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!
“Screw the rabbi.”
LOL!
I have a friend who converted to Judaism from Catholicism.
She use to wear fake jewelry and have real orgasms.
Now she has fake orgasms and real jewelry....
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.
Kramer is Jewish too. And lots of the other characters too. Newman, and the older generation — the Seinfeld and costanza parents. Uncle Leo. They are all hilarious. On the one hand there was a lot of Jewish humor on the show. On the other hand the show was practically antiSemitic — probably something to do with Larry David who has a little self loathing thing going on.