Skip to content
Guest Thinkers —

Why Jewish Jokes Are Dangerous

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Abe Foxman, Director of the Anti-Defemation League, stopped by Big Think today to talk about the state of anti-Semitism in America today. Among other things, we asked him if it was okay for Jews to tell Jewish jokes. His answer, in a word: No.

Foxman pointed to examples dating back to Archie Bunker on “All in the Family,” which was the first time it became okay to laugh at bigotry. All hate begins with words, explained Abe Foxman, from the Holocaust to slavery. He even told us that he had it out with Sacha Baron Cohen after the release of the first Borat movie, when he saw the skit “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” Foxman said that even though people think the viewers were laughing at Cohen, they were really laughing with him. He even asked Cohen to film a public service announcement for the ADL; Cohen is apparently “still considering.”

If you want to be notified to when our video interview with Abe Foxman is posted, please subscribe to The Voice of Big Think RSS feed.

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people
Related
Culture & Religion
Repairing the World: The Road to The Rothko Chapel
Of the many concepts of Judaism artist Mark Rothko took to heart, the idea of tikkun olam, Hebrew for “repairing the world,” penetrated the deepest. In Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel, academic and a cultural historian Annie Cohen-Solal cuts to the heart of Rothko’s life and art and sheds new light on how both seemingly had to end at The Rothko Chapel (shown above), the Houston home of Rothko’s final works that he tragically didn’t live long enough to see himself. In this tightly focused new biography, Cohen-Solal shows us both how The Rothko Chapel culminates Rothko’s life-long mission to repair his world and how it continues to serve as a light of hope in our darkening world.
Up Next