This book is a publication of
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2018 by Elliott Oring
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: B?uschenthal, Lippmann Moses, 1784-1818, author. | Oring, Elliott, 1945-editor. | Lang, Michaela, translator.
Title: The first book of Jewish jokes : the collection of L. M. Buschenthal / edited by Elliott Oring ; translated by Michaela Lang, with annotations by Anastasiya Astapova, Tsafi Sebba-Elran, Elliott Oring, Dan Ben-Amos, Larisa Privalskaya, and Ilze Akerbergs.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018019097 (print) | LCCN 2018021736 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253038340 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253038319 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253038326 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Jewish wit and humor. | Jewish wit and humorHistory and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN6231.J5 (ebook) | LCC PN6231.J5 B86 2018 (print) | DDC 818/.602dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019097
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Contents
THE FIRST BOOK of Jewish Jokes, at its core, is a translation of a collection of jokes published in 1812 by Lippmann Moses Bschenthal: Sammlung witiziger Einflle von Juden, als Beytrge zur Characteristik der Jdischen Nation (Collection of witty notions from Jews as a contribution to the characterization of the Jewish nation). To title anything as the first, original, earliest, or archetypical is likely to invite reactions pointing to a host of earlier instances. In this case, the title of the book is offered as a deliberate provocation. An outpouring of specimens of earlier Jewish joke books is welcome. While there is no dearth of articles and booksscholarly and popularpublished on the Jewish joke and Jewish humor more generally, this literature proceeds virtually without any reference to historical sources. This translation of Bschenthals Sammlung (collection) is designed to stimulate the search for even earlier examples of Jewish joke books that contribute to an understanding of the development of jokes and anecdotes that are characterized as distinctively Jewish.
The title The First Book of Jewish Jokes is not only provocative; it is demonstrably false. Although Bschenthals Sammlung had been identified by a prominent Germanist as the first Jewish joke book (Gilman 2012, 6), many of Bschenthals jokes are acquired from an earlier source: Der Judenfreund, oder auserlesene Anekdoten, Schwnke, und Einflle von Kindern Israels (The friend of the Jews, or selected anecdotes, pranks, and notions of the Children of Israel) published in 1810 under the name of Judas Ascher. Three-quarters of the jokes in Bschenthals Sammlung are taken word-for-word from Aschers Der Judenfreund.
Accompanying the translation of Bschenthals Sammlung is a translation of all the texts in Ascher that Bschenthal did not include in his own book. The reader is actually getting a translation of two early books of Jewish jokes. A table indicating which jokes in the Sammlung come from Der Judenfreund follows the translations. Also included in this volume is an essay on the nature and problems of Jewish joke scholarship and an essay on the situation of the Jews in central and western Europe in the century leading up to the publication of Bschenthals and Aschers joke anthologies. Finally, the jokes in the Sammlung are annotated; that is to say, an effort has been made to search for analogues to the jokes in order to get some sense of how many of them appear in later Jewish joke collections. Since there are no comprehensive indices of joke types as there are of folktales, ballads, or legends, the search for analogues is necessarily a hit-and-miss affair. Nevertheless, the search might offer some sense of the extent to which Bschenthals texts do or do not survive in what is perceived to be a more contemporary Jewish joke inventory.
To characterize the Sammlung as the first book of Jewish jokes is, no doubt, something of an exaggeration, although not by much. The purpose of the title is to rouse scholarly interest in the Jewish joke. Hopefully, it will also entice readers whose interests are something other than scholarly. Such readers need to be forewarned that Bschenthals book is unlikely to prove a resource for increasing ones personal repertoire of humorous materials. Most of the jokes are not of a kind likely to be retold to friends and acquaintances. In a few cases, the humor may escape comprehension altogether. It is hoped, however, that those who have an interest in Jewish jokes for their entertainment value will still find them interesting. After all, they were published over two hundred years ago. They are the product of an age with a different philosophical outlook, when different historical forces were in play, and when the social and material circumstances of the Jews in Europe were significantly different from what they are today.
Notes
. A digital copy of the original work can be found at http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/judaicaffm/content/pageview/7020489 (accessed June 17, 2017).
. The WorldCat database identifies only nine libraries in four countries that have Bschenthals Sammlung in their holdings: Germany (4); United States (1); Switzerland (1); United Kingdom (3). WorldCat identifies twenty libraries in six countries with copies of Der Judenfreund: Germany (11), United States (4), Israel (2), Netherlands (1), Switzerland (1), United Kingdom (1).
. Judas Aschers name does not appear in the twenty-six-volume work Neue Deutsche Biographie (19522013), the ten-volume Dictionary of German Biography (19952000), the thirteen-volume Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopdie, or the four-volume Bibliographica Judaica: Verzeichnis jdischer Autoren deutscher Sprache (1981).
THIS VOLUME IS an act of collaboration, and there are a number of people to be thanked for their contributions to the project. First and foremost is Michaela Lang, who translated Bschenthals Sammlung in its entirety as well as those texts in Judas Aschers Der Judenfreund that Bschenthal did not incorporate into his volume. Dr. Anastasiya Astapova, research fellow, Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu, Estonia, surveyed the Russian Jewish joke literature; Dr. Tsafi Sebba-Elran, lecturer, Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of Haifa, Israel, searched the Hebrew collections of Alter Druyanow, Shimon Ernst, and Dov Sadan; Dan Ben-Amos, professor of folklore and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Pennsylvania, examined Immanuel Olsvangers
