Not all these jokes are Jewish, far from it, and the chances are that you’ve heard a few of them before. The joke about Hitler – surprisingly the only one – was almost certainly not originally a Jewish joke either, at least it wasn’t back in the 1970s when an earlier version was told by at least one British Gentile comedian. A few are a bit risqué – only a few? – but there are some that are clean enough and weak enough to have been told by Tommy Cooper, who would probably have delivered them in a similar style to Charlotte Bornstein, and to even more laughs.
These programmes are literally non-stop gags, so there is not really much to review without killing the surprise. Although he is both an old Jew and a comedian, Jackie Mason was noticeable by his absence, but none of those featured here were regular comedians, although some are no strangers to the media. Jonathan Avirom is an attorney; Judy Blotnick an artist, Lou Charloff a retired actor. No doubt though there are some people who will find some of the jokes herein not simply obscene, but potentially anti-Semitic, but let’s not talk about Abraham Foxman or his bunch of Kosher comedians.
[The above review was first published August 2, 2012 (UK time) not August 1 as shown here.]
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