Draft
Kata Zsófia Vincze, Ph.D.
ELTE University, Budapest
Department of Folklore
katazsofia@gmail.com
Ethnicity in Israeli Folklore and Ethnic Humor.
Funny folk tales, anecdotes, short stories, ethnic jokes, short electronic
messages, and electronic visual messages all use ethnic humor. This
course will address the transition from oral narratives to electronically
transmitted folklore.
Q : How does every ethnic joke start?
A : With a look over your shoulder.
Notes:
1. According to an annual survey conducted since 1993 in Hungary, 73 % of the students between the age of 18-25 have
anti-Semitic and racist views. Out of this number, 38% can be considered openly anti Semitic and racist while the rest are
"just" using anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes and stereotypical language. At the same time, in the last year several
murders took place against Roma people in an act that was declared a racist pogrom. About 25 % of my students ask me
questions using anti-Semitic stereotypes, and some them take my courses about East European Jewry to find out more
about this feared group of people.
2. However, Hungary has a vibrant cultural, intellectual and religious Jewish life. There are more than 30 synagogues, as
well as rabbinical seminars, Judaic and Jewish studies programs at several universities, Jewish publishing houses,
newspapers, magazines, theatres, and hundreds of websites, blogs and Jewish forums.
3. Relations between Hungarian Jews and Israel exist, but they are not very strong. For Hungarian Jews, Zionism was
never really popular, and making aliyah has never been a strong trend.
4. So far I have not done very much research on the topic below, so any suggestions are welcomed.
Course description: The main questions of the course
By taking a cultural, anthropological, and ethnological approach to Israeli society
and culture, this course focuses on Israeli ethnic folk narratives, including
stories/folk tales, short stories, anecdotes, jokes, circle text messages, emails,
and transmitted "You Tube" messages. We must take into consideration that in
many cases these oral and electronic narratives transmit sensitive ethnic
content, play with ethnic stereotypes, and verbalize the content of the ethnic
conflict, sometimes showing the specific elements of xenophobic hatred.
1. What is the social significance of ethnic folklore today? Is humor in urban and
rural folklore an important strategy that can express in a legitimate way political
incorrectness and can play on ethnic stereotypes?
2. Is the use of ethnic symbols in a highly aesthetic and entertaining way
sometimes the only way to justify the presence of certain stigmatized ethnicities
to the outside world? Is aesthetic representation with a clear purpose to entertain
a way to domesticate latent xenophobia?
3. How do we treat/preserve/use these folkloristic texts such as classic folktales
(from the collections or the archives), the short "You Tube" films/spams, the short
cell phone text messages, and the political or academic ethnic anecdotes?
4. Why do we value printed and electronic folklore differently? Does the new
electronic text fit the classic ethnographic typology? Do they have similar
structures, value systems, morality, or types of punch lines?
5. Can folklore be considered some sort of a level of communication between
cultures in conflict or even, in some cases, the product of basic, everyday
interethnic relations?
The Scope of the Course:
To acquaint students with the role and the diversity of current Israeli folklore
by focusing on short narratives, stories, and jokes.
 To illustrate the fact that obviously ethnic folklore does not have clear borders
between cultures, languages and ethnic groups, but is rather a process of
continuous migration, fusion, and change, especially in a multiethnic
environment like Israel.
 To understand how present-day folklore is everything that we send out, laugh
at, don’t laugh at, download, say, use, wear, watch, and understand.
 To question what has been selected to play the role of (our own and others)
ethnic folkloristic main motifs, stereotypes, and clichés and to see what is
used and understood.
 To compare and contrast the sources and strategies of ethnic humor in
different folkloristic genres.
 To recognize the role and importance of the different coexisting and
conflicting traditions, beliefs, religions, social structures, and political systems,
as well as the different rhetorical elements of identity constructing strategies
through short narratives.
 To analyze the content, components, historical roots, and present day role of
reflected, recognized ethnic stereotypes as a main source of humor.
 To form an idea by the end of the semester about the diversity of Israeli
society and Israeli cultural language through the dynamics of sarcastic
folklore among the Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Mizrachim, the Russian
Jews, the Christians, the Palestinians, and, within these larger groups, also
the specific Polish, Romanian, Ukrainian, Indian, Ethiopian, Georgian,
Moroccan and other communities.
 To develop academic criticism/relativism of our own academic theories,
beliefs, and conclusions.
 To encourage students to collect, download and translate these texts so that
by the end of the semester we will have a collection of humorous electronic
folklore.
Pedagogical methodology:

Each class will consist of a 60 minute lecture, a 20 minute discussion, and the
presentation of visual illustrations (caricatures, cartoons, short "You Tube"
movies, and short segments of movies). In every class, we will analyze several
short stories, anecdotes, and jokes as examples and relate them to the relevant
scholarly works on ethnicity and ethnic conflicts.
Applying academic criticism and analysis to our own engagement with Israeli
folkloristic productions, we will go through a process of learning (self) academic
criticism, skepticism in theoretical frames, academic terminology used without
reflections and some constructive methods to question our own academic
superstitions.
Course Requirements and Grading
1. Students will write one analytical research paper analyzing any folkloristic text, or performance
within a cultural anthropological framework by interpreting the texts from four perspectives 1.
Ethnological translation. 2. Ethnographical description and contextualization. 3. Critical
hermeneutical analysis. 4. Reflecting back on their own paper and showing the weaknesses of
their analysis.
2. Students will have to 1. Collect from an archive five unpublished funny short stories,
anecdotes, folk tales or ethnic jokes based on their own fieldwork, or 2. Download 15
electronically transmitted primary texts or visual messages.
Class schedule
Introduction in the context of the living folklore
The Israeli society: immigration culture;
Ethnic, religious, lingual, cultural diversity.
Traditionalism and modernity in the Israeli culture.
Nation building narratives and narratives of the homeland.
Required readings:
 Tamar Alexander,
The Beloved Friend-and-a-Half Studies in Sephardic
Folk-Literature, The Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, Beer-Sheva1999.
 Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of
Israeli National Tradition. University of Chicago Press, 1994,
We will use the following books through the semester:



Haim Schwarzbaum, "The Denier and the Loaves of Bread," Edot (1947): 97105.
Dov Sadan, A Bowl of Raisins, Tel Aviv, 1950 (H); A Bowl of Nuts, Tel Aviv,
1953.
El-Shamy Hasan, M. Types of the Folktale in the Arab World. A
Demographically Oriented. Tale-Type Index. Bloomington: Indiana University





Press, 2004, 1255 pages. Bibliography and sources, registers of tale-types,
motifs, and countries, subject index.
Jamal Sleem Nuweihed, Abu Jmeel's Daughter & Other Stories: Arab
Folk Tales from Palestine & Lebanon, 2002.
Sonia Nimr, Ghaddar the Ghoul: And Other Palestinian Folk-teles.
MacDonald, Margaret Read: Tunjur! Tunjur! Tunjur!: A Palestinian Folktale.
GOLD, Mike. Jews Without Money. New York: Avon, 1965
GOLDEN, Harry. The Golden Book of Jewish Humor. New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1972.
The relation between the „classic” idealistic, esthetical folklore and the pop
culture in Israel
The use classic folklore in constructing nationalism or ethnicity: folklorizm: the
„authentic”, „pure”, „aboriginal”, „ancient” folklore on a stage as a form to
preserve the „original” ethnicity.
The use of folklore: symbolic ethnicity on ethnic festivals. (Recited Kidus as a
hipp hopp song.)
Esthetical and symbolic representations as legitimization of certain stigmatized
ethnic groups.
The parody of the classic folklore.
Required readings:
 Dov Sadan, A Bowl of Raisins, Tel Aviv, 1950 (H); A Bowl of Nuts, Tel
Aviv, 1953 (H).
 Golden Deborah, „Now, like real Israelis, lets stand up and sing.”
Teaching the national language to Russian newcomers in Israel.,
Anthropology And Education Quarterly 2001.
 Salamon Hagar, Political bumper stickers in contemporary Israel: Folklore
as an emotional battleground,, The Journal Of American Folklore 2001.
 Shmuel Zanvel Pipe, Yiddish Folksongs from Galicia, The Folklorization of
David Edelstadt's song "der arbeter" cider arbeter". letters Edited by Dov
Noy & Meir Noy, jerusalem 1971. Folklore Research Center Studies:
Volume II.
Recommended:

Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi, Popular Music and National Culture in
Israel
(Berkeley: University of California, 2004), Chapter 2 161-162.

Scott Streiner, “Shooting and Crying: The Emergence of Protest in Israeli
Popular Music,” The European Legacy, Towards New Paradigms: Journal
of the
International Society for the Study of Europe 6, 6 (2001), 771-792.
Ethnicity and (the lack of?) politically correctness in some Israeli folk
narratives
Twisted ethnic stereotypes. Positive stereotypes.
„Innocent” stereotypes. Unconscious stereotypes.
Clichés which helps us orientate. Unmasking our own prejudgments..
Parody, humor, sarcasm, self criticism.
Required readings:
 T.G. Fraser, The Arab-Israeli Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
 Donna Rosenthal, The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land.
Free Press, 2008.
 Jacob Lassner and S. Ilan Troen, Jews and Muslims in the Arab World:
Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined, 2007.
The sources of ethnic humor: the concept of ethnographic „normality”
Stereotypes, common knowledge, accent, dialect, body language, different
fashion. Main motives of ethnic jokes: stupidity, sexual behavior, greediness,
stinginess, the physical appearance etc.
The roots, the history and the consequences of the stereotypes in every day
context.
The stylistic tools of ethnic humor
The textual models and leitmotivs of sarcastic ethnic short narratives.
Required readings:
 Davies Christie, Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries,1982.
 Davies Christie. Ethnic Humor Around the World. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990.
 Leon Rappoport. Punch lines: The Case for Racial, Ethnic, and Gender
Humor, Greenwood.
 Henry Mitchell, Ethnic Humor Around the World, National Review, June 24,
1991.
Inter-textuality between folk tales, short stories
The complicated relationships between „elite” and folk culture, oral and written
literature, historical reality, and narrative fiction.
The (inter-textual) relation between the folk/pop culture and the „higher” culture.
Differences, similarities, style, constructing strategies, different reception, the
obvious but masked hierarchy etc.
Borrowed elements, strategies, style, mutual terminology,
The folklore: a source for literature, and the sacred texts as source for the
current electronic folklore.
Switching hierarchy: popularization of the literal text and the „upgrade” of the folk
Required readings:
 El Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale History, Genre, Meaning.
 Shmuel Zanvel Pipe, Yiddish Folksongs from Galicia, The Folklorization of
David Edelstadt's song "der arbeter" cider arbeter". letters Edited by Dov Noy
& Meir Noy, jerusalem 1971.Folklore Research Center Studies: Volume II.
 Hagit Matras and Yaacov Mazor, The transformation of Zalman Shneur’s
poem into a popular song. http://www.folklore.org.il/JSIJF/jsijf1920.html#zalman.
 Alan Dundes, Holy Writ as oral writ. The bible as Folklore.
Humor and religious traditions
Religion as an aspect of ethnicity.
From the Hasidic comic tales to the sexist jokes about orthodox, or Muslimor
other religious people. The limits of verbal aggressively: offence and taboo.
Required readings:
 D. Reidel, Telling good humor from bad humor: limitations of the
linguistics of humor. In Desmond MacHale (ed.) The Fifth International
Conference on Humor. Book of Abstracts. Dan Laoghaire, Ireland: Boole
Press. 87. 1985.
 Yoav Elshtein, Ma'aseh Hoshev: Studies in Hasidic Tales, Jerusalem,
1983.
 Funny hasidic stories on chabad.org.
 Offensive politically incorrect religious jokes (online).
Transition from oral culture to electronic transmition
The impact of the electronic media on the revival of the folklore.
Folklore is usually anonym, but electronic folklore has no face either: the
consequences of faceless anonymity.
Required readings:
 Dov Noy, "Collecting Folktales in Israel," In the Dispersion 7 (1967): 151 67.
 Yael Zerubavel, The Last Stand: On the Transformation of Symbols in
Modern Israeli Culture, University of Pennsylvania, 1980.
To domesticate, or to tame down the unknown feared foreigner through
humor
Can the verbal openness of the ethnic humor contribute to the understanding of
ethnic conflicts?
Or does the semi-legitimacy of the use of ethnic stereotypes generate further
conflicts, prejudgments?
The common cultural spaces, parodistic mixed language: the Palestinian and
Israeli folklore in coexistence.
Required readings:
 D. Reidel, 1992. Humor as a non-bona-fide mode of communication. In Elra
L. Pederson (ed.), DLLS Proceedings 1992: Proceedings of the Language
and Linguistics Society. Provo, UT: Brigham University. 87-92.
 Lewis, Paul, “Joke and Anti-Joke: Three Jews and a Blindfold,” in Journal of
Popular Culture, Summer ’87, pp.63
 GLAZER, Nathan. Ethnic Dilemmas, 1964-1982. Cambridge: Harvard U.
Pres.
 Oring, Israeli Humor. 1998. 23-86.

Zerubavel, Yael, The Mythological sabra” and Jewish past trauma, memory
and contested identities, Israel Studies 7.(2) 2002.
Recommended
 Oz, Where the Jackals Howl, in Oz Where the Jackals Howl and
OtherStories.
 Yehoshua, A.B. Facing the Forests. [short story]
Morag, Gileadh, 'New images of the Arab in Israeli fiction', Prooftext 6,
1986, 147-62.
Original manuscripts & supplemental online material especially from Israel
Folktale Archives, Haifa Folklore Research Center will be sent out.
Extended bibliography
Ethnic Humor Extended Bibliography
Barreca, Regina. They Used to Call Me Snow White—but I Drifted: Women's
Strategic Use of Humor. New York: Viking, 1991.
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Translated by
Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell. New York: Macmillan, 1911.
Boskin, Joseph. Rebellious Laughter: People's Humor in American Culture.
Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997.
Cousins, Norman. Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections
on Healing and Regeneration. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.
Davies, Christie. Ethnic Humor around the World: A Comparative Analysis.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Translated and
edited by James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1960.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro- American
Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Koestler, Arthur. The Act of Creation. New York: Macmillan, 1964.
Lederer, Richard. Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults upon
Our Language. Charleston, S.C.: Wyrick, 1987.
Morreall, John, ed. The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1987.
Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century
American Humor. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press/Greenwood, 2000.
Raskin, Victor. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel,
1985.
Rishel, Mary Ann. Writing Humor: Creativity and the Comic Mind. Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 2002.
Simon, John. Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline. New York:
Potter/Crown, 1980.
Spalding, Henry D. Joys of Jewish Humor. New York: Jonathan David, 1985.
Additional bibliography on humor
Novak, William & Waldoks, Moshe Big Book of Jewish Humour, originally
published by Harper Perennial (1981)
Jay Allen (1990). 500 Great Jewish Jokes. Signet.
Morey Amsterdam (1959). Keep Laughing. Citadel.
Elliot Beier (1968). Wit and Wisdon of Israel. Peter Pauper.
Noah BenShea (1993). Great Jewish Quotes. Ballantine Books.
Arthur Berger (1997). The Genius of the Jewish Joke. Jason Aronson.
Milton Berle (1996). More of the Best of Milton Berle's Private Joke File. Castle
Books. .
Milton Berle (1945). Out of my Trunk. Bantam.
Elliot Oring (1984). The Jokes of Sigmund Freud. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. .
Richard Raskin (1992). Life Is Like a Glass of Tea. Studies of Classic Jewish
Jokes. Aarhus University Press.
Joseph Telushkin (1998). Jewish Humour: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say
About the Jews. Harper Paperbacks.
Ralph Woods (1969). The Joy of Jewish Humour. Simon & Schuster.
David Minkoff (2006). Oy! The Ultimate Book of Jewish Jokes. Thomas Dunne
Books.
David Minkoff (2008). Oy! The Great Jewish Joke Book. JR Books.
Simcha Weinstein (2008). Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st Century.
Barricade Books.
Raskin, Victor.
1979. Semantic mechanisms of humor. In C. Chiarello et al. (eds.) Proceedings
of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society. 325-335.
1980. A linguistic theory of humor. In H. Mindess and J. Turek (eds.) The Study
of Humor. Los Angeles: Antioch University West. 89-90.
1981. Script-based lexicon. Quaderni di Semantica. 2:1. 25-34. 1983. A scriptbased semantic theory of humor. In Nilsen (ed.), 285-287. [WHIMSY II
1983. A Concise History of Linguistic Semantics. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue
University.
1984. Semantic principles of joke construction. in Lawrence Mintz(ed.) Third
International Conference on Humor. Conference Abstracts.[. Washington, D.C.:
International Humor Conference Committee.
1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordnecht-Boston-Lancaster:
D. Reidel.
1985. Jokes. Psychology Today. 19. 24-39. It. tr. Umorismo. Psicologia
Contemporanea. 12: 74. 1986. 2-9.
1985. Telling good humor from bad humor: limitations of the linguistics of humor.
In Desmond MacHale (ed.) The Fifth International Conference on Humor. Book
of Abstracts. Dan Laoghaire, Ireland: Boole Press. 87.
1985. Script-based semantics: a brief outline. Quaderni di Semantica. 6:2. 306313.
1986. Language, linguistics and humor. In Nilsen and Nilsen (1986: 144-146).
[WHIMSY IV] V
1986. Script-based semantics. In: Ellis D. G. and W. A. Donohue eds;
Contemporary Issues in Language and Discourse Processes. N.J.: Erlbaum. 2361. V
1987. The interdisciplinary field of humor research. Semiotica. 66; 4. 441-449.
1987. The world humor research movement. In Nilsen and Nilsen (eds:1987: 5052). [WHIMSY V]
1987. The world humor research movement. In Nilsen and Nilsen (eds. (1987:
216-218). [WHIMSY V}
1987. Linguistic heuristics of humor: a script-based semantic approa The
International Journal in the Sociology of Language. 65. 11-26. 1988. Intelligence
- human and artificial - and humor. In Nilsen an Nilsen (eds.), (1988: 86-87).
[WHIMSY VI.]
1989. Jewish scripts. In A. Ziv. (ed.) Third International Conference on Jewish
Humor. Abstracts. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University. 36-37. l990a. Sophisticated
jokes. In Raskin and Hughes. (eds.) (1990): 125-127.
1991. Humor and language. In William Bright (ed.) International Encyclopedia of
Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 180-182. V
1992. Humor as a non-bona-fide mode of communication. In Elra
L. Pederson (ed.), DLLS Proceedings 1992: Proceedings of the Language and
Linguistics Society. Provo, UT: Brigham University. 87-92.
1992. Using the powers of language: non-casual language in advertising, politics,
relationships, humor, and lying. In Elray L. Pederson (ed.) DLLS Proceedings
1992. Proceedings of the Deseret Language and Linguistics Society. Provo, UT:
Brigham Young University. 17-30.
1993. Language and humor. In RE. Asher (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and
Linguistics. New York-Oxford-Seoul Tokyo: Pergamon.
Extended bibliography on short stories, folklore
AaTh—Aarne, Antti and Stith Thompson
1967 The Types of the Folktale. Second revision. FF Communications 184.
Helsinki:
Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
Basset, Rene
1924–1926 Mille et un contes, récits & légends Arabes. 3 vols. Paris:
Maisonneuve Frčres.
Chauvin, Victor
1892–1922 Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes, ou relatifs aux arabes, publiés
dans ľEurope
chrétienne de 1810 ŕ 1885. 12 vols. Ličge: Vaillant & Carmanne.
El-Shamy—see Shamy
Fadel, Ayten
1978 Beiträge zur Kenntnis des arabischen Märchens und seiner Sonderart
[Contributions to the understanding of the Arabic folktale and its qualities].
Unpubl. PhD diss., University of Bonn, Bonn.
Holbek, Bengt
1987 Interpretation of Fairy Tales. FF Communications 239. Helsinki: Academia
Scientiarum Fennica.
Jason, Heda
1965 Types of Jewish-Oriental oral tales. Fabula 7: 115–224.
Jason.indd 302 12/20/2005 2:01:00 PM
folktale types of the arab world 303
1975 Types of Oral Tales in Israel, part 2. Israel Ethnographic Society Studies,
vol 2.
Jerusalem: Israel Ethnographic Society.
1988 Folktales of the Jews of Iraq: Types and Genres. (Studies in the History
and Culture
of Iraqi Jewry, vol. 5). Or Yehuda (Israel): Iraqi Jews’ Traditional Culture Center.
1996a Indexing of folk and oral literature in the Islam-dominated cultural area.
bsoas
59: 102–116.
1996b Review of El-Shamy, H. M. Folk Traditions of the Arab World. Asian
Folklore Studies 55: 184–86.
Nowak, Ursula
1969 Beiträge zur Typologie des arabischen Volksmärchens [Contributions to the
typology of the Arabic folktale]. Unpubl. PhD diss., University of Freiburg.
Freiburg/Br.
Noy, Dov and Otto Schnitzler
1967 Type-Index of ifa 7000–7599. In Hodeš-hodeš wesippuro 1966 [A Tale for
Each Month 1966], ed. Noy, Dov, 142–64. Haifa: Ethnological Museum.
1968 Type-Index of ifa 7000–7999. In Hodeš-hodeš wesippuro 1967 [A Tale for
Each Month 1967], ed. Cheichel, E. 131–52. Haifa: Ethnological Museum.
1970 Type-Index of ifa 8000–8799. In Hodeš-hodeš wesippuro 1968–1969 [A
Tale for Each Month 1968–1969], ed. by E. Cheichel, 243–81. Haifa:
Ethnological Museum.
1971 Type-Index of ifa 8800–8999. In Hodeš-hodeš wesippuro 1970 [A Tale for
Each Month 1970], ed. Noy, Dov, 166–89. Haifa: Ethnological Museum.
1972 Type-Index of ifa 9000–9299. In Hodeš-hodeš wesippuro 1971 [A Tale for
Each Month 1971], ed. Noy, Dov, 97–125. Haifa: Ethnological Museum.
1979 Type-Index of ifa 9300–9499. In Hodeš-hodeš wesippuro 1978 [A Tale for
Each Month 1978], ed. Noy, Dov, xxvii–xlvi. Haifa: Ethnological Museum.
Shamy, Hasan M. el-1995 Folk Traditions of the Arab World: A Guide to Motif
Classification. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
1998 A Response to Jason’s Review. Asian Folklore Studies 57 (1998): 345–55.
Thompson, Stith
1955–1958 Motif-Index of Folk Literature. 6 vols. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press. Ed. pr. 1932–1936.
Thompson, Stith and Warren E. Roberts
1960 Types of Indic Oral Tales. FF Communications 180. Helsinki: Academia
Scientiarum Fennica.
Yom-Tov Lewisnski, The Book of Festivals (Sepher Hamoadim), Tel Aviv, 194857, 8 vols. (H).