I am teaching a virtual class on Jewish humor through our partner site, My Jewish Learning. I share classic jokes and excerpts and then discuss what they say about the Jews who tell them and the Jewish audiences who enjoy them.
We have a lot of fun, and I think I’ve made the case for how a classic Jewish joke can be just as revealing and meaningful as any other classic Jewish text. But I wonder whether I am engaging in a worldview that sees humor as the sum total of Jewish identity. The Pew Research Center found that 42% of Jewish Americans associate being Jewish with a sense of humor—twice as many people who said the same thing about observing Jewish law.
Have we all become Tim Whatley, the dentist from “Seinfeld,” whom Jerry suspects has converted to Judaism in order to be able to tell Jewish jokes?
I’m already having these doubts tisha b’avithe annual fast that mourns destruction of temples In Jerusalem and other historical disasters. Before the day of fasting, observant Jews engage in several rituals of mourning for the dead. It’s a solemn time, and I’ve always been troubled by a custom that requires me to mourn at the height of summer.
endless sorrow The details of this period must have reached the sages of the Talmud. They tell the story of the elders who look down on the Temple Mount after the Romans razed it, and see a fox fleeing the temple’s holy of holies, the holy of holies. They begin to cry, but Rabbi Akiva begins to laugh.
They want to know why he is laughing, and Akiva explains. On one level, he understands the absurd irony – the cosmic mockery – of what they are witnessing: while the Torah states that any non-priest who approaches a holy place will die (Numbers 1:51), the fox violates that place without harm.
But Akiva is also laughing because the scene of destruction fulfills a prophecy: that Jerusalem will not be restored to the Jews until it has been reduced to rubble. Other sages get consoled.
Miriam Zami, in an in-depth analysis of the story, states that Akiva “resists the notion that the only future is bleak.” Laughing and remembering God’s promise to restore Jerusalem is “an act of healing, resisting Roman power and resisting the notion of a fundamentally meaningless existence.”
It is the kind of laughter that scholars of Jewish humor have long celebrated: “laughter through tears,” “laughter of defiance.” As Jewish scholar Ruth Wiese writes in her study of Jewish humor, “both the mystic and the comedian aspire to improve a world they are powerless to improve.”
However, I worry that humor may offer an unwanted escape from grim reality – perhaps healthy in small doses, but disillusioned when it becomes a way of living in the world. When we celebrate the genius of Jewish humor, are we mocking those who suffer without its comfort? To paraphrase the German philosopher Theodor Adorno, is it barbaric to make comedy after Auschwitz?
However, like Akiva’s friends, I found some comfort in the latest HBO special from veteran comedian Marc Maron. Maron, now 59, has long been a “comic’s comic,” but he’s gained wider fame in recent years on the strength of a popular podcast and his roles in the Netflix series “Glow” and his eponymous sitcom on IFC. His style is indignant and confessional, and Jewish to the extent that even he wonders: “There’s a part of me that just wants to stir up the Jewish thing,” he says at one point in the new special.
“From Bleak to Dark” is Maron’s first feature film since the death of his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, in 2020. He is one of many comedians who are exploring their personal grief in their comedy; As New York Times critic Jason Zinoman pointed out in a recent essay, “These new shows suggest that grief, precisely because it is usually handled with seriousness, jargon and unspoken thoughts, is ripe territory for stand-up.”
The first words of Maron’s special fit right into the main text of the Tisha B’Avi liturgy, known as the “Lamentation”: “I don’t want to be negative,” he says, “but I don’t think anything’s ever going to get better again. I don’t want to offend anyone, but I think whatever time it takes us to brighten up this planet, it’s going to be pretty much the same.”
He’s talking about global warming, but eventually he starts talking about Shelton’s death. At first he wonders how he can discuss his loss on stage, and then imagines a sad one-man show called “Marc Maron: Kaddish, A Prayer for the Dead” and recites the prayer’s opening words.
But Maron is not one to find comfort in Jewish ritual. “I’m not religious. I’m Jewish,” he explains, as if the second sentence makes the first sentence self-evident.
As far as comedy is concerned, he says, “I am a person who talks about my life. So I wasn’t clear how it was going to happen. what am i going to talk about [Shelton], You know, is this ever going to happen? Is there any way to bring humor into it?”
There is, and it happened the night doctors took Shelton off life support. At first, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be there, but his friends persuaded him that he would regret it if he didn’t say goodbye. “So I went over there and actually looked at her and she was gone,” he tells WebMD. “And I was able to touch her forehead and tell her I love her and was able to cry for a few minutes.” And then, because he’s a comedian at heart, he remembers a joke: As he steps away from her hospital bed, he thinks, “Selfie?”
“When I wrote that joke, or when I came across it, I was very happy,” he says.
Maron knows he’s not the only person watching in the theater, or at home, who is grieving, and his words are as comforting to them as they are to himself. In another famous Talmud story about laughter, Elijah the prophet and a rabbi Baroka meet two men in the market. Both explain that they are clowns. “When we see someone sad, we cheer them up,” he explains. “Similarly, when we see two people quarreling, we try to make peace between them.”
fighting the dark with comedy
Elijah says, “These two have a part in the world to come,” which is a prophet’s way of saying that they have a free way into heaven.
I don’t know whether Maron knows that passage or Akiva’s, but his particular experience seems like an essential scene on the eve of Tisha B’av, when Jews are called to maintain hope and embrace life despite a tragic history.
He explained, “I think the humor that comes from real darkness is really the best because it disarms it.” “It is heightening the sentiment. That’s why I got into comedy, because I’ve seen comics and they used to take things that were complicated or scary and simplify them and make you look at them in a different way and laugh. And I think that’s a beautiful thing and it’s necessary.”
And then, because he’s a comedian and Jewish, he can’t resist a joke: “I believe there were probably some hilarious people in Auschwitz.”
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.