Borscht Belt Humor Hits Broadway-Yea or Oy Vey?
WOHL, ALEXANDER
BORSCHT BELT HUMOR HITS BROADWAY Yea or Oy Vey? ALEXANDER WOHL Is Borscht Belt humor back? Those snappy jokes and put-downs with their Yiddishisms, their homey feel and their often Jewish...
...We can do that ourselves, and even better...
...I never saw one Chinaman who said to me, 'I'm looking for a nice piece of gefilte fish.' " "My best friend is half Italian, half Jewish...
...It's a story you can follow...
...They applaud when Mason says, "The toughest army, man for man, in the world today is in Israel...
...A cablegram—of congratulations from Trotsky...
...Robert Klein hosts a cable television show...
...Real" Jewish humor, says Waldoks, represents "the last vestiges of Jewish popular culture...
...Everybody and everything is fair game...
...I never see four black people walking in the street and saying, 'Watch out...
...Again the husband rises to go in...
...Even Albert Einstein realized the unique consequences of being a Jew: "If my theory is proven correct," he said, "Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world...
...This may be simply because the comedian takes material from his own past...
...The proliferation of comedy clubs affords the rising comic the chance to display and hone his or her skills, much the same as the Catskills once did...
...He still uses stereotypes and put-downs, pointing out the idiosyncrasies and the real and perceived differences between ethnic groups...
...Like Judaism itself, Jewish humor has been affected by modernization, assimilation and acculturation...
...Today they go to Broadway...
...He jokes that now, when he does a show for younger audiences, he has to explain to them that "nachas is not a cheese chip...
...The difference, he noted, is that today people accept making fun of themselves...
...That's right," he chuckles, "there's always two Jews who get excited when you say that...
...It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic...
...Whether this affinity happens to be based on stereotypes doesn't matter...
...According to Caroline's Comedy Club in New York City, generally considered to be one of the top clubs in the country, many of today's young comedians still are Jewish...
...The Jewish God—where is the Jewish God...
...Should a Jewish joke be based in Jewish history...
...This, from another rabbi's son...
...Originally confined to places like Long Island, these jokes, and the term JAP, have disseminated throughout the nation...
...The husband jumps up, but the obstetrician reassures him: "That's nothing...
...Ray Charles is Jewish...
...he asks, "Too Jewish...
...Some psychoanalysts, including Freud, go so far as to say that Jewish jokes are often masochistic, in an effort to deflect the danger from persecutors...
...I told the super, don't paint Godl" Brace's routines, as well as those of other Jewish comedians, frequently have drawn criticism from parts of the Jewish community who feel threatened by the comedic commentary on Jewish culture and values...
...If I cook tomorrow, well go to a Chinese restaurant Thursday...
...It's just that, with some exceptions, most of their material is not...
...That* s why Jewish men hate Chinese restaurants...
...Somebody will kill you...
...Moshe Waldoks has labeled it the parevization of Jewish humor...
...Mason's act is based on the theory that people laugh together if they have a shared experience or emotion...
...Before shell cook a meal, she's gotta make twelve deals...
...For instance, his parents' values were "God and carpeting...
...But he got fired for taking off too many Jewish holidays...
...It is a group that is not overly religious, yet secure in its Jewishness...
...A religious Jew will be more offended by jokes attacking beliefs sacred to her or him than less religious Jews who might enjoy the same jokes...
...His audience loves the insults, the outrageousness, the rapid-fire jokes, the Jewish accent, the Yiddish words and, most of all, the subject matter they feel a part of...
...Those snappy jokes and put-downs with their Yiddishisms, their homey feel and their often Jewish orientation...
...Evaporated milk is goyish even if the Jews invented it . . . Lime Jello is goyish...
...It is why some adore novelist Philip Roth and others shun him...
...Here is a simple worker, a loyal Communist, who says I haven't read the message from Trotsky with enough feeling...
...There's a Jew over there!' Let's be honest...
...Likewise, the more observant might find jokes about Reform Jews to be more their cup of borscht...
...One type of humor which seems to have crossed the line is the Jewish American Princess (JAP) joke...
...Jews have salvaged a great deal of wit and wisdom out of their historical wanderings...
...Did you ever see anybody afraid to walk into a Jewish neighborhood because he might get killed by an accountant...
...From Billy Crystal to Robin Williams to the grandfather of them all, Mel Brooks' "2,000-Year-Old Man," the Jewish accent has become a standard...
...Ah, mon Dieu, commeje suffre...
...Two-thirds of the world consists of water...
...Does it have to be told by a Jew...
...Comedians like Jackie Mason, our social commentators and tummlers, will carry on the tradition, making some laugh while offending others...
...At last there comes from the room the cry "Ai, Ax, Oy vey ist mir...
...Twenty-five years ago it couldn't have been done anywhere but the Catskills or the clubs...
...Where to eat lunch...
...Whereupon the tailor cleared his throat and read: JOSEPH STALIN KREMLIN, MOSCOW YOU WERE RIGHT AND I WAS WRONG...
...I never saw one move yet "Mine sleeps seven," one will say...
...In what other profession can a man tell a woman to take off her clothes and send the bill to her husband...
...A Jew doesn't want a boat...
...Although he finds it extremely funny, Gilford said in a recent interview that much of Mason's material was just "polite anti-Semitism...
...But Allen, like Max Shulman and S.J...
...Some would say he crosses it...
...Comrades...
...Frequently the accent itself gets the laughs and not what is being said...
...The Jews could have had the Suez^ Canal in that [Six-Day] war, but they didn't want it...
...Mel Brooks sees the Jewish accent as a way to preserve a fading culture...
...At lunch, where should we have dinner...
...Pointing out the warts and the idiosyncrasies of Jewish life through satire and stereotype is a role that should be reserved for the anti-Semites, these critics say...
...In fact, what qualifies something as Jewish humor...
...Do we really need all that water...
...Every Jewish house is a museum . . . Jews can't even fix a car.- A gentile car breaks down and they're under the car right away...
...I SHOULD APOLOGIZE...
...Even more surprising, the comedian is none other than Jackie Mason, the 53-year-old, fast-talking, Yiddish-spewing, often insulting social commentator and former rabbi...
...But Bruce was one of the most perceptive comedians of his generation...
...B'nai B'rith is goyish...
...His college courses were in Truth, Beauty and Advanced Truth and Beauty...
...He kills for food...
...He jumps quickly from one cultural stereotype to another...
...But for Jewish women they're making houses now without kitchens...
...It shouldn't be surprising that people respond with greater sensitivity to jokes that directly affect them...
...I go to Puerto Rico all the time...
...Now, when a comedian makes it, the possibilities are limitless...
...I thought that they were Puerto Ricans...
...I know 5,000 Jews with boats...
...Or does it just have to be told with a Jewish accent...
...The world of comedy today is more vibrant and more sophisticated than it was 25 years ago...
...What began as a simple, even fond, stereotype of the pampered Jewish daughter, and had its roots in novels like Herman Wouk's Marjorie Momingstar and Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, has become, according to some, a real source of anti-Semitism and anti-feminism...
...Mason denies having made it...
...Older, and perhaps wiser than the comedian who was banned from the Ed Sullivan show in 1964 for allegedly making an obscene gesture...
...If s a compliment You have to be beautiful to make a living from that field...
...Once, as a guest on "Late Night with David Letterman," he showed movies from his bar mitzvah, the highlight of which was a Ferris wheel centerpiece made out of toothpicks and pickled herring...
...You need a Jewish president Somebody who can show a profit for this country...
...In a mezuzah...
...The great Hillel might have said "If not now, when...
...Hadassah, Jewish...
...These differences explain why some Jews love Mel Brooks and others are embarrassed by antics like dancing Nazis that are part of his movies...
...let's play on...
...If you live in New York or any other big city you are Jewish...
...A keen political satirist, he was also an observer of the human condition, of people and cultures and particularly of the differences between Jews and gentiles: I'm Jewish...
...Even some of the most famous Jewish comediennes, like Joan Rivers (nee Joan Molinsky), use "JAP jokes" in their acts, in self-parody...
...My God, what pains...
...His act overflows with Jewish jokes, gentile jokes, Chinese jokes, Puerto Rican jokes...
...You waited for the fish you wanted to come down," he explained, "then you picked him out of the seat and ate him...
...It remains a source of recognition and pride in their religious upbringing and culture...
...Thus, the story of the doctor who goes to deliver the baby of a wealthy, assimilated Jewish matron...
...He's on crucifixes all over...
...he wants a dormitory...
...TROTSKY...
...He loved using Yiddish, which he learned from another New York comic...
...The concern is so great that in recent months conferences have been held by the American Jewish Committee and on college campuses across the country...
...The doctor quickly throws down the cards saying, "Now it's time...
...Other female Jewish comics, such as Gilda Radner and Elaine May, do not...
...Jewish jokes must be seen and heard to be fully appreciated...
...A Jewish car breaks down and you always hear the same thing...
...Woody Allen is another who parodies and exaggerates his experiences and culture to create comedy...
...Mine sleeps twelve," says another...
...Twenty-five years ago they might have gone to see him at Grossinger's...
...If he can't buy it wholesale, he steals it...
...Within a couple of decades there won't be any more accents like that...
...Where does Jackie Mason fit into the range of Jewish comedy as \ diverse as Gene Wilder and the Three Stooges...
...An Italian wife lives in her kitchen...
...Kool-Aid is goyish...
...All Drake's Cakes are goyish...
...Every gentile home is a workshop...
...There's no food in the house...
...At the end of Mason's show, gentiles in the audience come up to him to tell him how funny he was...
...Jackie Mason Ironically, it is probably the less observant Jews that most enjoy the Jewishness of Jewish jokes...
...In fact, in a recent announcement, director Billy Wilder said that he is considering remaking his movie, One, Two, Three, with Jackie Mason in the role that James Cagney had in what was Cagney's last part before his comeback in Ragtime...
...Maybe the gentiles need it...
...You think that a Jew is going to get out of his Mercedes to drive a tank...
...His acerbic wit covers politics as well: "People say I shouldn't pick on Nixon...
...As Jack Gilford points out, "I can talk in Jewish dialect for an hour and get laughs every few seconds...
...There will always be those who worry about the dangers of Jewish humor dying out and there will be others who worry only about the dangers of Jewish humor...
...From Woody Allen to Alan King, from Morey Amsterdam to Zero Mostel, from the Marx Brothers to the Ritz Brothers, Jews have disproportionately dominated the field...
...A more serious analysis, suggested by Moshe Waldoks, co-editor of The Big Book of Jewish Humor, makes the division between "Jewish humor" and "Jew jokes...
...You can't screw 200 million people and wind up with phlebitis...
...It's the sound I was brought up on, and it's dying...
...But Jewish humor is also a source of pride and identity...
...Eddie Cantor's goyish...
...Insisting that he detests ethnic jokes, Mason quickly "apologizes...
...Veteran comic actor Jack Gilford, who has starred in movies like A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum and Cocoon and made comedy record albums like "You Don't Have To Be Jewish," marvels at the success of Mason's show...
...SHOULD APOLOGIZE...
...Whereupon Stalin raised his hand and stilled the crowd...
...These changes make Jackie Mason's success even more surprising...
...I like to visit my hubcaps," he laughs...
...As psychoanalyst Theodore Reik noted in his book Jewish Wit, it may be easier to get the Jews out of the Exile than the exile out of the Jews...
...Remarkably, this joke hasn't been making the rounds at Grossinger's, but on Broadway, at the Brooks Atkinson Theater...
...For instance, he relates that "I once won two weeks at an interfaith boarding camp, where I was sadistically beaten by kids of all races and colors...
...He's on a little box nailed to the door jamb...
...Bruce was also one of the first to include "Jewish" material before audiences that were not exclusively Jewish...
...The doctor suggests to the husband that they wait in the other room and play cards, since it is not yet time...
...Why is a Borscht Belt comedian playing to standing-room-only crowds on Broadway in 1988...
...They're being ironed out by history, because there are no more Jewish immigrants...
...Puerto Ricans...
...For some, the line between satire and self-hatred is crossed more often than it is for others...
...It is a quality that is difficult to describe succinctly but easy to identify...
...And this is the kind of criticism Jackie Mason is hearing today...
...A most historic event...
...Who do you think drove the Jewish tanks in that war...
...Count Basie's Jewish...
...The Jew with the dialect, who is not quite American, can say almost anything and it will come out humorous...
...While not a particularly sophisticated form of humor, stereotypes and parodies have always been an essential part of comedy...
...But even Roth, who has often been labeled the bad-boy of Jewish writing since Portnoy uttered his first dirty word, has written, "I have always been far more pleased by my good fortune in being born a Jew than my critics may begin to imagine...
...Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew...
...It fulfills the historic Jewish pursuit of the oral transmission of history...
...Comedian David Steinberg has his own production company, which makes television commercials...
...The second tops him, saying that his temple serves ham sandwiches during Yom Kippur...
...Every Jew loves food," he says...
...A schnauzer?' 'No, a mamzer . . . Izzy, kum avek fun ihr . . . He don't understand English, Miss Marsh...
...In Annie Hall he cracked that two Jewish intellectual magazines Dissent and Commentary had merged and formed Dissentary...
...After all, a good many of his co-religionists did...
...And, he says, "pretty soon I was the only rabbi with a gentile congregation...
...the mensch with the nudnick...
...You never see a Jew in a bar, except if he gets lost looking for a piece of cake...
...Add to that, comedy...
...You cant blame Reagan for the deficit If s not a job for a gentile...
...Perelman before him, is aware that humor often parodies profundity...
...No kidding, I look like a hooker...
...TOU ARE THE TRUE HEIR OF LENIN...
...What do you think Jews talk about for breakfast...
...As psychoanalyst Martin Grotjahn wrote, "You do not need to attack us...
...If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be goyish even if you're Jewish...
...You have probably heard at least one: Q,—"What does a JAP make for dinner...
...Moreover, it is a way for them to maintain identification with the community without the accompanying religious baggage, a way to mock a part of the culture with which they do not feel completely comfortable...
...Much of Allen's humor stems from his juxtaposition of the mighty with the commonplace...
...As the jokes got better I started to charge a cover and a minimum...
...I say it's syphilis...
...A—"Reservations...
...In the recent, highly underrated movie, Ishtar, which was written and directed by May, there is a funny routine in which the very gentile character played by Warren Beatty gets mad at someone and calls him a "smuck...
...a group that has grown up with a strong (post-1967) Israel and that identifies with the Jewish state...
...Up herel^ow read this historic communication...
...There's no boardwalk . . . Jews themselves were never fighters," he says...
...Born into a family of rabbis, he seemed destined to follow in their path...
...When the police would stand in front of the stage and wait for him to swear so they could arrest him, Bruce would begin swearing in Yiddish...
...And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage"—with a real religious parable—"A boy asks Rabbi Mendel Kotzker, 'Where does God live?' The rabbi answers, 'Wherever He is admitted.' " Allen's debt to the Jewish intellectual and religious tradition is extensive...
...But you read it without the right feeling...
...After a while the woman's cries reach the men...
...While delivering sermons, however, he "started to tell a few jokes to make it more palatable...
...if you live in New York, you're Jewish...
...If I cook today, I won't have to cook tomorrow...
...But then, Hillel never played Broadway...
...You know the kind: "I should have been a doctor...
...Mason's one-man tour de farce, The World According to Me, has been one of Broadway's hottest shows since it opened in December 1986...
...This, before he was expelled for cheating on a metaphysics final: He looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to him...
...Why do you think that in Miami everybody is named Goldberg or Horowitz, but every building they live in is called the 'Condominium of the la tres de la mer...
...I couldn't believe it...
...That's because he's looking at you straight on . . . He won't touch food if it ain't kosher...
...Presumably there were no bilingual police officers...
...And when his character in "Hannah and Her Sisters" is thinking of converting to Catholicism, in preparation he buys white bread and mayonnaise...
...Even Jackie Mason is acknowledging the historical Jewish emphasis on intellectual pursuits over mechanical ability when he says that Jews can't fix things...
...The subject has been featured in The Washington Post and TheJVew York Times, on National Public Radio and "Donahue," with activists protesting things like "Slap-a-JAP" T-shirts...
...He's got phlebitis...
...For the ages...
...a past that, like Jackie Mason's, often has a familiar ring to it...
...He's gone ape for chopped liver.' "Good" Jewish humor is immediately distinguishable...
...Likewise, characters like Leo Rosten's fictional hard-boiled detective, Silky (Sidney Pincus), have this quality: 'Your Dog...
...A character in the movie My Favorite Tear noted that Jews know two things: suffering and where to find good Chinese food...
...It's the same old Jackie Mason...
...Much of Jewish humor makes fun of intellectual traditions, perhaps because Jews have always been so disproportionately represented in these activities...
...A short fat yenta with a moustache, what are you going to give her, 80 cents...
...There is something particularly humorous about a Jewish accent or dialect in jokes...
...After all, how much can a cockroach drink...
...Jackte Mason Perhaps it was natural for him to go into comedy...
...Jackie Mason is also much funnier in person than on paper...
...Jackie Mason And what about those left behind in the trenches of stand-up comedy...
...I saw that army...
...If a gentile has a boat, he's out on excursions...
...Someone once suggested that a Jewish joke is a joke that no guy can understand and every Jew says he has already heard...
...His observations walk the narrow line between good jokes and bad taste...
...When someone says that the only Jewish holiday they observe is violinist Jascha Heifetz's birthday, we sense it is both Jewish and funny...
...TROTSKY You can imagine how the crowd exploded in astonishment and triumph...
...You call a Jewish girl a hooker...
...The physician says, "No, it is not time yet...
...It's a complicated, interesting, morally demanding and very singular experience, and I like that...
...But in the front row, below the podium, a little tailor called Stalin over and whispered to him: "Such a message, Comrade Stalin...
...I know, I know: He don't look Jewish...
...If you call an Italian girl a hooker you're in a lot of trouble...
...You should be proud...
...It is a humor often associated with what Freud called "mishpochitis," from the Yiddish word for "family...
...Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish . . . Although Bruce grew up on Long Island, completely assimilated, and changed his name (from Leonard Schneider), he was eager to confront his Jewishness when he performed...
...Not bad," says the third rabbi, "but in our temple, when Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come around, we just put up a big sign: 'Closed for the Holidays.' " It's fun to poke fun at rabbis, but not if you're in their congregation...
...3...
...Lime soda is very goyish...
...There's no bigger shnook in the world than a Jew with a boat All he wants is to show it to you...
...He's on rocks, he saves you, he's dying on bank buildings—he's been in three films...
...Thus the popularity of stories like the one about the three Reform rabbis who are bragging about who has the most progressive temple: The first notes that his has ashtrays in the pews so that the congregants can smoke during the Torah reading...
...May, who is known for her comedy routines with director Mike Nichols, is also a talented writer who uses the warmth and idiosyncrasies of her culture as a source of comedy...
...Compare Allen's own writings—"Why does man kill...
...Another time he got a job where he was paid to look Jewish...
...A little while later the woman in labor is heard again...
...Mason learned early in life the importance of holding an audience...
...His companion, the more worldly character played by Dustin Hoffman, then attempts to teach him the proper way to say "schmuck...
...The question we cannot answer is, will this be all that is left of Jewish humor...
...Dinner, where should we have coffee . . . The only people who never had a cockroach are white Protestant American gentiles...
...Jews somehow think that if it's Jewish it's got no class," he says...
...But Jewish humor, even in a distilled form, will remain one of the most succinct methods of transmitting history and culture...
...I love the Puerto Ricans...
...In evaluating Mason, it is helpful to look at Lenny Bruce, who died in 1966 and has today, unfortunately, gained a reputation as the Eddie Murphy of his time because of his use of obscenities...
...I hate Chinese," says Mason.' 'They never eat in a Jewish restaurant...
...Instead of hiding the differences, Mason laughs out loud at them...
...YOU ARE THE TRUE HEIR OF LENIN...
...Jackie Mason At the same time, Yiddish is one of the best ways to express ideas and feelings for which there are no fitting English words...
...Come, Comrade worker...
...Mason's use of JAP jokes doesn't seem to stand out in his act as it does in Rivers' because these jokes are merely part of the plethora of jokes based on stereotypes that form his repertoire...
...Christians are lucky, because your God, the Christian God, is all over," he said...
...It stopped.' And the wife says, 'it's your fault.' " Mason credits much of Jewish humor to the need "to battle back from persecution...
...But Mason and a host of other comics like him are not self-hating Jews...
...Rather, they are proud of the characteristics that differentiate Jew from gentile...
...I was there...
...Even Mason has taken leave from his show to make films, just as fellow Jewish comics Rodney Dangerfield, Albert Brooks and Billy Crystal, to name just a few, have done...
...The former category includes more culturally and socially relevant humor, while the latter is made up of more stereotypical and less sophisticated jokes...
...It is what Professor Stephen Whitfield of Brandeis University termed "one of the dominating threads of memory and group consciousness, a style that disarmingly proclaims that 'we' are still different from 'them.' For even the most assimilated Jew, Jewish humor can be an anchor not only to his history, but to the essence—stereotyped or not—of his culture and religion, his community and social life...
...Thus the popularity of jokes like: 'How many Zionists does it take to replace a light bulb...
...Comedian Robert Klein has fashioned much of his humor from his own background...
...But Mason's sharpest satire is reserved for his fellow Jews...
...But most Jews have a swimming pool...
...The hordes cheered and Stalin read the historic cable aloud: JOSEPH STALIN KREMLIN, MOSCOW YOU WERE RIGHT AND I WAS WRONG...
...A story from Leo Rosten vividly points this out: During a gigantic celebration in Red Square, after Trotsky had been sent into exile, Stalin, standing on Lenin's tomb, suddenly and excitedly raised his hand to still the acclamations: "Comrades, comrades...
...Four—one to stay home and convince someone else to do it, a second to donate the bulb, a third to screw it in, and a fourth to proclaim that the entire Jewish people stands behind their actions.' " Jewish humor is about the Jewish condition: the culture, the pain, the joy, the family and any baggage that goes along with it...
...Mason owes much of his success to his audience, a group composed of the suburban, nouveau riche Jews he parodies...
...An important factor in the success of Jackie Mason and the appeal of Jewish jokes is the delivery...
...And you know what the Jews will say...
...His fast-talking, yeshiva-bocher chanting and sing-song delivery, his Eastern Ashkenazi English accent, his gestures, facial expressions and intonations all add vital elements to his jokes...
Vol. 13 • July 1988 • No. 5
