Britannia Radio

Jewish World Review May 27, 2009 / 4 Sivan 5769

Old Jews Telling Jokes

By Richard Z. Chesnoff

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | A Frenchman, a German and a Jew walk into a bar.
"I'm tired and thirsty," says the Frenchman. "I must have wine."
"I'm tired and thirsty," says the German. "I must have beer."
"I'm tired and thirsty," says the Jew. "I must have diabetes."

I have long been convinced that two things have allowed we Jews to survive for almost four thousand years and outlive our long list of enemies in the process: religious faith and a burning desire to tell jokes, especially the self deprecating kind.

This Jewish thirst for humor migrated readily from the ghettos of Europe to the great Yiddish comic theater that thrived on New York's Lower Eastside. It moved on to the Catskills, to Broadway and soon became ensconced in Hollywood where it goes from strength to strength. Its rapid, raucous delivery style gave birth to the likes of Eddie Cantor and the Marx Brothers, influencing American humor all the way to Jon Stewart and Andy Samberg - not to mention Sid Caeser, Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Jerry Seinfeld and scores of others in between. Time magazine once estimated that while Jews made up only 3 per cent of the American population, fully 80 per cent of this country's professional comedians were Jewish! Even many of today's non-Jewish standup comics draw inspiration if not material from the old school of Yiddish humor.

I'm also personally discovering that the older a Jew gets, the more he or she wants to tell stories and have them laughed at — even if they aren't officially in the comedy trade or even if the jokes they're telling are ancient and have been recounted time and time again. Like me, for example.

Hollywood director and producer Sam Hoffman has came up with the perfect solution: the enormously successful Jewish humor website called "Old Jews Telling Jokes" (www.oldjewstellingjokes.com) which Hoffman launched just last year. Born of his own fondness for the funny tales he heard from his father, family and friends over four decades, the website is just what it's called: Old Jews telling jokes.

The format is simple. With bouncy klezmer Yiddish jazz providing the intro, gags are lustlly told by individual amateur stand up comics in front of a bare white screen . Each one is at least 60 years old. The only restrictions: no racism and no sexual preference gags. The only audience present at the filming is made up of other joke tellers — no easy crowd to please. New gags are posted on the site every Tuesday and Thursday. The new season is about to begin this June 9th.

News of www.oldjewstellingjokes.com spread like internet fire when it first hit the ether. The website has already logged more than 2 million video plays. Hoffman, who works with Jetpack Media, the internet production company created by GreeneStreet Films, reports that home video rights to the series have been picked up by First Run Features. "Story telling is a Jewish tradition," says Hoffman — "in fact, it's a human tradition."

To help cast the first series in the summer of 2008, Hoffman and his producers Eric Spiegelman and Tim Williams enlisted Hoffman's father, Barney who e-mailed a select score of his friends. Each had to fit three requirements: be over 60, be Jewish, and "be able to tell one hell of a joke — old or new."

Those who answered Barney's talent call — mostly men, and only two women — met at a vacant storefront in Highland Park, N.J., where Hoffman was waiting with his film crew and a table laden with sandwiches to satisfy the noshers. The second season was filmed at a tony art art gallery in New York's Greenwich Village just last April 20th. It was an especially rain-stormy night. Nonetheless, the tryouts drew more than 40 would-be comics — including me, not to mention "Hizzoner", former New York Mayor "Ed" Koch.

I can't say there were too many new jokes, but there were an awful lot of good oldies told with that slick gusto that only comes with time and experience. A retired dentist from Long Island had a story about a jealous wife and his partner's mistress. A still working actress of a certain age enacted an hysterical tale of a lady who can't blow out a candle. I told three from my own long whiskered repertoire — including one about a 16th century rabbi who has to debate the pope. I'm hoping they'll use at least one of them. Oy, will my kid brother, David, be jealous! He lives in Vegas, has an hysterical story he once learned from Shecky Green, but is still only 54.

Nu, what can you do?