A Club of Their Own: Jewish Humorists and the Contemporary World

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This book bases its title on a joke by Groucho Marx who said (approximately, accounts differ) “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member”—a line that encapsulates one of the most important characteristics of Jewish humor: the desire to distance oneself from a group to which one feels superior and in this way to forge a path to emotional freedom. By studying the history and development of Jewish humor, the chapters in this book provide nuanced accounts of how Jewish humor can be described, but also makes a case for the importance of humor in studying any culture. A recent survey showed that about four in ten American Jews felt that “having a good sense of humor” was “an essential part of what being Jewish means to them,” on a par with or exceeding caring for Israel, observing Jewish law, and eating traditional foods. As these chapters show, Jewish humor has served many functions as a form of “insider” speech. It has been used to ridicule; to unite people in the face of their enemies; to challenge authority; to deride politics and politicians; in America, to ridicule conspicuous consumption and diminished American Jewish masculinity and masculine Jewish women; in Israel, to contrast expectations of political normalcy and bitter reality. However, much of contemporary Jewish humor is not designed only or even primarily as insider speech. Rather, it rewards all those who get the punch line. Cover A Club of their Own: Jewish Humorists and the Contemporary World: Studies in Contemporary Jewry an Annual XXIX Copyright Preface Notes Contents Symposium A Club of Their Own: Jewish Humorists and the Contemporary World “The Right Mélange”: Viennese Operetta as a Stage for Jewish Humor Better than Its Reputation? A Jewish Script Jews on Stage The Showboat Stratagem How a Yellow Jacket Became a Land of Smiles The South Pacific Syndrome From the Buchenwaldlied to The Sound of Music: The Jewish Legacy of Viennese Operetta Notes Purim on Pesach: The Invented Tradition of Passover Yontef-bletlekh in the Warsaw Yiddish Press Examples of Interwar Hagadah Parodies The Peysekh-blat (Lublin) The Gensha Street Hagadah The “Miss Judea” Hagadahs Conclusion Notes Jackie Mason: The Comedian as Ethnographer Notes Decoding Seinfeld’s Jewishness Notes “Humour Wholesalers”? Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran’s Anglo-Jewish Television Comedy Notes Funny-Looking: Thoughts on Jewish Visual Humor Notes Humor and Russian Jewish Identity Jokes of the 1920s and 1930s 1937–1953: Stories about Jokes Jokes of the 1950s through the 1980s Conclusion Notes “Laughter through Tears”: Jewish Humor in the Aftermath of the Holocaust Jewish Humor before and during the Holocaust Jewish Humor and Entertainment in the DP Camps Conclusion Notes And Hannah Laughed: The Role of Irony in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem Notes An Irony of History: Ephraim Kishon’s German Triumph Notes The “Tsadik from Plonsk” and “Goldenyu”: Political Satire in Dzigan and Shumacher’s Israeli Comic Repertoire Dzigan and Shumacher’s Early Careers “The New Dybbuk” Ben-Gurion as Hasidic Tsadik Reb Dovidl’s Mysticism: Between Kabbalah and Security Portrait of the State Between Mimicry and Criticism The Alien and Discordant Voice “In the Plonsker Rebbe’s Yeshiva” “Goldenyu” and “Golda Visits the Pope” Conclusion: The Diaspora Body Notes Humor and Ethnicity on Israeli Television: A Historical Perspective Humor, Society, and Ethnicity Ethnic Relations in Israel: Milestones Analytical Scope The Mizrahi as “Comic Victim” (“The New Immigrants,” 1973) Hegemony’s Losing Battle (“The Sabbath Trip,” 1984) The Mizrahi as Court Jester in the Age of Commercial Television (“Jojo Halastra,” 1994) “Some of My Best Friends are Ashkenazi” (Only in Israel, 1998–2003) Concluding Thoughts Notes From Monsters to Pop Icons: The Use of Humor in Films on Nazis and Hitler since Der Untergang The “Truest Truth” about Hitler The Nazi-Killing Business Nazis in a “Space Oddity” Selfies with Hitler Conclusion Notes Making Out in Anne Frank’s Attic: Humor and the Holocaust in Australia Australian Jewry and the Holocaust Jewish Holocaust Humor John Safran: Race Relations Jane Korman: Dancing Auschwitz Non-Jews and Holocaust Humor Michael Leunig and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Tom and Alex: “Six Degrees of Hitleration” Conclusion Notes Essay In Memoriam: Ezra Mendelsohn Notes Review Essay The New Marranos Mordechai Altshuler, Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941–1964, trans. Saadya Sternberg. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2012. x + 324 pp. Elissa Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. xi + 276 pp. Olga Gershenson, The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013. x + 275 pp. Rina Lapidus, Jewish Women Writers in the Soviet Union. London: Routledge, 2012. xii + 211 pp. Harriet Murav, Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolutionary Russia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. xi + 399 pp. Yaacov Ro’i (ed.), The Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union. Washington, D.C. :Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. xv + 450 pp. David Shneer, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War and the Holocaust. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011. xii + 283 pp. Notes Book Reviews Antisemitism, Holocaust, and Genocide Esther Farbstein, Beseter hamadregah: hayahadut haortodoksit behungariyah nokhah ̣hashoah (Hidden in the Heights: Orthodox Jewry in Hungary during the Holocaust). Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2013. 939 pp. Notes Amos Goldberg, Traumah beguf rishon: ketivat yomanim bitkufat hashoah (Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing during the Holocaust). Or Yehuda: Dvir, 2012. 447 pp. Michal Shaul, Pe’er taḥat ’efer: haḥevrah haḥaredit beyisrael betzel hashoah 1945–1961 (Beauty for Ashes: Holocaust Memory and the Rehabilitation of Ashkenazi Haredi Society in Israel 1945–1961). Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, 2014. 492 pp. Notes Ben Urwand, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. 327 pp. Notes Cultural Studies Joy Calico, Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar Europe. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2014. 254 pp. Notes Ernest B. Gilman, Yiddish Poetry and the Tuberculosis Sanatorium 1900–1970. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015. 187 pp. Notes Efraim Sicher (ed.), Race, Color, Identity: Rethinking Discourses about “Jews” in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Berghahn, 2013. xvii + 380 pp. Yosef Tobi and Tsivia Tobi, Judeo-Arabic Literature in Tunisia, 1850–1950. Detroit:Wayne State University Press, 2014. 367 pp. Note History and Biography Dianne Ashton, Hanukkah in America: A History. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 343 pp. Notes Ava F. Kahn and Adam D. Mendelsohn (eds.), Transnational Traditions: New Perspectives on American Jewish History. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014. viii + 309 pp. Cecile Esther Kuznitz, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 321 pp. Jess Olson, Nathan Birnbaum and Jewish Modernity: Architect of Zionism, Yiddishism and Orthodoxy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. 390 pp. Lee Shai Weissbach (ed. and trans.), A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. 470 pp. Notes Zionism, Israel, and the Middle East Gideon Aran, Kookism: shoreshei Gush Emunim, tarbut hamitnaḥalim, teologiyah tziyonit, meshiḥiyut bizmanenu (Kookism: The Roots of Gush Emunim, Settler Culture, Zionist Theology, and Contemporary Messianism). Jerusalem: Carmel Publishers, 2013. 464 pp. Note Israel Bartal and Shimon Shamir (eds.), Beit Salomon: sheloshah dorot shel meḥadeshei hayishuv (The Salomons: Three Generations of Pioneers and Leaders). Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2014. 242 pp. Note Anat Helman, A Coat of Many Colors: Dress Culture in the Young State of Israel. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011. 246 pp. Mark LeVine and Mathias Mossberg (eds.), One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. xx + 273 pp. Note Studies in Contemporary Jewry XXX Symposium: Place in Modern Jewish Culture and Society Note on Editorial Policy