ABSTRACT
In modern Jewish humor, jokes involving wordplay often play upon the clash of the languages used by a people required to be multilingual. These languages include the traditional language of the Jewish people, Hebrew—and, sometimes, Yiddish—and the language of the host country of the diaspora. Hebrew was the language of the Bible and, in the days of the Talmud, Aramaic was the language of the people. When sharp-witted scholars speak two languages, and both are written without vowels, that presents many opportunities for wordplay, including puns, acrostics, plays on people's names, riddles, and enigmatic speech. The Talmud believes that some names in the Hebrew Bible are not real names. Riddles were popular even in the time of the Judges. Samson challenged his companions at his wedding feast to solve the following riddle: "From the eater came out food, and from the strong came out sweetness.
