Point, Click, Chuckle: Jewish Humor Goes Online
From riddles and one-liners to satires and comic strips, the Internet’s trove of Jewish humor goes on and on. This is instant gratification at its best, funnies at your fingertips. Even biographies of your favorite laugh masters have gone digital. The following is a short guide to Jewish knock-knock’s on the Web:
JEWHOO! (www.jewhoo.com): For a who’s who guide to Jewish comedians, search this catalog of funny men and women, from Milton Berle to Ali G. Want to know Woody Allen’s name before he changed it? Check this site, a self-described parody of Yahoo! that also features Jewish actors and entertainers.
THE KNISH (www.theknish.com): With “all the Jews that’s fit to print,” this site delivers news à la The Onion and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” Don’t be the only one who didn’t hear that overfishing has placed gefilte fish on the endangered species list, or that all kosher Chinese restaurants are reportedly booked for Christmas Eve through 2067.
BANGITOUT (www.bangitout.com): Since 2000, this Jewish satire site has been delivering their Kosher Top Ten with hilarious precision. Created as a place where Jews can laugh at themselves, you can find a father’s application to find a date for his daughter, or the 10 ways you know you are at a Jewish Thanksgiving meal. (#8: Leftover vegetable kugel is suddenly titled “stuffing.”)
‘JEWISH HUMOR’ YAHOO! GROUP (http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/ JewishHumor): As long as your quip makes moderator David Grossman laugh, share it with almost 400 members of a group who don’t always distinguish between groan-worthy and funny. These jokes are family oriented, and poke fun at modern Jewish life. Why did the man getting an aliya say his name was Sarah bat Moshe? He’s having financial trouble and put everything in his wife’s name.
A WORD IN YOUR EYE (www.awordinyoureye.com): For encyclopedic volumes of jokes, speeches and lateral-thinking puzzles, this U.K.-based site is it. More kosher-style than kosher, highlights of about 1,370 jokes include digs about subject such as getting older, rabbis and priests, and of course, Jewish mothers. (Question: What did the Jewish mother say when her daughter told her she was having an affair? Answer: Who’s catering?)
SH’KOYACH (www.shkoyach.com): This site features the comic-strip life of Dave, a mild-mannered Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, and Shrimp, the temperamental and sometimes obnoxious shrimp that lives with him. As this pair navigates life, lighting Hanukkah menorahs without catching fire and calling a rabbinic hotline to ask a halachic question, you’ll have trouble keeping a straight face.
Jennifer Siegel contributed to this report.
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