ABSTRACT
Critical humor in Jewish jokes focused on two stereotypes, the Jew as financially dishonest and obsessed with money, and the Jew as weak and cowardly. Ironic humor provides a comic victory for the traditional victims of ethnic joking, turning their weaknesses into strengths, their vulnerability into triumph, and their faults into virtues. In this mode, weakness, cowardice, and even mercenary obsession are presented as cleverness, as tools for survival, as means of transcending the attacks and insults provoked by the status of a marginal, minority, frequently deprecated group. Many of these jokes feature a gentle, but pointed confrontation between a rabbi and a priest or between rabbis, priests, and ministers. The meaning of the joke telling is tied to the teller and the audience as well as being in the text and the effect of the humor can be subtle and complex.
