Let My People Laugh: Greatest Jewish Jokes of All Time compiled by Salvador Litvak; New York: Skyhorse Publishing; (c) 2024: ISBN 9781510-782167; 192 pages, $24.99.
SAN DIEGO — Movie director Salvador Litvak (When Do We Eat?; Guns and Moses) has compiled 162 Jewish jokes. Some are very old. I’m 79 years old, and I can remember my father telling me some of the stories that he heard from his father. Call them classics. But others are fresh–or at least they are to me–and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud (“lol” to social media habitués) and then read them across the breakfast table to my wife, Nancy.
What is a Jewish joke? There are various categories, four examples of which are found in the first 10 jokes among 162 selections. One is when a Jewish person, facing a problem, comes up with a clever, unexpected solution. A Jewish kindergartener, asked who the most famous person was to ever live, responds “Jesus Christ.” His Christian teacher says that’s the correct answer, but asks how come a little Jewish boy answered that way? The response: “In my heart, I knew it was Moses, but business is business.”
Another is a Chelm joke, referencing a mythical Jewish town populated by fools. One fellow, wearing nothing but a top hat, sits naked in a chair, explaining that it is okay to be naked because no one ever comes. Well, why the top hat then? “Maybe somebody will come.”
Yet another category depends upon Jewish customs and ritual to bring a knowing smile to the face of practicing Jews. A rabbi plays a few holes of golf before the Yom Kippur service. He hits a hole in one. Up in heaven, Moses asks God why the rabbi wasn’t punished instead of being rewarded. God responds, “”Who’s he going to tell?”
A fourth category has to do with Israel’s troubles in the Middle East. A well-known Arab terrorist is told by a fortune teller that he will die on a Jewish holiday. Which one? he asks. “Any day you die will be a Jewish holiday.”
The foregoing jokes were in the “classic” category –meaning I had heard them before. However, there were many in the next 152 jokes that I hadn’t heard. I’ll tell you one. A kibbutznik telephones the Supreme Leader of Iran and says he and his friends are declaring war against the ayatollah and his country. They begin to compare the relative size of their forces. The kibbutznik has 18 sturdy souls. The ayatollah counters that there are 2 million fighters in his Army. The next day, the kibbutznik calls the Supreme Leader and says, “the war is off” and he goes on to explain, “there’s no way we can feed two million prisoners.”
Litvak suggests that some jokes, which he numbers, are particularly apt for being told at ten different kinds of occasions: Weddings, fundraising, sermons, golf, keynote addresses, first dates, Shabbat gatherings, b’nai mitzvah, road trips, and business meetings. I’d like to add an eleventh occasion: breakfast. to start your day with laughter.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World