The Jewish Joke

An essay with examples (less essay, more examples)

By: Devorah Baum

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Paperback | 30 January 2023

At a Glance

Paperback
208 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
17.8 x 11.1 x 1.5

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$27.75

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Heard the one about the Rabbi and the cow from Minsk yet? Look no further for laughter than this fascinating and revealing celebration of the great Jewish Joke

'This book is funny, clever and, at times, heartbreaking. In other words, Jewish' David Baddiel

'[Baum is] intellectually luminous, psychologically penetrating, existentially anxious, and wonderfully funny' - Zadie Smith

'Hilarious and thought-provoking' - David Schneider

The Jewish joke is as old as Abraham, and like the Jews themselves it has wandered over the world, learned countless new languages, worked with a range of different materials, been performed in front of some pretty hostile crowds, but still retained its own distinctive identity. So what is it that animates the Jewish joke? Why are Jews so often thought of as 'funny'? And how old can a joke get?

The Jewish Joke is a brilliant - and very funny - riff on Jewish jokes, about what marks them apart from other jokes, why they are important to Jewish identity and how they work. Ranging from self-deprecation to anti-Semitism, politics to sex, it looks at the past of Jewish joking and asks whether the Jewish joke has a future. With jokes from Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham and Jerry Seinfeld, as well as Freud and Marx (Groucho mostly), this is both a compendium and a commentary, light-hearted and deeply insightful.

Industry Reviews

'This book is funny, clever and, at times, heartbreaking. In other words, Jewish' - David Baddiel

'[Baum is] intellectually luminous, psychologically penetrating, existentially anxious, and wonderfully funny' - Zadie Smith

'A Jew and a non-Jew read Devorah Baum's The Jewish Joke. They both found it hilarious and thought-provoking. Because it is' - David Schneider

'Hers is the book to turn to if you're looking to amuse your friends and has something in common with the joke books we used to pass around as kids ... [Shows] the sorrow that is the dark underside of laughter - sorrow that belongs to everyone' - Erica Wagner

'A breezy, accessible meditation on how [Jewish] humour works, and why it is so integral to Jewish identity... There is much for the scholar to enjoy in Baum's erudite but lightly sketched analysis of how humour helps us to deal with ageing, dislocation, impossible families and sexual confusion. Alternatively, you could just read it for the gags' - Matthew Reisz

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