What was my obsession Jan. 2018?

1.19.2018

What’s something everyone around you knows you’re obsessed with and why?

The joke went like this, the sound of my best friend Naomi’s voice coming out over the classroom speakers, “Yeah it’s like Gallows Humor… it’s only funny when it’s making fun of your own culture. Like one time when I was learning how to drive on the island my mom was like ‘How did it go?’ and I was like ‘Well, have you heard of the Holocaust?… This was worse.’” The class laughed nervously at the dark and edgy joke. Naomi’s words continued on, saying, “But like… I can make that joke because like everyone in my family died in the Holocaust.” In response, the audience was somber, possibly embarrassed by their previous laughter.

It was December 2017 and I was presenting my semester- long anthropology ethnography on Jewish humor and women. The project included a podcast, which I played short clips of for the class. During the question and answer session, an extremely vocal and mildly obnoxious girl in class raised her hand, asking, “So, I laughed at that joke, because I thought it was funny, do you think that’s okay?” I paused for a minute and then attempted to speak slowly and intentionally explaining, “I don’t know what is behind your laughter when you laugh at something like that, so it isn’t really for me to answer for you.” Unfortunately, I just ended up sounding redundant and unsure, ending with, “So, I guess I don’t have an answer for you.”

Although I managed to provide her with a vague answer, her question has followed me around for the past two months, and now my roommates know it as something I have become fixated on. Her query has become the focus of what I study, watch videos about, ask people about and write about. It felt like such an unanswerable question, “What is ‘okay’ to laugh at?” What is “okay” to joke about? What weight does a joke even hold? These questions stay with me every time I watch a T.V. show where a Jewish character jokes about their stinginess.

Amidst my obsession, instead of fully enjoying the new show “Difficult People”, I winced when the main character said, “I can’t fix anything because my dad is dead. And when he was alive, he was Jewish.” I am not immune to this kind of humor, I’ve made countless jokes about my Jewish family’s stereotypical inability to play sports and their intense love of musicals.

Yet, as this Jewish self-deprecation is so commonplace in modern comedy and television, does this kind of joking have the potential to hurt Jews and ignite hatred in anti- Semites? We already know their Charlottesville tiki torch flames burn bright, and that their power has the potential to incinerate more of The United States.

Unable to find resolve, these questions will keep me up late searching on jstor.org for academic articles on Jewish humor, or binge watching Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.