. (He includes a warning if a video has language “from the George Carlin list” of seven words you can never say on TV.)

Kustanowitz says his muse was his late wife, Shuly, who served as his “gentle censor.” Now he often runs material by his daughter, Esther, a prolific blogger and Jewish culture queen in her own right. (“The tree doesn’t fall far from the fruits,” Al jokes of his own talent.)

For some 25 years he published a family newsletter with funny news items around Purim time each year, noting that “you can’t make this stuff up.” Over time he sent it out to hundreds of family members and friends, but he abandoned the print edition now that his website has about 2,300 subscribers.

Besides, he says, “I started the blog because I couldn’t wait until Purim.”

Based on his success, Kustanowitz now offers a series of one-hour lectures. His talks include video clips and commentary, with more than two dozen topics to choose from.

“I don’t worry about theories” about Jewish humor and its sociological implications, he says.

I think kids won’t know how to do that accent! When I was little here in LA so many Jewish people had that old NY accent, with a little Yiddish in their speech. Now that generation is quite old. The accent is going and it’s sad.

Ya gotta do the accent to do the jokes. The funniest ones are a little off color. Here’s an example.

Morty was retired and finally made it to Florida. Walking along a deserted beach early one morning, he discovers a lamp in the sand. He gets out his old hanky and rubs it clean. Lo and behold, who should come out but a (all say it together) genie! The genie is thrilled to be let out f the lamp and grants Morty one wish. “Anything you want. Anything at all.”

Morty reaches into his pocket and pulls out a creased piece of paper. “Genie, this is a map of the Holy Land. Look here at little Israel, surrounded by her enemies, always living in war and fear. I’d love for you to give peace to the Holy Land.”.

The genie says, “Kind sir, my powers are great, but that wish... That wish is just too difficult for me. Is there anything at all else you might desire?”

Morty thinks. Finally he says, “You know, genie? My marriage has always been good but there is this one intimate act my wife has never done for me, you know the one. I’d like to sample that before I die.”

The genie says, “Lemme see that map again.”

Get the Wadok’s book on Jewish humor. You’ll like it.

Now, the type of Jewish humor known as “Borscht Belt” (i.e. the Jewish mountain resorts in the Catskill Mountains and a second tier in some other mountainous resort areas in New York, were the place that young comics could try out their “shtick” (comedy routine and embellishments).If they were successful, it was often the key to New York and Hollywood.

{I went to Shawanga Lodge in 1961, owned by an Israeli couple named the Dans, and ended up fixing up their daughter Stefanie with a good friend of mine at Temple Un., about 3 years later. They got married, bless them. It was a good week, and a little like “Dirty Dancing” without the dirty dancing}

The best place to find partially hidden Jewish humor is in any Mel Brooks comedy, esp. “Blazing Saddles” and “The History of the World” series (some in “Young Frankenstein” too). It was also carried out brilliantly in the writing for these movies, as well as in the acting, esp. by the late Madelaine Kahn, Marty Feldman, Gene Wilder and Terri Gar, aided and abetted by the hilarious Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Kenneth Marrs, and Clevon Little, to name a few.

In the older film, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World”, you had the cream of the second crop of Jewish comedians/actors, including Peter Falk.

A third wave of Jewish humorists and comedians came about because of TV, featuring old timers like Burns and Allen, the Three Stooges, Myron Cohen, Mollie Goldberg, and Jack Benny. THey spanned the periods from vaudeville to the USO shows of WW2 to the Ed Sullivan Show, and then their own shows.

A fourth wave came about with the rise of TV shows who featured up and coming comedians, some Jewish, some not. These included Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Drew Carey, Rita Rudner, Roseanne Barr, etc. Of these, at least Crystal, Rudner and Barr are Jewish (but we’re not sure what Barr is today other than meshugana (crazy).

And the last major wave that I can think of that had a major effect on humor was “Seinfeld”, the show about nothing. Three of the four leads were Jewish - Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander and Julia L. Dreyfuss.

There are other comedians out there, but the groups I have mentioned represent the changing history of Jewish humor, from the early days of talking movies and radio to HBO specials and mainstream TV shows.

If you want to understand at least some of the philosophy behind the new American Jewish humor, read two books, “The Education of Hyman Kaplan” and “Harry Golden’s “Enjoy, Enjoy”. They are period pieces written as humor, but they show how early Jewish humor evolved from the early 20th Century immigrant humor to the becoming-Americans adaptation phase, and then, as Wadoks did in his book, it became more inclusive from the Old World to the New, and I think we are better for it.

Now, if you want some good Jewish (and even non-Jewish) Russian emigrant humor, you’ll have to listen to Yakov Smirnoff. His early routines are priceless and hilarious, esp. his observation that “You Americans are so lucky. You even have “Freedom” in a box, naively referring to “Freedom Maxi-Pads”. Plus his delirious act of putting a stickem MaxiPad on his head and saying, “See, you can even put Freedom on your head”. Is America great or what?”

Russian emigre joke (1970’s)I learned from a friend:

Ivan is walking down the streets of Moscow when he sees Igor coming towards him, with two rolls of toilet paper under his arms.

Ivan excitedly greeted him and asked, “Igor, I haven’t seen toilet paper for months. Where did you get yours”?

Igor: “I just came back from the cleaners”.

Or:

True story: A friend of mine, once Soviet Army Major Avram (Abraham) Shifrin, spent some R&R time in the KGB’s infamous Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, before being shipped to various slave labor/death camps along the TransSiberian Railroad system from Potma to Lake Baikal.

He was continually moved from prison to prison, thus ending up with a variety of Soviet political prisoners of every type - ethnic, religious, political.

He used to tell us, and Congress, that the only place you could find “freedom” in the Soviet Union was in the prison camps “because everyone was there. There was no discrimination”.

My own attempt at Jewish humor (which is always borrowed from someone else): “Ten Jews, eleven synagogues”.

“My grandmother’s matzoh balls were so hard that if you dropped one on your foot, it would break it” (TRUE).

There’s a joke about old Mrs. Schwartz and her shual’s rabbi
which is worth a laugh or two:

There was a somewhat poor synagogue out in the middle of the American hinterland. They were ashamed that they couldn’t pay their rabbi a really decent salary so at a congregational meeting, each person was asked to volunteer some serve or goods to help improve the rabbi’s life.
One after another, people stood up and offered to do this.

The shoemaker offered to repair his shoes and make him one new pair for the year. The painter offered to paint his house. And on it went throughout the small gathering.

Finally they came to 75 year-old Mrs. Schwartz. When it was her turn to offer something for the rabbi, she said with a straight face, “Sex”. After the laughing stopped a few minutes later, someone asked her how she arrived at that, to which she replied.

“Vell, I told my husband that the shual wanted all of us to donate something to the rabbi, and he said, “Screw the rabbi.”

So here I am.

Shalom!

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