The Jewish joke may even transcend cultural context because the family of Jews spread around the world can use humor as a thread of connection. However, Jewish jokes do not stagnate. They evolve in order to reflect the lives and culture of the people who understand them.
Another common feature of Jewish jokes is that they reflect pain and suffering by turning sorrow into laughter. To the authors who address Jewish humor in Freudian terms such as Abrami, Jewish humor is defined by masochism. The anger that Jews could be directing externally is instead redirected at the self and at the community. Freud would have understood the phrase self-hating Jew, and wrote extensively about the ways Jewish jokes transfer anger related to political and social oppression into humor. Some authors focus on the ways Jewish humor capitalizes on stereotypes, to own the
All the authors show that modern Jewish comedy, especially American Jewish comedy, has masochistic elements that are inseparable from the definition of Jewish humor.
The definitions of Jewish humor and Jewish jokes include varying references to specific modes of comedy such as sarcasm, pun, or darkness in terms of the ability to make fun of anti-Semitism. Although each author will frame Jewish humor slightly differently, all agree that there is no one element that characterizes all Jewish humor. What defines Jewish humor is an often self-abnegating but always self-reflective sublimation of the Jewish experience.
Works Cited
Abrami, Leo M. "Psychoanalyzing Jewish Humor." My Jewish Learning. Retrieved online: http://mobile.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Humor/What_is_Jewish_Humor/Defining_Jewish_Humor/Psychoanalyzing_Humor.shtml
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.
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