Adult Education Blog

Our fifth and final class on Jewish Humor will discuss contemporary Jewish comedy and where it looks like the future of American Jewish Comedy is headed.

Rachel Bloom is a musical theatre and literary nerd who embraces her Jewishness in a deep and very visible way with her songs such as Remember that We Suffered (with Patti LuPone and Tovah Feldshuh), The JAP Battle, and the JAP Battle Reprise.

Jessica Kirson, slightly older than Bloom, has been described as "part old-school Jewish comedy, part new-school," meaning she's not afraid to hang on to some of the classic tropes about American Jews, while pushing forward as a modern Jewish woman addressing the current assimilated reality for the current generation. Her bit, "Nobody's as Mean as Old Jews" starts with a classic joke about Jewish summer camps/Jewish geography and goes from there.

We've talked a lot about how much of Jewish comedy was "punching up" - the coping mechanism of making fun of our own oppression. However, there have certainly also been Jewish cultural norms that participated in the oppression of others as a means of achieving our own assimilation. Sarah Silverman is probably the most famous contemporary Jewish comedienne, and has come under some fire in recent years as she decries "Jew-Face" while also still not fully accepting the consequences of her own blackface.