East Baton Rouge Parish Library

Jewish humor, what the best Jewish jokes say about the Jews, Joseph Telushkin

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-226) and index.

index present

non fiction

Jewish humor

bibliography

25631018

Joseph Telushkin

"Sigmund Freud once wrote of Jewish jokes: 'I do not know whether there are many other instances of a people making fun to such a degree of its own character.' Why this should be so is the subject of Jewish Humor, an erudite, opinionated, and hilarious examination of comedy as the mirror of culture, woven around more than a hundred of the best Jewish jokes -- some classic, some newly minted -- ever compiled. The jokes are analyzed by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, a well-known authority on Jewish life who is as celebrated for his wit as for his scholarship. Through humor, Telushkin identifies the keystones of Jewish character: family love and torments; relations with God; the push of antisemitic oppression and the pull of assimilation; chutzpah and its flip side, self-denigration; the love of learning, the passion for arguing, the commitment to justice -- and others."--Jacket

what the best Jewish jokes say about the Jews

Introduction: What Is Jewish About Jewish Humor? -- 1. "Oedipus, Shmedipus, as Long as He Loves His Mother": The Inescapable Hold of the Jewish Family. Between Parents and Children -- 2. "Two Men Come Down a Chimney" Jewish Intelligence and the Playful Logic of the Jewish Mind. Jewish Brains, Jewish Braininess. The Talmud. Reason Gone Mad: The Humor of the Absurd -- 3. "So How Do You Make a Hurricane?": The Jew in Business, or Jokes That Would Give an Antisemite Nakhas. Jewish Business Ethics. Materialism -- 4. "The Doctor Is Three and the Lawyer Is Two": Self-Loathing, Self-Praise, and Other Jewish Neuroses. Self-deprecation, Chutzpah, and the Jewish Sense of Self-worth. Sex, Guilt, and Other Complications. Jewish Civil Wars -- 5. "Pardon Me, Do You Have Another Globe?": Persecution and the Jewish Sense of Homelessness. Antisemitism. Forbidden Laughter: The Jokes of Russian-Jewish Dissidents -- 6. "And I Used to Be a Hunchback": Assimilation and Its Delusions. Assimilation. When Jews Become Christians. Intermarriage -- 7. "If I Could Just See One Miracle": Poking Fun at God, His Law, and His Spokesmen on Earth. Is God an Underachiever? The Messiah. Rabbis. Orthodox Jewish Humor. Charity -- 8. "Better to Be Late in This World Than Early in the Next": Why Are There So Few Funny Israeli Jokes? -- 9. "Why Is This Knight Different from All Other Knights?": Seven Final -- and Unrelated -- Jewish Jokes