When I decided to embrace my Jewish roots, however short and stubby, I had no hesitation. My mother always said, "Just wait to see who you marry first!" as though my love life - or lack thereof - should have some bearing on my cultural and spiritual identity, but I understood it was a personal decision. And I made it on my own.

Maybe it was naïveté, but I never saw flares of anti-Semitism or prejudice when I spent time with my Jewish friends as a child. Even as an adult, I should probably count myself lucky to have never witnessed a malicious attack on Jewish beliefs or practices.

But there is one thing I have noticed: the more openly I've embraced Judaism, the more my friends think it's okay to tease me about it. Yell Jewish-sounding words when I'm in the room - that's hilarious. There's nothing like a well-placed "Challah" to win a crowd over. I wrote before about mean-spirited ignorance, but I've also faced the obstacle of an over-abundance of seemingly charming and repetitively irritating Jew jokes.

I don't mind when people say, "Ashley, you're Jewish-what's the deal with keeping kosher," even though I haven't adopted all the laws of kashrut. I have no problem sharing my knowledge, as I continue to learn, with people less versed in Jewish culture or practice. It's another thing entirely, however, when a person plays up his or her ignorance as a means to a laugh or some other sort of attention.

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Bagels make people smile. I can't think of another bread that has so many jokes made about it - some of them, according to the bagel bakers I talked with, unrepeatable in print or polite company.

In the 1950s Milton Berle and Molly Goldberg used bagels as props. Even a young Woody Allen in 1963 got in on the act with a routine that taboo subjects are vital to society, so much so that in a place (like the Faroe Islands alledgedly) where sex is casual, sleazy natives peddle food porn instead. When a Faroe woman is asked whether she'd like cream cheese on her bagel she replies: "I don't do that kind of thing."

The New Jersey artist who in the 1990s figured out a way to preserve genuine bagels and genuine locks (as versus lochs) on canvas had to be counting on the sense of humour of his potential buyers in an upscale Miami gallery - otherwise why hang these arrangements on your wall?

So what is it about the bagel that's so funny?

Some say it's the word itself - 'beigel' or 'bagel,' it's chunky and chewy just like the experience of eating it.

For others it's the ring shape with no beginning and no end that has a special hold on our human imagination with its intimations of eternity.   And then there's the bagel hole - inpsiring or terrifying, depending on how you deal with the concept of infinity (for one London poet of the 1930s, the ring of dough represented life - when you finished off your bagel the hole you were left with symbolised death). The hole is the subject of many tales, the best of which has to be the one about the Fools of Chelm - a staple group of simpletons in Jewish folklore. Finding Chelm's bagels lacking, a delegation of the town's sages decided they must act and find out why the neighbouring town's bagels are tastier, crunchier and chewier. 

"It's simple," says the neighbouring town's bagel baker when they ask him, "it's the hole that makes the bagel."

"Please," say the delegation from Chelm, "can we have some of your holes so as to improve our bagels?"

"Of course," answers the baker and hands over a dozen or so holes which the sages place very carefully in their pockets.

Wending their way home in high spirits, they stop paying attention to the path. Suddenly all of them - to a sage - fall over the crest of a hill and roll down, the bagel holes falling out of their pockets as they gathered speed. Desperately they search the fields for these special holes but to no avail. Crestfallen they return to Chelm empty handed, unable to change the sorry state of the town's bagels.

What I find endearing about the shape of bagels is that while they may aspire to be the perfect halo, they are by their plump, lumpy nature imperfect and a bit cheeky.   

In the 1960s El Al introduced a booklet - El Al Looks into the Bagel - to explain bagel history and etiquette to those passengers (there were quite a few it turned out) who had never eaten one before. The booklet was a hit and was reprinted at least four times. In fact, such was the scale of interest generated that El Al created a Bagel Research Center in its New York office - or did it? No one I spoke with in the course of my research (including the airline's unofficial historian) knew anything about it. Was this a further bagel joke? Or is there a great archive of bagel jokes out there? Anyone with more information?

Maria Balinska, author of The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

 

According to Sam Hoffman, the director of Jetpack Media's "Old Jews Telling Jokes," his dad is a pretty funny guy. Formed by GreeneStreet Films, Jetpack produces and develops original Internet video, and strives to synthesize independent film with online content. Below is an anecdotal explanation by Hoffman of what exactly "Old Jews Telling Jokes" is all about, as well as a video of a decidedly dirty joke told by one of his father's very funny friends, Larry "Moose" Donsky. Be prepared to laugh out loud.

My dad can tell a story. But he’d prefer to tell a joke. Storytelling is a Jewish tradition. You’ve probably seen Fiddler on the Roof. Whenever they ask the Rabbi a question, he tugs thoughtfully on his beard and says “let me tell you a story.” Then they sing. Jokes are like stories, but shorter and funnier. Old jokes tend to have a stigma, but they only last if they’re good. Some of the best ones provide a window to the culture of a bygone era. They can reveal the concerns of a generation or even the generation before. Anxieties of coming to a new country, of prospering, of assimilating, of having families, of fearing and worrying about, well, everything. Humor was and is the ultimate anti-depressant. My father gathered twenty of his friends to share their favorite jokes. We set three rules for the production: the joke-tellers were to be Jewish, at least sixty years of age and they were to tell their favorite joke – the one that always kills. Here, you will find them, Old Jews Telling Jokes.

Larry Donsky and my father attended Camp Dellwood together in Honesdale, PA from 1950 to 1954. At camp, Larry was known as "Moose" Donsky. Later, he played first base and catcher for a Coney Island League baseball team and worked in the Garment district in New York. He and my father fell out of touch for thirty years until my father decided to look him up in the white pages and call him. They have since rekindled their friendship and spearheaded the one and only Camp Dellwood reunion.

The video is after the jump

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My dissertation advisor -- we'll call him Dr. S from Purdue University -- just arrived this afternoon in Boca Raton for the Jewish American literature symposium. And so, of course, after the last session of presentations, I decided to join him and a group of scholars for cocktails.

If you've never had cocktails with a group of academics, you're either in for a real treat or you're going to be bored out of your mind. Fortunately, my experience today was the former. After the first round of cocktails, Dr. S and a scholar from Penn State decided to have a "joke-off," where each would tell a joke until one of them had nothing left. And, though I had planned to blog about something completely different for this post, I couldn't resist hijacking one of Dr. S's jokes for Jewcy. So here it is (or the way I remember it), compliments of Dr. S, who, as a matter of fact, won the joke-off.

Jesus Christ is just kind of wandering around heaven. He sees St. Peter, standing at the gate. St. Peter needs to run a few errands, and so he asks JC to hang out at the gate for a little while, just until he returns. JC, of course, is like, no problem -- I can hold down the fort until you finish all your errands. So St. Peter takes off and leaves JC at the gate.

After a little while, JC sees this little old man wandering around aimlessly, looking a bit lost. The little old man approaches JC, who asks him if he needs help. The little old man says, "Well, I'm an old carpenter, and I've been looking for my son for quite some time." JC's eyes light up. "Father?" he says, questioningly. The old man's eyes light up as well: "Pinocchio?" he says.He Once Was Lost: But now he's found.

Funny, huh? Gotta love academics.

My future father-in-law forwarded this joke and I think it's a little funny. Keep in mind it's an email joke that you've probably glossed over once and deleted numerous times.

A Mexican family was considering putting their grandfather in a nursing home. Unfortunately, all the Catholic facilities were completely full so they had to put him in a Jewish home. After a few weeks in the Jewish facility, they came to visit their abuelo (grandfather in spanish).

"How do you like it here?" asks the grandson.

"It's wonderful. Everyone here is so courteous and respectful," says grandpa.

"We're so happy for you. We were worried that this was the wrong place for you. You know, since you are a little different from everyone.

"Oh, no! Let me tell you about how wonderfully they treat the residents here," grandpa says with a big smile.

"There's a musician here--he's 85 years old. He hasn't played the violin in 20 years and everyone still calls him "Maestro." There is a judge in here -- he's 95 years old. He hasn't been on the bench in 30 years and everyone still calls him "Your Honor."

And there's a physician here that is 90 years old . He hasn't practiced medicine for 25 years and everyone still calls him "Doctor."

And me, I haven't had sex for 35 years and they still call me "The Fucking Mexican."