Jews played, and continue to play, a major role in the history of American comedy, and Jewish humor has been a much-discussed topic at least since Sigmund Freud wrote Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. But while many assume the Jewish penchant for jest is a modern and perhaps secular phenomenon, Sarah Rindner points to its ancient and religious roots:
The Talmud notes the important role of laughter in the religious psyche. One story recorded in Ta’anit 22a describes a conversation between the sage Rabbi Broka Ḥoza’ah and Elijah the prophet. Rabbi Broka asks Elijah which people in the marketplace will merit a place in the World to Come. . . . Elijah highlights several people who would not obviously pass for righteous: a jailkeeper dressed in non-Jewish clothing and a pair of jesters.
Elijah reveals that the jailkeeper’s outward appearance hides a hidden holy agenda that one would never have guessed. The jokesters, too, are more righteous than they seem, Elijah reveals. But while the jailkeeper’s saintliness is hidden, the jokesters’ virtue hides in plain sight. The very reason one might think they are not particularly saintly—the fact that they make their living lightening the mood and distracting people from their sorrows—is precisely the source of their greatness.
Rabbi Naftali Loewenthal, a London-based scholar of Jewish mysticism, . . . explained that comic irony fosters [a different] kind of perspective, helping a person balance the forces of the divine soul pushing for good and the temptations of the world. Humor “takes the air out of the urges within a person,” and in doing so clears a space for him to connect with something that transcends the narrow self.
Read more on Lubavitch Magazine: https://www.lubavitch.com/holy-folly-using-humor-to-reach-for-g-d/