Doctors, Jokes, and the Secret of Jewish Humor

Doctors, writes Aaron Rothstein, have a penchant for dark humor, cracking jokes in the face of death, suffering, and disease. Rothstein turns to the history of Jewish comedy to understand why this is so:

Ruth Wisse . . . wrestles with the idea of tragic humor in No Joke, her wonderful 2013 book on Jewish humor. Professor Wisse notes that during tumultuous times, Jewish humor flourished because of “an increased need for entertainment that would distract or temporarily release the tension, and offer consolation.” One Jewish comedian in particular, Shimon Dzigan, exemplified this concept during the early 20th century in Eastern Europe, playing characters on stage in sketches which poked fun at local Polish political figures and even German leaders. In explaining why he sought humor in dark times, Dzigan explained, “I have no answer. I can only say that perhaps because we subconsciously felt that our verdict was sealed and our fate unavoidable, we consciously wished to shout it down and drown it out. With effervescent joy we wanted to drive off the gnawing sadness, the dread and fear that nested deep inside us.”

Indeed, there is a gaping chasm between how those who joke about serious matters actually feel and what they laugh about. The laughing isn’t merely a cover for their feelings but a way of making those feelings less unpleasant and less controlling.

Read more at New Atlantis

More about: History & Ideas, Holocaust, Jewish humor, Medicine, Shimon Dzigan, Soviet Jewry

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF