Description:
1. This book is the first English translation of two collections of Jewish jokes that are over 200 years old.
2. The collections of jokes have been carefully annotated by the editor and a few other major scholars of folklore and humor. The editor has also written critical contextualizing material that set the joke books into their historical context.
3. The editor's work on jokes and humor has been highly influential in the field. This book is an exciting bridge between two major areas of research and publication: Folklore and Jewish Studies.
Review Quotes:
"As a reference text, both Oring's analysis and Lang's translation will prove to be invaluable to scholars looking for the etiology of a certain comic trope, or those trying to trace the history of certain comedic ideas."--Reading Religion
"The First Book of Jewish Jokes is an interesting hybrid: a joke book that offers a glimpse of what was considered funny in the past and two excellent essays by Oring that place the jokes into historical context. Readers interested in Jewish folklore and those curious about the nature of Jewish humor in the 19th century will find this work of interest."--The Reporter Group
"All told, this is an excellent piece of scholarship. . .it can serve as a capstone to Elliott Oring's lifetime project on understanding the joke and the Jewish joke in particular. "--Western Folklore
"The translation of [these works]...shed[s] light on the beginning of collection and scholarship of a genre that...contributes more than other Jewish folklore genres to the understanding of Jewish culture."--Haya Bar-Itzhak, author of Israeli Folk Narratives: Settlement, Immigration, Ethnicity
"Oring . . . provides readers with an opportunity to test his ideas about Jewish jokes on a rich set of empirical material. Going back to one of the first known sources of Jewish jokes, he helps us to trace their genesis."--European Journal of Humour Research
"The title The First Book of Jewish Jokes may seem to indicate that this book is a joke collection. It is, but it is also a complex, demanding work, rich in context and interpretation, engaging and compelling."--Steve Siporin, Folklore
"The present volume contains a complete critical edition of both works, translated from the German by Michaela Lang and annotated with analogs from other Jewish joke collections. Elliott Oring has added a concordance of texts that Büschenthal took from Ascher and two lengthy introductory chapters discussing the collection and its author and describing the social and political life of European Jews in Büschenthal's day. . . . Perhaps the most significant question that Oring addresses in this work is this: "Why did Jews adopt the joke genre as a symbol of their nationhood" (7)? Büschenthal's project was meant, as his subtitle put it, as "a contribution to the characterization of the Jewish nation," intended to both showcase Jewish distinctiveness and humanize their image."--Moira Marsh, Indiana University, Journal of Folklore Research