The First Book of Jewish Jokes

Michaela Lang

Description

Works on Jewish humor and Jewish jokes abound today, but what formed the basis for our contemporary notions of Jewish jokes? How and when did these perceptions develop? In this groundbreaking study and translation, noted humor and folklore scholar Elliott Oring introduces us to the joke collections of Lippmann Moses Büschenthal, an enlightened rabbi, and an unknown author writing as "Judas Ascher." Originally published in German in 1812 and 1810, these books include jokes and anecdotes that play on stereotypes. The jokes depict Jews dealing with Gentiles who are bent on their conversion, Jews encountering government officials and institutions, newly propertied Jews attempting to demonstrate their acquisition of artistic and philosophical knowledge, and Jews engaged in trade and moneylending—often with the aim to defraud. In these jokes we see the antecedents of modern Jewish humor, and in Büschenthal's brief introduction we find perhaps the earliest theory of the Jewish joke. Oring provides helpful annotations for the jokes and contextualizing essays that examine the current state of Jewish joke scholarship and the situation of the Jews in France and Germany leading up to the periods when the two collections were published. Intended to stimulate the search for even earlier examples, Oring challenges us to confront the Jewish joke from a genuine historical perspective.

Foreword
Acknowledgments

Part I: Introduction
1. On Jewish Jokes and the Collection of Lippmann Moses Büschenthal
2. The Jews in the Century of Büschenthal

Part II: The Texts
3. Collection of Witty Notions from Jews as a Contribution to the Characterization of the Jewish Nation / L. M. Büschenthal
4. Selections from The Friend of the Jews or Selected Anecdotes, Pranks, and Notions of the Children of Israel / Judas Ascher

Appendix I: Büschenthal Texts Taken from Judas Ascher, Der Judenfreund
Appendix II: Sources of Joke Analogs
List of References
Index

Sujets

• Jewish Studies
• Social Science
• Jewish
• HISTORY
• Folclore
• Jews
• Jewish mythology
• Jewish humour
• Jewish history
• Form
• Western Europe
• Central Europe
• Folklore

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253038340
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Elliott Oring
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: B?uschenthal, Lippmann Moses, 1784-1818, author. | Oring, Elliott, 1945-editor. | Lang, Michaela, translator.
Title: The first book of Jewish jokes : the collection of L. M. Buschenthal / edited by Elliott Oring ; translated by Michaela Lang, with annotations by Anastasiya Astapova, Tsafi Sebba-Elran, Elliott Oring, Dan Ben-Amos, Larisa Privalskaya, and Ilze Akerbergs.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018019097 (print) | LCCN 2018021736 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253038340 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253038319 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253038326 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Jewish wit and humor. | Jewish wit and humor-History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN6231.J5 (ebook) | LCC PN6231.J5 B86 2018 (print) | DDC 818/.602-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019097
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Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Part I: Introduction
1. On Jewish Jokes and the Collection of Lippmann Moses B schenthal
2. The Jews in the Century of B schenthal
Part II: The Texts
3. Collection of Witty Notions from Jews as a Contribution to the Characterization of the Jewish Nation/L. M. B schenthal
4. Texts from The Friend of the Jews or Selected Anecdotes, Pranks, and Notions of the Children of Israel/Judas Ascher
Appendix I: B schenthal Texts Taken from Judas Ascher, Der Judenfreund
Appendix II: Sources of Joke Analogues
References
Index
Foreword
T HE F IRST B OOK of Jewish Jokes , at its core, is a translation of a collection of jokes published in 1812 by Lippmann Moses B schenthal: Sammlung witiziger Einf lle von Juden, als Beytr ge zur Characteristik der J dischen Nation (Collection of witty notions from Jews as a contribution to the characterization of the Jewish nation). 1 To title anything as the first, original, earliest, or archetypical is likely to invite reactions pointing to a host of earlier instances. In this case, the title of the book is offered as a deliberate provocation. An outpouring of specimens of earlier Jewish joke books is welcome. While there is no dearth of articles and books-scholarly and popular-published on the Jewish joke and Jewish humor more generally, this literature proceeds virtually without any reference to historical sources. This translation of B schenthal s Sammlung (collection) is designed to stimulate the search for even earlier examples of Jewish joke books that contribute to an understanding of the development of jokes and anecdotes that are characterized as distinctively Jewish.
The title The First Book of Jewish Jokes is not only provocative; it is demonstrably false. Although B schenthal s Sammlung had been identified by a prominent Germanist as the first Jewish joke book (Gilman 2012, 6), many of B schenthal s jokes are acquired from an earlier source: Der Judenfreund, oder auserlesene Anekdoten, Schw nke, und Einf lle von Kindern Israels (The friend of the Jews, or selected anecdotes, pranks, and notions of the Children of Israel) published in 1810 under the name of Judas Ascher. Three-quarters of the jokes in B schenthal s Sammlung are taken word-for-word from Ascher s Der Judenfreund. 2 Undoubtedly, other joke books are out there. Even Ascher refers in his foreword to a pamphlet, Anekdoten von guten Juden (Anecdotes of good Jews), but these books have yet to be identified and made available. Nevertheless, B schenthal s collection is, at present, the first book of Jewish jokes that can be attributed to a known author/compiler. Judas Ascher would appear to be a pseudonym. His name is not found in any encyclopedia of German authors, nor does his name seem to be associated with any other book than Der Judenfreund. 3
Accompanying the translation of B schenthal s Sammlung is a translation of all the texts in Ascher that B schenthal did not include in his own book. The reader is actually getting a translation of two early books of Jewish jokes. A table indicating which jokes in the Sammlung come from Der Judenfreund follows the translations. Also included in this volume is an essay on the nature and problems of Jewish joke scholarship and an essay on the situation of the Jews in central and western Europe in the century leading up to the publication of B schenthal s and Ascher s joke anthologies. Finally, the jokes in the Sammlung are annotated; that is to say, an effort has been made to search for analogues to the jokes in order to get some sense of how many of them appear in later Jewish joke collections. Since there are no comprehensive indices of joke types as there are of folktales, ballads, or legends, the search for analogues is necessarily a hit-and-miss affair. Nevertheless, the search might offer some sense of the extent to which B schenthal s texts do or do not survive in what is perceived to be a more contemporary Jewish joke inventory.
To characterize the Sammlung as the first book of Jewish jokes is, no doubt, something of an exaggeration, although not by much. The purpose of the title is to rouse scholarly interest in the Jewish joke. Hopefully, it will also entice readers whose interests are something other than scholarly. Such readers need to be forewarned that B schenthal s book is unlikely to prove a resource for increasing one s personal repertoire of humorous materials. Most of the jokes are not of a kind likely to be retold to friends and acquaintances. In a few cases, the humor may escape comprehension altogether. It is hoped, however, that those who have an interest in Jewish jokes for their entertainment value will still find them interesting. After all, they were published over two hundred years ago. They are the product of an age with a different philosophical outlook, when different historical forces were in play, and when the social and material circumstances of the Jews in Europe were significantly different from what they are today.
Notes
1 . A digital copy of the original work can be found at http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/judaicaffm/content/pageview/7020489 (accessed June 17, 2017).
2 . The WorldCat database identifies only nine libraries in four countries that have B schenthal s Sammlung in their holdings: Germany (4); United States (1); Switzerland (1); United Kingdom (3). WorldCat identifies twenty libraries in six countries with copies of Der Judenfreund : Germany (11), United States (4), Israel (2), Netherlands (1), Switzerland (1), United Kingdom (1).
3 . Judas Ascher s name does not appear in the twenty-six-volume work Neue Deutsche Biographie (1952-2013), the ten-volume Dictionary of German Biography (1995-2000), the thirteen-volume Deutsche Biographische Enzyklop die , or the four-volume Bibliographica Judaica: Verzeichnis j discher Autoren deutscher Sprache (1981).
Acknowledgments
T HIS VOLUME IS an act of collaboration, and there are a number of people to be thanked for their contributions to the project. First and foremost is Michaela Lang, who translated B schenthal s Sammlung in its entirety as well as those texts in Judas Ascher s Der Judenfreund that B schenthal did not incorporate into his volume. Dr. Anastasiya Astapova, research fellow, Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu, Estonia, surveyed the Russian Jewish joke literature; Dr. Tsafi Sebba-Elran, lecturer, Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of Haifa, Israel, searched the Hebrew collections of Alter Druyanow, Shimon Ernst, and Dov Sadan; Dan Ben-Amos, professor of folklore and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Pennsylvania, examined Immanuel Olsvanger s Rosinkess mit Mandlen ; Larisa Privalskaya perused J. Chana Rawnitzki s Yidishe Witzn ; and Dr. Ilze Akerbergs looked at the Latvian collection Latvju tautas anekdotes compiled by P. Birkerts and the Lithuanian collection Lietuvi samojus by Jonas Balys. Dr. Inta Carpenter edited the two supplementary essays, and Kathleen Stocks and Norman Klein proofread the entire book. My sincerest thanks to James R. Dow, professor emeritus of German at Iowa State University; Susanne M ller of the European Ethnology Section of the University of Vienna Library; Wolfgang Mieder, professor of German at the University of Vermont, Burlington; Dr. Eddy Portnoy of the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at YIVO; and Sarah Quill at the Herman B. Wells Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, for supplementary information and references.

Part I
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
On Jewish Jokes and the Collection of Lippmann Moses B schenthal
A J EWISH JOKE is not a social fact, something out there in the world, but rather a constructed category. It is the construction that constitutes the social fact. Not every joke told about Jews would be considered a Jewish joke. A hostile anecdote about Jews told by Gentiles would be regarded as a piece of anti-Semitism and not a Jewish joke (Freud 1960, 111; als