Overview

With an ongoing international conference, Jewish humor in recent years has been a subject of serious scholarly inquiry. Most academic publications, however, have been individual works representing a particular thesis or viewpoint, generally on literary aspects. The present collection of essays by scholars from England, France, the United States, Denmark, Israel, and Australia explores characteristics of Jewish humor from a variety of perspectives, including anthropology, literature, psychology, sociology, and religion. Geographically, the work distinguishes between the Jewish humor of Israel and that of the diaspora; historically, it traces Jewish humor to the Bible. The linkages with Judaism and the Yiddish language are explored. Essays deal with the Jewish use of humor in stressful and tragic situations, with self-disparagement in Jewish humor, with anti-semitism and stereotyping, and with Jewish women as the objects of humor. The contributions to world culture of humorists Sholom Aleichem, Woody Allen, Philip Roth, Charlie Chaplin, and numerous contemporary performers are discussed as are the Jewish theorists of humor, including Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Arthur Koestler. An interdisciplinary book, it will be of interest to students and researchers of Jewish tradition and folklore, Jewish-American literature, American studies, and humor, popular culture, anthropology, psychology, and sociology.

Full Product Details

Author:   Avner Ziv ,  Anat Zajdman
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Praeger Publishers Inc
Volume:   No. 31
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.492kg
ISBN:  

9780313261350

ISBN 10:   0313261350
Pages:   224
Publication Date:   28 April 1993
Recommended Age:   From 7 to 17 years
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Preface by Avner Ziv Introduction: Jewish Humor--A Survey and a Program by Raphael Patai Psychosocial Characteristics of Jewish Humor The Shlemiezel: Black Humor and the Shtetl Tradition by Jay Boyer Sholom Aleichem's Humor of Affirmation and Survival by Emanuel S. Goldsmith Exploring the Thesis of the Self-Deprecating Jewish Sense of Humor by Christie Davies Three Jews and a Blindfold: The Politics of Gallows Humor by Paul Lewis Are Jews Funnier than Non-Jews? by Carolyn Miller Since When Is Jewish Humor Not Anti-Semitic? by Bernard Saper The Origins and Evolution of a Classic Jewish Joke by Richard Raskin Men and Women in Jewish Humor Love Among the Stereotypes, or Why Woody's Women Leave by Richard Freadman Philip Roth and Woody Allen: Freud and the Humor of the Repressed by Sam B. Girgus From Eve to the Jewish-American Princess: The Comic Representation of Women in Jewish Literature by Judith Stora-Sandor The Transactional Implications of the Jewish Marriage Jokes by Anat Zajdman Humor in the Promised Land Jewish Humor in the Service of an Israeli Political Leader: The Case of Levi Eshkol by Ofra Nevo The Development of Humor in Israeli Children's Literature in the Twentieth Century Miri Baruch Selected Bibliography: Books in English about Jewish Humor Index

Reviews

Author Information

AVNER ZIV is Professor of Psychology in the School of Education at Tel Aviv University, Israel, where his main research specialties are psychology of humor, adolescence, giftedness, and counseling and psychotherapy./e He is the author of eighteen books in Hebrew, English, and French, including Personality and Sense of Humor and National Styles of Humor (Greenwood Press 1988), as well as many dozens of articles in scholarly and professional journals, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. ANAT ZAJDMAN is an assistant in the Department of Education at the University of Haifa, Israel, where she is engaged in educational research, particularly on the educational aspects of the use of humor in schools and the implications of humor in interpersonal communication./e She has published on these topics in the Hebrew journals Reading Circles and Studies in Education and, in English, in Humor and Communication and Cognition.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions