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Jewish Comedy: A Serious History Audiobook
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(4.50) - 2 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter.
Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy—including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar—Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel. And he explores an enormous range of comic masterpieces, from the Book of Esther, Talmudic rabbi jokes, Yiddish satires, Borscht Belt skits, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm to the work of such masters as Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Philip Roth, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart.
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"I thought it was more about jokes and humour, instead, refers to jokes about antisemitism and humor related to it, I suppose the title should be something different. Starts with a joke, tell some of them, but not as humor but as a result of different ages and again, antisemitism being the main purpose of the book."
— mario (5 out of 5 stars)
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“Thoughtful…Fascinating.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“A serious study and most interesting at its most serious and obscure.”
— New York Review of Books -
“Both erudite and breezy.”
— Forward magazine -
“A serious and good philosophical work…that doesn’t consist entirely of jokes but has an awful lot of them in it…Some of its jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, and some of them are poignantly beautiful.”
— Times Literary Supplement (London) -
“Dauber recognizes the multiplicity of Jewish humor and wisely resists any single characterization of it…[He] deftly surveys the whole recorded history of Jewish humor.”
— Economist (London) -
“Any history of humor must include some jokes, and Dauber knows how to tell a joke…In any case. It’s not a joke book. Humor comes mostly out of everyday life, and Dauber weaves the narrative of everyday Jewish life (from the Babylonian exile to the present) and the literary record into a story of why a nation laughed—and needed to.”
— AudioFile -
“Dauber takes in a wide swath of intellectual territory—from Kafka to Mad magazine—but he delicately mixes scholarship with comedy in what is an entertaining and even profound book.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“Could well be the gold standard for understanding what people of any ethnicity, nationality, or political persuasion find funny, and why.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“An erudite survey of the evolution and distinctiveness of Jewish humor…A wide-ranging and insightful cultural analysis.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“You can’t understand comedy without knowing Jewish comedy—and you’ll find no smarter, more intrepid, and surprising analysis of the subject than in this book.”
— Jason Zinoman, author of Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night -
“Brilliant and groundbreaking…[Dauber] tells a crucial part of the story of Judaism.”
— Adam Kirsch, author of The People and the Books
Awards
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Finalist for the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Award for Best Humor Narration
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Finalist for the Natan Book Award
Jewish Comedy Listener Reviews
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Ludolf Gruch, 8/11/2018
About Jeremy Dauber
Jeremy Dauber is a professor of Jewish literature and American studies at Columbia University. He is the author of several nonfiction books on Jewish history and literature, and his Jewish Comedy was a finalist for the Natan Book Award.