Joan Rivers’ Most Jewish Comedy Moments
Getty Images
In the world of brassy, chutzpadik funny ladies, nobody has done it better and longer than Joan Rivers. The lady is a legend, a trailblazer, who made way for the candid, feminist humor of women like Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer and a whole generation of female comics who have the courage to get up on the stage and tell it like it is. As a woman, that is.
As we mourn Joan Rivers, we thought that it couldn’t hurt to revisit some classic moments in the comedian’s life. Because what better way is there to express our Joan love than to laugh at her jokes.
1) Joan on single girls and sexual double-standards. In 1967.
“The whole society is not for single girls. A man, he’s single, he’s so lucky. A boy on a date, all he has to be is clean and able to pick up a check and he is a winner.”
2) Joan tells a Holocaust joke.
“The last time a German looked this hot is when they were pushing Jews into the ovens.”
3) And then refuses to apologize.
“By my doing a joke it gets them talking, thinking.”
4) Joan on aging as a woman.
“Women as you get older, people get very angry with you.”
5) Joan and Sarah Silverman Talk About Funny Women and the Time Joan Got Kicked off a Live Television Show.
“I found, when I was still fertile, that men did not like a funny women in bed,” says Joan. “If I was a detective I would be like: crumpled up tissue…we know the person is Jewish,” says Sarah on Joan’s jacket.
6) Joan on giving birth.
“In my day having a child was better. They knocked you out with the first pain and woke you up when the hairdresser showed.” (1:55 – 2:55)
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30