Old Jews Telling Jokes (11 page)
Read Old Jews Telling Jokes Online
Authors: Sam Hoffman
Daniel Okrent’s achievements in media and publishing are too numerous to mention. Seriously, too numerous. Also, an account of his writings (four books!) and scholarship (Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School!) wouldn’t fit in this space. But I would be egregiously remiss if I didn’t tell you
he invented rotisserie baseball!
This is like having Thomas Edison tell you a joke.
Feldman comes down to breakfast one morning. He’s sitting at the table having his breakfast. His wife’s across the table as usual, with the newspaper in front of her.
She suddenly drops the newspaper, looks at him, and says, “I’m through with you.”
He says, “What are you talking about? We’ve been married for forty years.”
“Yeah. And for forty years you’ve been a schmuck. The day I met you you were a schmuck; I just didn’t realize it. For forty years you’ve been the essence of schmuckness. You’re such a schmuck, you’re the second-biggest schmuck in the whole world.”
Feldman says, “If I’m such a schmuck, how come I’m only the second-biggest schmuck in the world?”
“Because you’re a schmuck.”
Neil Elliot was born in Manhattan, then lived in the Bronx, Queens (Laurelton), Denver, Portland, Burbank, and San Diego—all before college at Berkeley. After graduation, he managed a psychedelic rock nightclub in Hollywood from 1967 to 1969, moved back to New York to work in theater, and then moved back to Los Angeles, where he stayed.
Sadie and Moshe go to the divorce attorney. They’ve decided they want a divorce.
“Well, this is very hard,” he says. “You’ve been married for sixty-three years!”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re both in your eighties. Why do you want a divorce? Why now?”
“Well, we just wanted to wait until the children were dead.”
Once Rosenthal finished school and ended a stint in the army, he studied pattern making and worked in the children’s wear business for his entire career.
These two ladies meet, and one of them says to the other, “Hi, how are you doing? I haven’t seen you for a while. How’s your husband?”
“Oh, my husband. He’s such a wonderful man. He’s such a doll. Every Shabbos, he brings home a bouquet of flowers for me.”
She says, “Flowers? I hate flowers. Terrible. I can’t stand flowers!”
“Why?”
“Because you know what I have to do when he comes home with flowers?”
“What?”
“You know … I have to lie down and spread my legs.”
“Oh my! Don’t you have a vase?”
Platt jokes that these days he is involved in “the table pad business” (those pads your grandmother used to put under the tablecloth). He says that the last time he got an order, “Truman was in the White House.”
This elderly couple is driving in a car. She’s driving; he’s in the passenger seat. She has horrible, horrible hearing. They’re on the freeway, and a police officer pulls them over. She rolls down the window.
The police officer says to her, “Did you know you were speeding?”
She turns to her husband and says, “What? What’d he say?”
Her husband says, “He wants to know if you knew you were speeding!”
The police officer says, “License and registration, please.”
She turns to her husband and says, “What? What’d he say?”
He says, “He wants to see your license and registration!”
The police officer looks at it and says, “Oh, I see that you’re from New Jersey. I dated a woman from New Jersey and, if I remember correctly, it was the worst sex I ever had in my life.”
She turns to her husband and says, “What? What’d he say?”
Her husband says, “He says he knows you!”
Gershon Evan
Adam and Eve
After Adam was created, there he was in the Garden of Eden, all alone. Of course it wasn’t good for him to be all by himself, so God came down to visit.
“Adam,” He said, “I have a plan to make you much, much happier. I’m going to give you a companion, a helpmate for you—someone who will fulfill your every need and desire. Someone who will be faithful, loving and obedient. Someone who will make you feel wonderful every day of your life.”
Adam was stunned. “That sounds incredible!”
“Well it is,” God said. “But it doesn’t come for free. In fact, this is someone so special that it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg.”
“That’s a pretty high price to pay,” said Adam. “What can I get for a rib?”
Cynthia Fisher
Bionic Penis
Mr. Goldberg wakes up in the hospital, bandaged from head to foot. The doctor comes in and says, “Ah, I see you’ve regained consciousness. Now, you probably won’t remember, but you were in a pileup on the freeway. You’re going to be okay, you’ll walk again and everything, but… something happened. I’m trying to break this gently, but the fact is, your penis was chopped off in the wreck and we were unable to find it.”
Goldberg groans, but the doctor goes on: “You’ve got nine thousand dollars in insurance compensation coming to you, and we have the technology to build you a new penis that will work as well as your old one did, maybe even better! But the thing is, it doesn’t come cheap. It’s a thousand dollars per inch.”
Goldberg perks up!
“So,” the doctor says, “it’s for you to decide how many inches you want. But it’s something you’d better discuss with your wife. I mean, if you had a five-inch one before, and you decide to go for nine inches, she might be a bit put out. But if you had a nine-inch one before, and you decide only to invest in five inches this time, she might be disappointed. So it’s important that she plays a role in helping you make the decision.” He agrees to talk with his wife.
The doctor comes back the next day and says, “So, have you spoken with your wife?”
“I have,” says Mr. Goldberg.
“And has she helped you in making the decision?”
“Yes, she has,” he says.
“And what is it?” asks the doctor.
“We’re getting granite countertops.”
SexWhat Is This I Hear About a Revolution?
SO THERE’S THE GARDEN, RIGHT? LET’S CALL IT EDEN
.
There’s a dude, Adam, and his lady friend, Eve, and everything is just perfect for, let’s say, the first two chapters.
Then, in chapter 3, sex comes along and, like it always does, ruins the relationship.
Of course you know about Genesis chapter 3. Everybody, everywhere knows about chapter 3. Chapter 3 reads like a metaphoric reduction of a bad night out clubbing: The drug-dealing snake arrives, ecstasy apples are eaten, awareness of nakedness occurs, shame rains down hard, management gets super-pissed, everyone gets kicked out of the VIP room.
And the hangover—forever.
Oh yeah, and as an extra bonus, there’s verse 16:
To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.”
Thanks.
It doesn’t take a semiotics professor to get the message here. The Old Testament puts it on a billboard early on the trip: Sex, despite that sweet burst of juicy apple flavor, is dirty, shameful, and bad. If you do it, God will know and he will be very disappointed. As in “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.”
Cut to 1960. A little pill comes along called “the Pill.” So much for verse 16. Suddenly biting the apple comes at a far more affordable cost. Women, and the men who want to love them, if only for a short while, grow braver. Emboldened by the tiny pill, they are willing to risk the approbation and disappointment of the Almighty. And you know what—they learn they can live with it.
For the Jews born in the 1930s and ’40s, the sexual revolution spawned by the Pill arrived with their young adulthood. Some were already married with young children; many had grown up with parents who slept in separate beds. As
Playboy
grew in popularity and
Deep Throat
played at local theaters, the disappointed God of Genesis was still there in the back of their minds.
Conflict is the heart of the story and discomfort is the wellspring of humor. This sex-driven conflict and discomfort, between guilt and pleasure, between Genesis and the Pill, drives the humor of this chapter’s jokes.
Barnett Hoffman is a die-hard Rutgers Scarlet Knights fan. During their undefeated 1975–76 basketball season, our family traveled all over the eastern seaboard to follow their run to the Final Four. It doesn’t get much better than that for a nine-year-old.
So Jake and Becky are married for fifty years, and it’s their fiftieth wedding anniversary and Becky asks Jake, “Jake: all these years. All these years, have you been faithful to me?”
“Of course. Never have I strayed in fifty years. And you, Becky?”
“Well …”
“Becky. Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you.”
“Well, you’re not answering me.”
“Well …”
“You mean to tell me?”
“Three times,” she says.
“Three times! Tell me about it.”
