In 2013, the Pew Research Center published “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.” A key aim of the survey was to explore Jewish identity: What does being Jewish mean in America today? US Jews say that remembering the Holocaust (73%), leading an ethical life (69%), and working for justice (56%) are essential to being Jewish. Interestingly, about four in ten say that having a good sense of humor (42%) is essential to their Jewish identity.
So why is humor important to Jewish identity? Where does it come from? And what does that mean for us today? The Tanakh has a number of references regarding humor:
Consider Psalm 37: “The wicked plot against the righteous, and gnash their teeth at them; but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that their day is coming.” Even the Lord can laugh, in this case at the wicked. (Psalm 37:12-13)
A passage from the minor prophet Zephaniah (3:17) casts the Lord’s reaction more in terms of joy: “He will take great delight in you … he will rejoice over you with singing.”
The reading at our Purim party the other night wasn’t created to be funny, but it puts a smile on our faces when we think about it: Jewish genocide is thwarted, the perpetrator and his followers are killed, Mordecai is promoted, and Esther remains the queen.
Abraham and Sarah, who were not able to have children together until reaching an unnaturally old age. When God’s messenger gave the couple the happy news, they both laughed. Because of this laughter, their son was named Yitzchak (Isaac), which means “laughter” or “he will laugh.”
Yeruchem Eilfort, writing on Chabad.org, mentions that in Talmudic times, a sage by the name of Rabbah used to begin each of his lessons with a joke. Rabbis explain this by saying that a good joke opens the mind to learning. He says Judaism is big on self-examination and self-effacement. If we can take the biggest heroes of our history and dissect their actions, we certainly must be able to laugh a little at our own foibles.
An essay by a writer named Gladstone provides three reasons for Jewish humor. The first reason is to cope with Christianity. He says he realized he was making a mistake by focusing on Jews in isolation. If being Jewish plus living in America equaled comedy, then there had to be something funny about that combination, and there is. In America, Jews are a white minority. What else can we do to cope with minority status in the super-majority Christian culture except joke about it?
He continues with a second reason. The world is incomplete, and God chose the Jews to complete it, embodied in the phrase “tikkun olam,” conveying an obligation to not just repair the physical world but to pursue social justice. How do Jews complete the world? We don’t know. We hear a nagging voice telling us to take action and, without knowing what else to do, sometimes we make a joke. Can making a joke mend the world? Probably not, but it couldn’t hurt.
Finally, he says Jewish humor is a defense, a polite way to decline the Christian invitation get assimilated. It’s better that we use humor to keep some distance and gently remind everyone who Jews are. We must maintain that difference.
In the book “The Haunted Smile,” Lawrence Epstein addresses these questions by chronicling the history of Jewish comedians in America. During the silent-film era, none of the top comedians were Jewish. Why? Because Jews need to be verbal to be funny. Epstein uses the show “Seinfeld” to illustrate that point: Many of their scripts were 20 pages longer than most other shows. The excess language betrays nervousness, a
distinctly urban and Jewish approach to dealing with anxiety.
Looking toward the future, he says the problem with the 21st century is that the newly assimilated Jewish comedians may not be as funny as their ancestors, because they are too far away from their original roots. He says the newer generations aren’t half as funny as the older generations.
So has Jewish comedy changed over time? Jaime Weinman reports that Jewish humor, once dominant in North American comedy, is starting to fade as an influence in modern entertainment. He reports that a Canadian documentary filmmaker, Alan Zweig, made a film called When Jews Were Funny, where Zweig argues that Jewish humor is a dying art in general. Sarah Silverman embodies a different kind of Jewish experience, making jokes about a modern Jewish status, the fact that many North American Jews are conscious of having so-called white privilege, even as they’re conscious of being a minority group.
The decreased visibility of Jewish humor can be traced to a lack of alienation, the kind of experience that gave this kind of humor a lot of its distinctive flavor. Zweig says a lot of people agree with him that success and contentment have had a negative effect on Jewish humor.
Ayelett Shani of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz interviewed Arie Sover, a professor of communications and humor studies at Ashkelon Academic College and founder of the Israeli Society for Humor Research. Professor Sover says we are missing the point by thinking humor is intended for entertainment or enjoyment. Humor is an existential matter. It’s ultimately part of our defense mechanism.
Professor Sover explains how humor works at the cognitive level. Our brain is constantly scanning the surroundings and looking for threats. We’re in a café, and if a dish falls we look in that direction. The moment you become aware of the unusual, you ask yourself two questions: Is it dangerous? And, do I understand how it came about? If it’s not threatening and you understand how it happened, you laugh. You assuage the tension that was created as a result of an exceptional situation. We enjoy laughing because anti-stress hormones are released causing a feeling of enjoyment. Humor was created to protect us.
Jews are a persecuted people who are constantly in flight and dealing with survival. Sover says humor is a means of survival. Jewish humor was humor of the minority. Humor never laughs at the majority. Those who want to be accepted by the majority laugh at themselves. That’s why Jewish humor rings a universal note.
What happened to Jewish humor in its metamorphosis to Israeli humor? Jewish humor made its way to Israel and changed. Professor Sover says we are no longer weak, we are the majority. We have no need for the self-deprecating humor that developed in periods of persecution and misfortune. In Israel we don’t laugh at ourselves, we laugh at others. That’s a vast difference. Jews telling jokes now perceive themselves as strong and smart and Arabs as weak and dumb. The other difference is that Israeli humor is less clever. Israeli humor is blunt and unapologetic.
So where does that leave us? Since no one wants to turn back the clock to tougher times of persecution for the sake of better humor, we should appreciate this time when Jews are funny but also understand that it won’t be this way forever. We should guard against the arrogance of superiority in Israel. And we should also recognize that a slowdown in comedic careers in the US may be a good indicator of a better life in general for Jews.
Shabbat Shalom.