No Joke: Making Jewish Humor with Ruth Wisse

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) Ruth Wisse, Professor of Yiddish Literature at Harvard University, discusses her book, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor. She broadly traces and celebrates modern Jewish humor but also asks difficult questions: Can the excess and extreme self-ridicule of Jewish humor go too far and backfire in the process? And is "leave 'em laughing" the wisest motto for a people that others have intended to sweep off the stage of history? Recorded on 04/14/2016. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 30867]