Reviewing Lee Siegel’s recent biography of the famed comedian, Joseph Epstein tackles an old question:
How Jewish was Groucho? Given the aggressiveness of the Marx Brothers’ roles in the movies, there is, in the writing about them I have read, little in the way of anti-Semitism. . . .
Lee Siegel [too] never mentions anti-Semitism in connection with the Marx Brothers, but he does attempt to position them in the tradition of Jewish humor. Jewish humor, in his view, is entwined with Jewish wisdom, which it surely often is. He recognizes that it is also heavily imbued with irony. And he wonders to what extent self-hatred is the basis of Jewish humor, noting that Freud is responsible for the notion that Jewish humor is about self-disparagement.
He speculates upon whether at its heart Jewish humor isn’t the result of the Diaspora (no stand-up comics, true enough, in the Hebrew Bible), alienation, and the condition generally of outsiderishness—a condition that breeds, simultaneously, an affinity for insult, a sense of self-debasement, and a feeling of superiority. “The status of the outsider,” Siegel writes, “is one place to begin to construct a definition of Jewish humor.”
Yes, perhaps. Then again, Jewish humor is in the end probably no more than Jews being humorous, and they have found manifold ways of doing so, from subtle to slapstick, from the blatant to the philosophical, and, God willing, they will continue to do so.
Read more on Jewish Review of Books: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2047/jews-on-the-loose