Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

by Michael Krasny

Let There Be Laughter is a compendium of Jewish jokes that packs the punches with hilarious riff after riff and also offers a window into Jewish culture.Award–winning broadcast journalist Michael Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since his bar mitzvah, and it’s been said that he knows more of them than anyone on the planet. He certainly states his case in this wise, enlightening, and hilarious book that not only collects the best of Jewish humor passed down from generation to generation, but explains the cultural expressions and anxieties behind the laughs.“What’s Jewish Alzheimer’s?”“You forget everything but the grudges.”“You must be so proud. Your daughter is the President of the United States!”“Yes. But her brother is a doctor!”“Isn’t Jewish humor masochistic?”“No. And if I hear that one more time I am going to kill myself.”With his background as a scholar and public-radio host, Krasny delves deeply into the themes, topics, and form of Jewish chauvinism undercut by irony and self-mockery, the fear of losing cultural identity through assimilation, the importance of vocal inflection in joke-telling, and calls to communal memory, including the use of Yiddish.Borrowing from traditional humor and such Jewish comedy legends as Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Schumer, Let There Be Laughter is an absolute pleasure for the chosen and goyim alike.“Krasny has chosen well, and digs into the jokes, explaining the sometimes not-so-funny histories and emotions that ultimately trigger the laughter. Besides the featured jokes, he provides plentiful additional bits that evoke smiles and nods of recognition.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Jewish, Religion, Comedy, History, Audiobook

309 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 27, 2016

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why have Jewish mothers and grandmothers been fodder now for years for such a wide range of jokes that nearly sanctify their over-the-top feelings of love and pride in their children?
Or ...why are they portrayed in Jewish jokes as overly critical, and impossibly demanding nags who are bane to their children's lives?

The above two questions are just 'two' of the many topics looked at in "Let There Be Laughter".....A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What it All Means
Author, Michael Krasny put together a sort of 'historical look' at this topic.
Jews play a dominate role in comedy.
Krasny asks the question:
"How do we account for such dominance? Gene pool? Culture?
A business that people found themselves working in, through generations, like the Chinese with laundries, the Vietnamese with nail salons, Italians with pizzerias,
Koreans with grocery stores, or Irish with pubs? Or, for that matter, Jews with delis or jews in the garment industry, or Jews as doctors? It is a challenging question and one with no simple answer".

I found this book fascinating and enjoyable. Everything was covered from
Sex and Marriage, suffering, guilt, schmucks, food, ( good eaters, bad eaters)...Yiddish generations, celebrations, martyrdom, interfaith, interracial, bourgeois values,
Jewish son's and daughters, and the meaning of how jokes discharge aggression, anxiety, conceal deeper repessed sexual meaning. Jewish jokes morn loss of the Yiddish language and culture and assimilation. Loss of religious beliefs, pity, ritual, and identity.

This book shows us a look at Jewish humor through the generations - from vaudeville -- to slapstick and silliness --to schmaltzy nostalgia humor--comedic filmmaking --contemporary figures such as Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal, Jon Stewart, Mel Brooks,
Woody Allen, Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, etc.
The contributions of Jews in comedy is huge. Kransny, himself, is widely known as a radio host, with one of the nations largest locally produced public radio listening audiences. He not only tells Jewish jokes - he analyzes them.

Jewish humor highlights suffering and neurosis....but also celebrates life and gives us lots of great laughs!
Interesting changes through generations.
The jokes selected throughout were charming.

Thank You William Morrow, and Michael Krasny

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: Not only did I win this book through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review but in fall 1972 I took a college class, Modern American Novel, and the author was the professor. (I rarely feel old but between this book and my next book, about the Altamont concert, I'm feeling kind of old, or at the least long-lived.)

I read a not for sale uncorrected proof paperback advance edition that has 280 pages. I read it over 14 days, taking my time because I was reading it concurrently with a novel and other materials. I'm thinking I should have waited for a library copy edition, the finished hardcover, but I might not have borrowed it in the very near future, and I do enjoy advance copies. I have reserved a copy at the library to read any content changed from or not included in my unfinished edition.

First the good because overall I enjoyed this very much: I love the storytelling that goes on all the way through and that frames the jokes. The author’s personal stories and the historical accounts are interesting. I appreciated the writing style, the chattiness of it, and felt as though I was with the author being told stories, and that was fun. Very engaging and entertaining!

I loved most of the jokes.

I was surprised by how many of the jokes I knew. I’d heard most of them. While I rarely actually laughed as I read, I was highly amused and found the book extremely enjoyable. I equally enjoyed the jokes I already knew and those I was hearing for the first time.

The negatives for me were enough to deduct slightly more than one star from a book I might otherwise have rated 5 stars. While the personal stories were a plus, especially of the author’s early years but more current ones as well, I found the incessant name-dropping annoying. I was almost literally rolling my eyes, frequently. Many of the names will be known to most as they are very famous people and others are locally well known. I suspect that the publisher thought that mentioning all these people, friends and interviewees of the author, would be a plus in the book’s sales. I would have preferred much less content about famous people. I felt that most of the time doing so was completely unnecessary for presenting the jokes and stories about their backgrounds. I’m not saying that sometimes it wasn’t a fun presentation technique, but there was way too much of it for me. I’m not sure that I always notice name-dropping but here it was impossible to not notice. That is the main negative for me. The second negative is that I wish it had delved even deeper, especially with general history and with psychological meanings and how they pertain to Jewish humor and to specific jokes. There is some of that but not as much as I’d expected, and most of it was common sense. There was no analysis I found earth shattering or that even provided much information new to me. I thought I’d learn more than I did. A third issue is the misspellings, but it is an advance copy so I can forgive all, except that the last name of one of the author’s friends is misspelled, and not just in the book proper but also in the Acknowledgements section at the end. I hope all the spelling errors will be corrected in the final for sale edition of the book.

I am Jewish but I was raised not only without religion but also without the Jewish culture. Most of what I learned when young about Judaism came from reading about Jews and Jewish history and reading books by Jewish people, and from two friends who were raised in observant Jewish homes. And yet I feel very Jewish. I do miss the application my city’s Jewish Community Center used to have for their gym, the boxes where a religion was chosen. Only about ½ the members are Jewish but there were many choices for what kind of Jewish an applicant was affiliated with, and one of the options which I always chose was “just Jewish” which is how I feel. Given my lack of background I was a bit surprised by how familiar the jokes were to me. I don’t know if that’s because of my many Jewish friends or because Jewish humor has made its way into the mainstream. I’m assuming it’s the latter.

I finished the book 6 days prior to its official publication date and am posting this review 5 days before it will be available for sale. I feel lucky to have been able to read it early, and I’m glad that I read it. I can definitely recommend it to readers who are interested in its topic.

Contents:
Introduction
I. Jewish Mothers & Jewish Grandmothers
II. Sex & Marriage
III. Schlemiels & Schmucks
IV. Yiddish, Generations, & Assimilation
V. Celebrations
VI. Suffering
VII. Separate & Distinct
Conclusion and Outtakes
Acknowledgments

ETA: There are also many other books mentioned in this book, and some of them are likely to go on to my bloated to read shelf.

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by a host with a show on NPR and a Professor of English Literature, this erudite author delivers, big time.

A fantastic compendium of his niche interest with commentaries that are exemplary and akin to Rambam.

This is not just a compilation of jokes throughout the last one hundred years or so, but a compendium juxtaposed with relevant narrative.

Unlike Cioran, La Rochefoucauld, and The Silver Palate Cookbook, this book is special in how it inserts some creative ideas of others entwined with a current and sensitive purview in which he is, as a writer, a part of the whole.

I only wish he would/could write on other topics that he is familiar with.

A funny and reflective journey.

Like a bagel, it can be consumed gleefully by anyone.

[Susan Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why has Judaism and humour been so intimately linked? What is it about the Jewish experience that seems to encourage humour even while lapooning some very horrible situations, that is at once universal but celebrates the differences. This book goes a long way to try and explain the genesis of the humour and how it has evolved.
It is also filled with laugh out loud jokes and anecdotes. The author is a noted collector of these stories and he is a wonderful storyteller himself. You do not have to be Jewish to enjoy this book but it doesn't hurt if you are, especially of a generation who recall the latent Anti-semitism in the post Holocaust world or the blatant anti-semitism of the pre- Holocaust times.
He looks at how humour evolved and changed in the New World and Israel. What had been largely passive was changed into a more aggressive humour while maintaining its source built on anger and suffering. When he lists the wide variety of purveyors of Jeiwsh humour, the reader is stunned by how many names appear. As Steve Allen exaggerated, for such a small group, their representation is overwhelming.
It is a great book on so many levels- funny, sad and always sharply observant. It goes a long way to explaining Jewish life and experience and also offers an antidote to the increasing Anti-semitism that seems to be creeping into society.
Prior to the Holocaust one Jewish man is asked why he reads the Nazi propaganda newspaper. He says, tongue firmly in cheek, after programs, discrimination and violence, it's nice to hear how well everyone is doing in taking over the world.
To me, that is the essence of Jewish humour. Laughter in the face of tragedy. It must work.
We are still here.
I give this book five purrs and two paws up.

[Judie · Rating 4 out of 5]

LET THERE BE LAUGHTER is more than a book of Jewish jokes. While Michael Krasney does include a lot of jokes in eight different categories, he explains what function the jokes serve and why they can be both funny and insulting, often stereotypical. He also compares the different styles of jokes by various comedians, linking those with similar traits and comparing some of those from the early and mid-twentieth century to those of today.
I found the reasoning behind why some subjects, such as money, misogyny, and Jewish customs became fodder for jokes interesting, though it was sometimes a stretch. While I still find some of them offensive, I better understand their purpose from a different perspective. “The fear, of course, is that even joking about such stereotypes can reinforce them or cause pain. But what should be said of the freedom that comes with expressing perhaps even owning and celebrating them, with humor?”
Many of his stories are based on actual conversations and explanations. For example, he wrote of how he asked Nobel Prize winning Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer if he believed in free will. Singer replied, “I have no choice.”
During his career as a NPR’s KQED San Francisco affiliate host, he interviewed many famous Jewish celebrities. He mentions them a lot. He also writes about growing up in Cleveland, Ohio,
He writes about name changes, some for people for professional reasons, some because they wanted to sound more American, some because of the misunderstanding of immigration officials. One name change is very similar to my maternal grandmother’s brothers: They wanted to sound more American so, when they came here from Lithuania, they changed their name to Greenberg. It had been Feller.
He offers cross-over jokes, that is a joke that can apply to other ethnic groups just as easily as to Jews. It reminded me of when “Fiddler on the Roof” went to Japan. The Japanese people loved it but didn’t understand what it had to do with Jews since it was so obviously about themselves.
I’m seventy-five years old and have heard many of them before but there were some new ones as well including a better presentation of one I’ve been telling for about a year. It’s the second paragraph on the page after the beginning of Chapter VI, page 208.
Like most joke book, LET THERE BE LAUGHTER is a quick read. It’s also written with care and caring.
I received an advance copy of this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

[FyzaReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Let There be Laughter' written by Michael Krasny, who is a Professor of English Literature and host of the noted NPR show 'The Forum'. He previously authored 'The Spiritual Envy-An Agnostic's Quest', in which he tried to answer the principal question about whether we can live this life according to our own code without the need and aid of faith or spiritual belief in a deity? I read that book several times and it used it as a guid on my own path to secularism. So I was extremely excited when Professor's Krasny's new book was announced and I pre ordered it as soon as it became available to purchase.

I have had the pleasure to have taken a few courses with Professor Krasny. His class lectures are equivalent to an enchanting theatrical performance. His wonderful collection of lectures on 'Masterpieces of Short Fiction' have been recorded by 'Great Courses' company and can be purchased online.

Myself being previously used to stoic Engineering Professors, thought these attributes of mixing humor, storytelling, and teaching must be shared amongst all the Professors of the Humanities; but after having taken several more courses in the literary arts, I have come to the final conclusion that, in deed, Professor Krasny is rather unique. And very much celebrated too; his classes fill out auditoriums, his radio show is listened by a multitude of people everyday; and even the Mayor of San Francisco declared Michael Krasny Day on the 20th anniversary of his radio show.

This new book 'Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means' is a collection of Jewish jokes accumulated by Professor Krasny throughout his life. The book is written in the same style and voice familiar to all of Krasny's fans and reading the book transported me back into his classroom. I could visualize him in front of me, telling these stories utilizing all of his tonal variations. There are two seminal questions the book tries to answer; First is the question of humor i.e what is in fact humor and the second why are Jews considered funny? Professor Krasny deems humor to be an another form of storytelling, that reveals some truth, albeit in a comical way. The book is divided into eight distinct categories of jokes where Professor Krasny lists the jokes and then gives personal anecdotes and explains the context. I personally enjoyed the last four categories the most: 'Yiddish Generation, Celebration, Suffering, and Separate & Distinct'. Professor Krasny reveals that characteristics such as assimilating in a new place, fear of loss of identity, holding on to tradition, pressure to succeed, etc, are some of the main crux of the Jewish jokes. But I believe that these characteristics are shared by all migrant communities. Humor could also be a vehicle to pass on tradition to the future generation, in danger of losing their heritage in the new world. Being a Pakistani living in the US, I could very easily relate with Jewish Humor exhibited by Professor Krasny. Replace the Rabbi with an Imam, the Jewish Mother with an Indian Auntie, and the joke switches from being Jewish to Indian/Muslim/Pakistani etc. Recently an Anthology of short stories was published in the US by women from the Indian subcontinent origin titled "Good Girls Marry Doctors", also a theme of jokes listed in Professor Krasny's book. So then, humor is not only a form of story telling, but is also a way to bring people together. The characters in these jokes may be of different race, ethnicities, religions; but there is something very crucial that they all share-and that is their humanity. And this is what in the end this book "Let there be Laughter" reminds us all of.

[Linden · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining history of Jewish humor, replete with classic stories, jokes, and Yiddishisms.

[Mel Ostrov]

This 300 page book has more than 100 0f the designated “Funniest Jewish Jokes of all time,” but it really is much more than that. As the introduction states, it truly is “A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What it All Means.” In addition to the amusing black-printed (and often hilarious) jokes, they are also accompanied by topical discussions and explanations in blue-tinted print. The contents are divided by chapters like Jewish Mothers & Jewish Bubbies”, Sex & Marriage, Schlemiels and Schmucks, et al, all packed into a 6”x8” hardcover.

The humor is replete with jokes like, for example: “Mice are running rampant all over the synagogue. women are frightened, children are running for cover, and the men have no notion what to do. “Don’t worry,” the rabbi announces. “I’ll take care of it.” The next day the mice are gone. The people in the Synagogue are amazed! Finally, an older man stands up in the middle of a service and asks, “Rabbi, how did you do it? How did you get rid of all those mice?” “Easy, the rabbi answers, “I Bar mitzvahed them and as everyone knows, once they’re Bar mitzvahed, they never come back. ”

The joke is followed up with an explanation and discussion by the author. Furthermore, throughout the book, apparently every famous comedian, living or deceased, has been mentioned in the discussions by the author, an expert on the subject.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting commentary, but there were times I found myself using the "Playboy Technique": reading it just for the jokes. There are definite characteristics of Jewish humor that the author explores, both scholastically and, of course, with humor and examples. Though not all of the jokes stem from the Ashkenazi and immigrant experience, many do, so it was a bit like revisiting my mother's Uncle Izzy at his candy store on the corner, or sitting in Tante Sophie's kitchen hearing the women of the family chatter and sip tea through sugar cubes held in their mouths. Many of the jokes and stories only confirmed my wish that I knew/remembered more Yiddish. Such a wonderful language that risks disappearing, even though many of its colorful words and expressions have become part of our everyday lexicon. It is one of the biggest regrets of my life that I haven't retained the language I heard my mother and her siblings speak during my childhood.

And, for the record, I actually got to use one of the jokes, appropriately, the very day I read it.

Thank you to librarything early reviewers for sending this my way.

tags:2016-read, early-review-librarything, funny, made-me-laugh-out-loud-for-real, made-me-look-something-up, made-me-think, nonfiction, places-i-have-been, read, taught-me-something

[Marty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received in exchange for an honest review.
It is hard to rate a book that you can put down and then pick up with out feeling you have lost the story line, but this is a collection of great stories and jokes. May times I did laugh out loud and I enjoyed the book very much.
The book is divided into several sections that relate to humor, the meaning of Yiddish words and how they have evolved over the ages. While some are stale, insights are explained into how they can still be reverent today.
Written by an award wining journalist and talk show host, I hope the book does well as it should

01/28/2024 Just finished reading again. Loved it just as much as the first time.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jokes you've heard a million times. Names dropped all over the place. Analysis before AND after the joke that doesn't shed any light on "what it all means." Evidence that discussing why a joke is funny takes all the humor out of it. I'm not completely sorry I read it (but almost) so I gave it a 3. Let's see... there must be something good to say about it. I know! It was short!

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had what I was looking for, but did not get from Jeremy Dauber's Jewish Comedy. Although Dauber's work was undoubtedly a "good book," it was very scholarly and not very funny. This book, on the other hand, made me laugh out loud a number times, while still providing a good dose of the history and context of Jewish humor.

[ManOfLaBook.com · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means by Michael Krasny tells of the great Jewish jokes, the origins, and commentary. Mr. Krasny is a successful radio talk show host and a teacher.

I really enjoyed Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means by Michael Krasny, I read the whole book in about two days laughing along with the author. I found the commentary interesting, but not necessarily enlightening, but I’m familiar with much of the material.

I love the sarcastic, bitter, dark Jewish humor which, to be fair, is shared with many cultures but with a twist of guilt and spice. The author does some storytelling himself, dropping names and telling tales of the famous and not-so-famous among others.

You don’t have to be Jewish to laugh at the jokes or to understand them. You just need a healthy sense of humor and twinkle in your eye.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook on audible, read by the author.

I really enjoyed this book, and would give it 3.5 stars. Full of jokes and a little bit of interesting analysis, it was great to listen to on a recent car trip.

My only criticism is that the author read the jokes without pausing in the narrative, so that we didn't have time to react.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Krasny presents a collection of Jewish humor (jokes) passed down from generation to generation along with a narrative which explains the cultural expressions and anxieties behind the laughs. It is this latter aspect which I found very enlightening adding to a better appreciation of what was being presented.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The jokes are hilarious. I found, though, that Krasny's narrations between the jokes were often contrived, as if he needed to fill space. What worked was when he would explain Yiddish words when they appeared in the jokes. But too often he simply explained what was going on in the joke, which even a shiksa like me could understand. But the book was worth reading simply for the laughs.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's good to laugh once in a while!

The author did a great job telling Jewish jokes while explaining them, without being tedious. I enjoyed reading this short, funny and informative book.

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not just a book of jokes, this book just might touch your heart as well as your funny bone. Very enjoyable.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only laughed 10 times in 250 pages- was hoping for a better page to laugh ratio.

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2-1/2 stars) Whatever else its merits, this subtitle is inaccurate--it is not a "treasury" of humor. To be that, it would have to be a much bigger book, on the order of Leo Rosten's classic The Joy of Yiddish or Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor, both of which are well over 400 pages. This book, at under 300 pages of fairly large print with big margins, is a collection, not a treasury. That said, the jokes are amusing, though honestly I only laughed out loud three or four times while reading the book, partly because many of these are well-worn. Krasny gives new spins to a handful of jokes, and leaves out lots and lots of material, but if there was a size restraint, the selection of jokes is fine. His analyses are lazy and often feel like they were done at the last minute, as though he forgot he was supposed to be analyzing these jokes. It's very much a layman's book in terms of that analysis--he doesn't display the chops of someone who has actually studied humor, Jewish history or pop culture. This is a perfect library check-out; it wasn't a waste of time, but I surely don't need it in my permanent collection.

[Andrew Rothstein · Rating 1 out of 5]

American Jews have been major contributors to comedy. The names of those who have made us laugh over the past 100 years are too many to list here, thought Krasny does open with a lot of name dropping. Others have noted the connection of Jews to humor. Some have done it to recognize talent. Others so they can tell you their favorite jokes. After all, if you write about popular Jewish comedians, you have a shot of attracting readers who like them as well.

Krasny's approach is to organize the humor around themes, such as Mothers and Bubbies, Sex and Marriage, etc. He mixes in humorous jokes and then explains the underlying cultural implication.

There's are adages among comedians about explaining humor. Things like, "Analyzing humor is a bit like dissecting a frog: You learn how it works but you end up with a dead frog."

That's sort of how I felt when reading this book. Somehow, Krasny found a way to make funny dull. he also had a tendency to pick some of the worst Jewish humor I know of. Jokes that demean, use negative stereotypes, or are predictable.

Too bad. With all the great Jewish humor out there, the book was a disappointment.

[Mara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Krasny could have saved his own time and effort, and better served his readers, by just giving us a compilation of Jewish jokes, without the so-called analysis in between. His writing is very choppy, moving from one thought to another without much in the way of connectivity, and his analysis is shallow. We all understand that humor is in the eye of the beholder, and that the same ethnic joke when told by a non-(insert ethnic group here) is, or can be seen as, racist, but might be considered hilarious when told by a member of that ethnic group, especially if being told to another member. That certainly doesn't need to be repeated at least half a dozen times in the space of 300 pages. But that's what most of the analysis seems to boil down to, whether he's talking about Jews as outsiders, Jewish stereotypes, or even the way Jews experience joy.

Overall, Krasny seems more interested in name-dropping (he told so-and-so a joke when he interviewed him on his radio program, his close friend so-and-so, etc.) than giving us any new or interesting material.

[Jerry Jares · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't start reading this at night because you will be up all night reading this engaging book. The author knows lots of Jewish jokes and he shares them and then adds the cultural background and meaning of the jokes and stories. Krasny shows how some of these jokes are used to hold on to traditions, to show the pressure to succeed, to face their fear of loss of identity (in an increasingly secular world), to show that Jews can assimilate to a new place.

The author's insight is wonderful and he shares it in such an interesting way. The only thing I would have liked to have had was a glossary of the Yiddish words explained in the back of the book for reference. Otherwise, this was a book that I read from cover-to-cover in one sitting -- it was too good to set aside for dishes, or sweeping, or cooking meals.

Other Books by This Author
Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life (2009)
Sound Ideas (with M E Sokolik) (2009)
Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic's Quest (2010)
** Let There Be Laughter A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It Means

[Zosma Leonis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Krasny could have saved his own time and effort, and better served his readers, by just giving us a compilation of Jewish jokes, without the so-called analysis in between. His writing is very choppy, moving from one thought to another without much in the way of connectivity, and his analysis is shallow. We all understand that humor is in the eye of the beholder, and that the same ethnic joke when told by a non-(insert ethnic group here) is, or can be seen as, racist, but might be considered hilarious when told by a member of that ethnic group, especially if being told to another member. That certainly doesn't need to be repeated at least half a dozen times in the space of 300 pages. But that's what most of the analysis seems to boil down to, whether he's talking about Jews as outsiders, Jewish stereotypes, or even the way Jews experience joy.

Overall, Krasny seems more interested in name-dropping (he told so-and-so a joke when he interviewed him on his radio program, his close friend so-and-so, etc.) than giving us any new or interesting material.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps I wanted to hear more Jack Benny, Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, or Woody Allen. I did get a lot of Jerry Seinfeld. Really nothing on Ben Stiller. While many jokes were well explained, I often felt I was not getting the full benefit. This is probably because I'm not Jewish and there was a certain cultural "something" that was missing for me.

I suspect some of the funniest jokes were left on the cutting room floor, as what's funny to one person leaves another person cold. However, if you appreciate humor, this book is enjoyable to go through for the jokes themselves, plus your brain must think a bit harder to understand where the joke comes from and what it is about it that makes you laugh.

[Monica Weissmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of it would be too much, less of it would be too little !

More of it would be too much, less of it would be too little , this book is just the right amount of stories intertwined with relevant jokes, a delightful history of Jewish humour imbeded in the American culture. I really enjoyed fly reading it and heartily laughing at jokes, while feeling connected and reconnected to my people, whom i did not know for many years in my youth, hapenning far away behind the Iron Curtain.
You will not regret spending your time to read the book, and you will have a better understanding of the Jews and the Jewish culture, which holds humour and laughter in gtreat respect.

[Eric Flamm · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book feels really dated, like here are the jokes that made your grandparents laugh. Apparently, Jewish humor flourished in the Fifties and Sixties, with not much happening afterward. Perhaps Jews became too assimilated later to have a distinctive brand of humor easily adapted to a book. I wanted to read this book and gain some jokes that I could tell at the synagogue or other places of Jewish life that I frequent. Sadly, such is not to be. If nostalgia is your thing, this book is great.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Krasny uses jokes not only as an end in themselves, but as a vehicle to explore all aspects of Jewish culture. His analyses of the jokes is just enough to highlight various norms, stereotypes, traditions, and changes, nothing too profound that might spoil the humor. Some might be turned off by his name-dropping, which to some extent is understandable (he is an interviewer who has met plenty of famous people), but perhaps is greater than it need be.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable. Gave me some new jokes, for which my friends will be thankful.

Notes:
Blue font, except for jokes which are tan. My copy has 279 pages, not 304.
p 87 ... Your wife died during the operation, and will require round the clock nursing. ... Kidding!
131 ... passing on something of ourselves ... that's what gives life meaning.
Jews and the Irish, Bellow: Oppressed people tend to be witty.
132 ... naming children, after the dead, and often using the first letter
246 ... Try the soup. ... Aha!

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and enlightening read

An interesting look at what makes Jewish humor both “Jewish” and “humor.” The author provides background on the various topics covered in Jewish humor and the roots of the most common themes. The book is also packed with jokes. As someone who grew up surrounded with ethnic jokes (large Polish family and community), I appreciate the author’s efforts to explain where that kind of humor comes from and why it exists.