Professional Jokers: Jewish Jesters from the Golden Age of American Comedy

Featuring Drew Friedman’s “Comedy Jewseum”

Once the bread and butter of stand-up comedy, jokes like this one were created by a generation of Jewish comedians who made their way from vaudeville theaters to nightclubs in Manhattan to the Catskills and beyond. Dozens of legendary comics from Groucho Marx to Henny Youngman to Milton Berle to Jerry Lewis to Joan Rivers, among many, many others, have earned a place in the pantheon of American comedy. It is no exaggeration to say that for much of the 20th century, Jewish comedians dominated America’s humor industry.

Birthed from the traditions of Jewish humor, from wedding jesters and the banter of talmudic study houses to the searing Yiddish satire of the 19th-century Jewish enlightenment, Jewish American comedians came of age during a period of post-immigration social anxiety for Jewish Americans. Still an ethnic minority with unique cultural and linguistic characteristics, mid-20th century Jews dealt with lingering antisemitism while trying to find their place in American society.

Engaging this outsider perspective, comedians expressed these anxieties via jokes that often functioned as humorous social commentary. Comedy was also a way to show that they had the same foibles as everyone else and served as a type of assimilationist impulse into larger American culture. The first wave of Jewish celebrities to enter American popular culture, comedians not only showed other Americans that Jews were just like them, but did so by making them laugh.

Much of their humor was universal and some comedians did not want to appear overtly Jewish, so they changed their names from Berlinger to Berle or from Feldman to Foster, to offer a couple of examples. Jewish material they often kept for inside jokes or specifically ethnic venues like the Catskills, although some were more open about their culture and included it in their acts. And then, of course, there were the comedians who performed marvelous mash-ups of American and Jewish cultures.

Some of the first Jewish celebrities in America, Jewish comedians from this era could be found everywhere: in the press, on the radio, on television, in the movies, and in nightclubs. Their films, books, and recordings were often bestsellers and they appeared frequently in advertisements for a wide variety of products. Their story sheds light on the variety of ways in which many of them engaged their Jewishness to enrich American comedic culture.