Al Jaffee Explains How Mad Magazine Made American Humor Jewish

[flamingdem]

http://forward.com/culture/books/333672/al-jaffee-explains-how-mad-magazine-made-american-humor-jewish/

* I remember some of this: they were also “making fun of ourselves. We made fun of a certain kind of Yiddishkeit just by using these words. Farshimmelt. Furshlugenner. Potrzebie.”


-- snip

Mad is famous for delivering pointed attacks on the powerful from a subversively left-wing perspective, and, according to Jaffee, this was because the first generation of Mad—Kurtzman, Elder and Jaffee himself — came from Jewish traditions. All the founders had grown up in Yiddish-speaking New York homes and became close friends at the High School of Music and Art. Raised in a world of Jewish humor and Borscht Belt schtick, this group of talented young men brought that background to Mad and in so doing made it the one of the most popular magazines in American history, reaching a pinnacle of 2 million circulation during the 1970s.

I asked Jaffee if he and the other writers, artists and editors considered their non-Jewish readers when they were using so much Yiddish, and he recalled that Kurtzman, the first editor, “wanted funny meaningless words. Meaningless to the general reading public, but not meaningless to someone who grew up in a Jewish household.” Overall, “Kurtzman’s philosophy was ‘why do I think it’s funny? If I think it’s funny, other people will too. Even if it is these throwaway words.’” For the readers who did not know the Yiddish words and jokes, Jaffee felt “the average reader in the country” wouldn’t have “made a connection between these strange words and the fact that a lot of people working for Mad were Jewish.” For them it would have been a jokey, funny, curse-like word. Yet over time, as non-Jewish readers learned the specific Yiddish language of Mad, even they began using Yiddish terms in their letters to the magazine.

During the magazine’s first decade, the word “Jewish” was never used, even though the Jewishness constantly came through in varied ways, from such overt markers as Yiddishisms and foods associated with Jews to less obvious one such as commentaries on postwar American indifference to the Holocaust, attacks on McCarthyism, subversive ideas about gender and challenges to suburbanization. I knew that the avoidance of the term “Jewish” was a common aspect of postwar Jewish American comedy, from the Marx Brothers to Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” and I wondered whether it was a conscious choice or if the creators of Mad determined that there was no need to say “Jewish” or even “Yiddish” since it was already so obvious.

Jaffee explained to me that that his generation of Jewish artists was very sensitive to the fact that they were Jews in a non-Jewish world overshadowed by the Holocaust. In fact, the writers and artists of Mad used to joke “amongst ourselves about looking too Jewish. You know, if you walked with your portfolio into an advertising agency, if you looked too Jewish or had a name like Ginsberg, you were dead meat.” Whenever possible, the men changed their names to make them sound less Jewish. (For example, Jaffee changed his name from Abraham “to something more American — Alan,” although he said he would not have done so if he’d had to pay for it — it was a free service to GIs.) It was not necessarily that they were ashamed of theirs names, but they didn’t want to be pigeonholed.

For Jaffee, the decision not to “advertise himself by wearing a Magen David” had more to do with his family history: When Jaffee’s father brought him and his brothers back to the U.S. in 1933, his mother remained in Lithuania. Jaffee never saw her again, and she disappeared with the countless other Jews of Lithuania during the Nazi invasion.

“I lived through a period when Jewish people were very nervous about flaunting their Jewishness,” Jaffee said. “Even after the war, you were aware that there were people out there who wanted to kill you just because you were Jewish. And it’s still around.” So while Mad Magazine would have an intensely Jewish feel to it, the term would not be used.

Read more: http://forward.com/culture/books/333672/al-jaffee-explains-how-mad-magazine-made-american-humor-jewish/#ixzz40sKtNqEk

[PoliticAverse]

1. Best humor magazine ever. n/t

[flamingdem]

2. Agree. I grew up on it

I still think "snappy answer to stupid question" and other catch phrases of the different artists on a daily basis. Of course 'tis a shadow of its former self. Worst of all I can't read it for free in magazine stores since they don't carry it in many places now.

[PoliticAverse]

3. Not the same once Don Martin left. n/t

[flamingdem]

4. Yeah, he was the best

[haikugal]

5. I have a subscription...

I loved it growing up but my father wouldn't let me read it, said it was communist propaganda....he and I never saw eye to eye.

Thanks for this post!

[awoke_in_2003]

7. I was lucky

my father read it with me.

[haikugal]

8. Yes, you were!

[awoke_in_2003]

11. My father was a hippy

As a teen, I thought myself conservative. It took me a while to realize how smart my father is.

[haikugal]

12. I grew up to be a hippy...

Dad was a brainwashed Reaganite, poor thing.

You had a fun Dad...it's funny how things turn out sometimes isn't it? I made sure my son got to read many different things and listen to a lot of different music. Very different from how I grew up.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Wow, I never realized this

I was born in 68, and read a lot of MAD Magazine in the 70s and 80s. Best magazine ever.

[awoke_in_2003]

9. And I agree

Cracked was funny, but second rate

[bvf]

10. Bookmarked. Looks like a good read, thanks.