Jewish Comedy: A Serious History
by Jeremy Dauber /
2017 / English / EPUB
678.2 KB Download
A rich account of Jewish humor: its nature, its
development, and its vital role throughout Jewish
history.
A rich account of Jewish humor: its nature, its
development, and its vital role throughout Jewish
history.
In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny,
Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish
comedy and its development from biblical times to the age of
Twitter. Organizing the product of Jews’ comic imagination over
continents and centuries into what he calls the seven strands of
Jewish comedy―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. Persecution,
cultural assimilation, religious revival, diaspora, Zionism―all
of these, and more, were grist for the Jewish comic mill; and
Dauber’s book takes readers on the tour of the funny side of some
very serious business. (And vice versa.)
In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny,
Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish
comedy and its development from biblical times to the age of
Twitter. Organizing the product of Jews’ comic imagination over
continents and centuries into what he calls the seven strands of
Jewish comedy―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. Persecution,
cultural assimilation, religious revival, diaspora, Zionism―all
of these, and more, were grist for the Jewish comic mill; and
Dauber’s book takes readers on the tour of the funny side of some
very serious business. (And vice versa.)
In a work of dazzling scope, readers will encounter comic
masterpieces here that range from Talmudic rabbi jokes to
medieval skits, Yiddish satires and Borscht Belt routines to
scenes from
In a work of dazzling scope, readers will encounter comic
masterpieces here that range from Talmudic rabbi jokes to
medieval skits, Yiddish satires and Borscht Belt routines to
scenes fromSeinfeld
Seinfeld and
andBroad City
Broad City, and the
book of Esther to Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song.” Dauber also
explores the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as
the Jewish mother, the Jewish American Princess, and the
schlemiel, the schlimazel, and the schmuck, and 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.
, and the
book of Esther to Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song.” Dauber also
explores the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as
the Jewish mother, the Jewish American Princess, and the
schlemiel, the schlimazel, and the schmuck, and 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.
Jewish comedy, as Dauber writes, is serious business. And
precisely what it is, how it developed, and how its various
strands weave together and in conversation with the Jewish story:
that’s
Jewish comedy, as Dauber writes, is serious business. And
precisely what it is, how it developed, and how its various
strands weave together and in conversation with the Jewish story:
that’sJewish Comedy
Jewish Comedy.
.