The Last Jewish Joke

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-5095-6465-1
Verlag: Polity Press

Buch, Englisch, 160 Seiten, Format (B × H): 142 mm x 218 mm, Gewicht: 318 g

The golden age of Jewish humour flourished in the second half of the twentieth century, enjoyed by Jews and non-Jews alike, but its twilight years are now in sight.

Telling jokes has the potential to reaffirm community once religion, political loyalties and victimhood are stripped away: from the 1960s on, a unique cultural dynamism bound up in these jokes reminded Jews around the world of what it means to be Jewish. Often, jokes pit one group against another, but Jewish jokes opted for self-deprecation instead, and in this case, laughing at the group reinforced it. They enabled Jews to live in harmony with others in full conscience of their differences and they safeguarded a desire for survival at the heart of Jewish identity. Moreover, absurd, larger-than-life characters such as Rabbi Jacob generated tolerance, empathy and tenderness among non-Jews after the horror and guilt of the Shoah. From the early 2000s, however, the space that allowed Jewish jokes to flourish began to shrink, due to a decline in the understanding of the Shoah, a less positive image of Israel and a waning of the importance of Jewish culture in American intellectual and cultural life.

This playful and personal book by Michel Wieviorka includes Jewish jokes but also laments the disappearance of the Jewish joke and eulogises its ability to allow the thriving of community alongside difference. It is an original and wide-ranging analysis of the evolution of the diaspora and its relationship with the State of Israel, its history and dramas as well as its cultural creativity.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wieviorka, Michel

Weitere Mitwirkende

Stockwell, Cory

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Geschichte des Judentums
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kultursoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Instructions for Use

I The American Invention of Jewish Jokes

II Prolegomena

III In France, in the 1960s and 1970s

IV What Counts as a Jewish Joke and What Doesn’t

V The Heyday in France

VI The American Decline

VII In France, a Changed Situation

VIII What about Israel?

Conclusion: The Last Jewish Joke

Notes

Über Autor(innen)

Michel Wieviorka is Professor of Sociology at EHESS, Paris.