Tom Teicholz tellsJewish jokes Let us quote from sacred text: the 2005 Emmy Award acceptance speech by “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart. Spaketh Stewart: “When I first said that I wanted us to put together a late-night comedy writing team that would only be 80 percent Ivy League-educated Jews, people thought I was crazy. They […]

David Mamet has written a book, “The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred and the Jews” (Shocken/Nextbook), that is by turns bold, courageous, and outrageous — it is a book that calls Diaspora Jews to the table and asks: “In or Out?” “The underlying premise of the book,” Mamet told me recently, “is to all Jews: If […]

When Israel is discussed these days, more often than not it is in terms of an existential crisis, or “the situation,” or as the subject of international news headlines. However, reading recently published works by three different Israeli fiction authors, Etgar Keret, Benjamin Tammuz and A.B. Yehoshua, is a bracing reminder that there is an […]

To meet him, you might think Steven Rubin is a normal person. Tall, handsome, happily married with young children, he is personable, affable — in short, one of the gentlest and nicest guys you could meet. But he is a man obsessed with war — World War II to be precise. Recently, Rubin launched www.ww2daily.com, […]

“Hannah Montana,” a Disney Channel program I watch on occasion with my daughter, features a 14-year-old girl with a secret identity: she’s actually a rock star. This is an absurd fantasy. In real life, the rock star at my daughter’s school is a mom. Although she leads a double life, it is no secret. Her […]

The fall season is upon us, with new books, movies and TV programs all vying for our attention as palliatives to the news of war, terrorism and melting ice caps. Even as the days get shorter and our own day of judgment looms imminent, we wonder: Is there a hero out there who can set […]

Here’s Marty Kaplan blogging on Huffington Post about suggested treatments for Mel Gibson’s “problem”: “‘Jew Like Me’ is another strategy. Walk a mile in my shoes. Gain 10 pounds at my table. Wait two hours after lunch before swimming. Laugh that ironic meta-laugh right along with us when Jon Stewart says, ‘Jewey.’ Sensitize yourself to […]

“The King of popular comedy is dead,” proclaimed Le Figaro after Gerard Oury, one of France’s most successful directors (if not its most successful) died on Thursday, July 20, at his home in St. Tropez. I know Oury’s work because as a teenager I went with my mother to New York’s 68th Street Playhouse, an […]

In college, I wrote the same literature essay over and over again. Regardless of the novel, its plot or its country of origin, I found that I could always work up four pages on the subject of “Life vs. Death.” My ideas on this subject were not particularly original. In a high school English class, […]

For the 20th anniversary issue of The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, it was suggested that I write a column about Jewish journalism. Herewith the result: Jewish journalism is a much-maligned enterprise — it cries out like the late Rodney Dangerfield for respect. No one really admits to reading a Jewish newspaper. “It comes to […]