Is this kosher?

The other week I went to see the "truly terrifying" Ghost Stories at the Duke of York's Theatre on St Martin's Lane (for free London theatre tickets go here if you're under 26!). The play features Nicolas Burns from Nathan Barley and is not that scary!

Anyway, at one point a joke was told to highlight people's differing perceptions of situations to help explain the concept of PAREIDOLIA, the psychological phenomenon where vague/random stimuli are perceived as being significant.

The joke went something like this:

A Frenchman, a Scotsman and a Jew are all in the desert. The Frenchman says, "I'm so tired and thirsty, I must have wine!". The Scotsman says, "I'm so tired and thirsty, I must have Scotch!" and the Jew says, "I'm so tired and thirsty, I must have diabetes!"

Now, in my subsequent retelling of this joke, I was met with a range of reactions.

One friend of Jewish heritage said in an email, "Yeah that's really funny because we're all neurotic and have big noses".

It's difficult to accurately gauge tone from emails, but I read this as world-weary sarcasm, along the lines of "How hilarious, yet another propagation of a crass generalisation about Jewish people". Now, I fully sympathise with this interpretation, but I think that it misses the point of the joke!

Firstly, I want to start by talking about the JEWISH/NEUROSIS stereotype. I know around ten people who would describe themselves as being of Jewish heritage and I wouldn't describe any of them as having the defining characteristic of neurosis. So where does my understanding of this come from?


Almost exclusively from Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the films of Woody Allen.

In this funny interview, Larry David and Ricky Gervais talk about neurosis being one of the hallmarks of Jewish comedy. This is illustrated by a scene from Annie Hall, where Woody Allen's character Alvy Singer says "Don't you see the rest of the country looks on New York like we're left-wing communist Jewish homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here!"


Note that the people I've mentioned are American and, more specifically, from New York City (although Curb Your Enthusiasm is set in LA). I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of this theme, but I'm talking expressly about my own experiences. What I'm trying to say is that I associate the JEWISH/NEUROSIS stereotype specifically with New York Jewish comedians, and as such it is a WEAK stereotype in my mind.

In other words, the propagation of this generalisation is NOT enough to make me laugh, yet I still find this joke really funny. Why?

Because I'm laughing at the absurdity which arises when a base-level joke such as the ENGLISHMAN/IRISHMAN/SCOTSMAN one tries to deal with the relatively complex concept of neurosis.

This joke is usually used in England to portray Irish people as being stupid (a generalisation that PWEI does not reflect!). Interestingly this format of joke is used all around the world – Wikipedia cites combinations such as Dutchman/German/Belgian and Swede/Dane/Norwegian.

When this is replaced by the more subtle idea of portraying Jewish people as neurotic, the joke's limitations are exposed, and it's funny!

Also, I love the contrast brought to mind between STUPIDITY and NEUROSIS. Calling someone a neurotic is really not that much of an insult!

I'm aware that it's not particularly funny to analyse a joke in this way – for more on this, see this article by Charlie Brooker, but I wanted to stand up for this one, because it's just the kind of subtle subversion that makes me laugh.

But even if the premise of the joke isn't racist, that doesn't necessarily mean the joke isn't offensive. You could say that the subversion of humour doesn't excuse the propogation of a crass stereotype, however mild. What do you think? Let's generate debate and maybe we can achieve CULTURAL UNITY...



IN OTHER NEWS, SPOTTED: A youth on St John's Road, SW11, teaming Barbour countrywear with sports-casual tracksuit bottoms. He has GONE BEYOND. Sadly target evaded capture on camera. Send your CULTURECLASH photos to popwilleatitself@live.com!