The Best Of Yiddish Humor
May 18
In The Beginning There Was Yiddish
Jewish humor comes from the long history of Judaism and of humor in Judaism, which dates back to the origin of the Torah. The real origin is the Midrash all the way from the old Middle East.
“Jewish humor” generally references more timely traditions. It can be attributed in part to the verbal and usually anecdotal stories told by Ashkenazi Jews who generally spoke a language called Yiddish. This type of humor took root in the US in the last hundred years and has bled over into Jewish secular culture.
European Jewish humor developed in the insular Jewish community that existed in the Holy Roman Empire. Theological satire was a way to clandestinely resist Christianization.
Modern Jewish humor started in the nineteenth century at the time that German-speaking Jews of the so-called Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). It became firmly established during the shtetls of the Russian Empire. Yiddish humor flourished within twentieth-century America when it arrived on American shores with millions of Jews who fled Eastern Europe from the 1880s to the early 1920s.
Best Of Jewish Humor
The Huffington Post recently published the top Jewish jokes ever told. Here are a few favorites.
A Jewish papa was anxious about how his boy had turned out. So, he visited the rabbi to see what he would say.
“Rabbi, I raised my son in the faith and spent all the money we had on his Bar Mitzvah. It cost me a small fortune to pay for his education. Last week, he says he is going to convert to Christianity. Rabbi, what did I miss?”
The rabbi rubs his beard and answers, “Strange that you should be here. You see, I also brought up my son as a man of the faith. I sent my son to the best university. My whole fortune went into the making of that boy. Then one day he visits me and says he wanted to convert to Christianity.”
“What turned him around?”
“I prayed to God to find me an answer,” said the rabbi.
“What did God tell you to do?” asked the man, now alert.
The rabbi answers, “Funny that you should come to me…”
Another joke is:
Two kids were waiting in the hospital. Each was on stretcher and next to each other just outside the operating room. So, the first boy says, “What brings you here?”
The second boy replies, “My tonsils have to come out and it’s making me nervous.”
The first boy reassures him, “That’s nothing. I had mine out when I was four. You go to sleep, you wake up to lots of jello and ice cream. Nothing to it.”
The second boy says, “Well, what are you doing here?”
The first boy says sadly, “circumcision.”
The second replies, “Whoa, good luck, kid. I had that one done at birth and couldn’t walk for a year.”
Q & A Jokes
Q: In the Jewish religious tradition, when does a fetus count as a human being?
A: When it doesn’t flunk out and finishes medical school.
Q: Why do Jewish people have such big honkers?
A: Well, the air is free.
When Izydor Epstein came to the U.S. from Poland, he was applying for a driver’s license. They asked him to read an eye chart to test his vision. The clerk pointed to the first line that read: “P O W Z Y N S K E Y.”
“Now,” said the clerk. “Can you read what’s on the board?”
“Read it?” replied Izydor, “I know the guy. He was my next-door neighbor!”
