Shtick Shift Excerpt

Growing up Jewish in cold, rainy Manchester, England, I always knew that I was “a little different.”

My parents promised me a post-bar mitzvah growth spurt. (I’m still waiting.) And when the No. 135 bus took me home each day and stopped to pick up the kids from the local Catholic school, I’d shove my yarmulke even deeper into my pocket. Getting picked on by the big kids for being short and shy was bad enough. Getting picked on for being Jewish was much worse. But there was no point provoking the local anti-Semites by exhibiting my religiosity. These bullies weren’t the majority, by any means—but that didn’t make them any less scary.

My fears at the bus stop followed me into Hebrew school, where I learned all about centuries of Jewish suffering and oppression. When I walked back outside, our synagogue had been spray-painted, yet again, with (mis-spelled) obscenities.

Like many Jewish families, the standing joke at our family’s Passover seder table was, “They tried to kill us,
we survived, let’s eat.” But it didn’t seem all that funny to me, not when the tombstones in the local Jewish cemetery were defaced with swastikas. And so, like many underdogs, I sought solace in popular culture and the
world of superheroes. (In case anybody wants to learn more, I’ve divulged my affection for caped crusaders in my book Up, Up and Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero.) Within that alternative universe of “Zap! Pow! Bam!,” nebbishy nerds like Clark Kent beat up the bad guys, not the other way around.

Halfway through high school, however, I made a life changing discovery. Beneath my nebbishy exterior, I possessed a hidden “super power” of my own: the power of humor. Suddenly, I became the class clown, cracking up my teachers and classmates. Now that the cool kids liked me more, the mean ones were less prone to beat me up. I learned later that I was in good company—many famous Jewish comedians had been class clowns, too.

At the time, however, I knew almost nothing about the tremendous impact Jews have had on comedic history. Instead, I’d subconsciously tapped into this long, storied tradition. Like countless Jews before and since, I discovered that suffering inspires humor, which in turn can be used to fight oppression.

Only later did I take that yarmulke out of my pocket. I’d studied film at university, and after graduation I began a rewarding career in movie and television production. But something was missing. After all, the entertainment industry revolves around all things superficial and trendy. As I looked for something more serious to which I could dedicate my life, I found myself thinking more and more about my faith.

I started taking classes, and became more observant. My spiritual awakening was nothing dramatic—unless swapping movie sets for “rabbi school” (yeshiva) counts as “dramatic.” During that journey, I met rabbis and
rebbetzins who became my new mentors and “super heroes.” The men were full of wit and wonder, nothing like the stuffy “white shirt/black suit” penguins I’d expected. The women surprised me, too. They were outrageous, confident and free-thinking, not stereotypical, shmatteh-wearing submissive kitchen slaves. Through these holy Hebrew jesters, I finally came to appreciate those dark-humored jokes around the seder table, and the very real role comedy has played in helping Jews survive centuries of persecution.

Indeed, humor—which is all about paradox and a sense of the absurd—plays a significant role in the Jewish faith. As the old joke goes: If you don’t think God has a sense of humor, you haven’t seen a platypus.

Or better yet, consider the festival of Purim, inspired by the biblical Book of Esther. Purim celebrates the time that the Jews of ancient Persia were saved from genocide. Okay, so that may not sound like a recipe for hilarity, but that’s exactly what makes the story a great taproot of Jewish humor. The tale relies on split-second reversals of fortune—called hippuch in Hebrew. The only difference between tragedy and comedy is the way the story ends, and the Purim story certainly wraps up with an amusing punch line. Haman, the chief advisor to the Persian king Achashverosh, secretly plots to kill all the Jews in the kingdom. Disaster seems inevitable. Little does he know that the king’s wife, Queen Esther, is Jewish herself. Ooops! In an ironic twist, Haman ends up executed on the very gallows he built to hang the Jews. To this day, Jews commemorate this victorious reversal of fortune with a purimshpil (which means a “Purim game” in Yiddish), dressing up in costumes inspired by the Bible story, and perpetuating the tradition of linking the bitter with the sweet, and tragedy with comedy.

These lighthearted Purim activities serve a serious purpose: to remind us that persecution still exists and shows no sign of abating. On New Year’s Eve, 1999, the world pinned its hopes on the dawn of the new millennium, when we would finally bid farewell to the bloodiest century in history. Instead, the twenty-first century ushered in the new Intifada, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and other deadly bombings in London and Madrid. And who would have dared imagine that the ancient and barbaric practice of beheading would reenter the modern world with the execution of Jewish “infidels” like Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl? Nations like Iran and North Korea pose threats to world peace, while reports of genocide in Darfur seem to indicate we have failed to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. Closer to home, the evening news presents a nightmare vision of violence, economic meltdown and pointless tragedy, coupled with reports of shallow, shameless celebrity insanity.

Despite these dark turns in the annals of history, the United States generally remains a safe haven for the Jewish people. But, ironically, America’s embrace of the Jewish people has a shadow side: rampant assimilation and secularism that threatens the future of our faith.

Sadly, I witnessed something I never expected: the same hatred I saw as a child in England, here in my adopted home of New York City. In the autumn of 2007, our local synagogue was vandalized, along with another synagogue on our block. The culprits spray-painted and scratched more than twenty swastikas onto cars, and stuffed handwritten flyers reading “Israel: Land of Pigs” and “All Jews Die” on windshields. And this was in Brooklyn Heights, a leafy, gentrified neighborhood. Coincidentally (or not) the vandalism occurred just a few hours after anti-Semitic Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spewed his rhetoric not far away, at Columbia University.

Thankfully, diligent police work paid off and a few months later, a suspect was indicted on almost one hundred counts of criminal mischief and other charges. An arsenal of weapons, including pipe bombs and firearms, was uncovered in his apartment. Our community was relieved, but also disturbed by the news that the suspect was a local man who claimed to be Jewish. His home was just a short distance from my office; I’ve probably passed him on the sidewalk many times. What a chilling reminder of the very real dangers we face today.

With all the tzurus in the world, we might well ask: What is there for twenty-first-century Jewish comedians to joke about? The surprising answer plenty. Luckily for us all, a veritable army of next-generation Jewish comedians are now on the scene, ready to slay the world’s modern day Hamans with their wit.

But before we meet these new Jewish jokers, let’s pay tribute to the funny men and women who paved their way.

Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st century is available to purchase online now and in book stores.