A Deeper Look at Jewish Humor (Hilarious and Thought-Provoking Class)

first of all as uh abhi walawak just mentioned it's obvious that there's a lot of serious stuff going on in the world right now um personally i'll mention that i am the great great great great great maybe and one more great grandson of the founder of the ukrainian town or city of berdychev was the founder of berlichev it was uh his request to the local landowner to the local squire that began bredichev as a as a settlement in the last in the in the late 1600s and then it flourished and blossomed into the uh into the thriving jewish community that it became and uh the believer's grave is actually the only grave in the old jewish cemetery that survived the war i've never been to it i've actually spoken with other descendants of liber and we spoke about making a a trip to uh the ukraine and making that visit to our holy ancestor and uh god willing very soon that'll be that'll be possible there'll be peace and our prayer is that there should be peace and security and safety for everyone everywhere especially right now for our brothers and sisters in ukraine um speaking of ukraine it's kind of interesting that the most notable politician in the world right now is a jewish comedian the president of ukraine president zielenski is a not only is he jewish but a comedian a jewish comedian what other kind of comedian is there is there any other kind of comedian by the way robin williams who is not jewish should be he should be but not jewish he said that one time he was in germany and he was interviewed by the german uh television reporter and they said mr williams why do you think that in germany we don't have so much comedy and he said did it ever occur to you that you killed all the funny people so at any rate the whole world right now has a lot of respect for a jewish comedian not just as a jewish comedian but as a a leader and it's an interesting thing you know i remember about 10 years ago they did a poll of americans about what's their most trusted news source and they asked is it this anchor is it that anchor and the winner i don't think he was i think he was a winner by writing i don't think he was even one of the choices but americans said their most trusted news source was john stewart again a jewish comedian right so i'm thinking that probably um the solution right now is we just we got to get like larry david to be like the head of the united nations and then meshech will be here and then ozil molly strike pina we'll all be laughing and so anyways um yeah let's talk about jewish humor what i okay how am i gonna talk about jewish humor so i decided what i was gonna try to do is come up with the algorithm for the quintessential jewish joke so i started thinking about what are the tropes the motifs that are common in jewish jokes and then from there could i sort of figure out the joke that has the perfect combination of those components blended in perfect harmony and then i would have the quintessential jewish joke at least that's that's the theory you get the the idea more or less okay fine so uh so i started thinking what what's like a big trope in jewish joke what's like a common theme so one of them occurred to me is well not all jewish jokes are about judaism about religion but some of the really good ones are and there's something very jewish about joking about religion we joke about religion right so there was once a uh an american jewish family they were rather assimilated they were not religious they were not observant in any way and so when it was suggested to them to maybe send their son to the local catholic school which was much better than the local public school they didn't really hesitate on any type of theological grounds they didn't really bother them they figured it's a good private school so they sent their son to the jewish family sent their son to the catholic school so i have to i have to preface that my dear friend kai and cohn is in the audience and hayam has an obsession this is a two-way street actually i've done it to him hundreds of times he's done it to me hundreds of times which is stepping on the joke by calling out the punchline so you're correct that's that is the punchline and we don't believe in him that is correct okay so that's the punch line and we don't by the way we don't need the element of surprise because we all know these jokes so it's fine we can say the punch line first that's not even the point so the point is we enjoy telling these jokes it's like pesach will come and you'll tell the story of utis mitzrayim of the exodus and we heard it last year we'll tell it again this year and it never gets old okay so and we don't believe in him that that's correct that is kaim that is the punchline so here's all right so this assimilated american jewish family they send their son to the catholic school and he's learning science he's learning math he's learning history everything's good he comes home one day from school and he starts talking about the priest came to our class he started teaching us about the trinity what's the trinity he says well you know the there's the father there's the son and there's the the holy ghost and the father the the boy's father who's not religious he he he spins around looks sternly at his son he says hey there's only one god and we don't believe in him you got him okay there was uh there was a a cruise ship which was uh it sank on uh on the seas and they couldn't find the ship for like a year and then some helicopter found uh one lone survivor who sir he survived he washed up on an island and for a year he lived by himself on this island so what yeah you know what i open it up to everyone it will make it a race how about that we'll gamify it and we'll see okay so kaim correctly said that's the one that i don't darwin okay that's correct okay but we'll make it a competition we'll see who can jump out with the punchline first so it's like the jeopardy of jokes that's right that's correct right okay so you have to say the answer in the form of a question which is very jewish by the way because we don't answer a question with an answer we answer with another question okay so uh well that's the show that i don't have in it correct okay so they uh found this one guy who survived on this desert island and the the news crews came and they were they were very impressed to see that he built a life for himself he'd made huts out of grass and bamboo coconut shells you know like gilligan's island style technology and uh so he's showing them this is the house that that i lived in where i took shelter for these for these 12 months they walked a little further on the island and they saw another hut what's this hut well you know i'm jewish this is my synagogue where i prayed every day they walked a little further down the island they saw another hut that says what's that hut he says well that's another synagogue and they said well but you already have a synagogue who says yeah but that's the synagogue that i won't step foot in okay anyways okay that's the synagogue i won't step foot okay um yeah uh religious jokes okay that's that's the thing jokes about religion so there was a there was a jew he uh made aliyah he moved to uh to israel and uh you know that they tax appliances over there very heavily so when you come as if as a citizen when you immigrate so then you're allowed to bring your own possessions with you you just can't bring extra for uh resale so a guy pulls into customs with seven refrigerators so they say yo sir are you gonna sell these refrigerators no no god forbid these are my personal personal use why do you need seven refrigerators just listen i'm very religious so i need you know meat milk separate that's a extra astringency i have that i don't even put them in the same refrigerator so i have a meat refrigerator milk refrigerator they said okay that's two but now you know you have seven so how do you account for five more he says well i have meat milk for the regular year and i have meat and milk for passover as well they said okay well that's that's four how do you account for the other threes as well sometimes i have parv so that's another one but there's parv for the regular year and then there's parv for pesa so customs officials doing the math he said well you're up to six now you brought seven he says listen does it bother you if once in a while to eat a little trey okay so now that's a joke about uh irreverence toward religion now i'll give you a fl the flip side the opposite opposite joke there was a guy who um he would always look for leniencies rabbinic loopholes he would always look for like the most lenient opinion that he could find and uh you know when when he would defend himself he would tell people you know this is according to some opinions there are some opinions there is an opinion that this is this is valid and that's how he would always do things so anyways he went through his whole life and then he would always defend his according to some opinions oh yeah there are those opinions who hold that this is perfectly acceptable um so then after 120 as we say after 120 uh he passes away and he goes to the heavenly court and they look at his life and they say okay good you're in going to heaven and they bring him in to a six foot by eight foot room with brick walls no windows and a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a concrete floor so he says this this is heaven and the angel who's escorting him in says according to some opinions according to some opinions okay and anyway okay fine so those are those are some religious jokes then what else are like themes of of jewish jokes um criticizing power criticizing power structures uh poking fun at those who are above you punching up as they say never ridiculing the downtrodden god forbid but using humor as a way almost of of protest now in modern history there's a great rich tradition of soviet humor poking fun at the soviet regime as a as a form of protest um there's an old jew sitting in gorky park with a uh hummish and a police officer comes over to him he says what are you doing and he says i'm studying hebrew he says old man you are never going to first of all you will never get a visa to leave to leave the soviet union to go to israel but even if you did you know how long it takes to process such a request you're an old man you you're going to die before it happens so he says hi i understand that but you see you have to understand i'm not studying hebrew um because i'm going to speak it in israel i'm speaking i'm studying hebrew because when i die i'm going to go to heaven and i'm going to meet my holy ancestors abraham isaac and jacob and they spoke hebrew so i want to be able to converse with them that's why i'm learning hebrew so the police officer says and what if you go to hell the old jewish man says russian i already know okay um it's an old soviet joke there's the joke about the the judge who uh walks into his uh chambers and he's giggling how many 70. okay your punch line is more severe than mine so he says uh the judge walks into his chamber and he's giggling and the bailiff sees him getting his camera what are you giggling he said no no i can't tell you says why not he says well i heard a joke he says just tell me the joke says i can't i just gave the guy who told it 70 years in siberia okay so um you know the guy calls the kgb he says kgb um if an escaped parrot flies into your window i just want you to know i don't agree with any of his political opinions um uh yeah okay so then those are jokes that are like protest jokes making fun of um of uh oppressive regimes then there's also like social critique making fun of uh internally the powers that be there's a lot of that too like making fun internally within the jewish community the power structures it's a very jewish thing to sort of poke fun at those who are in charge um so there are there's a there's a great tradition of uh of sort of you could even call it a little bit like cynical uh jokes about rabbis so there's a there was an old rabbi who became deaf in his old age and uh somebody asked him why did he become deaf and he says well you know what the torah says about taking bribes you know when a rabbi is a judge to hear a deliberate to deliberate near a case and if you know he takes bribes it could affect him uh that way so the person says well rabbit it says actually that javer that bribery blinds uh those who can see and you're saying you became deaf he says yeah well i heard a lot of promises i never saw the money okay so a little bit you know poking fun at i guess corruption there rabbinic corruption um yeah and then there's like more innocent things foibles that rabbis exhibit like talking too long that's you know a lot of jokes about that you know there was a rabbi in los angeles where they have a lot of congregants who are in the industry in the industry in los angeles means entertainment so there was a guy who worked for nbc and he comes to the rabbit he says listen nbc wants to give you he came to him after uh conitre and he says to him listen rabbi you're you're called a sermon an hour long term beautiful hour-long sermon um nbc wants to have a clergyman come on and inspire 12 million people during prime time um but the thing is this time slide it's not it's an hour i know your sermon's an hour um the time slot is 48 minutes do you think you could condense your beautiful hour-long connector sermon into 48 minutes and uh he says uh you know what you know i could cut out some of the extra bits and yeah i think i could get it down to 48 minutes so uh then uh he comes back to him a few days later the guy and he says uh rabbit listen that and nbc still wants to give you the time prime time it's gonna be 12 12 million people watching but it's not 48 minutes now it's 24 minutes do you think you could take your hour-long beautiful clone of your sermon you think you could say it in 24 minutes then i was like well let me think okay you know there's that one story that really it proves the same point as that other so i could take out that long story and uh you know okay yeah you know what i could condense my call ninja speech for 24 minutes no problem so then a few days later the guy comes over says rabbi nbc still wants to have you on no problem but right now it's it's it's 12 minutes they can only give you 12 minutes could you take your beautiful conundrus sermon and take it from an hour could you cut it down to 12 minutes rabbi thinks he says you know what i think yes yes i could i could say i could say it in 12 minutes i said great i'll get back to you i'll let you know the details when you're going to come down to the studio it's all gonna be good finally comes back and says rabbi this is i'm sorry they're giving you five minutes can you take your beautiful hour-long colonel today sermon and could you preserve the essence of it and say it in five minutes the rabbit says you know what i could and the guy says so rabbi why didn't you okay all right why didn't you okay um yeah so then let's see here i i just listen listen i i never know which ones are gonna be the be funnier for this audience um who knows you never know um you know you know the one about okay this is a little bit about like sanctimonious like religious posturing or arrogance the joke about what you say look who thinks he's nothing that's right everyone knows that one look who thinks there's nothing okay but what is look who thinks he's funny i have to formulate in the form of a question so there's a jeopardy so the the the rabbi at uh you know you said it uh connie today that's a good time you know it's just a good time for jokes um by the way cole newton is a good time for jokes i'll tell you why because that's when most people come to show so first let me pause this joke for a second i'm going to tell you another joke for a second there was this guy who was a once-a-year jew would only come connie would only come that that one night night of him kipper and so the rabbi decides one year he's like you know i gotta like confront this guy i'm gonna like with love but i want him to come around more often so uh the rabbi sees the guy heading out of shul he sort of sort of cuts him off at the pass he stands in front of me he says he says you know murray you know jewish judges murray okay so he says mary bernie murray whatever okay she says tom murray you know we have services here at the synagogue um every every every shabbos and the the guy says murray says rabbi listen you're a good guy i like you so i'm not gonna lie to you uh the synagogue is boring it's boring i can't come here every shot is just boring every time i come here it's just the same thing over and over again call nidre call nidre call nidra every time okay and anyway so it was called nidre and uh the rabbi uh is moved to uh all of a sudden this this emotional display and he walks up in front of the the the other and the holy ark and uh he throws his hands having word and he says master of the worlds i am nothing before you i am nothing i am nothing i am nothing and then he falls on the ground he starts groveling he's rolling and he's weeping i'm nothing i'm nothing so the cousin sees this not to be outdone so the cousin runs next to the rabbi he throws his hands heaven where he says master of the worlds look at me i'm nothing i'm nothing and he takes a dive also he starts rolling around on the ground i'm nothing i'm not saying the rabbi's rolling i'm nothing i'm nothing the cousin's rolling around i'm nothing i'm nothing so the shamish you know the custodian of the show the guy who cleans up so he sees this going he doesn't want to be left out he says this is what you do so he dives into the you know where they're rolling around he starts groveling he's rolling says i'm nothing i'm nothing i'm nothing the car's in elbows the rabbit he says no look who thinks he's nothing get a loader who thinks he's nothing okay anyway so we have jokes that make fun of you know what'd it call pompousness and arrogance and you know uh like i said punching up a lot of punching up jokes no no no no no no no that's that's well it depends on the mother-in-law but no you know what i thought about that about the mother-in-law jokes most of them are not jewish yeah yeah um oh so those that you're talking about the jewish mother jokes okay so kayam is requesting so he he's aware of something that i had once said that i learned that all of the jewish mother jokes were um replaceable with the codependent jokes they're in the world of recovery they're codependent jokes so basically all the jokes about codependency in the recovery world you could make them jewish mother jersey just substitute you which depend and and the jokes all work perfectly so like the what he called the the famous jewish mother joke is how many jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb don't worry about me i'll sit in the dark right okay fine so that's a codependent joke but anyways but you know interestingly enough in the end i did not include jewish mother jokes as one of the main it was too special it was like a niche it was like too specific of a category so i did not i did not include that okay but another category that i did include is about yiddish picos cleverness wit outsmarting the bad guys like the heroes the protagonists of many jewish jokes and a joke is a story and the story has characters even though we don't think of it that way because there's very short stories but the heroes of the jokes the protagonists of the jokes very often were cheering for their wit where they don't have other advantages they use wit to prevail um so regarding like cleverness just laughing at cleverness so there's there's a joke a guy calls a guy doesn't have any money needs to make some money what can he do how can he make money doesn't have anything to sell he doesn't have any skills that anyone will pay him for so he he calls up a guy he knows who has a daughter of marriageable age and he says uh listen uh could i uh propose a match i'm in the chat honest business i'm in the matchmaking business now can i propose for you a match for your daughter so guys like we're not really looking right now so the guy says and what if i were to tell you that the young man that i'm proposing for your daughter is lord rothschild's son so he's like wow that's okay maybe you know what well yes we're in okay so then the guy picks up the phone and he calls rothschild he says but rothschild listen i want to propose a shidduch for your son he says we're not looking right now and i'm not interested he says uh but uh wait hold on hold on did i mess up the joke yes did i mess it up he calls the first guy does the first guy have the sun how does it go the first guy has the son let me try it again he calls the guy with the sun and he says do you want a daughter how does it go paula how does it go what is do you call this living no no it's not you call this living which by the way sigmund freud wrote a book about jewish humor sigmund freud wrote a book about jewish humor and he put the do you call this living joke in the book and well there's two versions of the do you call this living joke the one of them is the the famous joke about the kgb comes to the door and in in moscow in the middle of the night they knock on the door and a little uh a guy answers the door and they say does does rabinowicz live here and you know which is always the jewish character in the russian jokes so the little guy says um no he doesn't live here so half an hour later kgb comes knocks his door again he says ravinovich live here no no he doesn't live here the kgb comes about half an hour later with a picture and they hold up the picture and they say you see this guy you see this picture this looks just like you you're ravinovic why do you keep saying ravinovich doesn't live here he says no you call this living freud has freud has a version of the joke that a shotgun uh put uh proposed a match and that the the the the family of the girl came to complain to the shotgun and they said you said that the boy's father passed away we found out he was a criminal and he's sitting in prison and the shotgun says no you call that living so anyways but that's the you call it what's the raw childhood let me let me see if i can fumble through it a guy calls his friend he says i want i have a up for you i believe it's for your daughter okay no he says we're not looking he says what but this is rothschild's son maybe he calls the guy who has the son i think he called yeah he calls the guy who has the son he says it's rothschild's daughter so he's like okay i'm interested then he calls rothschild it's like i have a guy yeah yeah then he calls raltr and says i have a guy for your daughter and rothchild's like i'm not really interested he says yeah but this guy he's already he's a young guy and he's already vice president at the world bank he said okay fine we're we're interested daddy picks up the phone he calls the world bank he says i have a vice president for you they said we have a knife enough vice presidents we don't need another who says rothschild son-in-law that's that's okay got it okay that was and you have to say the punchline like that like rothschild sell it like a question like a rhetorical question like you wouldn't take rothschild son eliza okay so that's that's like cleverness okay what what other cleverness um you know the one about the already what it's working over that was the next time that was the next one i'm not even joking it's working already was the next one that i was going to tell this is uncanny there was a jew on a train there's many different setups for this there's a jew on a train and uh so the anti-semitic uh what do you call the guys on the train the conductor comes over and he sees the jew on the train is like he brought his own food he doesn't bring bring kosher food on the you know on the trip he's eating this this herring so he says let me ask you something jew he says what makes you jews so smart all you jews are so smart what makes you so smart he says you want to know honestly because we eat herring and herring makes us smart he said well give me some of that herring he's like 50 rubles says here you're here you go and he buys the herring for 50 rubles an hour later the conductor comes back to the seat where the jew is sitting he says jew that piece of herring costs five rubles i just realized you sold me a five ruble piece of herring for 50 rubles the jew smiles says you see it's working already it's working already okay um yeah what's my next joke about jewish cleverness there was the rabbi the priest and the pastor and they were playing poker and it was illegal to gamble so the police came in the police chief came in to break up the gambling and he sees them gambling and they all sort of like throw the cards down under the table because they're caught right-handed and the police chief says father o'malley were you uh gambling so catholic priest father o'malley he looks heaven where he says god please forgive me just this one time i'm going to tell one little white lie he turns to the police chief and he says no i was i was not gambling it's okay fine and then he turns to uh the the the the pastor says uh pastor where where were you gambling and he looks heaven where's his god just one time one little white lie and he says uh no i gotta tell you i was not i was not gambling and police chief looks at the robbery says rabbi were you gambling and rabbi says with whom with whom nobody's okay uh you know the one about the the priest and the rabbi who run into each other car accident you know that one the classic one yeah it's a little fender bender they can each get out of the car and uh the priest is like oh rabbi i'm so sorry i'm so embarrassed and i was like listen don't worry it's like we don't know whose fault it is listen let's just celebrate you know what i have in the trunk i happen to have some uh kosher wine you never try some nice kosher wine let's have let's let's say the priest says sure that's that sounds very nice so rabbit comes out with a bottle opens it up and he pours a glass for the priest he says look i'm and he drinks the priest drinks the the wine says rabbi go ahead you're gonna have some rabbit says no i'm gonna wait for the police to get here [Music] okay so jewish cleverness here's one that combines cleverness with punching up and criticizing corrupt power structures so it's like it's a two for one um two jews are walking and uh it could be set in soviet russia could be set in nazi germany but the point is the setting of the joke is that the policeman is behind them and one says to the other i don't have my papers and i'm not allowed a jews not allowed to be out without their papers so the other one says don't worry i have my papers you walk normal i'll run that way the policeman will chase me not you and then i'll show my papers perfect plan so the one without the papers walks off slowly the one with the papers with the identifying papers starts running so the policeman starts chasing him stop stop stop so finally after he feels that his friend is safely home the the jew who took off running lets the cop catch him and uh he says show me your papers so he takes out his papers and the policeman looks at it and he's like well everything here is in order why did why did you run he's like honestly officer i i didn't know you were running after me and uh i just i i was running he's like why why would you just be running in the middle of the night you're just running he says well my doctor told me that i have to run a mile a day for my health so that's why i was running he says but you saw me i saw you look back and you saw me running behind you he said i thought maybe you see the same doctor maybe you see the same doctor okay so jewish cleverness yeah uh you know the one but the same jewish doctor maybe um yeah they say i don't even know if this is true this could be real talking about jewish doctors but this might even be real that they they somebody asked zelensky's mother about are you proud of your son she says his brother's a doctor i think it's true by the way i think it's actually i think it's real okay anyways um fine so we have religious themed jokes we have jokes of critiquing power structures we have jokes that exhibit cleverness so then i was trying to think of like another like archetypical category so then i i i decided this is just my discretion i decided that hoots but jokes are like crazy it's a rabbinical expression where they they deserve their own blessing they they're they get their own title their own category jokes about chutzpah as opposed to the joke where the the protagonist exhibits wit there are jokes where the protagonist exhibits chutzpah and sometimes a combination of wittenhood which is what makes me think they're two different categories which sometimes converge so the there was an old lady on a bus and she sees this young woman who's seated and she says if you knew what i have you would give up your seat for me so the young lady gets up she said go ahead go ahead sit down so the ladies takes the seat then uh it's hot so the young lady takes out a fan she starts fanning herself and the old lady says like if you knew what i have you give me your fan okay i find here's the fan the old lady fans herself a little while later she gets up she goes over to the bus driver she's like stop right here he's like we're gonna stop at the end of the block she says oy if you knew what i have you'd stop right here says okay fine no problem stops and she's getting off the bus buster i was like lady by the way you know what do you have she says hutzba okay um you know the definition of chutzpah is an orphan i stepped on the punchline a person who kills his parents and pleads to the judge for mercy because he's an orphan there you go okay um uh there are jokes that combine chutzpah with some theological or religious themes uh one of the classics one of the classics the lady who yeah so the old lady she goes down to the she goes to the boardwalk so she goes down to the boardwalk and uh she's uh her little ankle her little grandson is playing on the beach and all of a sudden there's this crazy wave out of nowhere and it just washes up on shore and then the wave goes back and the little boy's gone it's gone like oh my gosh what happened so the lady she screams up at the skies and she says send him back right now you can't take him send him back and then there's another wave and when the next wave comes up on shore it gently sets the little boy right back down in the spot where he was taken from and he's sitting there totally calm just like he'd been before the first wave came and took him and she looks up at heaven she says no he had a hat he had a hat right like the little boy came back on shore but he had a hat like send another wave send the hat like it's chutzpah right cuts but towards whom i guess let's put toward god which is a like a jewish thing i mean that which one you stumped me oh you're saying that's an actual thing in the bible right where the jews are are griping to moses you took us out of egypt for this right it goes back even further though because it goes back to to abraham abraham would argue with god like the chutzpah and the argument argumentation and the you know the the logic and i'm talking about with sodom and gomorrah so like huh to god so but with abraham it's actually extolled as a virtue with adam it's it's not a virtue with with abraham it's a virtue so it's like it's it's it's holy chutzpah so it's like we're actually rooting for his chutzpah um what else do i have here okay so i was talking to my brother some people know my brother david taub who is uh probably one of the funniest people i know he's very famous for the ichiga doozy show which is a puppet show that was on khabad.org for many many years and he did a lot of other stuff a lot of other projects like uh if i named them i'm gonna forget some of them but he made like mitzvah island made stick figure vignettes and he made it's vengeance and uh space rabbi he did a lot of different projects but at any rate david is one of the funniest guys i know so i was speaking to him in preparation for this talk and i was speaking about like religious themed humor and hutzpah humor and how they converge and how sometimes like it could even seem heretical so uh he he reminded me of a story he was the knight activity director in uh the detroit camp gangnaisral and knight activity director is supposed to uh basically be a constant stand-up comedian and he was concerned about it on talmudic grounds because it says the gemara says in in sanhedrin that late sonus which means uh scoffing or mockery is prohibited with one exception uh you're allowed to make fun of idolatry so he said he said to himself how many ballpoint jokes can i make already you know like how many he could only make fun of idolatry you know so he went to the camp rabbi and he asked the question he said you know i'm only a lot i have to make jokes all the time but i can only make fun of idolatry so uh i mean lifshitz the the camp rabbi there told him when you learn siddhis that means the the mystical teachings spiritual teachings of the kassidic masters your definition for idolatry will expand in other words the more richly you understand what it means to serve hashem and what is not serving hashem then the the the the more uh material you have because the more things you can make fun of because you realize that that too aveda zada literally means foreign service service of something foreign to us other than serving the one god so it's not just making baal pair jokes you know about you know biblical idolatry anything that's not serving god is foreign service and you're allowed to make fun of so like greed and and and the pump you know pompous arrogant uh self-serving uh character defects that that that's that's also a form of idol worship it's foreign service so you know they're they're joked making fun of those those those foibles and those those human weaknesses because that's foreign to the service of god uh but but my brother david he pointed out something very interesting he said that you know regarding heretical jokes he said to an idol worshiper your joke is heretical meaning you are blaspheming his belief so think about this he said as your idea of what is truly god becomes more mature and more developed and you realize that your previous understanding was actually not theologically sound so really things that become the object of derision today you used to revere yesterday and would even think it would be heretical to make fun of it but really it's not heretical to make fun of it it's actually the most religious thing you can do is to make fun of and disabuse yourself of the old notions which are incorrect so that you can graduate into loftier understandings of god that are more correct or in the words of libya dichover who was confronted by an angry young atheist he said young man the same god you don't believe in i don't believe in either so i would i'll take the liberties to translate that to you know the same beliefs that you are mocking i will also mock so false piety sanctimonious religiosity those are targets those are fair game we should mock those god forbid we don't mock that which is holy but as we mature we realize things that we used to think were holy were really just our own personal agenda that we were justifying in the name of holiness and that's actually the best stuff to make fun of anyways that was a deep conversation i had with with the funniest guy that i know and he's the funniest guy that i know and yet whenever i talk to him we always have very deep philosophical conversations okay so let me i i have a couple more sub categories but okay very very quickly i'll just tell you a couple more sub categories um one one is paradox jokes that have paradox in them um where it's the paradox that makes it funny like it you could all you can almost call it like the flip it's the flip so the punch line is an inversion of the setup so like two jewish businessmen go out for lunch and one says to the other ask me how's business and he's like nah come on i just want to enjoy lunch i don't talk about business he's like come on ask me how's business he's like no no i just want to i just want to eat i don't talk about business he says listen to me ask me how's business it'll be a business lunch and we'll write it off he says okay fine how's business he says don't ask so that's the paradox you can't tell somebody don't ask unless they ask okay um my grandfather oliver shulam who um his parents were from berdychev uh he was born in uh in america already but his parents were from berdychev and he used to tell a joke that he heard from them and from from many of the other uh you know their their their peers the old the old russian immigrants to chicago back in that era so this is one of the jokes he heard the one time this is again this is a paradox joke a flip where the punch line is an inversion of the setup that you can't have the the the payoff that makes sense without the setup that doesn't make sense or something like that at any rate so this guy goes and my grandfather used to act this out very like um with a lot of like flair a guy goes to the to the tailor he's running late for a a wedding and he's like i gotta pick up my suit you know the wedding starts in 20 minutes so he puts on the the suit and he starts screaming at the tail he's like this this whole suit it doesn't fit and the tail is like what what's wrong it looks fine he's like no this sleeve here is too long he said well the sleeve is too long bend your elbow like that it takes up some of the cloth and it makes the sleeve even out he's like yeah but this leg is too long so it goes and bend your knee like this and then it takes up some of the cloth and then you know evens out he says but the front is longer than the back so so then you bet you go like this and then the front evens out with the back he's like i don't have time to argue with you i'm going so he's walking down the street that's how my grandfather did he's walking down the street like this and two women walk by and uh they see him they sort of avert their gaze you know they say uncomfortably see this guy walking down the street like this and one woman says the other such a the other says yeah but his tailor must be a genius to be able to make a suit fit perfectly okay so that's the flip that's like the and then uh okay any and i have other sub-cat it doesn't matter okay so i said you know they're jewish jokes that are about jewish religion and jewish jokes that are about punching up and social critique and criticizing uh power structures and then there are jewish jokes about jewish wit and cleverness uh there are jewish jokes about chutzpah audacity and his jewish jokes about the flip the inversion okay so i i put this all into my uh special uh computer my jewish comedy computer and i said what is then the ultimate jewish joke and actually before while i was waiting for the computer to compute i it occurred to me that the ultimate jewish joke has to be the joke that would make god laugh this is what we call in 2022 god to your humor okay the joke that would make god laugh now where do we know of a joke that made god laugh what is you i guess oh no that's another one that but but that's that's another joke and it's blasphemous and it's shocking and it makes everybody cringe but i'll tell it because you said the punch line um and most people can't handle it and it really kills the mood so the joke is it's it's it's uh yeah so i'll no i'll tell it i mean it's a it's a real jewish joke and you can you can think about why it disturbs you and you can think about if there's something deeper remember by the way i didn't even discuss about the fact that the title of this talk was every truth has a little joke and that itself is an inversion that we say that every joke has a little truth but the reality is that every truth has a little joke meaning to say the main thing is the truth it's not even the joke the joke is just the way of dressing up the truth so people will listen to it the joke is just the way to disarm people so they'll listen to things that are true they don't they don't want to hear anyways i mean you want to tell the joke i mean it's not no one's going to laugh at this point a holocaust survivor passes away and this is already like so morbid and tragic the holocaust survivor passes away and goes to heaven and they said you want to meet god he says yeah i have some things i want to say to him and so god is like you know welcome to heaven and he says so the holocaust says um i want to tell you a joke about the holocaust god says it's not funny the holocaust survivor says i guess you had to have been there yeah it's the one that bites it bites yeah yeah yeah searing that yeah yeah it's a bad one i said it wrong on purpose i didn't say it wrong i took the joke out of okay okay but i thought that's what we agreed to do that we're taking the joke out of him so we're taking out the joke we're just leaving the truth okay anyway so but that joke god did not laugh at i'm talking about the joke that god did laugh at and we and how do we know that god laughed at it and by the way if you would read the story you wouldn't even think it was a joke you'd be why is god laughing but the talmud says that god laughed that the holy one blessed be he was laughing what was he laughing at so i'll tell you the story it's a good motive of ambassador there was a dispute you would not even think this is a joke with this setup there was a dispute about the purity and impurity we're talking about ritual not hygiene ritual purity and impurity status of a particular kind of oven and the home that means the majority of sages were ruling one way and rabbi lee allieser who was one of the sages was ruling another way so they were they came to which is a very common jewish thing two jews three opinions right the jewish talmudic dialectic argumentation um so that's a very common thing but what happened is that rabbi eliezer felt that even though he was the one he was the the minority opinion he was the lone opinion that he was correct so he started trying to prove himself so he started to i guess you would call it work miracles so he said if i am correct let the carob tree prove it and the carob tree uprooted and moved 100 ammo ice that's like 150 feet some say 400 amis at any rate the you know trees you know jumping up and and moving that's that's pretty uh unusual and um so the sages led by rev yeshua said so you know you must say you made a cab tree jump up doesn't that doesn't mean you don't win the argument so he says so if i'm right let the river prove it and the river reversed its stream and started going uphill he says what do you say about that and they again the sages led by rabbi yeshua said the river doesn't prove anything so he said if i'm right let the walls of the yeshiva of the base madness where we study let them prove it and the walls all leaned in at like this freakish angle and just started hanging there and uh so i'll be sure again said the walls of the basement don't prove anything so at that point rabia lyazer says if i'm right let heaven prove it and a heavenly voice a boss coil a heavenly voice issued forth and said why are you guys arguing with rabbi yazza you know the halacha the final ruling always follows him now that should be the end of the story that should be it and what happens the sages led by rib yeshua they counter they counter that heavenly voice and they say a verse from the torah incidentally they they quote scripture and they say lama shemin he it's not in heaven the torah is not in heaven meaning it was given thy came from heaven but there was matan which means the giving of the terror at sinai it signed it god gave us gave us the torah so it's ours now so he says it'll be sure it says he says after passing he screams the the verse he says the scriptural he invokes the scripture he says it's not in heaven he's telling dieter what taylor says he says not in heaven we don't pay attention to heavenly voices so he's telling the heavenly voice we don't listen to you so it says that sometime after this incident another one of the sages that have nasan ran into elioha navi elijah the prophet you know elijah the prophet he's going to be your sader soon and uh what six weeks i don't want to freak anyone out but the seders and tonight's other so say this yeah can you believe that but let me pause for one second i'll tell you a joke this is also a dark joke this is a really dark joke um not as dark as that other one but pretty dark um the there was this couple that lived on the land they were like tenant farmers they lived on the land of this pot it's the squire who was trying to get them to convert to christianity they never would and finally he said i'll take your child away if you don't convert so so they couldn't withstand it and they they converted and it was one time a maggot a traveling preacher a jewish traveling preacher came to town and he was telling what you have to do chuva he's telling him you're just saying one of these speeches you know you have to you have to repent and so the husband comes home and he tells the wife we have to do chuva that's it we have to tell the the parties you have to tell the squire we're becoming jewish again no matter what she's like you're right that's it go march down there tell tell him we're becoming jewish again right now and he's walking out the door and says hold on a second pesach is in six weeks let's wait till after and then we'll become jewish again okay at any rate so lay bishop toyota is not in heaven we don't listen to heavenly voices very strange statement very strange incident very difficult to make sense of what even transpired over there and abner who was one of the sages met elijah the prophet you're going to see elijah in six weeks at the seder okay that's why i got derailed last time elijah the prophet you know elijah he went to heaven with his body so he comes and goes a lot you know so he has he's privileged to see a lot of that stuff so ramnasan asked elijah the prophet says by the way i always wondered remember that weird thing that happened rebel yazar and the were fighting about this oven about its ritual purity status and this heavenly voice came out and um and they rejected it and they said that we're not going to listen to a heavenly voice what did hashem do like what was hashem's reaction and elijah the prophet says oh you want to know what hashem did my children have bested me he said it twice my children have bested me so what made god laugh what's the joke see if i would read that i wouldn't even know it was funny but it made hashem laugh and what does it have in it so then my computer my jewish comedy computer produced the result and it was that joke because what does it have okay it has a religious theme the whole question of how does torah law get determined that there's a rabbinic system it has social critique or punching up or criticizing power structures in this case something that seemingly could even be taken as blasphemous but actually it's not blasphemous at all it's actually the core of our belief that god gave empowerment to the rabbinical system to determine the truth so it's got that you know fighting what seems like that that protest and that fighting against the power structure but actually it's not heretical it's the the opposite of heresy but it challenges like i was talking about with my brother it challenges our notions of what is true belief and what is heretical it forces us to expand our minds it's got cleverness it's very clever because there'll be a sure thought of that retort on the spot it's got hutzbah who argues with a heavenly voice coming straight from god and it's got the flip because he uses torah against the torah to say what really is the torah saying i mean it's like and then the biggest flip of all that hashem is getting pleasure from the fact that his children bested him so that apparently is the archetypical quintessential god-tier jewish joke according to my jewish comedy machine computer that i built in my garage yeah and then it occurred to me by the way another joke that has similar themes the idea this idea that for hashem what's the greatest pleasure being quote unquote defeated by his children or bested by their cho by his children the uh rabbi asked the local priest if you uh he says father if you'd really do well at your job what'll happen will you ever get promoted he said you know well you know i guess i could become a bishop one of our guys made it you got it finally somebody besides kai and got a punchline what a that's right so very good one of our guys okay so he says father if you really do well at your job what what could happen he says i could become a bishop i guess he's like well what if you do really good at this like well i mean it's not very common i guess i could become a cardinal he's like well what if you do really good at that he said well i mean it's only one of them but i mean i guess i could become pope he's like what if you do really good at that he's like well what do you mean like could you go higher than pope he said what do you want me to be you i should become god himself he's like one of our boys made it at any rate by the way that's also related you talk about jewish mother jokes this is a jewish mother joke that's not actually the typical jewish mother joke this actually a jewish jewish mother joke that i like because it's warm and it's cute and it's positive but it's also hilarious what's the definition of a genius an average student with a jewish mother okay an average student with a jewish mother that's a genius so and then but what what's the idea there the idea is that hashem doesn't just love his people it's one thing hashem loves his people but that hashem made us his emissaries here in the world to accomplish something that so to speak he himself cannot accomplish the the bolder that is too heavy for god himself to lift obviously god is all-powerful so what what does it really mean what it means is that hashem extended himself into us each one of us is an embodiment of the divine and put us in a situation of being in a body being in a physical world with the temptations and the distractions and with the pain and with the trials and tribulations with all the things that happen in a physical world all the challenges that angels don't know anything about and the souls in heaven frankly don't know anything about because it's it's blissful up there and god extends himself so to speak he puts that khalik elekami mao that divine expression which is called the nisham of the soul into each of us and he says and now do that thing where you best me so to speak take the tools take the tools that i gave you and make me proud do something that i didn't do you know that everyone spoke about this story story from boba bhavamita and um compared it to another talmudic saying which is uh the sages say yaffa kayak that the the potential of this of the sun is greater than the father so that took those words and unpacked them and said you know in in hebrew that that preposition min could mean than but it could also mean from and both readings are true that the the child his power to quote unquote surpass the father comes from the father ben the beautiful power that the child meaning you have is comes from the father comes from hashem in other words is an expression of hashem so what is the ultimate flip i told you the the jokes have to have a flip the ultimate flip the ultimate inversion and the ultimate joke and not not a not a silly joke not a frivolous joke a very deep very serious joke the deepest joke the most serious joke is when hashem gets delighted from watching what we're able to pull off in the situation that we were put into and to do it all within a framework of torah that's delightful that's amazing that's astonishing that we're able to come down beautiful pristine souls into bodies be in this scary world where there's so much well let's say comedic material to put it euphemistically and to be able to keep our dignity keep our sanity keep laughing and to succeed within the framework of torah there's nothing more delightful than that and that's that's no joke it's a joke but it's it's no joke okay anyways i have like 50 more jokes here but i have raccoomanes or