In City Journal, Stefan Kanfer reviews Jewish Comedy: A Serious History by Jeremy Dauber (“Kosher Salt: How Jewish humor became the standard”). The sort of self-deprecating Jewish joke I wish we heard more of:
Sometimes the humor presented the flip side of anti-Semitism. Two impoverished Jews see a sign in front of a church offering cash to anyone who converts to Christianity. The bolder one schemes to fake it, mumble the appropriate homage to Jesus, and buy dinner with the reward. Hours later, he emerges. “Did you get paid?” his friend demands. The scornful reply: “All you people think about is money.”
I do have to take issue with the last paragraph of Kanfer’s piece:
The odd thing, Dauber suggests, is that the old rules of Jewish humor are changing as we watch. The appeal of such comedy used to be insular, full of attitude delivered with rimshots. “But is that true in America today?” Dauber asks, “where the best jokes aren’t about Jewish failure, but about Jewish success?” The answer will appear in clubs and on screens soon enough. Funny how that happens.
Don’t bet on that.
Jewish over-representation in all elite strata is not something they want goyim to notice, let alone openly discuss.
