“I am a Jew. What about it?”

Comedy falters at the gates of hell.

A comedian who embodied a Jewish stereotype from which the sting of prejudice had been leached.

The nutty professor’s inner Gentile.

Thoughts from his latest biographer.

Pride without meaning or responsibility is a hollow sort of cool.

From innuendo in Genesis to grand irony in Jonah, humor forms an important and often overlooked element in the Hebrew Bible.

Ruth Wisse isn’t asking Jews to stop joking; but more than humor, she knows, is required to fend off their (dead-serious) enemies.

Old Odessa was tempting: a Vegas-like playground free of restrictions where “you can see the flames of hell.” But what does Odessa tell us. . .

Jews have justly become identified with humor and wit, often at their own expense. But is it something of which to be proud—and how proud?. . .

“I applaud the intellectual courage of [Ruth Wisse's No Joke], the breadth of her learning, the comprehensiveness of her ambitions, her unembarrassed declarations of pleasure. . .