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changed the tenor of public speech by and about Jews. Exactly which an- tisemitism different Jews — famous or not — care most about varies, as do definitions of the term. But this much is clear: antisemitism’s days as a laugh- ing matter were, in retrospect, a blip. That blip is the subject of a dense- ly packed new book, The Last Jewish Joke . Its author, Michel Wieviorka, is one of France’s premier sociologists, the author of dozens of books, and a former president of the International Sociological Association. Wieviorka’s thesis is that Jewish jokes—which he defines as “funny stories that can be told and heard by non-Jews without stoking anti-Semitism”—thrived in a specific atmosphere, one where Jews still felt a bit Other, still felt the recency of oppression, but were also relatively at ease and welcome in their surround- ings. A good-for-the-Jews moment made for a golden age for Jewish jokes. The times we now live in, with their complicated mix of reality and dis- course of ever-rising antisemitism, do not lend themselves to joking around. Indeed, part of Wieviorka’s argument is that, while antisemitic comedy lives on, Jewish humour is much scarcer: the days of light-hearted ribbing are kaput. To make his case, Wieviorka offers a deep background in modern French and (to a lesser degree) Amer- ican Jewish history. (At times, this background strays far enough from the question of humour that I won- dered, Where do jokes fit into this? But I wasn’t too bothered: the value of the book might equally be getting an audi- ence of anglophone Jews to learn about the third-largest Jewish population, as much as about anything punchline-re- lated.) As a conceit, framing Jewish his- tory through humour is spectacular. What if you told the story of Jews not via what has led us to cry but through
what’s made us laugh? (It is explic- itly a counterpoint to the eminent historian Salo Baron’s concept of lachrymose Jewish history.) While plenty has been written about Jewish humour—Wieviorka makes no claim to be the first scholar taking it on — his approach is novel. A GOLDEN AGE? THE CHAPTER that will feel most familiar to English-speaking read- ers—“The American Invention of Jew- ish Jokes”—was bound to be the tricki- est to land in translation, for a readership possibly more familiar with the original material than the book’s own author. But it’s, in a sense, the most important part of the book, describing the intersection of Jewish humour and optimism under the most golden-age-type circumstanc- es: postwar, pre-9/11 America. That time and place offered a promise of a post- antisemitism landscape that went be- yond what was possible in France, due to the recency of the Holocaust and the fallout from decolonization, among oth- er factors. This chapter on American come- dy covers a lot of ground quickly, run- ning the gamut from Saul Bellow to Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. Seinfeld mer- its a paragraph—less real estate than the Jewish-mother jokes. Wieviorka’s observations about the show read like those of someone who knows what it is but has not necessarily seen it: “This sit- com, perhaps the most successful from a financial standpoint in the history of American television… makes Seinfeld ’s Jewish milieu seem very appealing, as it demonstrates that those in this milieu do not hesitate to make fun of the Jew- ish religion, even on television.” That summary is broadly correct, but the relationship between Seinfeld and Jewishness is so much more com- plicated than a golden-age interpreta- tion makes it seem.
Wieviorka describes 1990s sitcoms, and even 1960s and 1970s film and fiction, as a break from an earlier era, when American Jews succeeded — but via their embrace of the universal. He cites the significance of Fran on The Nanny (1993–1999) being Jewish and not euphemized as Italian, as spon- sors had wanted, presenting this as emblematic of its golden age. In truth, it was more like a rule-proving excep- tion, a brief respite from a catalogue of Jewish-coded American sitcom char- acters who were not permitted to be open about this status. I’m thinking of “Italian-Americans” like haughty Dorothy Zbornak and no-nonsense mom Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls (1985–1992), neurosis-incarnate George Constanza on Seinfeld (1989– 1998), or wisecracking Carla Tortelli on Cheers (1982–1993): not merely Jew- ish actors in Jewish-created roles, but iconically Jewish characters despite being officially gentile. (Add to the list Michael Stivic, a.k.a. Meathead, Rob Reiner’s lefty, proto–Bernie Bro son- in-law character on All in the Family (1971–1979). Meathead is Polish in the same way that American senator Ber- nie Sanders is Polish, which is to say, in geographical origin.) Jews absolutely existed in these shows’ universes, but the thinking seemed to be that we were tolerable only in small doses. One finds plenty of parallels here to (and overlapping with) Matt Baume’s work on gayness and American sitcoms in 2023’s Hi Honey, I’m Homo!: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture. Absent these generational memo- ries, it can be difficult to understand how refreshing it was when Broad City aired in 2014, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend the following year, with unapologeti- cally Jewish women characters front and centre, effortlessly blending self- deprecation and sex appeal — or as the
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