Humor is the most celebrated of all Jewish responses to modernity. In this book, Ruth Wisse evokes and applauds the genius of spontaneous Jewish joking--as well as the brilliance of comic masterworks by writers like Heinrich Heine, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, S. Y. Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Philip Roth. At the same time, Wisse draws attention to the precarious conditions that call Jewish humor into being--and the price it may exact from its practitioners and audience. Wisse broadly traces modern Jewish humor around the world, teasing out its implications as she explores memorable and telling examples from German, Yiddish, English, Russian, and Hebrew

"Krasny delves deeply into the themes, topics and forms of Jewish humor: 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."--Book jacket.

Author of The Jewish Book of Knowledge and The Pictorial History of the Jewish People. "A must for everyone, Christians and Jews alike." --New York Times. This classic collection of more than 800 traditions, legends, parables, and songs, with a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew words, has remained a favorite gift-giving item and a family treasure for decades. 12 pieces of sheet music.

This isnt your zaydes Jewish comedy. The once revolutionary, understated "Jew-ish" and "Israel-lite" flavor of Seinfeld has been replaced by a brutal matter-of-factness that would make earlier generation cringe. Your primer to the ever-changing face of Jewish comedy at the dawn of the 21st century: the new faces, their outrageous routines and their sometimes surprising seriousness about the most de pressing issues of our time.