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after the Second World War could per- ceive the jokes as ‘instances of sympa- thetic in-group humor’ because they did not stress the Jewishness of the fe- male target of the humor.” Is it strange that Hyman, a ma- jor figure in American scholarship of French Jewry and author of The Jews of Modern France , wouldn’t have been on Wieviorka’s radar for this, giv- en how deep she dove into Jewish- mother jokes? Not necessarily; even the best-read haven’t read everything. But something about Wieviorka’s interpre- tation of these jokes missed the mark. In his defence, he points out that the younger generations don’t find these jokes funny. In less of his defence, was Paula Hyman—born, like Wieviorka, in 1946 — part of a younger generation? To borrow from Jerry’s offended- as-a-comedian punchline, what gets to me here is not (or, not just) the ob- liviousness to sexism. Rather, it’s that Jewish-mother jokes are so ripe for anal- ysis, and Wieviorka barely scratches the surface. SCOLDS VERSUS TROLLS WHAT KILLED the Jewish joke, if it is dead? Wieviorka looks to Jewish histo- ry for answers, and it is, caveats aside, a fun trip to take with him. But the Jewish-history framing gets you only part of the way there. For the rest, you need to look at the evolution of humour generally. Wieviorka notes that Jewish humour doesn’t work as well online as it does in person or in movies, books, and so forth. This is true of jokes more broadly, and is as much about changes to Jewish identi- ty as the shift from in-person to online. In the US especially, the culture wars have led to a polarization where virtually every comedian, every joke, is instantly legible as on one politi- cal team or the other. The left version of this was exemplified by Nanette ,
Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 Netflix special, which deemed self-deprecation, if not comedy itself, problematic and harm- ful to marginalized people. The right wing’s was The New Norm , an animat- ed sitcom whose pilot was accurately described on Wonkette as, “What if we remade All in the Family , set in 2024, only Archie Bunker is always right, his foils are always idiots, and it’s not fun- ny?” Between the “humour” that ex- ists solely to offend, and the one whose only purpose is to educate and uplift, there’s little space left for uncompli- cated (or, apolitical) amusement. Our times may just be too ideological for jokes, Jewish or otherwise. There is also the awkward question of whether Wieviorka has picked up on the end of an era or is merely re- vealing his own lack of familiarity with contemporary Jewish comedy. Alex Edelman, Ilana Glazer, and Nathan Fielder are all Jewish-joking for Jew- ish and mainstream audiences. Then there’s the Slam Frank musical, Andrew Fox’s satire that “imagines what happens when a progressive community theater company decides to transform Anne Frank’s true sto- ry into an intersectional, multiethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, empower- ing Afro-Latin hip-hop musical.” It’s not what Jewish humour looked like previously, and it’s not for everyone, but is it any less authentically Jewish than Annie Hall ? Wieviorka writes of the “near ab- sence in Israel” of Jewish jokes, some- thing I cannot speak to (beyond the oft-circulating Eretz Nehederet clips satirizing Western leftist pro-Pales- tinian activists, which have struck me more as political point-making than fun- ny). But I’m not sure he can, either, as Hebrew-language humour does not ap- pear to be his area. Here, too, one sees the drawbacks to an “X is dead” framing, coming from someone whose primary
expertise is not in the area in question. His assertion that Jewish humour outside of Israel doesn’t much reference the Jewish state had me nodding along, until I remembered counterexamples. There’s the 1995 episode of The Nan- ny where Fran recalls losing her virgin- ity at a kibbutz, with the teen girl she is (inexplicably at this point) nannying for poised to do the same, in a scene set in what is meant to be Israel but it’s a sit- com, so they’ve just added some plants. The Birthright Israel–inspired episode of Broad City . The Adam Sandler film You Don’t Mess with the Zohan . Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat character speaks a “Kazakh” that is largely modern He- brew. And Philip Roth’s 1969 nov- el Portnoy’s Complaint —an assumed presence in any Jewish humour can- on—ends (well, almost ends) with Al- exander Portnoy in Israel, incapable of performing with an Israeli woman. Wieviorka is correct that there was a style of Jewish humour that was a happy part of diaspora Jewish culture, and that is less congruent with our times. The titular “last Jewish joke,” about clerics of various faiths caught gambling, is one that hovers between a cozy Jewish joke and an indictment of Jews as dis- loyal — that is, an antisemitic one. The end of “The Yada Yada” has Jer- ry flirting with a woman who shares Jerry’s affinity for making “anti-dentite” jokes (a play on antisemite , but refer- encing jokes about dentists). It’s all fun and games until she mistakenly as- sumes Jerry will share her enjoyment of jokes about Black and Jewish people. A wink to those in the know: playing this character is Debra Messing, who is Jewish, and who would go on to star as Grace Adler in Will and Grace . Who could have guessed that a 2025 Wall Street Journal headline would read, “Debra Messing Knows What Anti- semitism Feels Like”? And yet, here we are.
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