In defence of bad jokes

I was once at a terrific Shabbat dinner where late in the evening one of the other guests suddenly said: ‘OK, who’s got the best Holocaust joke?’ Even people who know something about Jewish humour might be surprised by this.

I said that one Holocaust-related joke I knew was the story from the 1970s of the Monty Python crew being invited to Germany to film a television series there. The Germans had called the Pythons to say that of course they had no humour of their own in Germany and would like to import some. The Pythons agreed, arrived in Munich and were promptly taken to Dachau. In retrospect, this must have been some kind of signal from their hosts that they were accepting of their history and wanted there to be no awkwardness.

For one reason or another, by the time the cars filled with the Pythons and their colleagues pulled up to the gates, they were informed by the guard that the camp was closed for the day. Some pleading commenced, including an explanation of how far their guests had come, when suddenly Graham Chapman, who had been quietly drinking gin in the back of the car throughout the journey suddenly shouted: ‘Tell them we’re Jewish.’

Of course this is really a Python joke, more than it is a Holocaust joke. To the extent that they exist, Jewish jokes on the Shoah have a very dark, even theological, feel. Here is one. Two men both killed in the Holocaust are in heaven. They haven’t seen each other since the camps and they are laughing at something that happened there. Indeed they are laughing so much that they attract the attention of God, who is passing by. ‘My children, my children,’ says God. ‘How could you laugh at such things?’ One of the Jews stops, turns to God and says: ‘I guess you had to be there.