Hazak: What is Jewish Humor? with Dan Freedman
Thursday, March 14, 2024 • 4 Adar II 5784
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM12:00 PM BYO Dairy Lunch
12:30–1:30 PM Program
What happens when a Rabbi, Priest and Minister walk into a bar? And what exactly is the difference between a shlemiel and shlimazel? Find out the answers and prepare to laugh a lot at Dan’s deep dive into the world of Jewish humor and comedy. Dan traces the development of Jewish humor back to Biblical times and brings it forward to its historic high-water mark in the Catskills and into the 21st Century. Is Jewish humor based on the concept of “laughing to keep from crying”? Is it a means of therapy for an oppressed people, fine-tuned over centuries of struggle for self-preservation? What is the state of Jewish humor today, amid a resurgence of anti-Semitism and threats to the bedrock of American democracy?
DAN FREEDMAN has been a senior editor at Moment Magazine since 2020. At the end of 2019, he retired from the Hearst Newspapers Washington Bureau, where he held a number of reporting and editing positions (including a rotation on the White House press pool). Dan grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in a household that placed high value on Jewish jokes, humor, and Yiddishisms. He received his B.A. from Rutgers University and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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Thu, December 26 2024
25 Kislev 5785
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