‘Jewish humor’ should not be confused with dirty jokes

By Danny Bloom

Danny Bloom

CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan –In late May, I penned a commentary here titled ”Do ‘Jewish jokes’ need to be updated?” which challenged Jewish comedians on stage and in movies to make modern Jewish humor in the 21st century better mirror Jewish culture today and leave the Catskills and Borscht Belt behind.

Struck by some of the God-awful humor that has made its way into so-called “Jewish humor” over the years — most of it good and life-affirming, but some of it tasteless and sexist and even feeding into the Internet hands of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites — I asked readers to look at my ”Silverman Manifesto” in order to raise some issues that I hoped thoughtful people would address, pro and on.

The manifesto, I emphasized, was meant merely as an alarm bell, a ”wake up call” for Jewish writers, comedians, film directors, artists, screenwriters, producers, actors and others to re-examine the state of Jewish humor in 2012 and where it’s headed. And a look back to the past might not hurt either.

Now, two months later, Ted Merwin, a professor at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and the author of In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture, among other books, has published his own take on what’s right and what’s wrong with Jewish humor today. Reviewing for New York Jewish Week  the current off-Broadway revue titled Old Jews Telling Jokes, Merwin made some salient points. Merwin was kind enough to give me permission by email to quote some excerpts from his insightful review.

I was heartened to read his courageous review, too. When I emailed Dr Merwin and asked him how he felt about my ”manifesto” and my own call for some improvement in Jewish humor for life in this 21st Century, he told me: “I mostly agree with you, although as I say in my review of Old Jews Telling Jokes, I am both amused and disheartened by this type of dated humor.”

“[The play] essentially transports its audience ‘up the mountains’ (as my grandmother would say) to the Catskills,” Merwin started off in his review, emphasizing that he felt the comedy revue was “dated.”

He added: “In Borscht Belt jokes, Jewish men always felt murderous toward their wives, non-Jewish women were secretly more attractive to Jewish men than Jewish women were, rabbis always offered
ridiculous advice, and gentiles occupied a rarefied realm that Jews could never hope to enter.”

Merwin noted: “To compensate for their nagging sense of outsiderness, the [off-Broadway] show implicitly suggests, Jews turned to humor — in particular, dirty jokes. Either sex or scatology is thus the underlying theme of almost every gag.”

He even imagines that if a non-Jew wandered into the theater he or she might start thinking ”that Jews, despite being renowned for their intellectual attainments, are in reality obsessed with their lower bodies.”

Merwin tells readers that he wishes the revue didn’t insult its audience’s intelligence quite so much, noting:” Perhaps I’m asking too much, but I wish that Old Jews Telling Jokes afforded some kind of new perspective on the place of humor in Jewish life, rather than yet another guilty peep into the bedroom or bathroom window.”

Hazak! Hazak! to Professor Merwin. Our views seem to be very close regarding ”some kind of new perspective on the place of humor in Jewish life” and I hope more Jewish writers and comics fuel the fire.

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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World and a devoted cyber-surfer.  He may be contacted at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com