| With Jokes Like These . . .
NEWSDAY
BY RICHARD F. SHEPARD. Richard F. Shepard is a connoisseur of
humor, Jewish and otherwise.
JEWISH HUMOR: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews,
by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. Morrow, 237 pp., $22.
IT'S hard enough to be a Jew, as the old saying goes, but a book
on Jewish humor by a rabbi might seem to make it just a little bit
harder - because, as the faithful have learned, it is difficult
for a rabbi to make light of anything in any but the most learned,
sober-sided way.
Well, don't worry. Joseph Telushkin is not only a rabbi but a man
who likes a joke, with proper reverence for the old ones that
have become part of Jewish tradition and tolerance for the new ones
that tell the new crop of Jews who they are. His humor breaks through
even in expository passages that analyze the jokes - and, as everyone
knows, it is devilishly hard to be funny when writing about humor,
especially Jewish humor, which has been tackled by Freud and other
major-league analysts.
Even before Telushkin asks if you have heard the one about . .
. , he lets you know what he is not doing. "Nothing in these
pages reflects Judaism's understanding of God's omnipotence, or
why Jews believe they were chosen by God, or the Jewish position
on birth control. I would gladly have included these subjects had
I found jokes about them, but I didn't."
What he has done is to place Jewish jokes within the framework
of Jewish life - or of the various Jewish lives that created them
- in Eastern Europe, in immigrant and latter-day America,
in the Soviet Union and in Israel (not too much joking there, he
finds, outside of politics). Jewish anxiety everywhere finds outlet,
better than on a psychiatrist's couch, in humor.
You worry about ethnic jokes? Don't, Telushkin writes; the challenge
is to distinguish the insightful joke from those that express hostility
and prejudice.
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