A Seven Week Online Series "Is Anything Okay? The History of Jewish Comedy in America" Launches on Thursday

From the earliest jokes told on the Lower East Side to the comedy routines honed in the Catskills, Ashkenazi Jews developed radically new forms of comedic output in the 20th century. On film and television, pioneering Jewish comics broke norms and challenged taboos of American culture.

In the newest online course from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, we can delve into the history of Jewish comedy and its explosive development in the United States. We will see hundreds of unique archival objects, including vintage jokebooks, early comedy records, film, television, and radio clips, photographs, and posters, along with interviews and discussions with leading scholars and personalities from the world of Jewish comedy.

The 7-week course, just in time for Purim and co-sponsored by the Catskills Borscht Belt Museum will launch on Thursday, March 20 online, with a new episode coming every week. The course is free but registration is required.

As Alan Zeitlin wrote in The Jewish Journal,

The first of seven episodes will be “Roots: Jewish Humor in Traditional Ashkenazi Jewish Life” and the last one will be “Contemporary Jewish Comedy” while others will explore the Catskills’ and internal Jewish conflict. The course will continue with a new episode dropping every week.

There will be lectures given by scholars and academics; Jewish comedians, writers and producers will also share their insights,. While it will focus on Ashkenazi Jewish humor, there will be some detours to the humor of Sephardic Jews. 

Enjoy!

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