What Makes Jewish Comedy Jewish?

From David Baddiel’s review of Jeremy Dauber’s book Jewish Comedy: A Serious History (“What makes Jewish comedy Jewish?”):

Jewishness in comedy – what, in other words, is actually Jewish about the comedy of these secular Jews – is elusive, a bit like Judaism’s conception of the afterlife. Sahl, when first approached with the idea that his act was pervasively Jewish even though he rarely drew on his ethnicity directly, is quoted as saying, “If the role of the Jew is to rock the boat and to be inquisitive – intellectually curious, that is – fine. Classic role”. It is an interesting concept: that Jewishness in comedy is subversive but also something that can be identified in comedians whether or not they wear it on their sleeve…

It is indeed integral to what is Jewish about Jewish comedy that Jewishness can only show itself in obscure ways, because Jews, for many years, would not want to identify themselves as such…

To come back, then, to what appeared to be a passing, but was not, point about the afterlife: Christianity, and most other religions, are all in the clouds, in the great hereafter – Judaism tends to concentrate on the here and now, and indeed its rules.

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