At Wit’s End: The Deadly Discourse on the Jewish Joke by Louis Kaplan

Abstract

Reviewed by: At Wit’s End: The Deadly Discourse on the Jewish Joke by Louis Kaplan Jennifer Caplan Louis Kaplan. At Wit’s End: The Deadly Discourse on the Jewish Joke. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2020. Pp 352. Paper $30. ISBN: 9780823287567 The Hasidic rebbe Nachman of Breslov once said, “one can understand the nature of a land by knowing its humor. In order to understand something, one must know the jokes related to it.”1 This idea that the truest nature of a place, or perhaps a people, is revealed through jokes presages what Louis Kaplan is arguing in At Wit’s End: The Deadly Discourse on the Jewish Joke. Kaplan’s book proves that not only are there still new things to be written about Jewish humor, but also that “Jewish humor” as a topic defies easy classification within a specific field or discipline. Additionally, Kaplan reminds us (importantly) that there are vital conversations to be had about Jewish humor that do not (or should not) involve the humor of the United States. Kaplan’s book offers a deep dive into the discourse around the Jewish joke in Germany from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. This study, Kaplan argues, “demonstrates how giving thought and earnest reflection to the meaning of the Jewish joke (as well as to its provocative laughter) provides an unusual and unique perspective by which one can gain insights into this deadly serious historical moment occupied with the Jewish question” (12). As such, this is not the German microcosm to recent macrocosmic looks at Jewish comedy. Although Kaplan references, and occasionally includes, Jewish jokes, his aim is to analyze the discourse around, and impact of these jokes. He argues that, “the collapse of a clear-cut distinction between Jewish self-irony and anti-Semitism troubles the work of any analyst who hopes to interpret these jokes in a straightforward or nonambivalent way” (219–220). Any analysis of the impact of Jewish jokes, especially those told by Jews, could easily devolve into victim blaming, or reifying the simplistic canard that such jokes are not “good for the Jews.” Kaplan, however, is careful never to allow the linkage between Jewish self-irony and anti-Semitism to become overdetermined. Kaplan structures his analysis around case studies, each from a moment in German history, in order to look at both a publication concerned with der jüdische Witz and the impact of or discussion around it. He begins (perhaps ill-advisedly) with a look at Arthur Trebitsch’s Geist and Judentum (Spirit and Judaism), the most well-known publication by the most well-known “Jewish anti-Semite.” Trebitsch made a career of excoriating and “exposing” Judaism [End Page 245] for the insidious cesspool he believed it to be. Although Trebitsch’s book is not primarily about Jewish jokes, he uses “Jewish wit” as an example of the ways in which Jewish culture was inferior to German culture. “Wit” for Trebitsch is not an expression of positive cleverness, but is instead proof of a craven, manipulative mind. Although beginning with Trebitsch makes sense for Kaplan’s progression, beginning the book with something that was not primarily about or concerned with jokes, and with a figure who is almost universally recognized as “bad for the Jews” starts the reader with an extreme example, which makes some of what comes after difficult to fit into the schema established by chapter one. Nevertheless, the book continues chronologically through the studies, and chapter two is an extraordinary work that brings something truly necessary to the conversation about Jewish humor. In this chapter Kaplan looks at Eduard Fuchs, who Kaplan describes as a “German neo-Marxist visual cultural historian and art collector” (60). This chapter is invaluable for two reasons. First, Kaplan identifies Fuchs as an example of “anti-Semitism of the left.” Fuchs’ case is an important reminder not only that bigotry and bias are not exclusive to right-wing circles, but also that left anti-Semitism is not a new phenomenon. Second, and more importantly, this chapter introduces art and art analysis to the conversation around Jewish jokes. Studies of Jewish humor are by nature multimedia affairs, but...