Old Jews Telling Jokes

by Sam Hoffman

  Every Friday afternoon at 2:15 sharp Becky goes to Morris’s room, closes the door, and just holds his penis for fifteen minutes. This goes on for four or five months.

  One Friday at 2:15 sharp she shows up at Morris’s room—no Morris. Panicked, she runs up and down the hall calling out, “Where’s Morris, where’s Morris?”

  One of the attendants finally stops her and says, “Morris is down the hall in Zelda’s room.”

  Becky goes down to Zelda’s room, opens the door, and there sits Zelda with Morris, holding his penis. Becky cries out, “Morris, Morris, why are doing this? Haven’t I been good enough for you? What does she have that I don’t?”

  Morris looks up at her and answers, “Parkinson’s disease!”

  Bernie Leibowitz

  Sam and Molly

  The following joke should be said (read) with a strong accent!

  Sam and Molly are an old Jewish couple. Molly says, “Sam, get me some ice cream.”

  Sam says, “Okay.”

  Molly responds, “Sam, please write it down so you von’t forget.”

  “I von’t forget and I von’t write it down!”

  Molly says, “Okay, but vhile you’re out, get me some pretzels, too. But Sam, please write it down so you von’t forget!”

  “I von’t write it down and I von’t forget!”

  An hour later, Sam comes home. He opens the bag and takes out six bagels and a half-pound of lox.

  Molly says, “Sam, didn’t I tell you to write it down so you vouldn’t forget? So vhere is the cream cheese?”

  NORMAN STILES

  During Norman Stiles’s career on Sesame Street, he wrote more than one hundred scripts and conceived, co-conceived, or supervised the development of characters such as Count von Count, Forgetful Jones, Sonny Friendly, H. Ross Parrot, Placido Flamingo, Elmo, Telly Monster, the Amazing Mumford, Zoe, Rosita, etc.

  Yes. Elmo.

  Sperm Bank

  So this ninety-eight-year-old man goes into a sperm bank and he says, “Excuse me, I would like to make a deposit.”

  And the nurse behind the counter says, “Okay, how old are you?”

  “I’m ninety-eight. And if by that question, you are questioning whether I’m capable of making a deposit, you are sadly mistaken. You see, all my parts are in perfect working order. As my wife Sadie would attest, but she can’t come here today because my parts are in such working order. She can’t come here today because she’s tired, understand? I want to make a deposit and I want to make it right now.”

  She says, “All right, all right, all right. Here’s a jar; you go in that room. Would you need a magazine?”

  “I don’t need no magazines.”

  He goes in the room and about thirty seconds go by and the nurse hears “Hyoyh. Hoooh. Hyeeeah. Ooooh.”

  “WHOOOOA!”

  She goes and she knocks on the door and she says, “You all right?”

  And he says, “I’m having trouble opening the jar.”

  Wayne Hochberg

  Guess How Old

  Morris and Sadie live in the same nursing home. Each day they take a walk down the hallway and often meet each other somewhere in the middle.

  Usually they say a few things to each other and one day Morris says, “Sadie, today’s my birthday. Wanna guess how old I am?”

  Sadie says sure, then maneuvers her walker closer, reaches down, unzips his fly, pulls out his penis, and gives it a few wags. She then puts it back in his pants, rezips his fly, and says, “You’re eighty-four.”

  Morris says, “That’s amazing. How did you know?”

  “You told me yesterday.”

  Jeff Loewi

  Driving in Florida

  Becky and Ethel are driving in Florida. Becky notices that Ethel has just run a red light but she decides to say nothing. Minutes later, Ethel runs another red light and Becky feels she must say something. “Ethel, do you realize you’ve just run two red lights?”

  Ethel says, “I’m driving?”

  George Bisacca

  Multitasking

  A ninety-year-old guy gets married for the third time to a younger woman.

  After the wedding celebration they go out to the Hamptons to the cottage they have rented on the beach.

  As they snuggle up to each other, the young wife begins to get excited and she whispers in his ear, “Sweetie, let’s go upstairs and make love.”

  He looks at her and replies, “I can’t do both.”

  Shelly Himmelfarb

  Crazy Person

  Eighty-five-year-old Hymie is driving down the highway when his cellphone rings. It’s his wife in a panic, shouting, “Hymie, Hymie! Be careful! I just heard on the radio there’s a crazy person driving the wrong way down the highway!”

  Hymie says, “What do you mean one crazy person? There are hundreds!”

  JOE SIMONOWITZ

  Joe Simonowitz graduated from Samuel Gompers High School in the Bronx in 1949. The caption under his yearbook photo was “That reminds me of a joke.”

  A Death in the Family

  This takes place in an old-age home.

  Cohen has been in this old-age home for quite a while and has Alzheimer’s. One of the nurses has taken a liking to him and always comes in to see how he is.

  One day, she comes in to find him very sad; he is crying. She says, “Cohen, what happened?”

  He says, “My penis died.”

  She doesn’t pay him any mind.

  The next day, he’s walking up and down the aisles with his penis hanging out. The nurse grabs him, puts him back in his room, and says, “Mr. Cohen! You can’t do that! Anyway, yesterday you told me your penis died!”

  He says, “I know. Today’s the viewing.”

  12

  Death: The Last Laugh

  What, You Want I Should Cry?

  CHRISTIANS KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY DIE. THEIR philosophies of death and afterlife are abundantly disseminated—images of heaven and hell pervade classic Western art and literature and popular culture as well. But if you ask ten Jews what their religion suggests will happen after death, you’ll get eleven different opinions.

  So I went to the source, the unquestionable authority, the one Jew who always knows the answers: my mother. But she said, “Who wants to talk about death? It’s depressing.”

  And essentially she’s not far off from doctrinal philosophy.

  I called an old friend, Dr. Abe Unger, who is both a rabbi and an academic, to pose the question to him: “What do the Jews think about death?” Rabbi Abe is an educated and contemplative man and his response surprised me. He said, “Well, the Jews don’t actually talk about it a lot.”

  I wondered, Has he seen any of Woody Allen’s thirty-nine movies? Jews I know are obsessed with death—and telling a lot of jokes about it, which indicates a profound cultural preoccupation.

  But Rabbi Abe meant the philosophical Jews, the Jews who, throughout the past 3,500 years, have debated and written and evolved the Halakha, the collective body of Jewish religious law. He paraphrased the text Halakhic Man, by the theologian Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, who writes (and I paraphrase the paraphraser) that we fear and dread death because our duty is to do mitzvahs (our Halakhic obligations) and in death there is no opportunity to perform mitzvahs.

  Interesting.

  From what I gather, there are also limited opportunities to eat pizza, watch baseball, or get four-handed Thai massage.

  But the message is clear—it’s about now. It’s not about earning frequent-flyer miles for a super-duper eternity. I mean, there is a Jewish heaven (all-you-can-eat-shrimp-poppers?) but apparently all the Jews get in. First you experience something like a Jewish version of purgatory, but after that, every single Semite is accepted.

  This gave me an idea for a sequel to the 1989 animated film All Dogs Go to Heaven called, as you would expect, All Hebes Go to Heaven. But the recent Bernie Madoff scandal made me doubt this idea’s veracity and I put off pitching this concept to Hollywo
od.

  Actually, Rabbi Abe mentioned to me that, according to the Aristotelian medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides, there could be a subtle meritocratic reward system in the afterlife—where the Jews who lived their lives more in accordance with Halacha would get to be closer to God after death. The Madoffs and their ilk wouldn’t go to hell exactly but something like the Elizabeth, New Jersey, section of heaven.

  The intellectual Jewish philosophies do dovetail with the armchair philosophies of the joke tellers in this chapter in one very important respect.

  The bottom line is the same: Live it, love it, kiss it, hug it, laugh it, cry it, grab it, and squeeze it now while you can—because the only sure thing about death is the basket of rugelach at the shiva.

  LARRY DONSKY

  Larry Donsky and my father attended Camp Dellwood together in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, from 1950 to 1954. At camp, Larry was known as “Moose” Donsky. Later he played first base and catcher for a Coney Island League baseball team and worked in the Garment District in New York. He and my father fell out of touch for thirty years, until my father decided to look him up in the white pages and call him.

  Hospital

  I recently had to spend an evening at Center State Hospital and the guy in the bed next to me wasn’t doing too well. Halfway into the night, the doctor came into the room, pulled the curtain between us, went over to the man and his wife, and said, “We’ve done all we can for you. You’re not going to make it through the night. So all I suggest,” he said to the wife, “is to try to make your husband as comfortable as possible.”

  He leaves, and it’s about twelve o’clock at night and I can’t sleep, I’m lying in my bed, and she says, “Darling, what can I do to make you more comfortable?”

  And he says, “Well, I really don’t feel all that bad. I’d really like to do it one more time.”

  She climbs into bed with him and I hear the bed going up and down, they’re going at it for about forty minutes, finally they finish, she’s moaning and groaning, and he says, “That was terrific.”

  She’s sitting in the chair, it’s now about one-thirty, and she says, “Darling, what can I do to make you more comfortable?”

  He says, “I really feel great and I’d love to do it again.”

  It’s about two-thirty in the morning; she jumps into the sack again. They go at it for about forty minutes. I can’t believe it, I can’t fall asleep, and he’s moaning and groaning and it’s wonderful.

  Now it’s about three-thirty in the morning. She says to him, “Darling, what can I do to make you more comfortable?”

  He says, “You know, I really feel good. I’d like to do it one more time.”

  She looks at him and says, “Sure. You don’t have to get up in the morning.”

  STEVE “SHECKY” PLATT

  Steve Platt got divorced when he was fifty. When he decided to start dating, he placed an ad in The Jewish Journal that said, “50-year-old Unemployed Loser. I do not like movies, music, dancing, theater, arts, literature, dining, vacations, cruises, or walks on the beach.” He received 183 responses.

  Eulogies

  This priest just finished this rousing sermon, which was about peace and love. He wheels around and he says to one of the congregants, “And you, sir, what would you like to hear them say as they walk past your casket?”

  He says, “I’d like to hear them say that I was a hard worker; that I was a good provider; that I took care of my family.”

  “Thank you,” says the priest. He points to another congregant. “And you, sir, what would you like to hear them say as they walk past your casket?”

  He says, “I’d like to hear them say that I was a good father, a good husband, and a good brother, and that I contributed to the church.”

  “Thank you,” says the priest. He points to another congregant. “And you, sir, what would you like to hear them say as they walk past your casket?”

  He says, “I think I’d like to hear them say, ‘Hey! I think he’s moving!’ ”

  JERRY BLOCK

  Jerry Block sells commercial real estate. His appearance on our site wasn’t his first time in front of the camera. A few years ago he was surreptitiously filmed while taking a New York City taxi and ended up in a Bud Lite commercial.

  Heaven

  They decided to change the rules for getting into heaven. Now when you reach the Pearly Gates, you have to tell the angel at the gates what it was like the day that you died.

  Sure enough, the following day at noon, the first person shows up and the angel says, “Tell me, sir, what were the circumstances of your death?”

  “I’ve often suspected my wife of cheating on me so I decided to come home early one afternoon. I happened to live on the twenty-fifth floor of this high-rise luxury apartment house, and as I walked in I noticed my wife was walking around without a stitch of clothing on. I became incensed.

  “I walked around, I looked behind the couch, I looked behind the drapes, I didn’t find anybody. I ran through the kitchen, and sure enough, right there on the patio, hanging from the ledge was some guy. I became so mad I jumped up, yelling and screaming at him. I took the heel of my shoe, I was banging it into his fingertips, and he fell to what I thought was certain death.

  “But I took a look over the ledge, and sure enough, wouldn’t you know, his fall was broken by a clump of bushes and he was looking up at me with this shit-eating grin on his face.

  “So I ran back into the kitchen, hoping to find something to throw at him, and I spied the refrigerator. I rolled it out, I pushed it across the terrace, picked it up, pushed it over the side. It turned, end over end, and sure enough it just smashed him to smithereens. Well, the whole event was just too much for me to take. I had a massive heart attack and I died right there on the terrace.”

  The angel says, “Well, that certainly sounds like a crime of passion. Welcome to the kingdom of heaven. Next.”

  The next person shows up and the angel says, “Tell me, sir, what was it like on the day that you died?”

  “Well, I happened to be exercising in my apartment this afternoon. I happened to live on the twenty-sixth floor of this high-rise luxury apartment house. It was a little too warm inside the apartment so I decided to drag my equipment out, and I’m jumping up and down on my trampoline on the terrace, and sure enough I jumped right off it and I put my hands out, hoping to grab anything to break my fall and I did grab on to the terrace of the floor beneath me.

  “This madman came out onto the terrace, yelling and screaming and banging away. He jumped up on the terrace and with the heel of his shoe he banged on my fingertips until I couldn’t hold on any longer and I fell to what I thought was certain death, except my fall was broken by this clump of bushes.

  “I was looking up at the sky, thanking God, smiling that He had spared me, when all of a sudden I saw this madman take what looked like a refrigerator, he pushed it over the edge and it fell end over end, hit me, smashed me to smithereens, and that’s how I died.”

  The angel thinks for a minute and says, “That too sounds like a crime of passion. Welcome to the kingdom of heaven. Next.”

  Next man shows up and the angel says, “Tell me, sir, what was it like on the day you died? What were the circumstances of your death?”

  And the gentleman looks him straight in the face and says, “Well, picture this. There I was hiding in this refrigerator …”

  Benjamin Dreyer

  Rugelach

  The old man is dying.

  He calls his son into his bedroom. “Sammy,” he says, “I can smell all the way up here that your mother is downstairs in the kitchen, baking rugelach. You know that your mother’s rugelach is my favorite thing in the world. I’m sure that this will be the last thing I’ll ever eat. Would you please go downstairs and get me some?”

  Sammy leaves the room.

  Five minutes go by. Ten minutes.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sammy returns to his father’s bedroom. Empty-handed.


  “Sammy,” the old man says, “where’s the rugelach?”

  “Pop,” Sammy says sheepishly, “Mom says they’re for after the funeral.”

  BARNETT HOFFMAN

  When I was a boy and my father was in the prosecutor’s office, he received a death threat from an escaped convict. We had an armed bodyguard stay overnight in our living room. He helped me untangle my fishing rod.

  Medium

  Jake dies.

  Becky goes to one of those mediums and the medium looks into her crystal ball and a voice comes out. “Becky.”

  She says, “Is that you, Jake?”

  “It’s me, Becky.”

  “Really? How is it, Jake?”

  “Oh, Becky, it’s wonderful. Every day I wake up, the first thing I do in the morning is have sex. And then I have some breakfast. And then I take a little nap. Sex again. And then lunch. And then a nap. And then I have sex, snack, and then I take another nap. Sex, nap, food, wonderful. And I do this seven days a week.”

  “Jake, you’re so lucky. Heaven must be wonderful.”

  “Who’s in heaven? I’m in a bull in Montana.”

  CHUCK BERKE

  Chuck Berke moved to Del Mar, California, twenty years ago and has been a real estate broker there ever since.

  The Accident

  A little Jewish lady was not very attractive—in fact, she was awful looking—and had lived a somewhat unlucky, sad, and lonely life. One day she is on a crowded bus and there’s an accident. She is apparently mortally wounded and on the way to the hospital, she thinks, Again unlucky, and now I’m about to die.