Better to laugh than to cry.
Yiddish Proverb

Every year, Sam Arno, a French-Moroccan Jewish guy with an attitude gathers a group of young Jewish comedians together to present THE NEW JEW REVUE the Saturday after Thanksgiving at the Dark Room in the Mission district in San Francisco. I caught the show because I was curious to see if New Jewish Comedy could hold a candle to the classic comedians that amused me when I was young. I was brought up on all-time greats like Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, George Burns and Bob Hope. Those are pretty tough acts to follow.

The seven comedians in the show were delightful and all under thirty-five.

Their humor was outrageous as well it should be. Yet, even as I laughed when Chelsea Peretti defined the difference between allowing a guy to pay for dinner and prostitution and Sam Arno insisted that his Moroccan roots entitled him to be a first generation African-American, there was something very Jewish that was missing.

These young comedians made fun of all the topics comedians always discuss:
sex, relationships, frustrations with daily life and personal inadequacies, but not one of them talked about their mothers.

A woman from Walnut Creek once said to me, “I am so humiliated by all the jokes about Jewish mothers,” and I answered, ”Why? All those stories paint a picture of immense concern for your children. No Jewish child ever doubts that he is loved.”

Who else but a Jewish mother would starve herself so her mouth wouldn’t be full when her son telephoned her? What other mother calls her child so many pet names that he doesn’t know his real name until he enters kindergarten?

Is there a goishe mama in the world so nurturing that she doesn’t allow her son to walk because it might wear him out?

Although these new Jewish comedians talked about gay marriage and dysfunctional families, not one of them explored food. How can anyone Jewish AVOID discussing food? Eating is our recreation, our excuse for schmoozing with one another. When I was a child, we gathered around the kitchen table at dinner and told stories well into the night. Relatives and friends would drop by and have a glass’l tea or schnecken with coffee and regale us all with ridiculous stories of rabbis who changed their teeth for Passover and Yeshiva bokher’s who looked like nebbishes but were their parents’ pride and joy. Jewish foods in themselves are as much fun to laugh about as they are to eat. Take the bagel: that round cement circle that you had to soften with cream cheese lest it break your dentures. Consider leftovers… they are all you get in a good Jewish home. No self respecting baleboste throws out food.

What is Jewish humor without remarks about latkes, tsimmis and the reassuring effect of eating kreplach at sundown on Yom Kippur so it can repeat on you all the next day? How can anyone Jewish NOT talk about Jewish waiters so independent they make the customer feel they are doing HIM a favor to serve him?

I listened to these savvy young comedians and I realized that New Judaism has taken a giant step out of the hang-ups that haunted my generation.

Jewish women who don’t find husbands do not run to a marriage broker. They have such profitable, stimulating careers that they might WANT a man, but they don’t NEED him. My generation of women saved themselves for their husbands. This one would not consider such a thing. It has taken the best of the past and combined it with the freedom of the present.

New Jewish men share parenting with their wives. Howard Stone, one of our new Jewish comedians calls himself a comic, a storyteller and a mother.

My own father rarely was home before I went to bed, so involved was he in business, golf and community service.

The new Jews are proud of their Jewishness. It enhances their lives. As Jacob Siroff said, “Jewish people don’t think they are better than everyone else. But fortunately for them, God does.”