What's with Jewish comedy?

By Jeff Berkwits

Comedy may be the Jews’ greatest gift to America. The twentieth century is littered with the names of great Jewish comedians: George Burns, the Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen. But after the astounding success of Jerry Seinfeld, where does Jewish comedy go from here?

  Earlier this summer, Max Alexander flew back from a weeklong comedy tour of Israel, and boy, were his arms tired! Ba-Dum! (Insert groan here.)

 Seriously, upon returning from a trip to the Holy Land last June – where the stand-up comic, along with three other Jewish-American jokesters, performed shows in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Ra’anana – Alexander had primarily positive memories. Among other benefits, the journey reaffirmed his belief that laughter is a universal language, strengthened his love for Israel and deepened his appreciation of Judaism. Still, happy as Alexander was with the excursion, when he arrived back to America he demanded a refund.

  “I went to the Dead Sea,” says the portly comedian with mock sincerity. “I sunk. I want my money back.”

  His jibe reveals a mindset that is in many respects quintessentially Jewish. The joke is self-deprecatory and humorous without being hurtful. It’s also a bit old-fashioned, as contemporary humor – and the many Jews who practice it – often tends to be much more caustic. Which begs an important question: What defines Jewish comedy, and have traditional comedic values, deeply rooted in Judaism’s religious and cultural traditions, become so mainstream they no longer qualify as distinctly Jewish? In essence, have comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David so popularized the cultural aspects of Jewish humor that Jews can no longer claim it as their own?

  Historically, Jewish comedy has been egalitarian. Centuries ago in Eastern Europe, satirical jesters called badchens performed at weddings and other significant social functions, poking fun at and good-naturedly tarnishing the image of important people in the community. At the same time, arguably due to Judaism’s tradition of Talmudic study, almost every facet of life was to some degree open to examination. So Jews, who more often than not were politically powerless, could subtly challenge the status quo via humor while keeping their harshest observations amongst themselves.

  “You have a lot of shtoch, or jab, humor, which is usually meant to deflate pomposity or ego, and to deflate people who consider themselves high and mighty,” explains Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, coauthor of “The Big Book of Jewish Humor.” “But Jewish humor was also a device for self-criticism within the community, and I think that’s where it really was the most powerful. The humorist, like the prophet, would basically take people to task for their failings. The humor of Eastern Europe especially was centered around defending the poor against the exploitation of the upper classes or other authority figures, so rabbis were made fun of, authority figures were made fun of and rich people were made fun of. It really served as a social catharsis.”

  During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Jewish immigrants settled in the United States and began to assimilate, their humor trickled into mainstream American entertainment. In 1929, Gertrude Berg’s “The Rise of the Goldbergs” radio show offered a glimpse into a stereotypical Jewish family (the program was so popular that, 20 years later, it even made the jump to TV, becoming one of the first sitcoms on that fledgling medium). As television developed, Sid Caesar, George Burns and Milton Berle further helped convert Jewish-influenced gags into American laughs.

  “There has been a certain acceptance of Jewish-style humor into American culture, akin to how black-generated jazz is now considered American,” notes Waldoks. “It gets transformed when a certain style of humor makes the journey from being within to being in the general public. The group that does that most effectively, and perhaps they’re the most well known and successful, is the Marx Brothers. They’re really the beginning of the transformation of Jewish humor within the Jewish community to Jewish humor as an urban-style humor that’s open to everyone.”
“It’s like a bagel,” observes Alexander. “A bagel was once just a Jewish food. Now, they serve bagels at McDonald’s with bacon on them. But anything that’s great, people accept. Plus, Jewish humor is not talking about being Jewish…. It’s not about saying that a person is Jewish, or that a funny thing happened to me on the way to the shul. That’s a Jewish joke, not Jewish humor. Jewish humor is a sensibility, and a lot of comics, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have taken on that Jewish sensibility.”

  Still, the broad acceptance of these sentiments has not necessarily signaled an equivalent tolerance for or understanding of Jews. Even today, up-and-coming humorists specifically cite growing up Jewish in a Christian culture as a comedic catalyst.

  “The second I started going to public school, being Jewish kind of became my shtick,” recalls “MADtv” alumna and current “Catwoman” costar Alex Borstein, who as a youngster attended an exclusive Jewish day school. “I had gone to a private school up until sixth grade, and you’re not different there. You’re one of many. Then you hit this area where you’re the lone Jew, and everyone else around you has a different experience. So you really start to work your material without even knowing that’s what you’re doing. By being able to make fun of your own last name the first day in school, the other kids like you a little bit. You’ve pointed out your difference already, and then you realize you’re the only one with that point of view.”

  Controversial comedienne Sarah Silverman (“Crank Yankers,” “School of Rock”), who was also the only Jew at her high school, shared a similar experience. “I mostly identified as a Jew because everyone around me was gentile,” she says. “I’ve gotten in touch with my Judaism... through my comedy more than anything else in my life, because I’m very focused right now on race and religion, and I examine those things in myself as well as others.”

  That propensity to examine life with a Jewish eye is probably best exemplified by Jerry Seinfeld (who will be performing for two nights in San Diego in mid-August). In creating a TV show allegedly “about nothing,” Seinfeld doubtless did more to popularize the sensibility of Jewish humor than any other contemporary comic.

  “Even the non-Jewish characters seem to be Jewish, and certainly their parents seem to be Jewish,” observes legendary comedy writer Bruce Vilanch, who starred in the traveling Broadway version of “Hairspray” that played San Diego last month and has penned “shtick” for Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal, among others. “Talk about a show that’s about nothing – you can do an entire episode about somebody’s nail polish not being right! It looks at the minutiae of life, which is certainly a very Jewish thing to do. We love to parse.”

  Brimming with verbal jabs, neurotic self-observations and other Jewish-style silliness, “Seinfeld” not only introduced the frequent Jewish need to examine every aspect of a situation, it also familiarized mainstream America with the urban – and often urbane – wit that Jews habitually take for granted.

   “Hearing a blonde with blue eyes saying ‘What a schmuck!’ or ‘I’ve got to schlep from here to there’ cracks me up,” says Borstein. “I think Jason Alexander’s character in ‘Seinfeld’ opened up so much of that. Using those terms and being a neurotic little nebbish, people now get that type of person.... It created a kind of shorthand. Woody Allen in the movies is very different than having someone in your living room every week. The TV breaks a barrier that movies don’t, so I do think it has made certain things a little more recognizable.”

   However, not every comedian agrees that “Seinfeld” was a positive step for Jews and Jewish comedy. One criticism that’s often cited is the fact that, despite ostensibly possessing Jewish attributes, other than the show’s namesake none of the key players are identified as being Jewish. At the same time, while the characters on the program all analyzed their lives ad infinitum, they never dealt with the serious issues that, along with the admittedly silly topics, many Jews also ponder.

  “In that sense, ‘Seinfeld’ is the end of the line for Jewish humor,” claims Joel Chasnoff, a columnist for the San Diego Jewish Journal and a New York-based stand-up who specializes in Jewish comedy routines. “He’s a Jewish comedian who’s able to be funny without even mentioning his Judaism. There used to be all these Jewish comedians whose comedy was a way to overcome their Judaism and be accepted. Seinfeld is at the apex in that he doesn’t even need to refer to his Judaism yet he’s still considered a great Jewish comedian.”

  That simultaneous mainstreaming and sublimation of Jewish humor concerns Vilanch. “As the Jewish population shrinks, and as Jews become more assimilated, it will be interesting to see whether the Jewish sensibility holds,” he muses. “I don’t know if it will. I meet a lot of younger writers, and they still seem to have that quality about them. And you look at a show like ‘Will & Grace,’ which is written by the next generation of writers, and there’s a family sensibility to it. But of course, Grace is also Jewish, so there’s a reason for all of those Jewish things to be brought in. I think it’s still there, but it may not be as dominant as it was, because we’re not as dominant in the [comedy] culture as we were.”

  So, what does the future hold for Jewish comedy? Ironically, some pundits see a return to more traditional religious humor as way to save Judaism’s unique comedic voice.

  “The only place for Jewish comedy to go is to really be true to Judaism,” declares Chasnoff. “I would argue that something like what I’m doing is the new kind of Jewish humor, which is humor based on actual Judaism – humor based on the synagogue, on bar mitzvahs and on going to Israel. In that sense, it’s like gay comedy, in that gay comedy right now is not gay comedians talking about mainstream society, but rather gay comedians talking about being gay.”

  That redefinition of Jewish comedy is, in some respects, already taking place. “I’m beginning to see very elaborate Purim spiels being done now by some communities,” says Waldoks. “They poke fun at the community that people live in, and do it with some smarts and very good parodies. It’s a way of using contemporary culture to help preserve this very old Jewish tradition. So it will be interesting to see what the next few years will bring.”

  Regardless of whether the Jewish approach to humor becomes utterly commonplace or returns to its roots, there’s little question it has already left an indelible mark on American culture. Judaism’s compassionate yet undeniably comedic way of exploring the human condition is sure to remain an integral part of the comedic landscape, thus guaranteeing that, wherever Jews live and whatever obstacles they face, humor will remain a common cultural bond.

  Which is, perhaps, the one thing about Jewish comedy that truly is no joke.



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