HOW DO YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAN AND GOD?
While Jews don’t accept the Christian belief that a man can also be a divinity, they’re generally pretty good at spotting the human side of the godly:
Moshe and Abe were partners in a very successful clothing factory. It had been in operation for many years and there wasn’t much they didn’t know about the shmatta business [rag trade]. One day, Moshe decided to take a trip to Rome.
As Abe had many Catholic friends, he surprised Moshe by getting him an audience with none other than the Pope.
On Moshe’s first day back at work after his Rome trip, Abe asked him, ‘So, Moshe! What kind of a man is the Pope?’
‘Hmm,’ said Moshe, ‘I would say he’s a 44 regular.’
And when it comes to the Almighty, Jews tend to take things pretty personally too. As Sholom Aleichem’s character Tevye complains to God:
‘You help complete strangers – why not me?’
But then, when you know someone that long and still they turn a cold shoulder, it’s hard to keep up the pretence that it isn’t personal:
A journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray twice a day, every day, for a long, long time, so she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site. She watched him pray and after about forty-five minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview.
‘Pardon me, sir. What’s your name?
‘Morris Feinberg,’ he replied.
‘Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?’
‘For about sixty years.’
‘Sixty years! That’s amazing! What do you pray for?’
‘I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims. I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop. I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man.’
‘How do you feel after doing this for sixty years?’
‘Like I’m talking to a bloody wall.’
Jews have long since realised that God can be something of a let-down:
Moses is walking in the hills. He slips. Finding himself hanging between heaven and earth, he calls out: ‘Is there anyone there?’
A voice responds from above: ‘Yes, I’m here. It’s God. Don’t worry, I’ll save you.’
Pause.
Moses: ‘Is there anyone else there?’
Which doesn’t mean God is a bad guy. Rather, as Woody Allen has it, ‘You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that He’s evil. I think that the worst you can say about Him is that, basically, He’s an underachiever’*:
A man brings some very fine material to a tailor and asks him to make a pair of trousers. When he comes back a week later, the trousers are not ready. Two weeks later, they are still not ready. Finally, after six weeks, the trousers are ready. The man tries them on. They fit perfectly. Nonetheless, when it comes time to pay, he can’t resist a jibe at the tailor.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘it took God only six days to make the world. And it took you six weeks to make just one pair of trousers.’
‘Ah,’ the tailor says. ‘But look at this pair of trousers, and look at the world...’
So the world was a bit of a rushed job. And if that explains the state of the world, then it also explains why man, as the product of just one day’s work, isn’t exactly an overachiever either:
Moishe is driving in Jerusalem. He’s late for a meeting and he’s looking and failing to find a parking place. In desperation, he turns towards heaven and says, ‘Lord, if you find me a parking place, I promise that I’ll eat only kosher, respect Shabbos and all the holidays.’ Miraculously, a place opens up just in front of him. He turns his face up to heaven and says, ‘Never mind, I just found one!’
Because when you get a shlemiel people, you’re bound to get a shlimazel God:
There is this very pious Jew named Goldberg who always dreamed of winning the lottery. Every Sabbath, he’d go to synagogue and pray, ‘God, I have been such a pious Jew all my life. What would be so bad if I won the lottery?’
But the lottery would come and Goldberg wouldn’t win. Week after week, Goldberg would pray to win the lottery, but the lottery would come and Goldberg wouldn’t win.
Finally, one Sabbath, Goldberg wails to the heavens and says, ‘God, I have been so pious for so long, what do I have to do to win the lottery?’
And the heavens parted and the voice of God came down: ‘Goldberg, meet me halfway. At least buy a ticket.’
Though never say the people don’t at least try:
God: And remember, Moses, in the laws of keeping kosher, never cook a calf in its mother’s milk. It is cruel.
Moses: Ohhhhhh! So you are saying we should never eat milk and meat together.
God: No, what I’m saying is, never cook a calf in its mother’s milk.
Moses: Oh, Lord, forgive my ignorance! What you are really saying is we should wait six hours after eating meat to eat milk so the two are not in our stomachs.
God: No, Moses, what I’m saying is, don’t cook a calf in its mother’s milk!
Moses: Oh, Lord! Please don’t strike me down for my stupidity! What you mean is we should have a separate set of dishes for milk and a separate set for meat and if we make a mistake we have to bury that dish outside ...
God: Ach, do whatever you want ...
Thus, just because the Jewish joke tends to be more logistical than spiritual, doesn’t mean it’s not serious – even about God. We might see it instead as an extension of the Jewish covenantal tradition that sees man in a partnership with God. Albeit a partnership that gives him, just as it gives God, the right to kvetch.
* From Love and Death (1975).