Jewish Humor Central is a daily publication to start your day with news of the Jewish world that's likely to produce a knowing smile and some Yiddishe nachas. It's also a collection of sources of Jewish humor--anything that brings a grin, chuckle, laugh, guffaw, or just a warm feeling to readers.
Our posts include jokes, satire, books, music, films, videos, food, Unbelievable But True, and In the News. Some are new, and some are classics. We post every morning, Sunday through Friday. Enjoy!
Rabbi Bob Alper's standup sets have made frequent appearances on Jewish Humor Central. We've been watching his funny DVD
and just can't resist sharing some of his jokes with you, especially
since he gave us permission to spread the joy that his humor brings to
live audiences and to viewers of the DVD. The
DVD contains his 50 minute standup set and a collection of jokes that
we're just starting to tap into. Here's one that we call "A Jewish Name." Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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Tonight is the start of the joyous Jewish holiday of Sukkot. In synagogues and homes all over the world, Jews will raise their voices in prayer while holding and waving the four species -- the lulav (date palm branch), hadasim (myrtle branches), aravot (willow branches) and the etrog -- the citron that looks like a large lemon. If you think the only use of the etrog is to hold it and wave it on Sukkot, think again.
Tucked away in a corner of Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market, Uzi-Eli Hezi, a Yemenite etrog farmer, entertains and informs visitors to his booth about the healing power of his juices and lotions made from the etrogim that he grows on his farm. Born in Yemen in 1942, Hezi came to Israel in the Operation Magic Carpet airlift in 1950.
As Melanie Hidman wrote in a Jerusalem Post article a few years ago,
Etrog juice hasn't been clinically tested, but is used as a home remedy
for centuries. Etrogim – citrons in English – can also cure morning
sickness, work as an antidote to snake or scorpion bites, lower blood
pressure, cure infertility, help heal burns, and reduce blood pressure,
among other medical miracles - all according to Hezi.
“The etrogim keep me healthy and happy,” said Hezi. “I haven’t seen a
doctor in 15 years. I pay for health insurance for nothing!” Indeed,
he’s got a loyal following of people who feel the same way. Hezi sees
more than 250 customers a day at his stall, though he sometimes refers
to them as patients. He has hundreds of stories of helping infertile
women give birth, lifting chronic depression, and healing ailments large
and small through his line of etrog products.
“I can see what’s inside a man and give him a medicine that’s just what he needs,” Hezi explained.
Hezi
juggles running the stall and blending the juices, while simultaneously
listening attentively to the requests and questions of his customers.
He’s part therapist, part healer, part spiritual adviser, and part etrog connoisseur.
Enjoy the video. We'll be shaking our lulav etc. on Monday and Tuesday so there won't be a Joke to Start the Week tomorrow or next Monday which is another Jewish holiday, Shemini Atzeret. We'll be back this Wednesday with our usual mix of Jewish delicacies.
Yiddish 101 is an introduction to an ancient language that's attracting
new interest at the University of Texas. Richard Schlesinger has a
video report on the Austin classroom where conversations sound like they could
be taking place at a Hasidic Jewish bakery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
This video was shown on the CBS Sunday Morning TV show last week. It focuses on the resurgence of spoken Yiddish in Texas classrooms. The report includes comments by a University of Texas Vietnamese student who is adding Yiddish to her language repertory, a visit to the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts and its founder Aaron Lansky, and to the streets of Williamsburg where Yiddish is the main spoken language of its Hasidic residents.
We also get a glimpse of activities of the National Center for Yiddish Film, the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene, and the Klezmatics, one of the oldest bands playing the Klezmer music that was the dominant musical form in Eastern Europe. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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With Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur behind us, our attention turns to Sukkot, one of the happiest holidays in the Jewish calendar. We hope you had an easy and meaningful fast, and now it's time to plan our feasts for the eight-day holiday of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah. It's traditional to start building a sukkah immediately after Yom Kippur, and many sukkot went up last night and today. It's also become traditional for congregations to schedule a Sukkah Hop, a moveable feast with synagogue members volunteering their sukkot for their friends to drop in for a l'chaim and some sweet snacks under the leafy or bamboo roof of the temporary shelter. The Sukkot videos have been slow to come in this year, so we're sharing a video that the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy posted last year, a video that we just discovered so it's probably new to most of our readers. The Berman Hebrew Academy is a Modern Orthodox day school located in Rockville, Maryland. Rabbi Avichai Pepper, Judaics Program Director for the Lower School, took original music from Pharrell Williams' hit song Happy, and wrote and arranged a new version about sukkah hopping with vocals by student Elyon Topolosky.
Enjoy!
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Kol Nidrei, the chant that begins the evening service on Yom Kippur has been recorded by just about every cantor who had access to recording equipment. Considered by many to be the most sacred song in the Jewish liturgy, it is not really a prayer, but a legal formula involving the annulment of vows. You don't have to be Jewish to sing Kol Nidrei. Many famous and popular singers have been attracted to the haunting melody and included it in their recordings. We remember Perry Como singing it on TV, and we had a copy of his version on a 45 rpm record. Johnny Mathis also recorded Kol Nidrei, and in 2011 he talked about his connection to Jewish music in an interview posted by the Idelsohn Society for Music Preservation. We hope you enjoy Johnny's version and his reflections on the recording. The Jewish Humor Central family and staff extend best wishes for a G'mar Chatima Tova to our readers and their families. We'll be in shul tonight and Wednesday and back with more Jewish humor on Thursday.
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VIDEO.) Reflections on Kol Nidrei by Johnny Mathis
It's another Monday, but not just any Monday. It's the Monday before Yom Kippur. Tomorrow night Jews all over the world will gather in synagogues to chant Kol Nidrei (Be sure to check Jewish Humor Central tomorrow for our Kol Nidrei post). But Monday is still joke day, and today we're telling one that's set in a synagogue (not yours, of course, but the other one.) Here's the setup: Morris was coming out of the synagogue one day, and as always, the rabbi was standing at the door. And then... Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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It's
no secret that the greatest comedians are Jewish, and most of them
achieved their fame by entertaining audiences without having to resort
to using foul language, like many of today's younger comics.
Today
we're continuing our series,
"The Great Jewish Comedians," with a video clip of the great Groucho Marx appearing on the TV show I've Got a Secret in 1959. For our readers who are too young to remember Groucho, we're including some information about him from Wikipedia, but his career was so long and so varied in vaudeville, movies and TV, alone and with his brothers Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Gummo, that we suggest you read his complete biography here.
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian and film and television star. He was known as a master of quick wit and widely considered one of the best comedians of the modern era. His rapid-fire, often impromptu delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers and imitators.
He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers,
of whom he was the third-born. He also had a successful solo career,
most notably as the host of the radio and television game show You Bet Your Life.
His distinctive appearance, carried over from his days in vaudeville, included quirks such as an exaggerated stooped posture, glasses, cigar, and a thick greasepaint
mustache and eyebrows. These exaggerated features resulted in the
creation of one of the world's most ubiquitous and recognizable novelty
disguises, known as "Groucho glasses": a one-piece mask consisting of horn-rimmed glasses, large plastic nose, bushy eyebrows and mustache.
In this video clip from 1959 (Yes, that's 56 years ago) Groucho appears on Garry Moore's show and challenges Bill Cullen, Monique van Vooren, Henry Morgan, and Betsy Palmer to guess his secret while plugging his then new book, Groucho and Me. In watching the video, we noticed how TV has changed since 1959, not only in moving from black and white to today's giant color high definition, but also with Groucho holding, lighting and puffing on a cigar, and Garry holding a lit cigarette, presumably a Winston, which was sponsoring the show. Enjoy!
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This Shabbat, falling between the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is known as Shabbat Shuvah because Shuvah (return) is the first word of the Haftarah read in synagogue on this day. It is also known as Shabbat T'shuvah (repentance) because of proximity to Yom Kippur.
Traditionally on this Shabbat, rabbis deliver sermons to their congregation
to awaken the congregation to recall their conduct of the
past year, and begin to repent for the coming of Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement).
We usher in the Shabbat tonight like any other Shabbat, with the singing of Shalom Aleichem. We found a particularly beautiful rendition of Shalom Aleichem by Vered Forbes in a duo called Yehudim Tovim (Good Jews.) The video looks like it was made in and around Jerusalem. We hope you enjoy it.
Shabbat shalom.
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Sitting shiva is not a subject you would expect to be the basis of a funny commercial. But there is a long history of dark humor over the centuries during which Jewish jokes and anecdotes developed.
With more than one million apps available for the iPhone, it was just a matter of time until one surfaced that dealt with sitting shiva.
Nathan Firer followed a Jewish tradition of turning tragedy into comedy when he lost his father last year. The former lawyer turned comedy writer and producer used his powers of observation and exaggeration to satirize what typically occurs at a house of mourning during the seven day long shiva period. He created a funny mock commercial for a new iPhone app called i-Shiva.
In the video below, the announcer asks "Are you down on your luck, homeless and hungry yet own a smart phone? Are you a foodie in search of your next blog-worthy meal? Are you totally stoned and have the munchies? Then i-Shiva is the app for you! i-Shiva is the new revolutionary smart phone application that will guide you to the nearest shiva call within 18 miles of your location." From there it gets funnier and funnier, with the app even including a database of which yentas to avoid when visiting and fressing at the shiva house. Enjoy! (A
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Di Goldene Kale in Concert at Rutgers University (Photo: Jody Somers)
In August we attended a concert version of Di Goldene Kale (The Golden Bride), a Yiddish operetta from the glory days of the Second Avenue Yiddish theatre. (Kale is pronounced kalleh - rhymes with challah, not kale, the leafy green vegetable.)
The performance was at the Nicholas Music Center on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
The audience was enthralled by the beautiful music and funny dialogue, which was projected on a huge screen in English translation.
When the cast and orchestra took their bows, Zalmen Mlotek, the musical director of the Folksbiene - National Yiddish Theatre addressed the audience which gave them a standing ovation. He told the audience that with the theatre group taking up permanent residence at the Museum of Jewish History in downtown Manhattan, he was hoping get support to stage a full production with professionally designed sets and costumes.
Apparently support came quickly, because Folksbiene announced last week that they are selling tickets for the full production which will be staged from December 2 through December 27 at the Edmond J. Safra Hall at Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place in Manhattan.
This is a must-see production which will have you humming the melodies and laughing at the funny lines as you leave the theatre.
“Di Goldene Kale” —
with music by Joseph Rumshinsky, lyrics by Louis Gilrod and a book by
Frieda Freiman — had its premiere in 1923 at Kessler’s Second Avenue
Theater, where it filled the 2,000-seat house and ran for 18 weeks.
In the operetta, a
beautiful young woman named Goldele, who was abandoned as a child,
receives an unexpected inheritance and sets off on a journey to claim
her estate, find her mother and offer her hand to the man who can help.
Here's a video clip of the cast rehearsing for the August performance of the concert version followed by an earlier recording of one of the main songs of the operetta, My Goldele. Enjoy!
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(A tip of the kippah to Debbie Drachman for bringing this story to our attention.)
Tonight Jews all over the world will enter their preferred place of worship to start a new year and usher in a month of holidays starting with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Simchat Torah. Whether the house of worship is Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Secular Humanist, or other, we all look at the High Holidays as "a time for introspection, time to forge a new direction" as expressed in Starting Over, a new music video by Six 13, a six-man vocal a capella group.
Driven by a mission to connect Jews around the globe with their
heritage through music, anchored by a strong Jewish identity, and fueled
by thumping beatbox, intricate arrangements, and soulful harmonies. Six 13 brings a fresh style of
Jewish music to the stage, with songs ranging from hip-hop dance tracks
to rock anthems. The members of the New York City-based group sound like
a full band – while using nothing but their voices.
We'll
be attending Rosh Hashanah services for the
next two days, and we'll be back on Wednesday with our usual mix of jokes, music, nostalgia, Yiddishe nachas, unbelievable but true anecdotes from the news pages, and more. Here's
wishing a happy, healthy, joyous, prosperous and funny New
Year from our family to yours!
Enjoy the video and have a Shanah Tovah uMetukah!
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Apples and Honey are popular this year in Rosh Hashanah music videos. And a few music videos are using Honey, I'm Good, the song made popular by Andy Grammer, as the basis for a holiday parody. With only two days until Rosh Hashanah, we picked this video as the best of the bunch. It's by Erez Cohen and features a large cast of characters, including juggler Sam Jacobs and cameo appearances by Hebrew rapper Kosha Dillz and Danielle Jacobs as Rebbetzin Rivka Leah Zelwig, whose hilarious videos we've featured on Jewish Humor Central.
You'll find the lyrics just below the video. Enjoy and Shabbat Shalom! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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APPLES & HONEY ARE GOOD LYRICS: Chorus: Apples and honey are good Wanna dip another but I probably should not I’ve got so many at home And if I stay I might just eat em ‘all
Apples and honey are good Wanna dip another but I probably should not So I’ve gotta bid them adieu May your year be sweet and new (Sweet and New)
Verse 1: It's been a long, long year for Jews everywhere Now the holiday season's in the air, (I’m singin' like) I can't wait for the New Year feast tonight Cuz in 10 more days we won’t eat a bite (Yom Kippur, like)
Oh baby, Oh maybe, Could start this year right, baby, my King has already got all of my love
CHORUS
Verse 2: Oh we eat the head and not the tail So we’ll be our best and never fail (now check it out) I've got G-d and He's got me So I’ll throw my sins to the fish in the sea (Singin’ like)
Oh baby, oh maybe I’ve got no more wrongs, baby my King has already got all of my love
CHORUS
Bridge:
Oh the shul is, shul is all dressed up in white Oh, That Shofar, sound it makes me feel so alive So Alive!
Thanks
to our thousands of loyal subscribers and casual readers worldwide who
have
joined us during the year. We started this blog on October 5, 2009 and
it's been going strong with more than 1800 blog entries over the last six years. We appreciate your loyalty and we hope to keep bringing
you
a daily mix of Jewish humor in all of its forms -- traditional,
eclectic, musical, unbelievable but true, and just funny, tempered with touches
of nostalgia and Yiddishe nachas. 5775
has been an amazing year for us -- a year of wonderful friendship, a year in which our whole family spent Passover in Jerusalem, a year in which our nine books on Jewish humor
have been selling on Amazon.com, and in which we performed comedy shows
and lectures in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida. Here's
wishing a happy, healthy, joyous, prosperous and funny New
Year from our family to yours!
The Kustanowitz Kronikle is our Rosh Hashanah Greeting Card.
Click on the page below for a printable PDF version.
What song drew the most cheers this summer? OMI's Cheerleader, as
the Jamaican reggae/pop artist's smash hit was voted Billboard's No. 1 song of the summer of 2015.
The buoyant single headed Billboard's annual Songs of the Summer chart,
which tracks the most popular hits based on cumulative performance on
the weekly Billboard Hot 100 chart from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
So what does this have to do with Rosh Hashanah? The United Hebrew Congregation of Singapore created a music video called Sound a Tekiah, a parody of Cheerleader, in which their members dance their way around the island. There have been Jews and Orthodox synagogues in Singapore since the 1840s, but Reform Judaism did not make an appearance until 1991, when a small group of expatriate Jews founded The United Hebrew Congregation. It is made up of a Jewish Diaspora of many nationalities of Reform, Conservative, Progressive and Reconstructionist backgrounds.
Here is the UHC's Tekiah video, just in time for Rosh Hashanah. Enjoy!
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With Rosh Hashanah only five days away, we're bringing you some more new music videos created to greet the holiday season.
Today's video is by the Boys Town Jerusalem choir singing Bashanah HaBa'ah, the song by Ehud Manor that was made popular by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. It's a song of hope and optimism about the coming year. (Transliterated Hebrew lyrics and English translation appear below the video.)
Established
in 1948 to provide a home and education for young immigrants to the
newly-created State of Israel, Boys Town Jerusalem has become one of the
country's largest and most respected educational institutions. Today, the beautiful 18-acre Boys Town campus in the Bayit Vegan
neighborhood of Jerusalem is one of Israel’s major technological
training centers. Approximately 800 students, ranging in age from 12 to
20, live on the campus, with a capacity to house up to 1,000. The
children and grandchildren of immigrants from 45 countries on six
continents, they mirror the ethnic diversity of the Israeli population.
More than 75% come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and
require substantial scholarship assistance. No student is ever turned
away from Boys Town due to inability to pay tuition.
Here is their new, lively music video to wish all of us a Shanah Tovah. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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Od tireh od tireh Kama tov yiheyeh Bashana bashana haba'ah
Anavim adumim yavshilu ad ha'erev Veyugshu tzonenim lashulchan Veruchot redumim yisu el eim haderech Itonim yeshanim ve'anan
Od tireh od tireh Kama tov yiheyeh Bashana bashana haba'ah TRANSLATION: Next year we will sit on the porch And count all the wandering birds Children on vacation will play catch Between the house and the fields
You will see how good it will be Next year
Red grapes will ripen by evening And be served cold to the table Pleasant breezes will blow on to the roads Old newspapers and clouds
It's a week before Rosh Hashanah, but it's also Monday. And Monday means it's time for a Joke to Start the Week.
So we're interrupting our series of Rosh Hashanah music videos to give you a joke -- not just any joke, but a joke with a Rosh Hashanah theme.
Here's the setup: A messenger needed to deliver an urgent message to a rabbi, but it was Rosh Hashanah and the rabbi was in shul. And then...
Enjoy!
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With only a week until the start of Rosh Hashanah, we're sharing another new, original song for the holiday by Julie Geller. Julie,
raised in Colorado where she now lives with her family, also spent time
in Boston, San Diego, and Israel. She has taken on a mission to bring
love and healing into the world through her music. Julie is a graduate of Harvard University and the New England
Conservatory of Music. She studied at Bar Ilan University and Midreshet
Lindenbaum in Israel. During the last few years Julie gave us new, original songs that she composed for Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Chanukah. She just released a new song, Sheya'alu, a poignant song about the power of the shofar, forgiveness and repentance. It is not usually sung in synagogue services but it's an abridged version of a paragraph that some say quietly after the shofar blowing service is concluded.
The words in transliteration and English translation are
Yehi ratzon milefanecha Adoshem sheya'alu elu hamalachim hayotze’im min hashofar lifnei chisei Chevodecha veyamlitzu tov ba’adeinu lechaper al kol chatoteinu.
May it be Your will, God, that those angels that are evoked by the shofar ascend before
the throne of Your glory and invoke goodness on our behalf, to pardon
all our sins.
We hope Julie's singing enhances your High Holiday experience. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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Every year around this time the new crop of Rosh Hashanah music videos starts to appear. We try to share the latest and best of the crop with you as they become available. With Rosh Hashanah only 10 days away, we expect to be in a musical holiday mood during this interval. Some videos will be funny and some will be more serious as befits the High Holidays, but our objective is to give you videos that entertain. Today we begin with a musical parody of the song Sugar by Maroon 5. It's called Apples and Honey and it's by Felicia Sloin and Tom Knight. The lyrics appear at the bottom of the screen. Parodies work best if you know the song that is being parodied, so if you're not familiar with the Maroon 5 original, we're including it just below the parody. Enjoy and Shabbat shalom!
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When
a new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails was released this week, much
ado was made about one of the emails with the subject line "Gefilte
Fish" and the full message saying "Where are we on this?"
To
understand the deep meaning behind this email, we have to go back to February 5, 2010 and a congressional hearing about a shipment of carp that
was farmed in Illinois and was the subject of a trade dispute between
the U.S. and Israel. Illinois Rep. Donald Manzullo asked Secretary of State Clinton to personally get
involved in a trade dispute between an Illinois gefilte fish company
and the Israeli government. As Yair Rosenberg wrote this week in Tablet Magazine quoting former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in his memoir Ally,
America signed its first-ever free-trade agreement with Israel back in
1985, but the treaty exempted certain Israeli products liable to be
eradicated by their cheaper American counterparts. Apples, avocados, and
oranges fell into this category, and so, too, did the carp cultivated
by Galilean farmers. Which was why 400 pounds of the frozen Illinois
fish were denied entry to the Promised Land.
We
found a video clip from 2010 on the CNN Money channel of a Foreign
Affairs Committee hearing where the subject was discussed to everyone's
amusement and prompted congressman Elliot Engel of New York to place an
order for two jars of the gefilte fish.
Enjoy!
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Buddy Hackett (1924-2003) was born Leonard Hacker in Brooklyn. His career spanned more than half a
century in nightclubs, movies, the stage and television.
His rubbery
face was a familiar one on America's home screens in the 1950's and
1960's when he was a frequent guest on talk shows hosted by Jack Paar
and Arthur Godfrey.
Hackett's irrepressible clowning was so
familiar, in fact, that it always seemed to come as a surprise to
audiences and critics when he would display solid acting talent in his
movie and stage appearances.
He appeared many times on The Johnny Carson show, and we have shared many video clips of those shows on Jewish Humor Central over the past few years.
He also was a frequent guest on The Dean Martin Show. In this clip, Buddy tells Dean about his days in the legitimate theatre.
Enjoy!
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Two years ago we shared a few blog posts to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the release of Allan Sherman's parody hit Hello Muddah Hello Faddah. Last year we posted a few video clips of a new collection of long-lost Sherman parodies. Sherman composed so many parodies of pop songs of the 1960s that they are being revived by a new generation of singer-comedians. In February Elli, The King of Broadway was asked to sing a Sherman song as a part of the Metropolitan Room Special Event "A Tribute to Love". Elli has made a name for himself in show business as an actor, singer, comedian, and voice over artist. In this video clip, Elli sings Allan Sherman's hit "When I'm in the Mood for Love, You're in the Mood for Herring. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE
VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU
GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND
TABLETS. YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE
TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH
HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK
ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO
IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)
