What's There To Laugh At?

What made Bubbe and Zayde guffaw

By Brian Berger

In Out of the Fog, historical detective Brian Berger digs through newspaper columns, clippings, and other clues to bring readers the fascinating, scandalous, and forgotten tales of the past.

No, really, are Jews still funny to you? Because, I’ll tell you, they’re hilarious to me, always have been: from the characters at Oneg Shabbat to the Marx Brothers, Gertrude Stein, Sophie Tucker, Daniel Fuchs, Mickey Katz, Molly Picon, Henny Youngman, Phil Silvers, Belle Barth, Mort Sahl, Nat Hiken, Pearl Williams, Don Rickles, Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Jackie Mason, Tuli Kupferberg, Betty Walker, Wallace Markfield, Totie Fields, Woody Allen, Gilbert Gottfried. We all have our favorites.

In a period where no perceived offense is too slight to inspire its own protest (#Outrage), recalling this—the abundance of Judaism’s collective comic genius— is both empowering and calming. And so, in an attempt to trace back the Jewish genius for comedy I started wondering, what did our grandparents and our great-grandparents think was funny? And that led me, as so many roads do, back to the borough of Brooklyn and the history contained in its English language.

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In 1914, advertisements for the Loew’s Fulton and Bijou Theatres in downtown Brooklyn—both part of the local vaudeville circuit owned by the Marcus Loew, himself an Austrian-born, New York-raised Jew—promoted:  Harry Steppe, “famed as a Jewish comedian, and his ‘Kissing Girls,’ called the “whirliest, girliest show of them all”; “the celebrated Jewish comedian, Murray Bennett, who presents an unusual type of Hebrew onstage with more than ordinary skill”; and

Morris and Allen, “Jewish Comedians with big voices.”

How big? Big enough their resounded even while sharing a bill with Great Ergotti and his Lilliputians (midget acrobats); an impersonator—of European war leaders—named Saona; “colored comedians” Crumbley and Class (Jewish and Black performers often shared stages at this time); and one Florence Avery, “musical genius.”

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In June 1923, the Brooklyn Standard-Union announced that after several years in England, “Henry Green, Jewish Comedian of note,” has “returned to his native land, and is re-entering the Keith vaudeville circuit in the one-act play which first earned him popularity, Aaron Hoffman’s  The Cherry Tree.” In it, Green stars as “George Washington Cohen, the little Jew who, like the father of his country, couldn’t tell a lie.”

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In April 1925, a Brooklyn Citizen ad declared Dr. Abraham Coralnick, Kiev-born, University of Vienna educated, associate editor of the Yiddish newspaper Der Tog (The Day), would lecture on “Jewish Humor” at the Brooklyn Jewish Center, at 667 Eastern Parkway, in Crown Heights. His address, delivered in Yiddish, would consist of three parts: 1. Old Jewish Humor 2. New Jewish Humor as interpreted by Sholom Aleichem 3. Jewish humor in America.

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In April 1929, the Citizen announced that “Ludwig Satz, well-known Jewish comedian, one of the greatest on the stage, and a supporting cast from the Public Theater, where is now playing A Seder Night, will broadcast over WABC this evening, at nine o’clock.” A month later in the Standard Union, Satz was elevated to royalty—“The King of Jewish Comedians”— for his role in the hit Yiddish musical comedy, A Galician Wedding, then playing at the Rolland Theatre in Brownsville. Briefly profiled in the same paper that November, it was noted that Satz— who was born in Polish Galicia in 1894—had played 500 roles, and was often compared to Charlie Chaplin.

In January 1934, Irving Davidson, president of the Bethel League of Bethel and Manhattan Beach, spoke on Jewish Humor to the Young Folks Auxiliary of the Petach Tikvah in Crown Heights. Summarized a Brooklyn Eagle reporter:

“Although the Jew is known as ‘the eternal troubadour of pain,’ his centuries of constant struggle with life has brought forth a vein of genuine racial humor and keen wit… The genuine humor of the Jew, according to Mr. Davidson, is intellectual and subtle. He asserted that the popular vaudeville humor of [Eddie] Cantor and [George] Jessel is not essentially Jewish.”

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In December 1936, Eagle radio columnist Jo Ranson noted that “The magnificent writings of Sholom Aleichem, rated the ‘the Mark Twain of Jewish Literature,’ will be turned into radio dramatizations over WMCA starting tomorrow night at 7:30.” Remarkably, the series, titled “Sholom Aleichem—Jewish Humor Dramatized,” would be the first time the Yiddish writer’s works had been translated for public presentation. Added Ranson: “The author’s ability to laugh at the weakness of his fellowmen, at the same time as calling attention to their virtues, brought him wide popularity in Jewish literary circles.”

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When the now canonical A Treasury of Jewish Humor, edited by Galician-born, Brooklyn-raised, historian and folklorist Nathan Ausubel, was published by Doubleday & Co. in June 1951, it was reviewed in the Eagle by Dr. Sidney Tedesche, Rabbi of Union Temple at 17 Eastern Parkway. A man of keen literary and cultural engagement (in 1940, for example, he gave his congregation a stirring sermonic review of then Brooklynite Richard Wright’s new novel, Native Son), Tedesche clearly adored his subject and after a brief introduction, he starts spritzing litany:

“Here you will find Zangwill, Agnon, Sholom Aleichem, Feuchtwanger, Peretz, Bialik, Untermeyer, Yehudah Halevi, Solomon Maimon, Nordau Perelman, Werfel, Zalman, Schneour, Heine, Golding, Yehudah Steinberg, Mendel Moicher Sforim, Molnar, Ludwig Lewisohn, Irving Feineberg, even George Brandes and the best of numerous others, a veritable treasure trove of every age of Jewish experience.

“Here you will find the unbelievable wage and nondescripts, quasi-geniuses, incompetent dreamers and legendary figures who have enriched ghetto, medieval and modern Jewish life throughout the generations.

“Here you will read of people who live on nothing and who tread on air, the sceptics, scoffers, impudent fellows, the beggars who graciously and patronizingly allow you to be blessed with the privilege of giving to them. Here we find the luckless ones whose misfortunes were so exaggeratedly preposterous that their woes were proverbial, the Shmendriks and Smigeges, the fools and simpletons, the Schlemihls, the Nudniks, the Phudniks (a nudnik is a bore with a Ph.D.) and Trombeniks and a full glossary so that you will not lose your way among a people whose faith, earnestness and humor kept an enter people from every being lost. Through a labyrinth of bewilderment, they kept their sanity and survived because of the gift of humor.”