Both Bermant and Raskin show how all Jewish humor, and for Raskin, individual jokes, can be traced to Biblical times in light of Talmudic and other Rabbinical writings. Raskin addresses rabbinic judgment, man vs. God, ethnic disparagement, and even the humor in the Ten Commandments. Jewish mother jokes cannot be ignored in any analysis of Jewish humor, and both authors address the role of Jewish mother jokes and how they can be traced to the Bible. Raskin discusses the original function of Groucho Marx's resignation joke and places it also within a historical framework that extends back in time to the Bible and forward to Woody Allen. The meaning of life is a rich topic of discussion in Jewish humor, traced through to the Bible and played out in variations of the joke of the dying Rabbi.

The connection between Jewish humor and Biblican humor is not immediately apparent to the untrained reader. For example, "Funny, you don't look Jewish" jokes are not written as such in the Bible. Yet the central...

It is remarkable that the Bible would have the roots of modern Jewish humor embedded within it, given the great gap of time and space that has ensued. Yet as both Bermant and Raskin show, Jewish humor transcends both time and geography. The seeds of Jewish humor can be found planted within the pages of the Bible, and modern Jewish humor is only superficially different from Biblical humor.
Works Cited

Bermant, Chaim. What's the joke?: A study of Jewish humour through the ages. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1986.

Raskin, Richard. Life is Like a Glass of Tea: Studies of Classic Jewish Jokes. Aarhus University Press, 1992

Spalding, Henry D. Encyclopedia of Jewish Humor. Middle Village, 2001.

Telushkin, Joseph. Jewish humor: What the best Jewish jokes say about the Jews. Harper Collins, 1998.

Ziv, Avner. Semites and Stereotypes. Greenwood, 1993.