Semites and Stereotypes

This interdisciplinary collection of essays assesses Jewish humor as a subject of serious scholarly inquiry. Scholars from England, France, the United States, Denmark, Israel, and Australia explore Jewish humor from a variety of perspectives, including anthropology, literature, psychology, sociology, and religion. Individual essays focus on linkages with language, religion, and historical traditions; study characteristics such as gallows humor, self-disparagement, and stereotyping; analyze distinctions between humor in Israel and in the diaspora; and discuss the contributions of Jewish humorists and comic performers and Jewish theorists of humor.

AVNER ZIV is Professor of Psychology in the School of Education at Tel Aviv University, Israel, where his main research specialties are psychology of humor, adolescence, giftedness, and counseling and psychotherapy./e He is the author of eighteen books in Hebrew, English, and French, including Personality and Sense of Humor and National Styles of Humor (Greenwood Press 1988), as well as many dozens of articles in scholarly and professional journals, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries.

ANAT ZAJDMAN is an assistant in the Department of Education at the University of Haifa, Israel, where she is engaged in educational research, particularly on the educational aspects of the use of humor in schools and the implications of humor in interpersonal communication./e She has published on these topics in the Hebrew journals Reading Circles and Studies in Education and, in English, inHumor and Communication and Cognition.