Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAs a reference text, both Oring's analysis and Lang's translation will prove to be invaluable to scholars looking for the etiology of a certain comic trope, or those trying to trace the history of certain comedic ideas.
* Reading Religion *
Oring . . . provides readers with an opportunity to test his ideas about Jewish jokes on a rich set of empirical material. Going back to one of the first known sources of Jewish jokes, he helps us to trace their genesis.
* European Journal of Humour Research *
The First Book of Jewish Jokes is an interesting hybrid: a joke book that offers a glimpse of what was considered funny in the past and two excellent essays by Oring that place the jokes into historical context. Readers interested in Jewish folklore and those curious about the nature of Jewish humor in the 19th century will find this work of interest.
* The Reporter Group *
The title The First Book of Jewish Jokes may seem to indicate that this book is a joke collection. It is, but it is also a complex, demanding work, rich in context and interpretation, engaging and compelling.
-- Steve Siporin * Folklore *
All told, this is an excellent piece of scholarship. . . it can serve as a capstone to Elliott Oring's lifetime project on understanding the joke and the Jewish joke in particular.
* Western Folklore *
The present volume contains a complete critical edition of both works, translated from the German by Michaela Lang and annotated with analogs from other Jewish joke collections. Elliott Oring has added a concordance of texts that Büschenthal took from Ascher and two lengthy introductory chapters discussing the collection and its author and describing the social and political life of European Jews in Büschenthal's day. . . . Perhaps the most significant question that Oring addresses in this work is this: "Why did Jews adopt the joke genre as a symbol of their nationhood" (7)? Büschenthal's project was meant, as his subtitle put it, as "a contribution to the characterization of the Jewish nation," intended to both showcase Jewish distinctiveness and humanize their image.
-- Moira Marsh * Journal of Folklore Research *
Table of ContentsForeword
Acknowledgments
Part I: Introduction
1. On Jewish Jokes and the Collection of Lippmann Moses Büschenthal
2. The Jews in the Century of Büschenthal
Part II: The Texts
3. Collection of Witty Notions from Jews as a Contribution to the Characterization of the Jewish Nation / L. M. Büschenthal
4. Selections from The Friend of the Jews or Selected Anecdotes, Pranks, and Notions of the Children of Israel / Judas Ascher
Appendix I: Büschenthal Texts Taken from Judas Ascher, Der Judenfreund
Appendix II: Sources of Joke Analogs
List of References
Index
