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!
Victor
Borge was a Danish comedian, conductor and pianist who
achieved great popularity in radio and television in the United States
and Europe. His blend of music and comedy earned him the nickname "The
Clown Prince of Denmark","The Unmelancholy Dane", and "The Great Dane."
We featured him last year in our series The Great Jewish Comedians. Borge had many funny approaches to music. One of his most famous was his invention of phonetic puncuation. His unique approach to inserting commas, periods, question marks and exclamation points made every song hilarious. In this video from 1968, Borge visits Dean Martin on his TV show and teaches him the basics. Then they try the technique out on a few songs, with hilarious results. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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In November 2014, over two
thousand young people gathered near downtown Jerusalem to celebrate life. The
"Simply Sing" initiative, which began at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, aims at bringing Jews and Arabs together through shared cultural
events. “Simply Sing” is a Jerusalem-based
cross-cultural project that has Jews and Arabs meet every few weeks for an
evening of musical performances and singing. The project has gained much
popularity as well as opposition from both Arabs and Jews during its four and a
half years of existence. Facilitators taught songs and
invited participants to sing along in both Hebrew and Arabic. The event was
headlined by singer Lubna Salame and the Yemen Blues band, who together created
a special joint performance for the event.
Yemen Blues is led by singer Ravid Kahalani, who combines the ancient Jewish
melodies of his birthplace in Yemen with West African, funk and mambo
influences. Time Out Chicago wrote that Yemen Blues is "one of the most
exciting bands in world music right now.”
Lubna Salame, originally from Haifa, is a resident singer with the Nazareth
Orchestra. She started her career as a child, singing classical Arabic songs
with a church choir, and became an instant star after her first concert at the
2000 Israel Festival.
In addition to the music, poetry and dancing, food played a major role in the
evening's success. A food truck featured two chefs, one Arab-Israeli, the other
Jewish-Israeli, who worked together to create fusion dishes that reflected both
their cultures (gefilte fish with knafeh anyone?). Chef Elias Mattar from the
northern Galilee region and Chef Marcus Gershkowitz, co-owner of Jerusalem's
famous Angelica restaurant, demonstrated cuisine from their kitchens.
Arab and Jewish DJs performed in a number of downtown bars during the after
party, proving once again the power of music to break down boundaries. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS: THE VIDEO MAY NOT
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Last week we featured Albert Brooks as one of the great Jewish comedians. Today it's his father's turn. Albert's father, Harry Einstein (1904-1958) was known professionally by a multitude of pseudonyms, most commonly Parkyakarkus. He was an American comedian,
writer, and character actor.
A specialist in Greek dialect comedy, he
became famous as the Greek chef Nick Parkyakarkus on the Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson
radio programs, and later on a program of his own. He appeared in
eleven films as Parkyakarkas, or Parkyarkarkas, from 1936 to 1945.
In 1944 (Yes, that was 72 years ago) he appeared in a wartime musical comedy, Sweethearts of the USA, also starring Una Merkel. The song You Can't Brush Off a Russian was written by Lew Pollack and Charles Newman.
Enjoy!
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It's the first Monday of summer, and our goal is to fill it and all the Mondays of summer with jokes to get each week off to a good start. Today's joke, from the files of Old Jews Telling Jokes, is told by television writer/producer and visiting professor Fred Rubin, takes place during World War II.
Here's the setup: During the height of World War II two Jewish soldiers are assigned a dangerous mission of wiring a bridge to explode. And on this bridge they know for a fact that Hitler and his motorcade will be passing over this bridge at 4:30. And then...
Enjoy!
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There's something about Hava Nagila that appeals to cultures around the world, and most of them are not Jewish. Since we started Jewish Humor Central seven years ago, we've posted more than 50 versions from the Americas to countries all over Europe and Asia. Three of these are from Thailand, a country which seems to find the music alluring and perfect for exotic dancing. Today we're sharing a fourth version from Thailand, performed by seven exotic dancers and a band that includes two conga drums. Go figure. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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One of the benefits of surfing the Internet for Jewish content every day is that occasionally we run across new performers and new songs. That's what happened today when we came upon an original song by Buzzy Walters titled The Jewish Holiday Song. In his composition, Walters manages to include all of the months of the Jewish calendar and the holidays and commemorations they contain. With each mention of a holiday or observance, he includes traces of melodies that we associate with them. Not just the High Holidays, Passover, and Chanukah, but also Shavuot, Tu Bishvat, Tisha B'Av, Yom HaAtzmaut, and Yom Hashoah. We don't know Buzzy and never heard his music before, but we hope that featuring him on Jewish Humor Central gives him more of an audience and encourages him to keep on composing new songs on Jewish themes.
Enjoy and Shabbat Shalom!
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Every Thursday is Throwback Thursday and each week we relish the opportunity to do a deep dive into the treasure chest of old funny video clips .
Two years ago we posted a segment of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show from 1984 where Buddy Hackett talked about
the TV censors denying his First Amendment rights to use a three letter
word meaning "buttocks." He launched into two jokes that illustrated his
point.
We found the second part of that segment where Buddy tells a few more on the same theme. But don't worry, he may get close to the line where censors would pounce but he doesn't cross it. Enjoy!
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Albert Brooks, the voice of Marlin, Nemo's father in the hit animated movie Finding Nemo and its just-opened sequel, Finding Dory, is a stand-up comedian, comedy writer and filmmaker. His parents were Thelma (Goodman) Leeds and Harry Einstein, both children of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Austria. His mother was a singer and actress and his father a radio comedian known as Parkyakarkus.
Unable to pass up a good punchline, the two performers named their
youngest son Albert Einstein, a name he changed to Brooks as soon as he became an
adult. His brother Bob retained the Einstein name and plays the role of Marty Funkhouser, one of Larry David's friends on Curb Your Enthusiasm. In his stand-up comic days in 1972 Brooks performed on The Flip Wilson show. Here's one of his routines as a ventriloquist whose technique with a dummy left a lot to be desired. Enjoy! (A
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A new Jewish community was officially born in Madagascar last
month when 121 men, women and children underwent Orthodox conversions on
the remote Indian Ocean island nation better known for lemurs,
chameleons, dense rain forests and vanilla. As JTA reported,
The conversions, which took place over a 10-day period, were the
climax of a process that arose organically five to six years ago when
followers of various messianic Christian sects became disillusioned with
their churches and began to study Torah.
Through self-study and with guidance from Jewish internet sources and
correspondence with rabbis in Israel, they now pray in
Sephardic-accented Hebrew and strictly observe the Sabbath and holidays.
The conversions were facilitated by Kulanu, a New York-based
nonprofit that specializes in supporting isolated and emerging Jewish
communities, but were initiated by the residents.
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We're back to our regular Monday schedule of posting a Joke to Start the Week. For this week's joke we dipped into the treasure chest of Old Jews Telling Jokes and came up with an oldie but goodie. The joke teller is retired school teacher Howard Gurak. Here's the setup: A woman goes to a store to buy a chicken. It's the last day and they're just getting ready to close the store. She says "Mister, have you got a good chicken?" And then... Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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Lou Jacobi (1913-2009) was born Louis Harold Jacobovitch in Toronto, Ontario. Jacobi began acting as a boy, making his stage debut in 1924 at a Toronto theater, playing a violin prodigy in The Rabbi and the Priest.
After working as the drama director of the Toronto Y.M.H.A.,
the social director at a summer resort, a stand-up comic in Canada’s
equivalent of the Borscht Belt, and the entertainment at various
weddings and bachelor parties, Jacobi moved to London to work on the
stage, appearing in Guys and Dolls and Pal Joey.
Jacobi made his Broadway debut in 1955 in The Diary of Anne Frank
playing Hans van Daan, the less-than-noble occupant of the Amsterdam
attic where the Franks were hiding, and reprised the role in the 1959 film version.
Other Broadway performances included Paddy Chayefsky’s The Tenth Man (1959), Woody Allen’s Don’t Drink the Water (1966), and Neil Simon’s debut play Come Blow Your Horn
(1961), in which he portrayed the playboy protagonist’s disappointed
father. His reading of the film line "Aha!" stuck with the Times columnist William Safire so vividly that he cited it when writing about the meaning of the word 36 years later.
We've posted a few of his routines over the years from the first two albums. Here's an audio clip (too bad there's no video) from The Yiddish are Coming, The Yiddish are Coming. In it Jacobi plays the part of a professor teaching a crash course in Jewish 101 and 102. It's rare to find a video of Jacobi as himself, but in October 1982, he appeared as a guest on David Letterman's Late Night Show. In the interview, which you can see below the Jewish 101 skit, Jacobi tells Letterman about his experiences working with Woody Allen. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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Ramat Shalom is a modern Orthodox congregation in Naucalpan, a suburb of Mexico City. To celebrate its 25th anniversary this month, the congregation had a concert featuring Mexican operatic tenor Fernando de la Mora, who sang traditional Jewish songs in Hebrew and Yiddish, as well as liturgical chants.
Since we started Jewish Humor Central, we've posted 17 versions of Adon Olam, which is usually sung at the conclusion of the Shabbat morning service. But until now none has been sung to the melody of the Neapolitan song Funiculi, Funicula. It was written in 1880 to commemorate the opening of the first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius. When we saw that this Adon Olam was on the concert program, we just had to share it with you, and what better day to share it than erev Shabbat. So enjoy, and Shabbat shalom! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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Lou Gottlieb (1923-1996) was the comic lead and bass player for the Limeliters, one of the most popular folk song groups in the 1960s. The other two members of the trio were Alex Hassilev on banjo and Glen Yarbrough on guitar.
Gottlieb was a Ph.D. musicologist (he
studied with Arnold Schoenberg) working as an arranger for the Kingston
Trio when he met his bandmates in 1959. They were strong on harmonies
and on funny, high-brow banter, and produced sixteen records during
their six years together.
He then bought the 32-acre Morning Star Ranch
near San Francisco, which became headquarters
for some time of the commune that helped provide free food and health
services to hippies in Haight-Ashbury and at the Woodstock Festival.
In
1969, Gottlieb tried to donate his ranch to God, but the court ruled
that God would have to appear in person to accept the gift.
Gottlieb used Yiddish expressions in some of the Limeliters songs. Here is their rendition of the Yiddish classic Rumania Rumania with funny asides during the running English translation that he provided. Enjoy! (A
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Mort Sahl is #40 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time, ranked between Billy Crystal and Jon Stewart. In 2003 he received the Fifth Annual Alan King Award in American Jewish Humor from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.
Sahl's humor is based on current events, especially politics, which led Milton Berle to describe him as "one of the greatest political satirists of all time." His trademark persona is to enter the stage with a newspaper in hand, casually dressed in a V-neck sweater. He would often recite some news stories combined with satire. He was dubbed "Will Rogers with fangs" by Time magazine in 1960.
Sahl was born on May 11, 1927 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the only child of Jewish parents.
His father, Harry Sahl, came from an immigrant family on New York's
Lower East Side, and hoped to become a Broadway playwright. He met his
wife when she responded to an advertisement he took out in a poetry
magazine. Unable to break into the writing field they moved to Canada
where he owned a tobacco store in Montreal.
Two years ago, at the age of 87, Sahl made an appearance on the TV show Set List: Stand-up Without a Net, in which comedians come on stage without a routine. They have to improvise based on a series of topics that are flashed on a screen. Sahl showed that he's still a pro at comedy.
And now, at 89, he's still going strong. Every Thursday at 7pm Sahl takes the stage at the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley, California to deliver a show filled with his legendary, take-no-prisoners wit. Enjoy!
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Hey, it's Tuesday! Wasn't the Joke to Start the Week supposed to appear on Monday? Yes, but Monday was the second day of Shavuot everywhere but Israel, so we didn't post yesterday. But that's no reason to skip a joke for this week, so we're posting it today instead. Today we're bringing back Michael Hirsch for another round.
Michael, an investment advisor for individuals and institutions, is a graduate of Brooklyn
College, Class of '66. He attended Telshe Yeshiva during high school and Yeshiva
Netzach Yisrael during college. When he's not telling jokes, Michael enjoys participating in triathlons.
Here's
the setup for today's joke: Max is going to the doctor for his annual physical and the doctor runs all the tests, head to foot. And then... Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR
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This week Shabbat, which starts at sundown tonight, leads directly into the Shavuot holiday, in which the giving of the Torah is celebrated for two days around the world and one day in Israel.
One of the most distinctive customs of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot is Tikkun Leil Shavuot, an evening-long study session held on the night of Shavuot.
Tikkun
means a “set order” of something and refers to the order in which the
texts are read. The custom originated with the mystics of Safed in the
16th century, and today, many Jews stay up all night on Shavuot reading
and studying a variety of sacred texts. Traditionally, readings from the
Torah and Talmud are included.
Many synagogues hold a Tikkun Leil Shavuot.
Some host programs that go on all night, fueled by cheesecake, sushi, and other delicacies, culminating in morning
services at sunrise. Other congregations gather for a few hours of
study. Whether one is planning to attend an all-night session, study for
a few hours, join with others, or study on one’s own, Shavuot is a
wonderful time to encounter sacred text.
On Shavuot we read the Book of Ruth, which tells the story of how Ruth the Moabite converted to Judaism and became the great-grandmother of King David. This week we found an interesting and unusual modern story of a conversion to Judaism.
It happened in China, where a young man seeking the truth followed many paths until he came to the conclusion that Judaism was the true religion. In this video he tells his personal story of how he was exposed to secularism, Chinese Communism, and Christianity, only to discover the truth in Judaism.
To be truly Jewish, he had to
journey to Israel, where he now wears Haredi clothing, which are all made in
China.
We'll be spending Shabbat and
Shavuot with our children and grandchildren, so there won't be any Jewish Humor
Central posts until Tuesday, when we'll return with another Joke to Start the
Week.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach.
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Throwback Thursday
has become a weekly social media posting trend to let readers and
viewers look back fondly on some of
their favorite memories -- hence the "throwback" theme. At Jewish Humor
Central, on most Thursdays we've been posting a nostalgic video clip from a very old TV show
or movie that brings back happy memories.
Today we're going back 55 years to 1961 when William Szathmary, better known as Bill Dana, had everyone laughing with his hilarious portrayal of Jose Jimenez, the astronaut. Unlike most of our posts, this one is not a video, but only audio. It was recorded at the Hungry i nightclub in San Francisco.
Enjoy!
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"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" are the words in a 1921 composition by Duke Ellington, with lyrics by Irving Mills, now accepted as a jazz standard, characterized by jazz historian Gunther Schuller as "now legendary", "a prophetic piece and a prophetic title."
Swing has now come to Jerusalem and other cities in Israel, thanks to Holy Lindy Land, an organization founded by a group of dedicated dancers . Weekly classes, street parties and concerts with the best jazz bands
are just part of its activities whose purpose is to expose many peoplethe the pleasure of swing dancing. Holy Lindy Land was established in 2007. It is bringing Swing,
Lindy Hop, Charleston, Blues, Balboa, and more dance forms to Israel. The Holy Lindy Land staff members teach effective
techniques, improvisation and musicality, while maintaining a fun and lively atmosphere.
The Charleston is a dance named for the harbor city of Charleston, South Carolina. The rhythm was popularized in mainstream dance music in the United States by a 1923 tune called "The Charleston" by composer/pianist James P. Johnson which originated in the Broadway show Runnin' Wild and became one of the most popular hits of the decade. Runnin' Wild ran from 29 October 1923 through 28 June 1924.
In this video, Holy Lindy Land teams and dancers from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa bring the Charleston to familiar locations all around Jerusalem. Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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(A tip of the kippah to Debbie Drachman for bringing this video to our attention.)
Rukhl Schaechter and Eve Jochnowitz, the Yiddish-speaking chefs who appeared here for 20 episodes of their cooking program Est Gezunterheit, are back after their series sponsored by the Forward ended last year. The new series called Timeless Delicacies offers shorter episodes featuring cultural reflections about food along with quick rundowns of recipes.
Reviving and expanding the series is one of the changes made to the Forward since Schaechter was appointed the new editor earlier this year. Schaechter is the first woman to helm the paper in its 119-year history,
its first editor to have been born in the United States, and likely
its first editor who is shomer Shabbat.
B'tayavon - Bon appetit!
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It's the first Monday in June, and another opportunity for us to share a Joke to Start the Week with you. Our old friend and certified hypnosis counselor Bob Hertzendorf is back for his many fans with another joke to get us in the mood. With all the old jokes going around, we have to admit that this is one that we haven't heard before. Here's the setup: This story happened on the watch of President George W. Bush. He called a security meeting. And at the meeting he had the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, and every other spying agency you can think of. And then... Enjoy! (A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:
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