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Jewish Comedy

A Serious History

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About this listen

In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter.

Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy - including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar - Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel. And he explores an enormous range of comic masterpieces, from the Book of Esther, Talmudic rabbi jokes, Yiddish satires, Borscht Belt skits, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm to the work of such masters as Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Philip Roth, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart.

©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Americas Jewish Heritage Judaism Literary History & Criticism Performing Arts World Comedy Funny Middle East Witty Inspiring Jewish History
All stars
Most relevant
Very good! From The Old Testament to Curb Your Enthusiasm - it's no joke!

A great listen

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This book reminds me of the companion textbook to an evening class. It gives a good overview, but, it skips along following well-trodden lines of basic history. However what is needed is the entire Zeitgeist, social mores, and manners of each time period and here it fails. It runs along ticking off well-known Jewish comedians but we never really are taken to the substance. And here is the problem of the book it is the cultural context that is needed so the now-defunct humor would be understood.
This would be true with any history of humor within my time the humor of say mother-in-law jokes is now dead but the context of the difficulty and stigma of divorce and therefore being trapped in a difficult marriage and attendant relatives needs to be understood. It will not make it funny but there can be clarity and compassion as to why the humor was there.

Almost but not quite.

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