Jewish Comedy
A Serious History

Name: Jewish Comedy
Brand: Blackstone Audiobooks
Availability: InStock
Author: Jeremy Dauber
ISBN: 9781538432198

Author: Jeremy Dauber

Narrator: Jeremy Dauber

Unabridged: 10 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Published: 10/31/2017

Categories: Nonfiction, Humor, Religious Humor, Social Science, Jewish Studies, Performing Arts, Comedy

Synopsis

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.

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kevin on November 17, 2023

Did you ever sign up for a university course because you saw something in the semester catalog that looked interesting and fun? Say, Introduction to Cannabis? or Beekeeping? or maybe Pattern making for Dog Garments? If so, Professor Jeremy Dauber (Columbia University) has the perfect course for you.......more

Goodreads review by Kirk on February 11, 2018

This book took me forever to read, what with looking up Yiddish words and performers and writers and references, but that's a sign of how engrossing and expansive the book is - I could spend a pleasant year or few following up the leads. Dauber is indeed serious about his subject, but he writes with......more

Goodreads review by Colin on December 20, 2019

I thought this was a fascinating and comprehensive historical survey. Covers the comedy luminaries I was expecting (the Borscht belt, Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Mort Sahl, Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, etc) but also delves into highbrow novelists like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, and the r......more

Goodreads review by Luke on July 09, 2024

Although maybe a bit of a dry read, incredibly interesting stuff, it helps to have a small basis on Jewish history to maybe understand some of the antiquity era stuff, but you don’t need too much knowledge as he does a good job at explaining.......more

Goodreads review by Negar on December 27, 2021

3.5/5 Tbh it wasn't a bad book, I just wasn't the target audience for it. My bad......more

Quotes

“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

Awards

Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Award
Natan Book Award