Also, they’re tight in the apse.

My father waited tables in the Catskills in the early 40’s.  He stayed at the Nevele for his Honeymoon, and got to see Red Buttons perform.

I’ve seen all the great stand-ups — Menasha Skulnick, Myron Cohen, Jackie Mason, Alan King, Shecky Greene, Henny Youngman, Buddy Hackett, and even the newer guys like David Brenner.  I remember all their routines.

My father and I told jokes all the time, and would often just say the punchline, or the title.  Like, “the one about the Rabbi!”  We had dozens of rabbi jokes but we always knew exactly which joke we meant at the time.

One of my father’s favorite jokes was this one:

Guy goes into a clothing store, tries on a new pair of pants.  Tailor asks how they fit.

Man says, “Well, they kinda remind me of Trinity Church.”

Tailor says, “Trinity Church?  How could pants remind you of Trinity Church?”

Man says, “Well, you know the ballroom in Trinity Church?”

Tailor thinks for a moment.  Then he says, “There’s no ballroom in Trinity Church!”

Man says, “Same as these pants.”

Sometimes, my father would come out of the dressing room at Robert Hall and just say “Trinity Church!”

— sent in by Steven M. Brown, MD of Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The Gambler

My father came from a large family, not unusual for the early 1900’s, 4 boys and 4 girls. The oldest son, Phil, was truly a unique individual for the times. In family photographs, he was usually absent. When asked why, my father would say Phil was “away at school.”  That probably meant he was in some sort of trouble.

On my first day of high school, my math teacher asked if my father was Frank or Phil. “Frank,” I said.  “Oh, thank G-d,” was her response.

To all the nieces and nephews, Phil was everyone’s favorite uncle. His sense of humor, joke telling, and storytelling was as good as anyone we saw on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Most of his career was spent as a bartender, both in our home town of Buffalo NY, and later in Northern California. He was very successful at this probably because of his joke telling and listening skills.

One of my favorite jokes from Uncle Phil was one he told me in my early years, and it has stayed with me for all this time. I hope it reads as funny as it when he told alound with his gestures and delivery.

Jake Kaplan was a gambler.  He bet on everything: the ponies, numbers, sports, anything he could get odds on.  After a string of bad luck he was in hock to every bookie, relative and friend in town.

The only way out of his problem was to fake his own death.

Laid out in his casket, his friends, family and other acquaintances passed by to pay their respects.  Last in line was Lefty Horwitz, the biggest, meanest bookie who was owed a very large sum by Jake.

As Lefty reaches the casket, he leans over, pulls out a knife, and says to the deceased, “No one gets away this clean. I am going to take this knife and give you what you had coming to you.”

Suddenly Jake opens his eyes, and putting his finger to his lips, he says, “Shush, you I’ll pay.”

- sent in by Dennis Spiegelman of Los Angeles, California

Dance Jitters

I’m not sure if this is technically a joke or not, but it’s a true story from when I went to my very first dance in 6th grade.  My father, Irving Mont, was a great storyteller, and loved the limelight.  In his last few years in a retirement community he became the star of many of their musical productions. He grew up very poor, served in the Korean War, and then was a draftsman for forty some odd years.  My dad loved telling jokes but he also really enjoyed “ribbing me,” as he put it.  Anyway, I was a nervous wreck about my first dance, but somehow managed to survive it, though most of the night was spent gathering up enough courage to actually ask a girl to dance, and trying to look busy while snarfing down ginger ale and cookies.

When I got home, my father asked me, “So, did you drink any alcohol at this dance?”

“No, Dad.”

“Did you smoke any pot?”

“What?  Are you kidding? No.”

“Did you get laid?”

“No!!!”

He looked at me and said, “So what the hell did you go for?”

He thought it was hysterical.  I was scarred for years.

- sent in by Daniel Mont of Hanoi, Vietnam
(originally from Newark, New Jersey)

Highway Robbers

My grandmother, Charlotte Einhorn, was born in 1893 in Milowka, Poland, and came to the US in her teens.  After a bit of schnaps, she’d tell jokes in Yiddish — but she always had trouble finishing because she laughed uproariously at her own punchline.  I often begged her to translate the jokes I didn’t understand.  This was one of her best:

A recently widowed man and his daughter pack up all their worldly goods and possessions and start on their way, moving to a new town.  As they pass through the Carpathian Mountains, they are set upon by highway robbers.  The thieves take everything and the poor man, already bereft because of the loss of his wife, sits sobbing by the roadside.

His daughter puts her hand on his shoulder and says, “Papa, don’t cry.  They may have taken the horse, the cart, our furniture, and our clothes but I hid Mama’s jewelry you-know-where.”

At this, the father redoubles his sobbing and the daughter is perplexed.  She waits until he calms down a little and then she says, “Papa, I don’t understand.  I saved our most valuable possession — Mama’s jewels.”

“Vey iz mir,” replies her father, sobbing.  “If your mother had been here, she could have saved the cart.”

— sent in by Madeleine Sann of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Granny’s Cats

My Granny was born December 31, 1900 and passed away December 24, 2004.  She had an eighth grade education, and in 1938 her husband left her and her three children, disappearing for parts unknown.  My dad was a year old at the time.

Granny started a jewelry stringing business (called Woodman’s, which was her sister’s husbands name — she felt that Gertsacov was far too ethnic) and did jewelry work well into her 90’s.  Her brand of expertise in pearl stringing was legendary, and some of the finest jewelry shops still sent their most precious stuff to her.   Jewelry stringing is a lost art.  She strung the pearls of many society ladies, politicians’ wives, and gangsters’ molls — she did them all.

Granny always came off as kind of a hard person.  She lived a hard life through the Depression, but she loved several jokes that she told and re-told through the years.  She liked these because they were clever, had word-play, and you had to understand in order to get it.  She didn’t like slapstick and physical comedy that much, which is kind of surprising, since I ended up as a professional clown and performer.  She saw me perform several times, and always said “Marvelous, Marvelous.”  But I don’t think she ever really loved it.  Ah well.

Here are a couple of her favorites: (some of them are more along the lines of a little routine she would do.  She was a woman of routines.)

About a person who was a chatterbox:  “She is a woman of VERY FEW WORDS.”

On getting into a car to go home:  “Home, James, and don’t spare the Hosses.”

If you were feeling ill:  “You’ve got to go home and get into bed with a nurse.”

And this was probably her favorite joke:

I know a woman who sleeps with cats.
Now ask me who it is.

(the person asks, who is it?)

Mrs. Katz!

(pause)

and sometimes Mrs. Nussbaum.

— sent in by Adam Gertsacov of Providence, Rhode Island

The Shvitz

My father took me to the “Shvitz” once when I was sixteen years old.  It was the first time he saw me stark naked, as an almost-adult.  He looked me up and down, and offered me this advice: “Son, marry a girl with tiny hands.”

— sent in by Paul Cohen, who was born in Brooklyn in 1943

You Say Tomato …

True story:

My dad’s parents were from Europe and, of course, spoke Yididsh, and my dad was fairly fluent. My mom’s parents were both born in the States and knew no Yiddish to speak of.

One day my mother’s dentist (who was also Jewish) told her a joke about a nafke, to which my mom replied, “that’s what Manny always calls me!”

The dentist was shocked by this, and the next time he saw my folks at a social function, he mentioned it to my Dad, who replied, “No, I call her zaftig!”

A slight difference!

— Steve Hinds (age 72)
Seminole, FL

Special Food

My Zayde passed a year ago — a wryly humored man who carried his spark and joie de vivre through all of his nearly 90 years. While I can’t remember him telling jokes, I can assure you that he was a source of great humor. Indeed, he used to tell me, “He who can laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.”

One story, in particular, comes to mind. My grandparents had an English Cocker Spaniel named Streudle who developed an abiding love for Jewish cuisine. Really — this canine consumed more chopped liver than the Rabbi (though Zayde consumed more than the whole congregation). As she aged, Streudle grew increasingly obese and had to be placed on special diet dog chow, which required refrigeration. My grandmother kept it in an old yogurt container (she did this with everything — why waste money on Tupperware?). The dog hated this food. She would stare at you when you tried to feed it to her — with these big, mournful, supplicating eyes — as if to say, “What is this chazzerai?”

Zayde was less discerning when possessed by hunger in the middle of the night. Nocturnally ravenous one particular evening, Zayde snuck downstairs.

Now, you know where this is going. But stay with me here, because I’ve devoted some real thought to this. I think most people, hungry at 3 AM, turn over and go back to bed. Having said that, the Earth is a populous place, we all sleep, and, in a busy world, we frequently skip meals. So I imagine that a good number of people indeed saunter off to the kitchen to satiate their hunger or indulge their cravings. Now, dogs are worldwide the most popular pet – surely some get pretty fat and require special, refrigerated, dog food. And, with only 24 hours in a day, adequately labeling containers probably takes a backseat to any number of things. Add to this that for whatever reason – laziness, not wanting to wake others, reducing your carbon footprint — these midnight jaunts to the kitchen are, by and large, dimly lit.

So you can imagine that a decently large number of individuals must end up, at some point in their lives, startlingly close to gorging themselves on a container of Purina Fit and Trim. Most probably give it a good shmeck and come to their senses. But inevitably some must take a bite before realizing their folly. Yet others may learn their lesson a bissel further down the road to “your pet’s ideal body condition, heart health and increased mobility.” Ultimately, after due reflection, I realize that my Zayde may not even be the only person to actually finish the container.

But, I am still pretty sure that Zayde is the only one to compliment his wife on “the fine new mandlen recipe” in the morning.

Zei gezunt – in his 89 years, that was the only diet food my Zayde ever ate.

— Adam Jack Gomolin
San Francisco, CA

The Frugal Traveller

My dad told many jokes that were double entendres. He was like a taller version of Rodney Dangerfield, although not as self-deprecating, and he did not insult others.

He told his jokes in front of me, his only child, born when he was 43 years old. I didn’t get them at first, but as I grew older and remembered them, I would understand and burst out laughing. He died at age 59, when I was just 16 years old.

Here is one joke I heard him tell when I was very young:

Everyone knows the word, “frugal.” “Frugal” means “to save.” A beautiful princess was lost in the woods and she thought she would die. Suddenly, a prince on a white horse came riding through the trees. “Oh, sweet prince,” she called to him. “Frugal me!” So he “frugaled” her, and they lived happily ever after.

A few years later, I was in 6th grade. I was young for the grade since I had skipped 4th grade, and generally quite naïve as an only child. My teacher had the class read and memorize a famous poem about books. Here is how it went:

There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away.
Nor any courser like a page of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take, without oppressive toll.
How frugal is the chariot that bears a human soul.

The teacher, a silver-haired spinster, asked if anyone knew what “frugal” meant. I raised my hand and told my father’s “story.” My recitation was met with silence.

Later that week, I was riding in the car with my dad driving. I proudly told my parents that I knew something no one else knew in my class, because of my dad’s story. “What story was that?” he asked. I told the whole thing, poem and frugal story and all, and when my dad heard it, he started laughing in a way I had never heard before, a huge, booming “Ho, ho, ho.” The car swerved around the road while he laughed and laughed, and I knew there was something more to the story than I originally thought.

— Suzanne Leichtling,
daughter of Joseph Fischer
New York, NY

A Vest Pocket History of Klezmer Music

It’s very likely that if the people here telling the jokes first heard them at a hotel in New York’s Catskills region — the Borscht Belt as it was lovingly called — then it’s likely that they also heard the music which opens and closes the segment of the jokes they tell so well.

Klezmer, old time traditional Yiddish dance music was the soundtrack of Ashkenazi Jewry for generations.  Wherever people spoke Yiddish they danced to this music at untold weddings, bar mitzvahs and life cycle events. “A wedding without musicians is like a wedding without a bride.”

Klezmer, (the word comes from the Aramaic  “kley” “zemer” or “musical instruments”) is a musical roadmap telling us where we lived who we played for and what we played on. Fiddles, ‘cellos and hammered dulcimers were the hot instruments of the Middle Ages until replaced by military band instruments in the 19th century, chief among them, the trumpet and clarinet.

Packed alongside prayer shawls, feather beds and family photos albums, klezmer music jumped the Atlantic and became the accompanying music to émigré Jews who made America their home in the decades after the Civil War.  Here, mixed with the exuberant and brassy sound of American ragtime and early jazz, klezmer, now on records, radio and in numerous Yiddish theaters, soon joined the banjo, slide trombone and the sax — its new American cousins — alongside the older more venerable instruments of the band.

As the old dances disappeared they were replaced by a snappier and more “with it” sound: in the 1930s klezmer became “Yiddish Swing” while all America danced to “Bei Mir Bistu Sheyn” a Yiddish theater love song.

But American tastes were changing. After World War II, all attention turned to Israel and its attendant new culture and the old melodies from a now-destroyed world seemed quaintly irrelevant.  It was only the uptick of Holocaust survivors who came to America who still cherished that nearly vanquished culture who kept it alive in the 50s and 60s but with whose own passing that world nearly slipped away.

But in the last 30 years a new generation of musicians — many born after World War Two — have again taken up the exuberant klezmer music of their ancestors playing it with a self possession and sense of ownership that almost makes it seem like it had never nearly died out.  From Brooklyn to Berlin and beyond, klezmer has transcended its modest roots to become one of the hottest music on the World Music stage.

And what does it prove, but, that like a good old joke, klezmer music can easily transcend the era in which it was created to reach a new and endlessly appreciative audience.

— Henry Sapoznik
Visiting Scholar on Yiddish and American popular culture,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
producer of “Dave Tarras’ B flat Bulgars”
(intro music to Old Jews Telling Jokes)