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Humor

Michelle Wolf (2016)

Nice Ladies

Larisa Klebe

I’m not a nice lady. I express my (many) opinions loudly, I’ve perfected the sarcastic comment as an art form, and I’m the proud owner of both a copper IUD and a sweatshirt that reads “I’ve got 99 problems and white heteronormative patriarchy is basically all of them.”

Topics: Television, Comedy
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

A Tale of Two Maisels

Rachel King
Larisa Klebe

When it comes to the new Amazon original series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, we are an office divided. The newest series from Gilmore Girls showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino has a whole lot to love, especially if you love history, Jewish women, and feminism (which we do!). At the same time, this first season pays little homage to the many funny Jewish women that were making waves in comedy before Midge grabbed the mic.

Topics: Television, Comedy
Bat Mitzvah or Check?

6 Bat Mitzvah Gifts to Look at Before Writing a Check

Sara Lebow

Here are six adorable Bat Mitzvah gifts to consider before just giving up and writing a check to the newly minted young adult in your life.

Ghosting Anxiety Image

Is Your Crush Ghosting You or Do They Just Observe Shabbat?

Sara Lebow

It’s Saturday evening, and it feels like your crush hasn’t talked to you in days. You’ve texted them five times with no response. Are you being ghosted? Or are they just resting for the Sabbath? We’ve created this helpful checklist to help you find out.

Topics: Comedy, Writing
Glow, a Netflix Original Series (2017-)

Wrestling with Women's Relationships in GLOW

Sara Lebow

The women who stumble into the wrestling show, filled with as much hope, desperation, and monotony as Ruth, do not simply to take over men’s parts, but redefine their own.

Cover of Sarah Silverman's A Speck of Dust

A Speck of Silverman

Larisa Klebe

Silverman delivers the type of no-holds-barred, crude, hilarious, smart comedy that we’ve all come to expect from her. She also drops some serious truth bombs.

Topics: Television, Comedy
The Wedding Plan (2017) Movie Poster

Rama Burshtein’s “The Wedding Plan”

Elena Hoffenberg

I did not know what to expect from a romantic comedy about a woman intent on getting married in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, but The Wedding Plan by Rama Burshtein is one of the most feminist films I’ve ever seen.

Topics: Comedy, Film
Carrie Fisher

Jewish Intergalatic Princess

Lisa Batya Feld

I was five when I saw Star Wars for the first time at my friend Danny’s house. We loved it so much that we spent the next two years playing games where we clambered up on rocks and swung down on tree branches like we were maneuvering through the Death Star together.

Topics: Comedy, Film, Memoirs
Amy Schumer, Headshot

The Honest, Outspoken Amy Schumer

Lili Klayman

In her obscene, outspoken, and controversial ways, Amy Schumer has shaped comedy; and with that, she has shaped society's views on women.

Topics: Comedy
Feminist Relics in Rising Voices Fellow Sarah Groustra's Room

Cool Girls Club

Sarah Groustra

When I was nine, I idolized Hermione Granger. I had just finished the Harry Potter series, and I was convinced that she was everything I aspired to be--bookish and intelligent, a powerful witch who stood up for what she believed in, but who could also snag the world’s best Quidditch player as a prom date. 

Barbra Streisand in What's Up, Doc?

Unlearning Silence in What’s Up, Doc?

Caroline Kubzansky

For all that I am the outspoken, proud nerd in my school life, for all that I try to speak up for my views and ask questions in academic settings, for all that I am confidently liberal in conservative settings— I am distinctly self-conscious about all of it. 

Topics: Feminism, Comedy, Film
A Sampling of Netflix's Stand-up Comedy Offerings

Netflix and No-Chill?

Delaney Hoffman

I am the funniest person I know. Out of all of the aspects of my identity, my sense of humor is probably my favorite. I say my jokes loudly; I laugh at the things I say even if nobody else does. Shari Short asserts in her article, "Jewish Funny", that humor is a common ground for Jews. Self-deprecation and sprinklings of Yiddish go a long way when identifying fellow members of the Tribe by jokes alone. 

Topics: Television, Comedy
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer

The Broads are Back

Larisa Klebe

That’s right. The much anticipated third season of Broad City is finally here! YAS KWEEN! After a hiatus which ardent fans like myself would classify as an eternity, Abbi and Ilana have at long last returned with their shenanigans, their pot, their feminism, and, as we learn from season three’s opening sequence, their multi-faceted bathroom use.  

Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, November 6, 1967

Remembering Anne Meara: Jewish Mother By Choice

Keren R. McGinity, Ph.D.

Anne Meara was a Jewess with an attitude. She was born in Brooklyn on September 20, 1929, raised as a Catholic, and died as a Jew in Manhattan on May 23, 2015. Meara studied drama and although she never intended to be a comedian, that’s how she will be remembered by most audiences. What made Meara truly unique was that she exuded her Irish ethnicity while simultaneously taking on the mantle of Jewish wife and mother.

Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer

For Women in Comedy, A New Jewish Voice

Sophie Edelhart

Jewish women are having a moment. At the end of 2014, Flavorwire published an article entitled “2014 Was—Secretly—The Year of the Jewish Woman.” It profiled Jewish women who made news in culture in the past year: Abbi Glazer and Ilana Jacobson of the Comedy Central show Broad City, Jill Soloway, the writer of the groundbreaking show Transparent,  and Jenny Slate, the comedian who starred in the romantic comedy Obvious Child, among others. 

Topics: Television, Comedy
Joan Rivers, May 24, 2009

Joan Rivers and Jewish Comedy: A Remembrance

Joyce Antler

“I am not the ideal Jewish woman,” Joan Rivers admits in a comedy act filmed in the Jewish Women’s Archive film, Making Trouble. “I love to take [my audience] to the edge,” she says.  “I love to get them upset . . . And ruin their value system.” Known for her aggressiveness and her “unkosher” bawdy style, in critic Sarah Cohen’s words, Rivers (nee Joan Molinsky), Phi Beta Kappa Barnard graduate and daughter of a Brooklyn Jewish doctor, performed for over forty years. 

Topics: Television, Comedy
Shari Short

Jewish Funny

Shari Short

It turns out that “Jewish Funny” has become evidence-based. Results from the recent Pew Study “Portrait of Jewish Americans,” four in 10 of the 5.3 million religious and cultural Jews surveyed consider a sense of humor essential to Jewish identity. Having a sense of humor is part of our communications and value system. It’s as if we have a framework for which we see the world that lets us find and enjoy the irony of life’s complications. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the words “irony” and “oy” both have an “o” and a “y”.

Topics: Comedy
Estelle Getty at the 41st Emmy Awards, September 17, 1989

Estelle Getty: Golden Girl

Jewesses With Attitude

Do I admire her because she's been described as "... evasive about her height, acknowledging only that she was under 5 feet and under 100 pounds?" Well, all the more points to Estelle Getty for being an itsy-bitsy powerhouse, but mostly I admire her for being a genuinely funny, talented woman, who never gave up on her greatest ambitions. In an industry where youth and beauty are often valued far above maturity and wit, Estelle turned the tables. She found success in her later years, cracked wise about it the whole time, and taught young women like myself a few things along the way.

Dinah Shore at the Miami Book Fair International, 1990

Moments in History: Jewish Entertainers of Television

Jewesses With Attitude

Earlier this month we promised more from our new series Moments In History, which commemorates game changing Jewish women in entertainment.  Our last entry took a look at women on the silver screen—today we’ll explore memorable moments from the lives of four very different Jewish stars of the smaller screen.

Wendy Wasserstein

Making Trouble: Clips from the Cutting Room Floor

Steven Myers-Yawnick

While hard at work here at the Archive, I stumbled upon some interviews that ended up on the cutting room floor during production of our prizewinning documentary “Making Trouble”. Take a look at a few clips that feature fabulous Jewish women in entertainment talking about fabulous Jewish women in entertainment.

See Tovah Feldshuh speak about the ahead of her time Sophie TuckerAlex Borstein explore Gilda Radner's beauty,  Adrienne Cooper's take on Molly Picon gender roles, and Wendy Wasserstein's thoughts Jewish entertainers on and off the stage. 

Topics: Comedy, Film, Theater
Jackie Hoffman, September 19, 2011

Jackie Hoffman Doesn't Care If You Find The Feminist Message

David Levy

Throughout March, Baruch College Performing Arts Center has been presenting a series of Jewish comediennes in partnership with the Jewish Women’s Arch

Topics: Feminism, Comedy, Theater
Microphone

Lauren Interviews Lauren

Lauren Mayer

Singer-songwriter-humorist Lauren Mayer reflects on Hanukkah, Christmas, family, growing up a Jew in Orange County and how all this informs her own, artistic process. May you enjoy this in depth interview conducted by… herself.

What inspired you to write “Latkes, Shmatkes”?

Two years ago NPR did a program on Christmas music, and their expert was talking about how secular songs, like “Frosty The Snowman,” became classics, and then he said, “Some songs should never become classics, like this one”— and used an old recording of mine as an example. It was a novelty song I’d written and recorded years ago, “The Fruitcake That Ate New Jersey,” and when I wrote in to ask how they found it, they ended up interviewing me. I joked that now I was part of the great tradition of Jewish songwriters who create Christmas music, and I really should do a Chanukah album. Once I said it, I realized it could be a fun idea.

"We Killed," by Yael Kohen

"Have you ever considered the girl to be the somebody?"

Stephen Benson

Yael Kohen’s new book, We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, has many revealing tales about how change happens. But one stands out for me: in 1966, the actress Marlo Thomas approached the head of ABC-TV programming with a novel idea. She wanted “to play the person with the problem, not the person who assisted the person with the problem.” She recalled:

I didn’t want to be the wife of somebody, or the secretary of somebody, or the daughter of somebody…”Have you ever considered the girl to be the somebody?” And he said, “Would anybody watch a show like that?” I said, “I think they would.” And so I gave him a copy of The Feminine Mystique, and he read it and kind of became convinced.

Topics: Comedy, Film, Non-Fiction
Joan Rivers, New York City, 2010

Joan Rivers: a woman filled with hate or humanity?

Gabrielle Orcha

Joan Rivers: a woman of chutzpadik and chilarity. We either love her, or hate her. She’s either the talk of the town, or fades into red carpet oblivion . . . only to be resurrected again.

Topics: Comedy, Writing
Kosher Camera

pJewishMisanthropy announces "Kosher Camera" that erases women in real time

Leah Berkenwald

Yesterday eJewish Philanthropy released a special, satirical Purim edition of their usual newsletter called pJewishMisanthropy. The whole thing is absolutely hilarious--at least it should be to any of us working in the Jewish communal world who read often-vague articles about the future of "peoplehood," "Jewish innovation," "leadership," and "engagement" in the ever-changing Jewish American/Israeli landscape. Still, one story in particular caught my attention.

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