Professor Peter Jelavich, keynote speaker at the recent Munk Centre lecture “When Are Jewish Jokes No Longer Funny?”, prefaced his remarks with an appropriate warning: “I won’t give a funny talk, nor tell any jokes.” Although he proceeded to take a rather dry, academic look at the development of Jewish humour in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jelavich still offered valuable insights into the nature and meaning of ethnic humour at a time when we must again question whether some jokes go too far.
Humour is worth studying, Jelavich argued, because often “we do not know what we are laughing at.” Jews, he said, do not have a particularly long reputation when it comes to humour. There is little emphasis on humour in either Jewish Scriptures or histories; in fact, what we now see as Jewish humour is a product of the 19th-century Yiddish traditions in Eastern and Central Europe. In our present day, Jelavich quipped, “The people of the Book have become the people of the joke.”
But this claim holds a great deal of truth. Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, and many other titans of American comedy are Jewish. And like the European cabaret performers before them, these comedians often turn to self-deprecation when mentioning their cultural tradition.
But as Prof. Jelavich noted in his lecture, ethnic humour has very different implications when practised within and without a community. Within a community the use of humour can have various functions, such as coping with difficult circumstances. Once it reaches the outside world, however, jokes can have more negative consequences.
Jelavich quoted an article from a liberal Berlin newspaper in the 1920s that stated, “That’s the way [Jews] are, and they even brag about it.” By presenting its people and culture as comedic, ethnic groups can make themselves laughable in all situations. However, it can also communicate feelings of acceptance and assimilation. By mocking their own culture to the outside world, an ethnic minority may be showing they are comfortable enough to take formerly serious differences lightly.
So what does this tell us about the conflict over the Mohammed cartoons? Unlike Jews, Muslims do not have a reputation for humour in the Western world; in fact, the perception is much different. Muslims are often seen as austere and sombre, more interested in virtue than laughter. The violent reactions to what are seen in the West as harmless doodlings seem to reinforce this stereotype.
But one should consider the source of the cartoons. Jon Stewart may be able to make fun of Jewish tragedies at the Oscars, but it would be much different if the same joke were made by, say, Tim Allen (with Shaggy Dog, he is the obvious shoe-in for next year’s host). The Anti-Defamation League puts millions of dollars every year towards investigations of anti-Semitism in mainstream media. The implication is clear: while minorities may poke fun at themselves, humour from the outside can easily be seen as an attack.
Muslims around the world fear, often with good reason, that their way of life is challenged by the culture of the West, be it Jewish, Christian, or secular. It comes as no surprise that these cartoons are seen by some as a direct attack on Islam. The general reaction in the West, however, is a bit more puzzling. While protests are held in support of free speech, most people gloss over the imprisonment of Holocaust denier David Irving, who in a truly free society is guilty only of being a terribly ignorant historian. Defending freedom of speech, it seems, applies only to insults of Islam.
Jelavich did not have a definitive answer to the lecture’s title question, but perhaps this is appropriate, as there are no easily defined boundaries for ethnic humour. Jelavich put it eloquently when referring to the cartoon controversy. Ethnic humour is no longer funny, he said, when people are ready to “wilfully give and take offence.” It seems that in this complex world of ours, joking is no laughing matter.
