Old Jews Telling Jokes at the Westside Theater

Jewish jokes are so plentiful online: who hasn’t been blessed with multiple emails forwarded from friends, or visited the Youtube videos of real-life old Jews telling jokes? Now a fast-paced revue at the Westside Theater—where the beloved Love, Loss, and What I Wore held sway for many seasons– is unexpectedly fresh. Yes, the familiar tropes: sex before marriage, after, business and money, death, mothers, and kvetching on every foible of life are revived in full force: Do you want a drink? Goes one. No, I don’t want to dull the pain.

Or, three Jewish mothers were sitting on a bench, minding their own business. Pause. Silence. Think about it.

Marilyn Sokol, Lenny Wolpe, Todd Susman, Audrey Lynn Weston and Bill Army portray a variety of stock characters, some even young. In a classroom, the teacher asks, who is the most influential man in the world. A hand shoots up. “Jesus Christ.” The kid gets a reward: a lollipop. “I know, it’s Moses,” he reveals to his friend while sucking, “but business is business.” A CNN reporter interviews a man at the Wailing Wall. “For what do you pray,” she asks. “World peace,” he replies. “For how long have you been praying?” “Fifty years.” “How does it feel to pray for so long without an answer?” “Like I am talking to a wall.”

The evening is a non-stop laugh fest. Then again: A doctor offers a man an operation to increase his penis size, $1000/inch. Discussing length with his wife results in the punch line: we’re getting granite countertops. If you find this howler a non sequitor, this show may not work for you.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Posted in Theater

4 responses to “Old Jews Telling Jokes at the Westside Theater”

danny bloom

May 22, 2012

Most of the jokes are funny and LOL humorous. But some of the jokes
are part of Jewish selfhatred and stereotyping even by Jews themselves
and these off-color selfhating jokes should be, IMHO, taken out of the
other funny play. These bad jokes are mostly New York City Jewish
selfloathing jokes and do not speak to Jews or non-Jews in the rest of
the world. Be careful what you put out there, the Neo Nazis are
watching and posting on their sites. Example – Another one: “Why don’t
Jewish mothers drink? They don’t want to dull the pain.” Many will
recognize these jokes (the drink joke sometimes ends with the inferior
“Alcohol interferes with their suffering”), NOT ALL JEWISH MOTHERS
SUFFER LIKE THE OLD STEREOTYPE AND THIS IS MERELY NYC HUMOR. GET RID
OF THAT JOKE. it’s anti woman and antisemitic in fact. Jewish mothers
are wonderful and the suffering stereotype is from LONG AGo. not now.
and this joke — The section “Business and Money” includes some shtick
about an ill-advised marketing campaign featuring Jesus on the cross
with the slogan, “They used Levenson’s nails.” And “Assimilation”
features an excellent gag in which two Jews pass a Roman Catholic
church advertising to pay converts $50. One man goes in and when he
exits after 20 minutes, his friend asks if he got his money. “Is that
all you people think about?” he responds. THIS IS ALSO SELF LOATHING
AND ANTISEMITIC. why put it in the show?

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Egg Man

May 22, 2012

The Silverman Manifesto (2012)
By Silverman Everyman
Email: bubbie.zadie@gmail.com
Enough of this self loathing and self hating! Enough of Jews
themselves denigrating themselves in public shows
of comedy or books! Enough of dysfunctional families
and ghetto Jews from the past! We are now living in 2012
and we are no longer dysfunctional people nor do we live
in dysfunctional families anymore and Jewish mother jokes
and Jewish Princess jokes and distasteful Joan Rivers’ Anne
Frank jokes should be thrown out the window. The Bronx and Brooklyn
ghettoes are things of the past. Wake up, fellow Jews and cast
off your self loathing and self hatred with these terrible jokes
about dysfunctional mothers and weak fathers and antisemitic tropes
that are sometimes even worse than Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice
schtick! Wake up, people!
We are a normal people now, successful, middle-class, no longer in the
New York City ghettoes where much of the old sick humor came from.
Sure, in the 1930s, those jokes had a purpose. Sure, in the 1950s,
after the war, maybe some of those jokes still had a purpose. But now,
in 2012, they have no purpose! Those jokes should be retired and you
know exactly what jokes I am talking about!
We don’t live in dysfunctional families anymore and we have success
stories all around, in an entirely new and loving way. It’s time for Jews
in America to wake up and smell the new air of happiness and life.
It’s time to stop the self loathing and self hating Catskills and Borscht
Belt jokes of the 1950s and celebrate the joyful reality of 2012.
Stand up and create
a new kind of warm, life enhancing and positive humor that goes beyond
the old stereotypes of yore. Rise up and rejoice, O Jews of America,
you have nothing to lose but your long-suffering neuroses. We are no longer a
neurotic people. Stop the Jewish mother jokes, stop the JAP jokes, stop
the sick Anne Frank jokes (and books!), stop the dysfunctional family jokes,
stop the victimization. We are no longer victims. We have made it. Wake up
and celebrate success, joy, happiness, normalness.
Enough already. We are normal. We have arrived. Leave the past alone. Where
it belongs. Stop the Jews are cheap jokes; some of the most philanthropic
people on Earth are American Jews: they build hospitals, museums, fund
scientific research, professorships,
educational initiatives. Focus on the good and the positive; leave the
past where it belongs: in the past!
Wake up and smell the sunshine. We don’t all live in the Bronx or
Brooklyn anymore, or Queens
or Beverly Hills. American Jews must evolve. Be nice, all ye who are
comedians and humor
writers. Respect yourselves. Respect what we have become now in 2012.
Stop the old, out-dated
stereotypes. We can write a new chapter in American Jewish history in
the creative arts
of comedy and film and literature and it does not have to be Portnoy’s
Complaint anymore.
Nor does it have to be Old Jews Telling Jokes off-Broadway anymore.
Mirror the present,
stop mirroring the dysfunctional ghetto past. Get past the past!
Embrace the now!

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August 14, 2012

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