AVAILABLE NOW
Published March 1, 2023
Wayne State University Press
In this comprehensive approach to Jewish humor focused on the relationship between humor and American Jewish practice, Jennifer Caplan calls us to adopt a more expansive view of what it means to "do Jewish," revealing that American Jews have, and continue to, turn to humor as a cultural touchstone. Caplan frames the book around four generations of Jewish Americans from the Silent Generation to Millennials, highlighting a shift from the utilization of Jewish-specific markers to American-specific markers.
Public Heroes, Secret Jews:
Jewish Identity and Comic Books
Rachel Bloom’s gaping MAAW: Jewish women, stereotypes, and the boundary bending of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
American Jewish Humor
Praise for
“Funny, You Don’t Look Funny”
Jarrod Tanny, author, City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa
“Unlike most books on Jewish humor, Caplan’s innovative work explores the place of Judaism within humor itself, allowing Caplan to stay laser-focused on her topic. The reader will be enlightened and entertained as she tracks the evolution of this poorly understood facet of American comedy across four generations.”
Simon J. Bronner, author, Jewish Cultural Studies (Wayne State University Press, 2021)
a National Jewish Book Award winner
“You have undoubtedly heard that Jews are funny and, after all, so many iconic Jewish comedian writers are famous for their biting humor, right? Rather than take that sweeping assertion for granted, Jennifer Caplan writes insightfully about the story behind their stories through several generations of literary and film humor by iconic Jews who ‘made it’ in America. Her profound revelation is that humor as an intellectual and social frame for paradox offers a critical expression of generational difference in views of the role of Judaism in American culture. Her book is a provocative cultural history and at the same time a clarion call for future generations of a people connected to the joke as well as the book.”
Rachel Kranson, author,
Ambivalent Embrace:
Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America
“Funny, You Don’t Look Funny is a terrific volume, anchored by Jennifer Caplan’s sharp, innovative readings of American Jewish comedic work from the late twentieth century through the turn of the millennium. Training her lens on how these comics took on the Jewish religion, Caplan reveals that the comedic process has long been a vital form of religious interpretation for American Jews.”
Publishers Weekly
“This perceptive debut from Caplan, a Judaic studies professor at the University of Cincinnati, examines how “Jewish satire and American Judaism have interacted over the last half century.” Unpacking the works of Woody Allen, Rachel Bloom, and Nathan Englander, among others, Caplan argues that some Jewish authors of the Silent Generation, exemplified by Joseph Heller, displayed in their fiction an irreverence toward the faith while figures such as Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth demonstrated concern with Jewish people’s ambivalence about their heritage. Baby boomers, Caplan contends, served as a bridge between these sensibilities and those of Generation X, who tend to be skeptical of Jewish identity, as illustrated by Larry David’s depictions of the faithful as “liars and hypocrites” on his TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm. The discussion of millennial Jewish humor is more disjointed and offers fewer takeaways, among them the observation that younger Jewish people “are moving away from Israel and the Holocaust as the touchstones” of Judaism. The wide-ranging analysis skillfully synthesizes cultural themes from novels, films, and tweets, while the insightful takes illuminate what it means to be Jewish in America. The result is a discerning perspective on the recent evolution of American Jewish identity.“