Secondary Moves: Arthur Trebitsch and the Jewish JokeĢ. Jokes have sharp and manifold edges, and Kaplan is a clear and brilliant guide to explaining how they bite as well as bind.ġ. With insight and incisiveness, a steady hand and a clear eye, Kaplan navigates through the most treacherous of comedic waters - the role of the Jewish joke in Germany through much of the twentieth century and beyond. Jeremy Dauber, author, Jewish Comedy: A Serious History: Added to this is Kaplan's fascinating "Afterword" in which he reflects on "The Jewish Joke in Trump's America" and the ways in which there is a surprising continuity in a discourse which seems to have lost none of its controversial and potentially dangerous relevancy. That itself constitutes a major achievement. I know of no other work that has recognized and so profoundly grasps the deep seriousness of "wit" as it penetrated Jewish and European history. Rather, in a uniquely sophisticated manner, Kaplan uncovers the multiple functions, ambiguities and hidden connections between anti-Semitism, Jewish self-conceptions and this slippery and dynamic discourse. This is not your usual run-of-the mill book on "Jewish Jokes". Louis Kaplan's marvelous book profoundly probes the deadly seriousness and deep structures of the discourse around the Jewish joke as uttered by various European progenitors, propagandists and analysts, especially in Germany from the Weimar Republic through Nazism and the post-Holocaust period. Steven Aschheim, Professor Emeritus, The Hebrew University:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |