Playing with Logic: Some Jewish Jokes I Like
In the America where I grew up, it seemed as if most of the singers were Italian (Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin…) and most of the comics were Jewish (Milton Berle, Jack Benny, Phil Silvers….)
Nowadays, it seems that a disproportionate number of comics are black: generations of persecution and suffering are apparently good for producing humor, presumably because humor is a good way of coping with persecution and suffering.
Humor from various cultures has some common elements, but at the same time every culture has its own deep characteristics that imbue its various cultural expressions, including humor. Over the years, I’ve become aware of some of the patterns in Jewish humor. In this piece, I’ll present one of the patterns that has intrigued me. Not only intrigued me, but appealed to me deeply. I’ll tell four of my favorite Jewish stories: they’re not ALL jokes, per se, but with each, at the end, one responds with some variety of laugh. At least I do.
The Jewish characteristic that expresses itself in all four of these stories, according to my interpretation, is the great investment the culture makes in LOGIC. A volume could be written about the role of logic in Jewish culture. Not by me, but a volume could be written. Actually, I expect that a decent search would disclose that more than a few such volumes HAVE been written, but I haven’t made the search, and I’m not planning to.
People of the book. People of the text. People of the ceaseless work of using logic to interpret the meaning of the text and the application of God’s law.
My father was, he said, “agnostic.” (How many four-year-olds are familiar with that word? My father’s son was.) But, of course, as the son of two Jewish immigrants from Russia, who never got high school degrees because–well, because they were Jews barred from such advantages and then they were refugees from pogroms– but whose shelves were full of books and whose conversations were full of the process of a variety of disputation influenced by generations of argumentation over the meaning of sacred texts, my agnostic father was also a Jew.
And as his son, I learned from an early age that logic played a central role in the pursuit of truth, and in the defense of one’s position.
So, I imagine that background primed me to appreciate these Jewish stories that play with logic.
I say “play with logic” because at the heart of each of these stories is not logic, but the turning of logic around to exploit or expose some underlying reality.
First, the two stories that turn logic around to EXPLOIT some hidden reality. And then two stories in which the reversal of logic serves to EXPOSE a hidden reality.
In a way, each of these stories constitute a Critique of Logic. Which, for a culture that employs logic as its central tool, constitutes the very kind of shocking upheaval that is, across cultures, so central to humor.
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Story # 1:
One of those Jew-hating figures arose in one of those places where Jews lived but precariously. (Precarious like a fiddler on the roof, one might say.) And this figure –was he a King, or an evil advisor to a manipulable King?– decided that all the Jews should be killed, because they’d done something or other. It gets decided –did the head rabbi manage to achieve at least this CHANCE of survival– that two pieces of paper would be placed into a container, one of them saying “Guilty” or “Kill the Jews” and the other saying “Innocent” or “Let them be.” The head rabbi would pick one of them out of the container and which one he picked would be the verdict and fate of the Jews.
Fine. A 50-50 chance. Better than sometimes.
Problem was, the evil whatever-he-was had no intention of leaving things to chance. Instead, he was going to inscribe BOTH pieces of paper with the death sentence, and thus for sure the rabbi would choose one that enabled him to kill the jews.
Fortunately, the rabbi was no fool. He understood the intention of the evil whatever-he-was. And so this was what he did.
At the crucial moment, he picked out one of the pieces of paper and before he or anyone else could see it he popped it into his mouth and swallowed it.
The evil whatever cried out, how can you do that, how can we know what it said now that you’ve swallowed it.
And the rabbi responded: No problem, evil whatever. Just look at whatever the remaining piece of paper says, and whatever it says, the one I swallowed must have said the opposite.
Hah! From can’t win to can’t lose!
Commentary: The “critique” of logic” here is that the head rabbi deliberately plays upon a false premise. What’s false is the assumption that, as stipulated in the arrangement, the two pieces of paper contain opposite statements. But the fact that they are identical gives the rabbi the chance to reverse the false conclusion to one that means certain death for his people to one that means certain survival for them.
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Story # 2
A very learned rabbi would travel from town to town. In each, a crowd would gather to hear him speak about the holy texts and talk with him, and then he’d go on to the next village. He traveled by cart, driven by a man who’d been with him for years.
One day, as they were about to reach another village, where they’d never been before, the driver said to the rabbi, “Wherever we go, the people treat you as a special person and ignore me completely. It gets to be a bit hard to take. How about this once, you and I switch places, and I’ll be the rabbi and you the driver. I’ve heard you give your speech so many times, I myself could give it word for word.”
The rabbi sympathized with the driver, and so consented to his proposal. The rabbi drove the cart, and the driver, dressed as the rabbi, stood up in front of the people who gathered round and did an impeccable job of delivering the talk.
All went quite well until, near the end of the discussion period, a man from the village asked a question so abstruse, so outside the matters the driver had heard discussed on other occasions, that the pretend-rabbi had not a clue how to answer it.
His heart started pounding. Then he saw what to do, and he replied: “I’m surprised that an intelligent man would ask so simple a question. Why, even my driver could answer that.”
At which he gestured to the actual rabbi who stood up and answered the man most cogently.
Commentary: This story is cast in the same form as the previous one, about the swallowing of the piece of paper: because of a false premise (“the two pieces of paper say the opposite thing” in the first instance, and “I’m the rabbi and he’s the driver” in this case), the clever man can escape from danger by leading others to draw an erroneous conclusion (“the paper I swallowed must have said ‘Let them live’” in the first case, “I could have answered that question, if my presumably less knowledgeable driver can answer it” in this case).
The delight of such reversals of logic comes not only from the clever escape from danger. It also comes from the sabotaging of one of the central disciplines of the culture, just as the Marx Brothers make us laugh with their wanton disregard of all proprieties and moral strictures.
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Here now is the second set of stories.
Story # 3 (You may recognize this joke from its appearance in the opening sequence of “A Fiddler on the Roof”):
Shmendrick, the Beggar, walks up to Shlomo, the successful merchant, calling out, “Alms for the poor! Alms for the poor.” Shlomo reaches into his pocket, takes out a coin, and gives it to Shmendrick, saying, “Here’s a kopek.”
Shmendrick looks at the coin and says, “One kopek? Last week you gave me two kopeks.”
Shlomo replies, “I had a bad week.”
Says Shmendrick: “So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?”
Commentary: There’s nothing SAID in this exchange that constitutes a commentary on logic and its uses. But it doesn’t have to be said. It’s there in the situation.
“Alms for the poor,” and the whole practice of begging, implies: though I am less fortunate than you, I am, like you, a human being, worthy of your sympathetic attention, and it is fitting that, though my life has not worked out as well as yours, you should sacrifice a bit of your well-being for me out of pure empathic concern.
But Shmendrick stands for the value of empathy ONLY AS LONG AS IT SERVES HIS PURPOSE. As soon as the misfortune of another reduces Shmendrick’s take from two kopeks to one, he pivots in an instance to “So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer.”
I love it.
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Story # 4
It is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when man asks God to forgive his many sins of the past year.
In the synagogue, during the Yom Kippur service, the rabbi throws himself on the ground and calls out, “”Oh, God. Before You, I am nothing!”
Seeing this, the most prominent member of the congregation (a rich banker), gets out of his seat and prostrates himself on the ground next to the rabbi, likewise shouting, “Oh, God. Before You, I am nothing!”
Now Mendel, a poor tailor, from the back of the building gets up and throws himself onto the floor in the aisle, and declares, “Oh, God. Before You, I am nothing!”
At this, the banker leans over to the rabbi, and says derisively, “Look who thinks he’s nothing.”
Commentary: Can you see why I pair this with the “So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?” story?
Like the beggar, the banker exposes himself as a hypocrite. His words only appear to express a certain value, a certain moral stance. In fact, he believes nothing of the sort, and is really giving expression to self-serving impulses that are the very opposite of their apparent meaning.
“I am nothing” is, here, an expression of self-importance. That the reality is the opposite of the pretense turns the logic of the words into the reverse of what they say.
A people whose lives have focused on the explication of words here confronts how the twists and turns and lies of the human heart render words into unreliable conveyors of meaning.
As the supporting pillars of the collective life are shown to be cracked and vulnerable, the shock of recognition makes us laugh.
February 6th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Appreciate the explication, but really love the humor!
February 7th, 2010 at 11:41 am
It`s deceptive , language – the twist and turn- the obverse of that stated, becomes an illusion, accepted by all as the spoken truth. Cruel humour!
February 7th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Not the same KIND of joke, but I love it nevertheless:
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Many years ago, the Pope decreed that all the Jews had to leave Italy. There was, of course, a huge outcry from the Jewish community, so the Pope offered a deal. He would have a religious debate with a leader of the Jewish community. If the Jew won the debate, the Jews would be permitted to stay in Italy. If the Pope won, the Jews would have to leave.
The Jewish community met and picked an aged Rabbi, Moishe, to represent them in the debate. Rabbi Moishe, however, could not speak Latin, and the Pope could not speak Yiddish. So it was decided that theirs would be a “silent” debate.
On the day of the great debate, the Pope and Rabbi Moishe sat opposite each other for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. Rabbi Moishe looked back and raised his middle finger.
Next, the Pope waved his finger around his head. Rabbi Moishe pointed to the ground where he sat. The Pope then brought out a communion wafer and chalice of wine. Rabbi Moishe pulled out an apple. With that, the Pope stood up and said, “I concede the debate. This man has bested me. The Jews can stay.”
Later, the Cardinals gathered around the Pope, asking him what had happened. The Pope said, “First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up his middle finger to remind me that there was still one God common to both our religions. Then I waved my finger around me to show him that God was all around us. He responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was also right here with us. I pulled out the wine and the wafer to show that God absolves us of our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of original sin. He had an answer for everything. What could I do?”
Meanwhile, the Jewish community crowded around Rabbi Moishe.
“What happened?” they asked.
“Well,” said Moishe, “First he said to me, ‘You Jews have three days to get out of here.’ So I said to him, ‘Up yours’. Then he tells me the whole city would be cleared of Jews. So I said to him, ‘Listen here Mr. Pope, the Jews… we stay right here!”
“And then?” asked a woman.
“Who knows?” said Rabbi Moishe. “He took out his lunch, so I took out mine.”
February 10th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
This is wonderful stuff and an appropriate forum to dissect some of the elements of humor. I would only add the obvious; the spontaneous and uncontrolled reaction of laughter is more important to embrace than to analyze. It is a universal life force by itself, as it makes thoughts worth thinking, and life worth living.
Of course there are no Norwegian stories, or I’d offer one up.