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The influx of digital streaming platforms from 2005 to 2008 enabled more nuanced representations of Jewish cultures, rituals, and subjects than on traditional distribution platforms. In front of and behind the camera, Jewish women, once marginalized, are now taking center stage and portraying the complexities of Jewish American life. Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson (creators of Broad City) and Rachel Bloom (creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) successfully navigated open-access digital streaming platforms to promote their comedic work, then modified their content to meet the needs of broadcast and cable networks and later subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) platforms. These content creators adapted traditional motifs of Jewish humor by infusing their work with contemporary, popular feminist sensibilities and applying narrative tactics specific to digital technology. This article examines the new common tropes produced by these Jewish American women creators of comedic digital streaming content as well as the historical, technological, and economic factors that gave rise to those tropes. Glazer, Jacobson, and Bloom inspired numerous subsequent content creators such as Jenji Kohan (creator of Orange Is the New Black), Joey Soloway (creator of Transparent), Amy Sherman-Palladino (creator of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Tiffany Haddish (creator of the comedy special Black Mitzvah), and Natasha Lyonne (cocreator of Russian Doll), who have also incorporated these tropes and been at the forefront of Jewish comedy, particularly in twenty-first-century digital streaming programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the topic of the Balkan Wars (1911-1913) from a unique perspective: addressing the issue in the humor sections of the major Yiddish newspapers in Warsaw, Haynt and Der moment, which were the most popular Yiddish newspapers of the period in the Russian Empire. This unconventional perspective was chosen not at random: although Yiddish newspapers often relied on general media coverage, their handling of humorous tools made it possible to analyze the unique vision of Polish and Russian Jewry that lies behind the dry reports from the fronts. The humorous references examined can be seen in the following patterns: emphasizing the Jewish aspect of events, a clear humanist stance, lack of automatic support for the interests of the mother country (Russian Empire), lack of confidence in the conduct of European countries and their ability to achieve peace, empathy with the suffering of the Jews in the territories in which the fighting took place in particular and with the sorrow that accompanies the war in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ever-increasing usage of Yiddish on American sitcoms and other comedic genres encompasses Jewish as well as non-Jewish characters. In this study I offer a metalinguistic analysis of how main or recurring fictional characters who are identified as non-Jewish employ Yiddish loanwords, intonation, and syntax (Yiddishisms) in American comedy television. I argue that Yiddishisms spoken by non-Jewish characters introduce three new tropes: the Yiddish Mask, the Yiddish Tourist, and the Yiddish Connector. In all three tropes, humor derives from the incongruence between the non-Jewish speaker and archetypes or stereotypes associated with speakers of Yiddish; however, the use of Yiddish within the Jewish linguistic repertoire also suggests a range of other semiotic meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholars agree that Jewish humour is a relatively modern phenomenon born out of the unique Jewish experience of exile, segregation and persecution. Howard Jacobson is a British Jewish writer who has always praised comedy and paid special attention to Jewish comic sensibility. He has emphasised the coping and liberating function that humour has exercised for the Jews, allowing them to transcend the terrible circumstances of their lives. Jacobson does not believe that humour removes pain, but that it contributes an emotional factor that makes the pain more bearable by affirming and celebrating life. He is convinced that there is something particularly Jewish about the way in which he fuses comedy and tragedy in his novels, since Jews have always joked in the face of affliction. Jacobson also stresses how from the very beginning the novel has been defined by its subversive and God-defying character. After explaining Jacobson’s main ideas on comedy and how they are shared by scholars who have examined the characteristic features of Jewish humour, I will analyse how they are reproduced by the narrator in Kalooki Nights (2006).

Woody Allen's short fiction has received much less scholarly attention than his films. Scholars who have investigated the humorous qualities of Allen's short stories and casual pieces have noted his penchant for absurdity and non sequitur, his use of the Little Man as a vehicle for humor, and the linguistic dimensions of his joke scripts rather than his Jewish comic sensibilities. Beginning with a brief overview on how Jewish humor has contributed to the comic achievements of American culture and drawing on analyses of the main characteristics of Jewish humor, this article adds to the scholarship by exploring the influence of Jewish humorous traditions on Woody Allen's short fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on scholars who have discussed humor's capacity to simultaneously unite and divide (Appel 1996; Mintz 1999; Meyer 2000) and on Kenneth Burke's (1969b) rhetoric of identification and division, this paper describes the rhetorical strategies Jewish-American humorists have used to respond to Christmas as a national American holiday. An examination of Jewish humor about Christmas contributes to the growing literature describing how Jewish humorists have helped shape American popular culture (Bloom 2003; Cohen 1987; Gabler 1988; Limon 2000; Zurawik 2003). In addition, our paper makes a theoretical contribution to the study of humor by expanding upon previous research that has focused on how humor creates unity and division. Specifically, we explain how humor can foster identification and division simultaneously not only between groups, but inside each of us, often resulting in partial forms of identification and division with our humorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Larry David's persona in Curb Your Enthusiasm serves as a contemporary manifestation of the schlemiel from Yiddish culture. Although David keeps the essential aspects of the schlemiel intact, he adapts them to twenty-first-century America. David's schlemiel persona reflects the uneasiness many Jewish people feel about their place in multicultural America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the essence of Jewish humor and how does this kind humor come into place in movies and in cinematic storytelling? Is there a characteristic of the "laughable" in the Bible and in the traditions of the Jewish community? Or should we consider, as some authors have suggested (Eckardt, 1992), that the notion of ''Jewish humor" should be replaced with the more politically correct phrase "humor amongst Jews", since the first term is too constricting and stereotyping, while other authors, like Patricia Erens, provide arguments for the existence of a "Yiddish narrative" in cinema, attempting to identify general elements of this narrative: pathos, humor and humanity (Erens, 1984). And, if we can use the term Jewish humor, what are the fundamental elements to be found in cinema? Using the Romanian born, French director Radu Mihăileanu as an example, I found one answer he himself has given to the set of questions on what Jewish humor is, with reference to "other" types of humor. "The Jewish tell a lot of jokes about themselves... about their mother, about their rabbi, about their accountant, about God. They are always discussing with God" (Mihăileanu, 2000). The second level of questioning refers to the general mechanism that puts into place the Jewish humor, what is its main resource. On possible answer is to be found with Henri Bergson, who, in his seminal book on laughter, Le rire (Bergson, 1901), suggests that laughter evolved to make social life possible for human beings. If we use his argument in trying to explain Jewish humor in cinema, we can start from the theoretical premise that laughter makes possible social circumstances that are otherwise unbearable for humans beings. This I believe to be explicit with Radu Mihăileanu's cinema - and I will refer in this paper to three of his movies: Train de vie (Train of life, 1998), Va, vis et deviens (Live and become, 2005) and Le Concert (The Concert, 2009), all three having in their center the problems of identity (Jewish and non Jewish) and Jewishness as a social phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]