Valley Beit Midrash

Professor Shaina Hammerman, a professor of Jewish cultural studies for the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, presents her Valley Beit Midrash lecture "Dirty Jews: Gender and Vulgarity in Jewish Comedy" before an audience at Temple Chai (www.templechai.com/) in Phoenix, AZ. ABOUT THIS LECTURE: In the past two decades, American comedy has been animated by a cohort of raunchy “sex comics” like Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Rachel Bloom, Lena Dunham, Ilana Glazer, and Abbi Jacobson, and others. This lecture ties together the bawdy content of these comedians’ acts with their shared identities as women and Jews. How does their work connect to the comedy of earlier generations of so-called “unkosher comediennes” like Sophie Tucker and Totie Fields? How does their work connect to the longstanding tradition of Jewish men’s comedy? It turns out that what we understand as “funny” and what we understand as “Jewish” depend entirely on the gender of the comedian. DONATE: