Why are Jews so funny? Exploring Jewish humor and comedians

A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones – Proverbs 17:22

Conquered kingdoms, pogroms, blood libels, persecution, the Holocaust. It hasn’t always ended well.

And yet, this could be the very reason that, despite a history wrought with tragedy, Jews make some of the best comedians of all time.

Just look at the Jewish-dominated list of American comedians from the early days of film to the present: The Marx Brothers, Danny Kaye, George Burns, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Woody Allen, Gilda Radner, Billy Crystal, Fran Drescher, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld and Sarah Silverman represent just a fraction of Jewish powerhouses in comedy.

Time magazine reported that in the 1970s, 80% of American comedians were Jewish – when Jews comprised less than 3% of the population. According to a Pew poll in 2020, more American Jews considered “having a good sense of humor” more basic to their Jewish identity than following Halacha (the ratio was 34%:15%). Their gentile counterparts, too, consider “humor” to be one of the primary characteristics of American Jews, according to another survey.

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