The following cartoons are satire, and social and political
criticism. No one, and no thing, is justifiably beyond a poke of criticism.
(Witness the avalanche of jokes even about Catholic priests and sex, or
the Pope, these days). Although open joking about Jewish identity, conventions
and institutions by non-Jewish commentators are typically pathologized
as manifestations of "antisemitism," Jewish comics themselves
relentlessly contribute to the very Jewish form of "antisemitism,"
popularly understood in the Jewish community as the genre of "Jewish
self-hatred." Jews endlessly lambast "nagging Jewish mothers,"
"Jewish American Princesses," and a treasure trove of neurotic
Jewish traits (Woody Allen's endlessly laughable self-examinations as
a Jew are a well-known case in point). Such humor, within the Jewish community,
is a well-known institution.
"All kinds of
deception and cunning, of fraud and trickery, devised and committed by
Jews, either to get money or to avoid paying money," wrote prominent
Jewish psychoanalyst Theodore Reik, "are exposed and candidly revealed
by Jewish jokes." [REIK, T., Jewish Wit, Gamut Press, New York, 1962,
p. 67]
Black stand-up comics satirize all manner of "white" foibles.
Famous Jewish comic Lenny Bruce was a pioneer in the assailing the hypocrisies
championed by just about every ethnicity. (In Jewish circles, by the way,
jokes about the attitudes and abilities of the non-Jew are a humor norm.)
Publically, Jewish comics like Milton Berle have long recited jokes about
Italians, and other ethnicities, with little -- if any -- outcry.
As Rabbi Joseph Telushkin once observed about "political correctness"
in the "Jewish joke" context: "People who oppose telling ethnic jokes
would have us believe that the whole genre is nonsense, that alcoholics,
neurotics, oversensitive people and shady characters are evenly distributed
among all groups. However, tolerant as it sounds, this assumption makes
no sense, for it implies that history and culture have no impact on human
beings. But of course, they do. What makes Jews Jewish is a specific religious
culture and historical experience that have shaped their values and strongly
influenced how they view the world." [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 10]
Cartoons are, by definition, caricatures. They strip the world of its
vast complexity to make some simple points. The more a subject is taboo
from criticism, the more a joke about this taboo is probably funny. The
more a subject is forbidden to be satirized, the more it positions itself
as a magnet to be satirized. The more any subject tries to stay hidden
behind self-protective, censorial drapes, the more it ultimately pours
out the windows into the public street. The more a subject is publicly
championed to be taboo, the more it is -- paradoxically -- in private
circles, the opposite..
Like any comic that seeks to have fun with the truth, our intention with
these cartoons is neither ridicule, defamation, or hostility, but merely
to highlight aspects of our current cultural milieu that all should recognize.
The more powerful the subject of examination (and the more resistant it
is to public criticism of any sort), the greater the tension release there
is in telling, or hearing, or reading, the joke -- for all. This is the
nature of comedy, as it has always been.
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