HOW DO YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SPORTING AND JOKING?

So let’s return to the analogy we’ve spoken of between religious persons and comedians, which is starting now to make some sense – for if the religious person appears as one kind of extremist, the comedian appears as another. It was Lenny Bruce who led the way here by turning stand-up into something of an extreme sport. And thank heavens for that, because Jews, on the whole, aren’t too good at sports:

Yeshiva University decided to field a crew in the rowing race. Unfortunately, they lost race after race. They practised for hours every day, but never managed to come in any better than dead last.

The chief rabbi finally decided to send Yankel to spy on the Harvard team. So Yankel goes to Cambridge and hid in the bullrushes off the Charles River, from where he carefully watched the Harvard team as they practised.

Yankel finally returned to Yeshiva. ‘I have figured out their secret,’ he announced. ‘They have eight guys rowing and only one guy shouting.’

Extreme talking, you could say, is the aim of the Jewish athlete:

The rabbi was an avid golfer and played at every opportunity. He was so addicted to the game that if he didn’t play he would get withdrawal symptoms. One Yom Kippur the rabbi thought to himself, ‘What’s it going to hurt if I go out during the recess and play a few rounds? Nobody will be the wiser, and I’ll be back in time for services.’

Sure enough, at the conclusion of the morning service, the rabbi snuck out of the synagogue and headed straight for the golf course. Looking down upon the scene were Moses and God.

Moses said, ‘Look how terrible – a Jew on Yom Kippur. And a rabbi besides!’

God replied, ‘Watch. I’m going to teach him a lesson.’

Out on the course, the rabbi stepped up to the first tee. When he hit the ball, it careened off a tree, struck a rock, skipped across a pond and landed in the hole for a HOLE IN ONE!

Seeing all this, Moses protested, ‘God, this is how you’re going to teach him a lesson? He got a hole in one!’

‘Sure,’ said God, ‘but who’s he going to tell?’

But if not being able to tell is the cruellest punishment for a Jew who’s indulged his guilty pleasure, telling the things you can’t tell is a guilty pleasure all of its own – as in the joke about the guy who goes to confession and tells the priest that after a lifetime of respectability he suddenly finds himself having an affair with two young married women half his age. When the priest urges him to seek Jesus’ forgiveness he replies that he can’t do that because he’s Jewish. ‘Then why on earth are you telling me?’ ‘I’m telling everyone.’

Or you need only consider the taboo-breaking excitement of a Lenny Bruce gig. In his major novel Underworld (1997), the American author Don DeLillo captures that atmosphere by imagining a scene in which Bruce is performing a set in California during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The set has just one ‘joke’, but it’s one he tells over and over again to evermore nervous laughter:

‘We’re all gonna die!’

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Darkness, death, war, the unknown, the unknowable – that’s where the nervous laughter comes from. And both the Jewish person and the comedian are familiars here. Both know what it is to perform in front of hostile crowds, always with the aim of trying to get the audience on side. Both have felt the need to constantly adapt their acts and find a quick-fire response for the latest hecklers. And both also recognise the fatal consequences of not being approved of. Jews know this in their (funny) bones. And a bad night for a comedian is one when nobody finds their shtick funny. When that happens, the comedian will tell you, they ‘died’.