Why Jews laugh

The Jews’ greatest contribution to history is dissatisfaction! We’re a nation born to be discontented. Whatever exists we believe can be changed for the better.

Shimon Peres

Jews are the great hecklers of both the divine and the ungodly…

No one has higher expectations for what humanity can be or achieve, or more intimate knowledge of the depths of depravity it is capable of.

“What do you suppose makes Jews joke so much about adversity?” asks Nathan Ausubel.

An obviously rhetorical question, Ausubel can’t help but enlighten us: “It is the instinct for self-preservation. By laughing at the absurdities and cruelties of life they draw much of the sting from them.”

True. Take away our humour — our right to relentlessly and indiscriminately mock — and we may not have the strength nor resilience to face the absurdities and cruelties of this world. For (most) Jews live in this world, and must reckon with it as best they can. We find no comfort in promises of salvation in the great hereafter. The only resurrection we can rely on is that of the stomach acid of indigestion, or many a bad idea we had naïvely hoped were thoroughly dispelled and laid to rest. Do we have a masochistic streak? Why do we perennially return to that delicious but devastating eatery that we know will promptly send us to daven on our porcelain throne? And why does misfortune befall us so frequently, seemingly more often than our goyishe counterparts? Do we invite it upon us with our incessant heckling? Does pointing out all the world’s flaws make us unpopular? Are these all, yet again, highly rhetorical questions?

And know this — I deliberately do not choose the word “complain”, because it does not do justice to “kvetch“. Kvetching is much more intricate than complaining. It contains the accumulated weariness from multitudes of generations visited by persecution — or at best — plagued by dissatisfaction.

Dissatisfaction with our own lives — of course. Disappointment with all the unfulfilled promises made to us by our doting mothers, and with the mundane realities and unglamorous responsibilities we must attend to each and every day.

Dissatisfaction with our fellow Jews, the ones who besmirch our good name (yes, you know who they are — some of them conveniently dying at their “own” hands, and others sleeping soundly in their money-down beds, for there are evildoers amongst all peoples!).

But most of all — dissatisfaction with state of the world, and how slow progress goes…

Slower than the glacial bowel movements of the fictionalized father of Portnoy. We have such high hopes for the world. We can imagine so many better ones. Ones without indigestion. Ones without war. Ones where we don’t sous vide our planet. But no one listens to the humanists and the realists of the Jews.

And no I won’t go into that here. There is no Jewish utopia — we are critics. We improve the world through the process of elimination. Yes, I can imagine many better worlds, but why don’t you try too? I know you won’t like mine anyways.

Nu? Enough of my ramblings. You wanted to know why Jews laugh? Do I really need to tell you, it’s so trite… We cry too!

D.H.G., April 14, 2022

References:

Ausubel, N. (1951). “Why Jews Laugh” in A Treasury of Jewish Humour. Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, N.Y.