Since Gaga and Michael Lucas have just launched social-media sites, we figured it was only appropriate to post this clip about a fictional gay-male social network called HEBrew. Yes, it’s stuffed with more bad puns than Old Jews Telling Jokes but that’s what Hebrew humor is all about. And we would definitely date some of these shayna punims.
Source: Bland Hack Pictures
Cam
How about a deal from Dan Avery. Since he seems intent on consistently posting articles about Jews on here. Either ones that ignore the fact that it is one of the only major religions that advocates and performs gay marriages and instead will point out one thing said by some out of touch rabbi with no influence.
Or He will put up posts that try to convince people that Israel is somehow evil for giving gays rights because it makes Palestine look bad for arresting gays.
Or ones like this that are a sad buy in to stereotypes. (I”m doubting he would create an entire posting over a video of black people tap dancing or Asians with buck teeth and funny round glasses.)
So here is the deal. Since Dan NEVER EVER post any articles about the Mormon Church funding pretty much every single piece of anti-gay legislation in the country going all the way back to the Hawaiian Constitutional Amendment attack on gay marriage years ago. Nor the fact that NOM is referred to as a Mormon front group by multiple Newspapers….. How about for every 5 random Jew stories Dan writes he posts at least ONE about the Mormon church. Would that be fair? for every 5 articles that he writes attacking the one major religion in the country that performs gay marriages…he at least puts up one post about the actual one that is systematically trying to strip our rights away from us.
The fact that this is a gay site and yet seems to purposefully ignore the most well organized and largest funder of anti-gay political movement in the country is unbelievable.
QJ201
Was HEBro already taken?
Chris
@QJ201: Yes, Hebro is a real thing that does parties for gay Jews in NY (maybe other cities too, but I only know NY for sure)
http://Www.hebro.org
Dixie Rect
I thought it was clever and silly. Lighten up.
jbwhovian
@Cam: I’m Jewish and I’m no fan of Israel, neither are my parent or grandparents. Israel did not democratically gain gay rights, they were won through the courts, not legislation, the government opposed gay rights, hence the court cases challenging the government.
When it comes to Palestine, does it concern me about the extreme homophobia, yes or course. But as far as I am concerned just brushing them off and treating the whole region like scum is cheap and ultimately self defeating. Democracy, and a move from extremism is what’s needed. Can it be achieved over night? Of course not. Islam is not extremist as a religion, it is those that interpret and warp the beliefs of Islam for their own madness which are the problem. Many of these countries (and governments) we in the west propped up with cash weapons and political backing, so we are just as much to blame.
Cam
@jbwhovian:
So…..you basically missed the point of my post.
First I love how you move talk of Palestine off to other areas so you can claim that the U.S. is responsible. Well there is democracy in Palestine, and it is written law that gays be arrested.
But as to my original post
The fact is, that Queerty has continually posted random articles about some Jewish Rabbi who doesn’t like gay rights, and ignored the fact that the religion supports gay marriage, performs gay marriages, and ordains gay rabbis. They have posted articles ignoring the fact that Israel has gay rights, minimizing it claiming that it is all a scam to make them seem better, seemingly missing the fact that they HAVE gay rights there.
So multiple articles critical of the one major religion that in the U.S. that is gay inclusive, and the one country in that area of the world that gives gays rights. Additionally,
AND YET
They never post articles critical of the Mormon church even though it is responsible for the funding and support of pretty much every single anti-gay piece of legislation we have had in this country for 2 decades.
So why not? Why attack the one major religion in the U.S. that officially supports gay rights and never ever write anything about the religion that is the largest funder and supporter of anti-gay political activities in the nation?
Bob
Keep you HeBrew boys! Give me an intact man any day over a cut one!
Marc
Cam, lay off Dan Avery. He is great and you smell.
cam
@Marc:
LOL!!!! Ok, because you said so, and because you look so cute with your fingers in your ears waggling at me. 😉
Carlos
hahaha right on Bob I also think that circumcision is genital mutilation and pointless.
danny bloom
Jewish professor says Jewish humor needs to come down from the mountains and be ‘updated’ and see my SILVERMAN MANIFESTO too, all POV welcome, pro and con. DANNNY BLOOM, 1949-2032
In late May, I penned a commentary here titled ”Do ‘Jewish jokes’
need to be updated?” which challeneged Jewish comedians on stage and
in
movies to make modern Jewish humor in the 21st century better mirror
Jewish culture today and leave the Catskils and Borsch Belt behind.
Adding the text of a kind battle cry I called “The Silverman Manifesto
(2012),” I noted that I had some qualms about how it might or might
not go over among American Jews, and whether it might be or might not
be accepted.
Still, struck by some of the God-awful humor that has made its way
into so-called “Jewish humor” over the years — most of it good and
life-affirming, but some of it tasteless and sexist and even feeding
into the Internet hands of neo-Nazis and anti-semites — I asked
readers to look at my ”manifesto” in order to raise some issues that
I hoped thoughtful people would address, pro and on.
The manifesto, I emphasized, was meant merely as an alarm bell, a
”wake up call” for Jewish writers, comedians, film directors,
artists, screenwriters, producers, actors and others to re-examine the
state of Jewish humor in 2012 and where it’s headed. And a look back
to the past might not hurt either.
Now, two months later, Professor Ted Merwin at Fairleigh Dickson
University in Pennsylvania, and a regular drama critic for the Jewish
Weekly in New York, has
answered my call independently, with his own take on what’s right and
what’s wrong with Jewish humor today. Reviewing the current
off-Broadway revue titled
“Old Jews Telling Jokes” (which has gotten many very good reviews by
the way, and only few critical reviews).
Merwin is direct and to the point, noting: “[The play] essentially
transports its audience ‘up the mountains’ (as my grandmother would
say) to the Catskills. In Borscht Belt jokes, Jewish men always felt
murderous toward their wives, non-Jewish women were secretly more
attractive to Jewish men than Jewish women were, rabbis always offered
ridiculous advice, and gentiles occupied a rarefied realm that Jews
could never hope to enter. The dated quality of the show is summed up
in two of its most inspired routines, which are Susman’s heavily
Yiddish-accented, solemn rendering of “Ol’ Man River” and a sing-along
with the audience of Tom Lehrer’s “Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” a song
about Jews discovering that Jewish life can (big surprise!) actually
take root outside of New York.”
Merwin adds: “To compensate for their nagging sense of outsiderness,
the show implicitly suggests, Jews turned to humor — in particular,
dirty jokes. Either sex or scatology is thus the underlying theme of
almost every gag. Jests about masturbating teenagers, blushing brides,
under-endowed grooms, priapic desert-island castaways, lascivious old
ladies, flaccid old men, aphrodisiac Jewish foods — the sex jokes go
on and on. Same with the jokes about bodily functions, which embrace
everything from women stuck on toilets to men with prostate and bowel
complaints.”
”This is where one needs to wonder if the show, despite having plenty
of heart, has a soul,” Merwin writes. “A non-Jew who wandered into the
theater could be forgiven for thinking that Jews, despite being
renowned for their intellectual attainments, are in reality obsessed
with their lower bodies. Or that upwardly mobile Jews remain stuck in
a low-class or unassimilated Jewish past that they have only
transcended on the outside, but still inhabit in some nether region of
their deepest selves.”
Merwin concludes that he wishes the revue ”didn’t insult its
audience’s intelligence quite so much,” adding that he was “reminded
of Bryan Fogel’s and Sam Wolfson’s phenomenally successful “Jewtopia”
(which played at the Westside Theater in 2006), which trotted out
every Jewish stereotype and excretory joke in the book, as if paradise
for Jews is an eternity on the toilet.”
The professor’s final verdict: “Perhaps I’m asking too much, but I
wish that “Old Jews Telling Jokes” afforded some kind of new
perspective on the place of humor in Jewish life, rather than yet
another guilty peep into the bedroom or bathroom window.”
Professor Merwin did not read the article I wrote here on May 24, nor
did he read “The Silverman Manifseto.” He does not know me, and I have
never known of his work before either, having
lived in Asia now for almost 20 years. Still, our views are very close
regarding ”some kind of new perspective on the place of humor in
Jewish life.”
I was heartened to read his review in Jewish Week. I emailed Dr Merwin
and asked him how he felt about my little manifesto and my own call
for some improvement in Jewish humor
for life in this 21st Century.
danny bloom
Danny Bloom, American writer, born 1949
”The Silverman Manifesto (2012)”
Enough of this self loathing and self hating! Enough of Jews
themselves denigrating themselves in public shows
of comedy or books! Enough of dysfunctional families
and ghetto Jews from the past!
We are now living in 2012
and we are no longer dysfunctional people nor do we live
in dysfunctional families anymore and Jewish mother jokes
and Jewish Princess jokes and distasteful Joan Rivers’ Anne
Frank jokes should be thrown out the window.
The Bronx and Brooklyn
ghettoes are things of the past.
Wake up, fellow Jews and cast
off your self loathing and self hatred with these terrible jokes
about dysfunctional mothers and weak fathers and antisemitic tropes
that are sometimes even worse than Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice
schtick! Wake up, people!
We are a normal people now, successful, middle-class, no longer in the
New York City ghettoes where much of the old sick humor came from.
Sure, in the 1930s, those jokes had a purpose. Sure, in the 1950s,
after the war, maybe some of those jokes still had a purpose. But now,
in 2012, they have no purpose! Those jokes should be retired and you
know exactly what jokes I am talking about!
We don’t live in dysfunctional families anymore and we have success
stories all around, in an entirely new and loving way. It’s time for Jews
in America to wake up and smell the new air of happiness and life.
It’s time to stop the self loathing and self hating Catskills and Borscht
Belt jokes of the 1950s and celebrate the joyful reality of 2012.
Stand up and create
a new kind of warm, life enhancing and positive humor that goes beyond
the old stereotypes of yore. Rise up and rejoice, O Jews of America,
you have nothing to lose but your long-suffering neuroses. We are no longer a
neurotic people. Stop the Jewish mother jokes, stop the JAP jokes, stop
the sick Anne Frank jokes (and books!), stop the dysfunctional family jokes,
stop the victimization. We are no longer victims. We have made it. Wake up
and celebrate success, joy, happiness, normalness.
Enough already. We are normal. We have arrived. Leave the past alone. Where
it belongs. Stop the Jews are cheap jokes; some of the most philanthropic
people on Earth are American Jews: they build hospitals, museums, fund
scientific research, professorships,
educational initiatives. Focus on the good and the positive; leave the
past where it belongs: in the past!
Wake up and smell the sunshine. We don’t all live in the Bronx or
Brooklyn anymore, or Queens
or Beverly Hills. American Jews must evolve. Be nice, all ye who are
comedians and humor
writers. Respect yourselves. Respect what we have become now in 2012.
Stop the old, out-dated
stereotypes. We can write a new chapter in American Jewish history in
the creative arts
of comedy and film and literature and it does not have to be Portnoy’s
Complaint anymore.
Nor does it have to be Old Jews Telling Jokes off-Broadway anymore.
Mirror the present,
stop mirroring the dysfunctional ghetto past. Get past the past!
Embrace the now!
Bryan
@jbwhovian: You miss the point; the fact that Israel is a democracy has enabled LBGT people to fight for and advance their rights in both courts and the Knesset. How well would suing for one’s right to marriage equality work in Iran?
Israel has issues to work out, but is holding up relatively well in the face of living in an area where pretty much the entire region regularly speaks of driving its inhabitants into the sea and genocide against its people (even Jews who have never set foot in Israel).