Funny You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humour from the Silent Generation to Millennials
Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen reviews a book by Jennifer Caplan
I picked up this book in the same week that Mel Brooks celebrated his 97th birthday. There are many who consider Brooks perhaps the best comedian in the second half of the twentieth century.
What is the book by Jennifer Caplan about?
What are the four components of Jewish humour, according to William Novak?
Why does Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen recommend reading Caplan’s book alongside Jeremy Dauber’s Jewish Comedy: A Serious History?
Some years ago, the NSW section of the NCJW asked me to participate in a program on Jewish Humour, and also the NSW Council of Christians and Jews organised a series of four talks on the role of humour in religion – I was to present the fourth session on the place of cartoons in religion. It never happened, but I ended up with a great collection of cartoons about religion!
At the same time, My Jewish Learning decided to run an article by William Novak entitled The 4 components of Jewish Humour. Also, on one of the rabbi’s discussion groups in which I participated, there was a request from a rabbi for suggestions on materials for a course he was creating on Jewish humour for after the Holy Days.
When I saw the title which included the phrase ‘the Silent Generation’ I made the mistake of thinking it was beginning with movies which we call Silent Movies and that would have included Charlie Chaplin (and now is not the time to discuss whether he was Jewish) or even the early days of ‘the Talkie’ which clearly would have included The Three Stooges which I have to admit did fill some of my Saturday afternoons when I was pre-Bar Mitzvah! The only observation I can make is that I was definitely far off the mark.
One of the techniques that Caplan applies is that each chapter features two individuals. For Caplan, the Silent Generation are those who grew up between the Wars. The chapter she created to discuss the Silent Generation she called Midrash for Atheists. The two individuals she features are Woody Allen and Joseph Heller. One grew up in an orthodox community and the other’s home was secular. Unlike many others, I personally dislike Allen’s work after his 1977 movies of Annie Hall and Manhattan. On the other hand, I loved both Bananas and The Front (a box office failure). I just don’t find anything post-1977 funny and perceive it as basically self-indulgent! Caplan in her introduction introduces the question raised by the Jewish American Scholar Allen Guttmann, who states that “there is no such thing as ‘Jewish humour’ because the Bible, ‘the greatest of Jewish books… is scarcely typified by elements of comedy’” (Jewish Humor p329).
For most of us, Joseph Heller is known for the novel set in the Korean War- Catch-22. Caplan argues that Heller’s writings as he ages show an increasing sense of his Judaism.
The second chapter looks at Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud. Her focus on Roth is on the collection contained in Goodbye Columbus which is ready a collection of novellas – only the first is Goodbye Columbus which was later turned into a movie with a lower to middle-class Jewish boy from the city develops a relationship with a Jewish noveau riche woman. At the end of the collection is a short story entitled “Elie the Fanatic”. Caplan’s analysis of Elie is much longer than the story itself. I am unsure that most of those who read Elie would think of it as at all humorous. It is a story of two cultures. Elie represents the old country which Jews who have moved to suburbia find that lifestyle offensive and must be jettisoned to become American.
Malamud often wrote in Yiddish. Again, Caplan’s analysis of the Jewbird is much longer than the story itself [only nine columns when it was originally published. Caplan points out that “there are no books about it, and very few articles devoted to it alone.”
The third chapter looks at those emerging as baby boomers. Here the focus is on Saturday Night Live and this is juxtaposed with Seinfeld. In both cases there is little reference to things Jewish although what is thought as Jewish is throughout its writing. For me the more obvious is the recording of You Don’t Have to Jewish where the material is so obvious rather than hidden. Some would argue that both Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld were not covertly Jewish but rather comfortable in being Jewish that they did not need to spell it out.
As I read this book, I had the distinct feeling that it was either a thesis which had been turned into a marketable text. Alternatively, it could have been the basis of a College course. This was reinforced by being published by a University Press.
Many of the books on Judaism and Humour tend to be a collection of stories or jokes. Perhaps the best example of that was The Joys of Yiddish followed by William Novak’s The Big Book of Jewish Humor” and later Novak’s Die Laughing. Caplan’s book should be read with Jeremy Dauber’s Jewish Comedy: A Serious History.
Published by Wayne State University Press
Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen is associated with Notre Dame Australia’s School of Medicine and St. Vincent’s Private Hospital. Previously he was associated with UNSWMedicine; University of Ballarat (now Federation University); and St. Louis University. He served as CEO of the Sydney Jewish Museum for 5 years.
