Cantankerously Yours
Humor, It Shouldn’t Get Lost
By Wendell Abern
Editor’s note: Second in a series devoted to recapturing humor that might perish forever without some gentle reminding.
Dear Comedophiles,
Please examine the above headline. Its unusual construction typifies Hebonics, or Jewish English, and illustrates the patois used in much of Jewish humor – a unique genre that I fear may soon disappear altogether,
According to Howard Schollman, linguistics professor at New York University and renowned Hebonics scholar, the sentence structure of Hebonics derives from middle and eastern European language patterns, as well as Yiddish.
In Hebonics, according to Schollman, the response to any question is usually another question – plus a complaint. Thus, “How are you?” may be answered, “How should I be, with my feet?”
Another Hebonics pattern, used in the headline to this column, moves the verb to the end of the sentence. The example Schollman gives: “He’s slow as a turtle,” in Hebonics could be, “Turtle, shmurtle! Like a fly in Vaseline he walks.”
In his very funny mini-dictionary of Yiddish words, “Yiddish for Yankees,” (with the engaging subtitle of, “Funny, You Don’t Look Gentile),” Martin Marcus uses the Hebonic form liberally in providing definitions:
“Klutz. A clumsy oaf. A guest who sits on your antique
coffee table and breaks the legs, she should break her
own legs once.”
Hebonics is funny even though it was never intended to be. It’s simply the natural way Jewish immigrants distorted English and adapted it to their own linguistic forms.
Schollman captured this unintended humor in his textbook on the subject, entitled, “Switched-on Hebonics.” A few examples:
Question: What time is it?
English answer: Sorry, I don’t know.
Hebonic answer: What am I, a clock?
Answer to a phone call from son:
English remark: It’s been a long time since you called.
Hebonic remark: You didn’t wonder if I’m dead yet?
Jewish comedians in the early part of the Twentieth Century recognized the fractured English they heard at family gatherings as funny, and turned home conversations into comedy routines. Complete with heavy accents.
If you wanted to sound as humorous as Uncle Herman or Aunt Bertha, you used their accents: “Vot, ve’re so vealthy ve’ll wacation by the Riwiera? Ve’ll go by the beach right here, the sun should only shine.”
Hebonics peppered the works of George Jessel, Milton Berle, Myron Cohen, George Burns, Jack Benny and other Jewish comedians throughout vaudeville’s heyday.
But the long story-telling jokes that were the heart of comedy routines through the Twenties began to vanish in the early Thirties, and are practically non-existent today. For example:
A young Jewish man tells his mom he has fallen in love and is going to get married. “Just for fun,” he says, “I’m going to bring over three
women and you try to guess which one I’m going to marry.” The next
day, he brings three women to the house, has them chat for a while, then lets his mother guess which one he’ll marry. Immediately, she replies, “The one on the right.” The son says, “Ma, that’s amazing! How did you know?” The mother says, “I don’t like her.”
Today’s Jewish comedians, whose venues are limited to comedy clubs and cable shows like “Comedy Central,” would tell that joke in 60 seconds.
But George Jessel or Myron Cohen would take seven minutes to tell the same joke, and their narration would somehow include asides on tight skirts, someone’s bald uncle with peptic ulcers and a bad case of Poison Ivy in someone’s nether regions.
Also, in vaudevillian routines, the comedian improvised, describing his main characters differently each time he told the same gag. Example:
First time: “Beautiful she vas, and zaftig too, vich means woluptuous, vid a bosom out to Pallum Beach.”
Second time: “Vas a beauty, okay, could stand to lose a few pounds, vouldn’t kill her.”
What a crime this engaging art form has virtually disappeared! Two big factors contributed to its demise: assimilation and broadcast technology.
Today’s Jewish population is part of the fabric of this country. We are all third and fourth generation Americans now. The huge influx of Jewish immigrants in the last part of the 19th, and early part of the 20th Centuries has slowed to a trickle.
How long since you heard anyone speak with an accent? How long since you even heard a joke told with a Jewish accent? Assimilation, unfortunately, squelched the very humor it created.
And broadcast technology dressed it up differently.
While radio, and later television, spread this ethnic form of humor from Jewish homes to the rest of the world, it also changed the form.
Once vaudeville’s comedians moved into broadcast, long story-telling jokes morphed into one-liners in order to jack up ratings.
The entire broadcast world is controlled by research companies who monitor our viewing (and previously listening) habits. In order to achieve good ratings, a sitcom must create a laugh every other line.
The sad irony of today’s comedic landscape is that the very technology that helped spread ethnic humor from Jewish homes to the rest of the world, is now absorbing it from the rest of the world and putting it back into Jewish homes.
Jewish humor today exists primarily on the Internet.
New Jewish jokes today circulate on computers, e-mailed from one Jewish family member to another, from one Jewish friend to another. I wonder how many of my non-Jewish friends received the e-mail headed,
“If Their Mothers Were Jewish.” Funny piece, capturing both the doting and demanding natures of Jewish mothers. To wit:
Christopher Columbus’ mother: “I don’t care what you discovered, you never call, you never write …”
Mona Lisa’s mother: “After all the money your father and I spent on braces, that’s the biggest smile you could give?”
Michelangelo’s mother: “Can’t you just paint on walls like other children? Do you know how hard it is to get that stuff off the ceiling?”
* * *
As I stated earlier, Jewish humor may disappear altogether. Though
I shudder at the prospect, I am also guardedly optimistic. I pin my hopes on the technology that brought this unique form out of Jewish homes, then put it back there again. Also, I have faith it will be kept alive by others as concerned as I am.
After all, this type of humor, it shouldn’t get lost.
Cantankerously Yours,
Wendell Abern
Wendell Abern can be reached at [email protected].