Have I Got a Cartoon for You! The Moment Magazine Book of Jewish Cartoons

Former Cartoon and Humor Editor for both Esquire & The New Yorker magazines, Bob Mankoff collects his favorite Jewish cartoons, and writes an introduction on the place of cartoons in the vibrant history of Jewish humor, and plumbs Jewish thought, wisdom and shtick for humorous insights.

Mankoff has written: “I always think that it’s strange that the Jews, The People of the Book, eventually became much better known as The People of the Joke. Strange because laughter in the Old Testament is not a good thing: When God laughs, you’re toast. If you say, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” he does for good. If there is any influence Jewish culture has on my cartoons about religion, it’s the disputatiousness of the that culture, the questioning everything just for the hell of it and then the questioning of the questioning to be even more annoying. When, I was first dating my wife, who is not Jewish, we once were having what I thought was an ordinary conversation and she said, “Why are you arguing with me?” I replied, “I’m not arguing, I’m Jewish.” I thought that was clever. She didn’t. Some humor scholars claim this stems from the practice in the Talmud of pilpul, which Leo Rosten described as “unproductive hair-splitting that is employed not so much to radiate clarity … as to display one’s own cleverness…”I go along with that except I like to think that some clarity and cleverness are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, that’s my aim in cartoons like these. Now, am I worried that these jokes would bring His wrath down upon me down with a bolt from the blue. Not really, but every time there’s a thunderstorm, I hide in the cellar.”