I gotta confess, though, I never “got” Jewish humor.
A lot of it was puns and plays on words, usually Jewish/Hebrew/Yidddish/whatever words, that zinged right over my head.
Eg, you’d get a 20min shaggy-dog story, with the punchline(?) something like, “…it saved the nine, because it was a schtitzen dayim!”, and I’d be all like, “huh?”.
Whaddya mean, ’huh?’, don’t you get it?
’Schtitzen dayim’, ’stitch in time’, get it? No??
You’re stoopit…
And dunno if anyone remembers the Jackie Mason Show, a 30min show we used to have on, late late late nights. opened with a caricature of him, and the show would be JM doing stand-up comedy.
It was okay, until it got too “ethnic”, and then I’d be lost.
Like,
Knock-knock.
[Who’s there?]
Yommika!
and the whole audience rolls on the floor laffing.
So I’d tell the same joke to a cow-orker, and get this look, like, wtf?
And I’d tell him that I just heard it yesterday on the JMS, and everyone was rolling on the floor laffing, so what’s the matter with you?
Oh, yesterday… okay, then it made sense.
Whut??
Well, yesterday was the feast of Tovah Feldshuh, when Moses went up on Mount Cyanide and God told him to wear a yommika from then on, as a reminder of XYZ…
Sooooo… it was funny yesterday but it’s not funny today?
Exactly! Yesterday it made sense, but today it doesn’t.
Okay, I’m so confused…
I think I prefer the shaggy-dog stories.