Jødisk humor hver fredag

For six years (2011–2017), the weekly newsletter of the Jewish Community of Oslo included «The Joke of the Week» on the last page. The present study of these jokes provides a) a mapping of predominant themes and b) expositions of jokes representative of these themes, addressing cultural and religious contexts and characteristics and employing – when applicable – the typology of Jewish jokes developed by Richard Raskin (1992). Predominant themes include marriage, family, dietary laws, holiday observance, God and the rabbis, biblical narratives and heroes, and intercultural and interreligious encounters. This collection of jokes reflects the international character of the Jewish community in Norway and confirms the common notion that Jewish humor typically is self- disparaging. Jokes at the expense of non-Jews are rare, a handful of slightly disrespectful jokes about Jewish–Catholic encounters being the main exceptions. Even the jokes about interreligious encounters usually make fun of the Jewish protagonist. Anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jewish cleverness, cunning and love for money appear prominently. There is striking silence, however, when it comes to topics that have sparked humor controversies in Norway: circumcision, the Holocaust, and Israeli military aggression and superiority towards the Palestinians.