Recommended Reading: Books by Telushkin and Prager

Just finished reading two books on Jews and Judaism. The first, Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews, is written by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. Published in 1992, this is one of countless books on Jewish humor (a simple Google search, "books on Jewish humor," generated 2.4 million results), not to mention Telushkin's own annotated bibliography (63 items). 

As one would expect, the book is sprinkled with very funny stories, so if you wanted to skim the book for humor alone, you wouldn't be disappointed. But Telushkin obviously has a point to make, as he says in his introductory comments ("Jewish humor reveals a great many truths about the Jews, but no one great truth"), so he takes the reader through various characteristics that typify the Jewish experience, chapter by chapter, illustrating but also commenting upon, so that the humor is almost an afterthought. The characteristics he focuses on in this book are family, logic, business ethics, materialism, self-deprecation, sex, antisemitism, assimilation, intermarriage, religion. The book is engaging, interesting, informative, well-documented, insightful, and, at times, laugh out loud funny. 

The other book I read, co-authored by Joseph Telushkin and radio personality Dennis Prager, is called Why the Jews? The Reason for Anti-Semitism. Originally published in 1983, it was recently updated (2003) to reflect the current political climate, not only in the United States, but in the Middle East, as well. The thesis of the book is clear: Unlike other forms of bigotry, Jew hatred is "an inevitable consequence" of Jewishness, specifically, God, Torah, Israel, and Chosenness. The authors' stated purpose in writing this book is to counter the attempt by modern historians to "dejudaize" Jew hatred by lumping anti-Semitism together with racism of other types. 

Part One of the book provides an explanation for Jew hatred, focusing particularly on the role the Jews played in introducing what the authors refer to as "ethical monotheism," i.e., one God, one higher set of morals. From the very beginning, the Hebrew religion ran counter to the religious, cultural, and sexual mores of other groups: "By affirming what they [the Jews] considered to be the one and only God of all humankind, thereby implying illegitimacy to everyone else's gods, the Jews entered history--and have often been since--at war with other people's most cherished beliefs" (page 8).

Part Two traces the history of anti-Semitism, beginning with the ancient world (Greece and Rome), continuing into the 4th century and through the Middle Ages, Christian persecution of Jews (painful to read) which, the authors claim, laid the foundation for the Holocaust; Islamic anti-Semitism which continues to this day; secular anti-Semitism, i.e., the Enlightenment, in France, Germany, and England; Leftist anti-Semitism, beginning with Karl Marx, who was himself a descendant of a long line of rabbis but was a virulent anti-Semite, and continuing with the French socialists, communist, Soviet and leftist anti-Semitism, which, ironically is espoused even by Jews; and finally, Nazi anti-Semitism, which, of them all, is the only form of anti-Semitism that is actually race-based. All the other manifestations allowed for the conversion and/or assimilation of Jews, which brought an end to the persecution; Hitler, by contrast, believed you could "never take the Jew out of the Jew." Hence, the "Final Solution." After the Holocaust, although anti-Semitism went underground thanks to the efforts of many in the west to organize (Anti Defamation League, for example), it manifests itself today not as anti-Jew but as anti-Israel: "To hide their anti-Semitism, enemies of the Jews nearly always use the word 'Zionist' when they mean Jew," write the authors (page 157).

Part Three, "What is to be Done?", offers five solutions for dealing with anti-Semitism, only one of which, the authors concede, is realistic, which is for the Jews to do what they were always expected to do: "resume their original task of spreading ethical monotheism" (page 190), the very thing that elicits such hatred. The irony is not lost on the authors. 

I read this book once, marked it up aplenty, and hope to read it again. There is much to be learned, unlearned, and relearned. I am ignorant of world and religious history, a slow, methodical learner. But I intend to keep at it, page by page.