Let There Be Laughter Quotes

“Excuse me, Mr. Kleinman,” Stein says. “I used to live around the corner, and forty years ago I left a pair of shoes with you for repair. Is it possible you still have them?” Kleinman looks at Stein and says, “Vas dey black ving tips?” Stein remembers and says, “Yes. They were!” “And you vanted a half sole mit rubber heels?” “Yes,” says Stein. “That is exactly what I wanted.” “And you vanted taps on the heels only?” “Yes!” says Stein. “Do you still have them?” Mr. Kleinman looks up at him, squints, and says, “Dey be ready Vendsday.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“And then there was Rodney Dangerfield telling us his mother wouldn’t breastfeed him. She only wanted to be friends.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Three modern rabbis are arguing about which of the three is the most progressive. “I am definitely the most progressive,” says the first rabbi. “We allow smoking during services.” “That’s nothing,” replies the second rabbi. “We serve pork spareribs during Yom Kippur.” “Not bad,” replies the third rabbi. “But I have you all beat. During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we post signs at my temple—closed for the holidays.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“When Henry Kissinger, then the U.S. secretary of state, declared that he was first an American, second secretary of state, and third a Jew, Golda Meir supposedly responded to him by saying, “That’s fine, Henry. But in Hebrew everything is written from right to left.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Israel is the only country in the world, according to Kishon, where patients give doctors advice, taxi drivers read Spinoza and Maimonides, and small talk is defined as a loud and angry debate over politics.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“A priest, a minister, and a rabbi, all friends, decide together to purchase new cars. The priest and the minister baptize their new cars, while the rabbi takes a hacksaw to his and cuts three inches off the tailpipe.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“A new Jewish Japanese restaurant opens. It’s called So Sue Me.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“A man is half-Jewish and half-Japanese. Every December 7, he attacks Pearl Schwartz.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“A dignified-looking Japanese gentleman, complete with top hat and walking stick, goes up to a Jewish woman in Manhattan and asks if she can tell him the best way to find the library. She looks him up and down, then says, “Pearl Harbor you could find, but you can’t find the library?”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Why are you reading that odious paper Der Stürmer?” The Jew answers, “I read the regular Jewish papers about pogroms, assimilation, riots in Palestine, and then I read Der Stürmer about how we Jews control politics and are taking over the world, and I feel much better.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Out of suffering, humor can emerge.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“as in the joke about the group of Hasids who show up to the Catholic ceremony of a nun being wed to Christ. They sit in the front row claiming they are relatives on the groom’s side.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“According to a Jewish headstone, “I told you I was sick.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize–winning Yiddish novelist, once told me: “Jews suffer from every disease except amnesia.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Following an especially arduous hike, the Russian says, “I’m tired and I’m thirsty. I must have vodka,” while the German says, “I’m tired and I’m thirsty. I must have beer,” and the Frenchman says, “I’m tired and I’m thirsty. I must have wine.” The Mexican says, “I’m tired and I’m thirsty. I must have tequila.” The Jew says, “I’m tired and I’m thirsty. I must have diabetes.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Two Texans are sitting on a plane going to Dallas with an old Jewish man sitting between them. The first Texan says, “My name is Roger. I own 250,000 acres. I have 1,000 head of cattle and they call my place the Jolly Roger.” The second Texan says, “My name is John. I own 350,000 acres. I have 5,000 head of cattle and they call my place Big John’s.” They both look down at the little old Jewish man, who says, “My name is Lenny Leibowitz and I own only 300 acres.” Roger looks down at him and says, “Three hundred acres? What do you raise?” “Nothing,” says Lenny. “Well then, what do you call it?” asks John. “Downtown Dallas.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“JESUS SAVES. MOSES INVESTS.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“A Jew suddenly finds himself by the entrance to a time machine, thrown back to Roman antiquity and placed inside a Roman galley, rowing with other slaves under a Roman soldier’s whip. The Jew turns to the slave next to him and asks, “How much are we supposed to tip the whipper?”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Two Texans are sitting on a plane going to Dallas with an old Jewish man sitting between them. The first Texan says, “My name is Roger. I own 250,000 acres. I have 1,000 head of cattle and they call my place the Jolly Roger.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Joan Rivers claimed she knew she was an unwanted child because the bath toys her parents gave her were a toaster and a hair dryer.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Jewish proverb: he that can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Woody Allen took stereotypes of Jewish cheapness to another level in his line “I’m very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Or the joke about the Israeli rowing team: one man rows while the others stand up in the boat yelling. Or the joke about the man who is flying on El Al, the Israeli airline, and is asked by the flight attendant if he wants dinner. He asks, “What are my choices?” The flight attendant says, “Yes or no.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Take the joke about the man with a clipboard who approaches an American, a Pole, a Russian, and an Israeli and says, “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I am taking a survey and I would like to know your opinion of the meat shortage.” The Pole asks, “What’s meat?” The Russian asks, “What’s an opinion?” The American asks, “What’s a shortage?” and the Israeli asks, “What’s ‘excuse me’?”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“the Jew who tells his friend he has completely shed his Jewish identity, when the two see a man resembling Quasimodo and the friend says, “And that guy says he’s not a hunchback”).”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“The definition of “chutzpah”? A kid who kills both his parents and pleads to a judge for leniency because he is an orphan.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“When the first man is done with his side of the story, the rabbi exclaims, “You’re right!” But then, after the second man concludes his side, the rabbi also exclaims, “You’re right!” Overhearing all this, the rabbi’s wife speaks up and says, “How can they both be right? They are in total disagreement.” The rabbi turns to his wife and says, “You’re right, too!”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“the Jewish immigrant taking an oral exam in his English as a Second Language class who is asked to spell “cultivate,” and spells it correctly. He is then asked to use the word in a sentence, and, with a big smile, responds: “Last vinter on a very cold day, I vas vaiting for a bus, but it was too cultivate, so I took the subway.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“Think, too, of the great stand-up comic Myron Cohen telling the joke about an older Jewish man in Miami who suffers a heart attack right on Collins Avenue and is helped to a stretcher by a young Jewish physician, who puts a pillow under the elderly man’s head and asks: “Are you comfortable?” The old Jew responds, with a Yiddish inflection, “I make a living.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity

“I inevitably think of the joke about the boy on the day of his bar mitzvah who is told he is now a man and will be connected from that day forward, for the rest of his life, to all previous generations. The kid responds: “Today I am a man. Tomorrow I return to the seventh grade.”
― Michael Krasny, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means – An NPR Host's Hilarious and Enlightening Collection Celebrating Comedy and Cultural Identity