Sunday, August 04, 2024
Elder of ZiyonThe late Egyptian Pope Shenouda III once went on TV and described how he made former Grand Mufti of Egypt Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi laugh with a variant of a "rabbi, priest and minister" joke.
The version he told was this:
A Muslim sheikh, a Christian priest, and a Jewish rabbi met, and each of them participated in a conversation about the money they receive: how to differentiate between what belongs to them personally and what belongs to God. The Muslim said: I hold the coin in my hand, with the head on one side and the writing on the other, and I throw it up. If it lands on the head, it belongs to God. If it lands on the writing, it is written for me to take. The Christian said: I make two circles inside each other and throw the coin up. If it lands on the inner circle, it belongs to me. If it lands on the outer circle, it belongs to God. The Jew was asked: What are you doing? He said: I am a man who has surrendered myself to God completely. I have no personal will at all. I hold the coin in my hand and throw it up and say to God: Take what you want from it and leave me the rest. Whatever God sends down, I will take.”
I traced the joke back to at least the 1960s where it was mentioned as an icebreaker joke in a 1968 academic conference and a 1965 medical group management meeting. Almost certainly it was created by Borscht Belt Jewish comedians in the 1950s.
Another variant was famously used in a key scene of the movie Short Circuit, also delivered by a Jewish actor:
It isn't a bad joke, but it depends on the comedian.
The joke is about the greed of all religions - why should they keep any of the money? - and the rabbi in the joke is just taking it to a logical extreme; it isn't about Jewish greed but about religious hypocrisy. When a Jew tells the joke, it is about the rabbi exposing the hypocrisy.
When said in Arabic between a Christian and a Muslim, it changes from "gentle mockery" to antisemitism.
Of course, compared to the far worse antisemitism in Arabic language media every day, this is nothing. But it is still instructive that the highest religious authorities in Egypt find it acceptable to tell antisemitic jokes.
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In the spirit of "gentle mockery," here's a new joke.
A rabbi, priest and imam enter a bar and order drinks.
The priest, surprised, asks the imam, "I thought Muslims don't drink."
The imam screams "Allahu Akbar" and stabs the rabbi multiple times. The patrons flee in terror as the rabbi lays on the floor dying. The imam leans back, raises his glass and replies, "For jihad, everything is permitted."
See? It makes fun of Muslims using a well-known stereotype and also makes the leaders of the religion sound like hypocrites, just like the earlier joke! Who could possibly object to a joke like that?
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