Old Jews Telling Jokes (18 page)

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.

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.”

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.”

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

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 Hollywood.

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 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.

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.”