Jewish Humour

There have been many great Jewish humorists—Sid Caesar, Groucho Marx, George Burns, Mel Brooks, to name but a few—but is there such a thing as Jewish humor? Ben Eliezer sees it as the ultimate ethnic humor—full of received slights and insults (real and imagined), self-mocking, and making light of disastrous circumstances. Then there are the usual preoccupations with mothers, doctors, food, sex, death, and money. But ultimately, as the author notes, “Jewish humor is like all humor—it’s there to make you laugh.”