Adult Education Blog

This week we are looking at medieval and enlightenment-era humor. 

Examples of Medieval Sense of Humor

Jewish comedy in the medieval and early enlightenment periods were often fairly directed at the issues of antisemitism and assimilation. They tended to particularly poke fun at the idea of conversos ever truly believing in Christianity and at the attempts of the Christian-influenced humanists and deists of the enlightenment era to somehow scientifically prove the backwardness of Jews. Like so much other Jewish comedy, it was clearly an exercise in coping with communal and generational trauma.