Dancing In Hebron
Jewish humour is a unique kind of comedy. It is all too often self-involved and self-addressed. It is an attempt by a people whose instinct is to make light of the consequences that life places upon them by being Jews. Wry and puckishly humorous observations that appear to make light of circumstances and conditions that might seem more suited to bleak and black surrender to despair, mark the humour of the Jewish mind.Grim, dark humour, an asperity in observation represents as a relief valve. For Jews, it does. There have been dark books written about the Holocaust that are in fact ironical perspectives of the dreadful plight of a people sleep-walking to their collective annihilation. Jews poke fun at themselves, they poke fun at life, at the strictures that life has placed upon them as a people, at the catastrophes that fate has surrendered them to.
This is a backlash against the surrender of the soul. This is a way to defeat despair. To muse and to amuse oneself. Could life conceivably become any more difficult? Assessing the historical existence of Jews and Judaism upon this Earth, unlikely. Yet, from the ashes of destruction, the remnants of world Jewry arise again and again, incandescent in a recalled determination to survive.
This is a survival technique. The video posted by an IDF soldier on YouTube, Battalion 50 Rock the Hebron Casbah is one other manifestation of this bitterly dry, self-directed humour. Jews being forced to deploy themselves in a manner directed by events beyond their control and their wishes. Laugh, to prevent yourself from crying hopelessly.
Laughter is solace, and it is hope.
Unfortunately for Jews, when they laugh, the world does not laugh with them.
Labels: Human Relations, That's Life, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, July 07, 2010
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