by Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

Moishmellow ice cream, anybody?  Wailing Walnut?  How ‘bout a Rashi Road?  Simchas T’Oreo?  Cup or Cohen?  Heard the Beatles tunes The Shul on the Hill, Your Mother Should Only Know, If I Kvell or This Goy? What do you call steaks ordered by 10 Jews? Filet minyan. What did one pig say to the other? "Wouldn't this be a great world if everyone was kosher?"

Where do these internet jokes come from? We all get them. Some are actually quite good, such as the recent list of Top Jewish movies: THE SEDER HOUSE RULES (Zaydie lays down the law on Pesach), THE SIX CENTS (Three Jews each put in their two-cents' worth), DREYDEL WILL ROCK (Chanukah toy comes alive), OY OF THE BEHOLDER (Singles kvetch about their awful dates), GOYS DON'T CRY (Rabbi explains why only Jews observe Tisha B'Av), STUART LADLE (Mouse makes chicken soup for Shabbos), THE GREEN MOYEL (Young man performs first circumcision), MUN ON THE MOON (Astronauts discover hamantaschen filling on lunar surface is not green cheese), ANGELA'S KASHAS (Woman reveals secret recipes), SNOW FALLING ON SEDERS (Unexpected storm disrupts Passover), and SUPERNOVA (Space scientists discover powerful strain of lox).

On the net, you can cruise through Harry Leichter's Large Collection of Clean Jewish Humor ("So NU, you were looking for Jewish Humor and Jokes, well you have come to the right place, so enjoy already!") to Oye-Vey - the Not-So Kosher Joke Site. Along the way, JewishPath’s Rest Stop gets you the yucks, but also Parshat and varied study topics. Haikus for Jews, L’Cha Humor, Lori’s Mishmash Jewish Humor, Jewish Simcha Happiness Site and myriad more await your mirth.

They’re the evolution of a long tradition of Judaic humor which is endemic to the race. Perhaps in an attempt to cope with constant persecution and outsider status, our discussions and gatherings have always brimmethed over with anecdotes, tall tales, twists on rituals, rabbis and the Red Sea, schlemiels and schlimazels and places called Chelm.

From Harvey Kurtzman, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee et al.’s Mad Magazine to 60’s icon R. Crumb to Lenny Bruce, the Marx Brothers to Woody Allen to Andy Kaufman, Tevya on the field to Mort Sahl to Sandra Bernhard to Jerry Seinfeld, Jewish comics, cartoonists and satirists have always been there. Unafraid to charter new territories, they have aptly reflected the for-better-or-worse complexities of the culture.

Jewish humor is largely self-deprecating (jokes about "frugality" seem to pervade) and can often be seen as defensive. "On a physical level," the New York-based National Foundation for Jewish Culture tells us, "using your wits is preferable to using your fists. Make it look like you're harmless by making a lot of jokes at your own expense, and maybe you'll live another day."

Art Speigelman, Ben Katchor, Jules Feiffer, our local Dan Wasserman and other comic artists help us make sense of what can be stark and hopeless reality. Unconstrained by censorship and often injecting personal philosophies into their work, they effect what the NFJC calls "the id of the art world".

Acceptance marches on. The NFJC presented its first National Award in American Jewish Humor to Alan King on December 14. Chicago’s Spertus Museum is curating a major Jewish Humor in America exhibit. A new documentary on Lenny Bruce examines his groundbreaking transformation of American sociological attitudes, within the framework of free speech. Mel Brooks’ "The Producers" opens this month on Broadway.

Finally, William Novak and Moshe Waldoks’ "The Big Book of Jewish Humor", Robert Menchin and Joe Kohl’s "101 Classic Jewish Jokes: Jewish Humor from Groucho Marx to Jerry Seinfeld", Rabbi Joseph Telushkin’s "Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews" and other books have led the way to a new era of chronicling the profound vagaries of our innovative forebears; internet offerings take it from there.

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