Download or read book No Joke written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-02 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Ruth Wisse evokes and applauds the genius of spontaneous Jewish joking--as well as the brilliance of comic masterworks by writers like Heinrich Heine, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, S. Y. Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Philip Roth. A.

Download or read book The Big Book of Jewish Humor written by William Novak and published by William Morrow Paperbacks. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two rival businessmen meet in the Warsaw train station. "Where are you going?" says the first man. "To Minsk," says the second. "To Minsk, eh? What a nerve you have! I know you're telling me you're going to Minsk because you want me to think that you're really going to Pinsk. But it so happens that I know you really are going to Minsk. So why are you lying to me?" Four men are walking in the desert. The German says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have a beer." The Italian says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have wine." The Mexican says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have tequila." The Jew says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have diabetes."

Download or read book Old Jewish Comedians written by Drew Friedman and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2006-10-18 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive collection of portraiture of comedians born before 1930 includes the famous (Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, Jerry Lewis, Mel Brooks, Jack Benny), the not-so-famous (Benny Rubin, Shelly Berman) and the largely unknown (Al Kelly, Menasha Skulnik). The Reuben Award-winning Friedman presents a thorough visual history of these greatest Borscht-Belt comedians.

Download or read book Jews and Humor written by Leonard J. Greenspoon and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews and humor is, for most people, a natural and felicitous collocation. In spite of, or perhaps because of, a history of crises and living on the edge, Jews have often created or resorted to humor. But what is humor? And what makes certain types, instances, or performances of humor "Jewish"? These are among the myriad queries addressed by the fourteen authors whose essays are collected in this volume. And, thankfully, their observations, always apt and often witty, are expressed with a lightness of style and a depth of analysis that are appropriate to the many topics they cover. The scholars who contributed to this collection allow readers both to discern the common features that make up "Jewish humor" and to delight in the individualism and eccentricities of the many figures whose lives and accomplishments are narrated here. Because these essays are written in a clear, jargon-free style, they will appeal to everyone—even those who don't usually crack a smile!

Download or read book A Small Book of Jewish Comedians written by Tony Nourmand and published by Reel Art Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unmissable gift book, A Small Book of Jewish Comedians is a perfect (please God) post-pandemic pick-me-up In 1978, Time magazine estimated that around 80 percent of professional American comics were Jewish, and Jewish humor remains a foundation stone of American popular culture and humor. This book is not intended as a definitive tome but is instead a joyful and irreverent celebration of great photography and some of the greatest one-liners of the 20th century, ripe in satire, anecdote, self-deprecation and irony. Featuring photographs of comedians such as Larry David, Fran Lebowitz, Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Sarah Silverman, Joan Rivers and George Burns, the book's portraits are accompanied by one-liners such as: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." (Groucho Marx); "When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick." (George Burns); "It was a Jewish porno film ... one minute of sex and nine minutes of guilt." (Joan Rivers); "You know who wears sunglasses inside? Blind people and assholes." (Larry David); "I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel." (Fran Lebowitz).

Download or read book Jewish Comedy Stars written by Norman H. Finkelstein and published by Kar-Ben Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles Jewish comedians, from Fanny Brice and Jerry Lewis to Sarah Silverman and Jon Stewart.

Download or read book The Haunted Smile written by Lawrence J. Epstein and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lawrence Epstein's The Haunted Smile tackles a subject both poignant and delightful: the story of Jewish comedians in America. For the past century and more, American comedy has drawn its strength and soul from the comic genius of Jewish performers and writers. An incomplete listing of names makes the point: The Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Fanny Brice, George Burns, Milton Berle, Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Brooks, Alan King, Mort Sahl, Buddy Hackett, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman, Richard Belzer, Jerry Seinfeld. These men and women, among others, form the canon of Jewish-American comedy. In the words of the Detroit Jewish News, The Haunted Smile "offers us a deep and subtle understanding of how Jewish culture and American openness gave birth to a new style of entertainment." Often the best way to illuminate a point is to recount some of these comedians' own brilliant routines, and Epstein uses the comedian's work to great effect, making for a book that is both a thoughtful work of history and a great deal of fun.

Download or read book Fish in the Dark written by Larry David and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the comic genius behind Curb Your Enthusiasm—a play with “a perfect second-act twist, and a solid last-minute kicker” (Vulture). Fish in the Dark marked Seinfeld co-creator Larry David’s playwriting debut, his Broadway debut—and his first time acting on stage since eighth grade. David starred as Norman Drexel, a man in his fifties who is average in most respects, except for his hyperactive libido. As Norman, his more successful brother Arthur, their elderly mother, and a host of other characters try to navigate the death of a loved one, old acquaintances and unsettled arguments resurface—with hilarious consequences.

Download or read book Shtick Shift written by Simcha Weinstein and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rabbi Simcha Weinstein grew up in England. As a short fellow, he waited for his growth spurt. That never happened, so to avoid the anti-Semitism he confronted, he became funny. He later turned that humour into his own stand-up and wrote a book describing how Jewish humour has changed in the 21st century and how comedians like Sacha Baron Cohen, Sarah Silverman and Jon Stewart now use the old taboos to get lots of laughs.

Download or read book To Be Someone written by Ian Stone and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Ian Stone has one of the sharpest comic minds in the country. I would read anything he’s written about anything. This book made me start listening to The Jam' Romesh Ranganathan 'Full of wit, cheek and energy – not just for fans of The Jam, this is for fans of London, of youth, of life itself' Rory Bremner 'This is a funny, fascinating, absorbing, surprising and readable book with the added bonus of Phill Jupitus’s delicious cartoons . . . A book for anyone who is now middle-aged and looking back joyfully at their youth' Jo Brand 'I really liked this book. I'd forgotten how shit it was in the seventies' Paul Weller Ian Stone grew up in a Jewish, working-class house in north London in the mid-1970s. Everywhere around him, adults were behaving badly. His parents' relationship was in freefall so he tried not to spend too much time at home. But outside, there was industrial unrest, football violence, racism and police brutality. As for the music, it was all 'Save All Your Grandma's Kisses for My Love Sweet Jesus'. It made him feel physically sick. Then The Jam appeared. This is Ian's story of that time. Of weekend jobs so that he could go to gigs. Of bunking into the Hammersmith Odeon and ending up on the roof. Of going to see The Jam in Paris and somehow finding himself being interviewed for Melody Maker. Of attempting to keep out of the way of skinheads and trying (and failing) to work out how to talk to girls. And of devastation when in 1982 Paul Weller announced that the band were splitting up. There will never be another band like The Jam. For those who went on that journey with them, the love ran deep. And still does. They helped Ian and thousands like him to grow up – to be someone.

Download or read book More Old Jewish Comedians written by Drew Friedman and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comical collection of of Jewish comedian portraiture is a sequel to 2006's wildly successful Old Jewish Comedians, which earned Friedman raves from Jerry Lewis, Howard Stern, The Believer,Entertainment Weekly and many more, and earned Friedman his own roast at New York's legendary Friar's Club. This all-new collection includes the famous (Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, Mel Brooks, Soupy Sales, etc.), the not-so-famous (Jerry Stiller, Zeppo & Gummo Marx, Larry Storch, Zero Mostel, etc.) and the largely unknown (Molly Picon, Herbie Faye, Jan Milton, etc.). The Reuben Award-winning Friedman, one of the great caricaturists of his age, presents a thorough visual history of the 20th Century's greatest Borscht-Belt comedians.

Download or read book Where the Jews Aren t written by Masha Gessen and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of The Man Without a Face, the previously untold story of the Jews in twentieth-century Russia that reveals the complex, strange, and heart-wrenching truth behind the familiar narrative that begins with pogroms and ends with emigration. In 1929, the Soviet government set aside a sparsely populated area in the Soviet Far East for settlement by Jews. The place was called Birobidzhan.The idea of an autonomous Jewish region was championed by Jewish Communists, Yiddishists, and intellectuals, who envisioned a haven of post-oppression Jewish culture. By the mid-1930s tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, as well as about a thousand Jews from abroad, had moved there. The state-building ended quickly, in the late 1930s, with arrests and purges instigated by Stalin. But after the Second World War, Birobidzhan received another influx of Jews—those who had been dispossessed by the war. In the late 1940s a second wave of arrests and imprisonments swept through the area, traumatizing Birobidzhan’s Jews into silence and effectively shutting down most of the Jewish cultural enterprises that had been created. Where the Jews Aren’t is a haunting account of the dream of Birobidzhan—and how it became the cracked and crooked mirror in which we can see the true story of the Jews in twentieth-century Russia. (Part of the Jewish Encounters series)

Download or read book Jews Don t Count written by David Baddiel and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North American Edition of the UK Bestseller How identity politics failed one particular identity. ‘a must read and if you think YOU don’t need to read it, that’s just the clue to know you do.’ SARAH SILVERMAN ‘This is a brave and necessary book.’ JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER ‘a masterpiece.’ STEPHEN FRY

Download or read book Let There Be Laughter written by Michael Krasny and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the host of NPR affiliate’s Forum with Michael Krasny, a compendium of Jewish jokes that packs the punches with hilarious riff after riff and also offers a window into Jewish culture. Michael Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since his bar mitzvah, and it’s been said that he knows more of them than anyone on the planet. He certainly states his case in this wise, enlightening, and hilarious book that not only collects the best of Jewish humor passed down from generation to generation, but explains the cultural expressions and anxieties behind the laughs. "What’s Jewish Alzheimer’s?" "You forget everything but the grudges." "You must be so proud. Your daughter is the President of the United States!" "Yes. But her brother is a doctor!" "Isn’t Jewish humor masochistic?" "No. And if I hear that one more time I am going to kill myself." With his background as a scholar and public-radio host, Krasny delves deeply into the themes, topics, and form of Jewish humor: chauvinism undercut by irony and self-mockery, the fear of losing cultural identity through assimilation, the importance of vocal inflection in joke-telling, and calls to communal memory, including the use of Yiddish. Borrowing from traditional humor and such Jewish comedy legends as Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Schumer, Let There Be Laughter is an absolute pleasure for the chosen and goyim alike.

Download or read book The Haunted Smile written by Lawrence J. Epstein and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lawrence Epstein's The Haunted Smile tackles a subject both poignant and delightful: the story of Jewish comedians in America. For the past century and more, American comedy has drawn its strength and soul from the comic genius of Jewish performers and writers. An incomplete listing of names makes the point: The Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Fanny Brice, George Burns, Milton Berle, Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Brooks, Alan King, Mort Sahl, Buddy Hackett, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman, Richard Belzer, Jerry Seinfeld. These men and women, among others, form the canon of Jewish-American comedy. In the words of the Detroit Jewish News, The Haunted Smile "offers us a deep and subtle understanding of how Jewish culture and American openness gave birth to a new style of entertainment." Often the best way to illuminate a point is to recount some of these comedians' own brilliant routines, and Epstein uses the comedian's work to great effect, making for a book that is both a thoughtful work of history and a great deal of fun.

Download or read book Jewish Comedy A Serious History written by Jeremy Dauber and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award “Dauber deftly surveys the whole recorded history of Jewish humour.” —Economist In a major work of scholarship that explores the funny side of some very serious business (and vice versa), Jeremy Dauber examines the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing Jewish comedy into “seven strands”—including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar—he traces the ways Jewish comedy has mirrored, and sometimes even shaped, the course of Jewish history. Dauber also explores the classic works of such masters of Jewish comedy as Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Philip Roth, Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart, and Larry David, among many others.

Download or read book Jewish Wry written by Sarah Blacher Cohen and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Jews of Eastern Europe came to the United States in the 19th century, they brought with them their own special humor. Developed in response to the dissonant reality of their lives, their self-critical humor served as a source of salvation, enabling them to endure a painful history with a sense of power. In America, the marginal status of immigrant Jews prompted them to use humor a a defense, exaggerating or mocking their ethnicity as events dictated. Jewish Wry examines the development of Jewish humor in a series of essays on topics that range from Sholom Aleichem's humor to Jewish comediennes through to the humor of Philip Roth. This important book offers enjoyable reading as well as a significant and scholarly contribution to the field.