The Jewish Joke: An essay with examples (less essay, more examples)

The Jewish joke is as old as Abraham, and like the Jews themselves it has wandered over the world, learned countless new languages, worked with a range of different materials, been performed in front of some pretty hostile crowds, but still retained its own distinctive identity. So what is it that animates the Jewish joke? Why are Jews so often thought of as 'funny'? And how old can a joke get?

The Jewish Joke is a brilliant - and very funny - riff on Jewish jokes, about what marks them apart from other jokes, why they are important to Jewish identity and how they work.

Ranging from self-deprecation to anti-Semitism, politics to sex, it looks at the past of Jewish joking and asks whether the Jewish joke has a future. With jokes from Woody Allen, Lena Dunham and Jerry Seinfeld, as well as Freud and Marx (Groucho mostly), this is both a compendium and a commentary, light-hearted and deeply insightful.

About the Author :
Devorah Baum is the author of the forthcoming Feeling Jewish (a book for just about anyone) (Yale, 2017) and co-director of the forthcoming documentary film, The New Man. She is Lecturer in English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of Southampton and affiliate of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations.

Review :
This book is funny, clever and, at times, heartbreaking. In other words, Jewish. A Jew and a non-Jew read Devorah Baum's The Jewish Joke. They both found it hilarious and thought-provoking. Because it is. Devorah Baum's breezy, accessible new meditation on how [Jewish] humour works, and why it is so integral to Jewish identity... There is much for the scholar to enjoy in Baum's erudite but lightly sketched analysis of how humour helps us to deal with ageing, dislocation, impossible families and sexual confusion. Alternatively, you could just read it for the gags. Hers is the book to turn to if you're looking to amuse your friends and has something in common with the joke books we used to pass around as kids ... [it shows] the sorrow that is the dark underside of laughter - sorrow that belongs to everyone. Even the most avid collectors of Jewish jokes are likely to find fresh material in it The dozens of examples [the book] contains are strung together by illuminating analysis ... Baum's books direct us towards laughter when the other option feels tempting, and for that we owe the author our thanks.