Conference to Study Often Self-Deprecating Jewish Humor

The story goes that the Lord announces that in three days, a great flood will engulf all life on Earth. Leaders of world religions stand before their flocks to offer some last words of hope.

“Repent your sins,” the minister tells his congregation, “and we shall meet in the next world.”

The Buddhist advises, “Meditate and we shall reach Nirvana together.”

“My fellow Jewish people,” the rabbi intones. “There’s no time to lose. We have only three days to learn how to live underwater.”

That grim determination in the face of disaster, a surreal defiance that adds a comic twist to tragic circumstances, is one aspect of typically Jewish humor--the subject of a coming international conference.

It is scheduled for June 9-12 at New York City’s New School for Social Research, with approximately 500 participants to include top Jewish humorists and comedians as well as scholars of the field.

Wave of Jewish Comedians

In advance of it, history professor Edward Shapiro of Seton Hall University says that the 20th Century has produced a tide of American Jewish comedians--what’s been called a “golden age” of Jewish humorists.

Writing in Keeping Posted, a bimonthly magazine published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, he says a self-disparaging note often characterizes Jewish jokes.

For instance, there was the famed quip by Groucho Marx that he wouldn’t join any club that would have him as a member.

“The growing prominence of the Jewish comedian has been accompanied by a willingness to make the Jew the butt of humor, often in a cruel and derogatory manner,” Shapiro says.

The jokes frequently draw on anti-Jewish stereotypes, he says, such as acquisitiveness or sharp business dealings, as in the story of three Jewish business partners vacationing in Florida.

One suddenly grows pale when he remembers he left the office safe open. A partner reassures him, “Don’t worry, we are here with you.”

Facing a ‘World of Enemies’

Citing the view of eminent psychiatrist Theodore Reik that Jewish self-mockery showed a “singular ability of self-assertion and self-preservation in spite of an overwhelming world of enemies,” Shapiro says:

“For those who are self-hating, Jewish humor will often confirm their alienation. For Jews proud of their heritage and people, the jokes will often be tokens of affection.”

In a sense, he says, “a vigorous Jewish self-criticism is a sign of health, not of stagnation or degeneracy.”

He sees evidence of that in American Jewish comedians who “no longer respond to the age-old fear of ‘what the Gentiles will think,’ ” despite concern by some Jewish officials that such self-depreciation is harmful.

Since World War II, he says, a major characteristic of American Jews is being up-front about their Jewishness, indicating “a security of one’s own identity.”

He says a “disproportionate number” of 20th-Century American comedians have been Jewish.

Groucho Marx, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Rodney Dangerfield, Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles and Joan Rivers are among the best known, plus numerous noted comic writers and cartoonists, such as Al Capp, Jules Feiffer, Rube Goldberg, Al Hirschfeld, S.J. Perelman, Philip Roth, Neil Simon and Norman Lear.

Humorists to Be Present

Many Jewish humorists, including Art Buchwald, Leo Rosten, Alan King and Ephraim Kishon, are scheduled to take part in the coming conference, being held under auspices of Israel’s Tel Aviv University.

Shapiro writes that some Jewish jokes may have different meanings for Jews and Gentiles and that sometimes Jews can see positive elements even in seemingly negative stereotypes of themselves.

That shows up, he says, in stories about the materialistic, repressive, lazy “Jewish-American Princess,” as in this story:

Sol comes home from a hard day’s work. His wife asks him if he would like a thick steak, a baked potato, a piece of hot apple pie and a glass of wine for dinner. Sol replies, “Not tonight dear. I’m too tired to go out.”

Although satirizing Jewish women, Shapiro says, such jokes can also be seen “as expressing the wholesome, traditional Jewish attitude toward wives” by Jewish males “proud of the fact that they are good providers and pamper their spouses.”

Another story, cited as both criticizing the Jewish woman as a marriage partner and also revealing a healthy attitude about marital stability, goes:

A Jewish man, after 20 years of marriage, says he never knew what true happiness was until he got married--and then it was too late.