A serious look at Jewish humor
UCONN CLASS LOOKS AT THE HISTORY OF JEWISH HUMOR
Avinoam Patt warns students at the outset that his class on Jewish humor may be entertaining, but it won’t always be funny.
Jokes are seldom humorous when you try to explain them, Patt acknowledged, and that’s what his class boils down to: a semesterlong explanation of the history, purpose and psychology behind Jewish humor.
But if you really want some yucks, don’t forget to ask Patt about the focus of his research: “My area is actually Holocaust studies.”
To that end, he’s coedited a forthcoming book called “Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust.”
“There’s different ways that Jews use humor to respond to antisemitism,” the UConn professor said. “Humor can be used as a weapon, especially as a weapon of the weak.”
On the subject of humor’s purpose, Mel Brooks said it succinctly: “Humor is just another defense against the universe.”
That’s a sentiment with which Patt would agree. He said Jews have been “overrepresented in the field of comedy,” particularly in the decades immediately following World War II.
Time magazine wrote in 1978 that, “Although Jews constitute only 3 percent of the U.S. population, 80 percent of the nation's professional comedians are Jewish.”
“What does this tell us in the ways that immigrant groups use humor as a way to engage in society,” Patt asked.
In fact, humor can serve several functions. Immigrant and minority groups can use humor to ingratiate themselves with popular society, Patt said, while maintaining a cultural identity.
It’s also a way to defuse hatred.
Patt called it “A psychological defense mechanism.”
“Jews use selfdeprecating humor as a way to respond to antiSemitism,” he said, putting themselves down more effectively than any bigot could possibly do.
The history of funny Jews goes back a long way, Patt said. There were, in Eastern European Jewish communities, socalled “badchen,” jesters whose job it was to entertain at weddings and community celebrations.
And then there’s the “focus on text,” as Patt put it, the twist that actually produces the laughter. “Good comedy will often take your brain in one direction and then surprise you.”
As Jewish immigrants came to the United States speaking only Yiddish, the focus of humor went to wordplay.
“Coming from a different language tradition, you’re going to pay attention to words,” he said. “You can see it as a throughline from Groucho to Lenny Bruce to Seinfeld.”
Groucho Marx presents an interesting example. Some Jewish comedy is distinctly Jewish. Take Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” for example, which Patt noted uses the Holocaust as a source of humor but “never makes light of Jewish suffering.”
But beyond a few Yiddish words here and there, the Marx Brothers don’t directly identify themselves as Jewish. Patt asks his class: “What’s Jewish about ‘Duck Soup?’ ”
When asked to name his top five Jewish comedians of all time, Patt made a point to focus not on “people who happen to be Jewish but are funny,” but on comedians who are “concerned with Jewish Identity.”
He started with the writer Sholom Aleichem, who could not be called a comedian but Patt said deserves a place in the pantheon of Jewish humorists.
“I have to include Mel Brooks,” Patt said, and “I do love Larry David.”
Patt also mentioned Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen, though he said “It’s hard to appreciate Woody Allen in the same way, knowing some of the things we know about Woody Allen.”
Patt’s class deals extensively with female Jewish comedians, and he made sure to add Sarah Silverman to his top five.
“If you really analyze what she’s doing with her humor I think it’s very clever,” he said. “This persona that she uses to lure us in.”