Ruth Wisse writes in her 2014 book:
* The young man was most disagreeably surprised when the proposed bride was introduced to him, and drew aside the shadkhen — the marriage broker — to whisper his objections: “Why have you brought me here?” he asked reproachfully. “She’s ugly and old, she squints, and has bad teeth …” “You needn’t lower your voice,” interrupted the broker, “she’s deaf as well.”
Two Jews meet in a railway carriage at a station in Galicia. “Where are you going?” asks one. “To Cracow,” replied the other. “What a liar you are!” objects the first. “If you say you’re going to Cracow, you want me to believe you’re going to Lemberg. But I know that in fact you’re going to Cracow. So why are you lying to me?”
A schnorrer, who was allowed as a guest into the same house every Sabbath, appeared one day in the company of an unknown young man who was about to sit down at the table. “Who is this?” asked the householder. “He’s my new son – in – law,” the schnorrer replied. “I’ve promised him his board for the first year.”
* Freud put up with anti – Semitism in much the same way that he accepted civilization with its discontents (to paraphrase the title of one of his most famous works). 6 He therefore welcomed joking as a compensatory pleasure — the expressive venting of people who lived under the double weight of their own disciplining heritage and the collective responsibility to behave well among the nations. Herzl, in contrast, wanted to alleviate anti – Semitism for the betterment of Europe as well as the Jews.
…At issue here is the degree to which the two men’s approval of Jewish wit was proportional to their respective plans, if any, for Jewish rescue.
