YIVO’s Newest Online Course, Is Anything Okay? The History of Jews and Comedy in America, Launches March 21

(New York, NY) – On Thursday, March 21, 2024, YIVO will launch the fifth course in the Shine Online Educational Series, Is Anything Okay? The History of Jews and Comedy in America. This course, along with all of YIVO’s Shine Online courses, will be free of charge.

From the earliest jokes told on the Lower East Side to the comedy routines honed in the Catskills, Ashkenazi Jews developed radically new forms of comedic output in the 20th century. On film and television, pioneering Jewish comics—Joan Rivers, Lenny Bruce, and many more—broke norms and challenged taboos of American culture.

In this course, delve into the history of Jewish comedy and its explosive development in the United States. See hundreds of unique archival objects, including vintage jokebooks, early comedy records, film, television, and radio clips, photographs, and posters, as well as interviews and discussions with leading comedians, scholars and personalities from the world of Jewish comedy.

Is Anything Okay? features interviews and discussions with comedians and comedy writers such as W. Kamau Bell, Lewis Black, Jena Friedman, Marc Maron, Paul Reiser, Modi Rosenfeld, Billy West, Alan Zweibel, and YidLife Crisis co-stars Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman and scholars and academics including Jennifer Caplan (Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies – University of Cincinnati, author of Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials), Jeremy Dauber (Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture – Columbia University), Avi Patt (Professor, Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies – University of Connecticut), Eddy Portnoy (Senor Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions – YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), David Roskies (Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture, Professor of Jewish Literature – Jewish Theological Seminary), and Michael Wex (author of Born to Kvetch).

The course is divided into seven units, ranging in topic from the roots of Jewish humor in traditional Ashkenazi life in Eastern Europe to the Catskills and Borsht Belt to contemporary Jewish comedy. You can register for the course at yivo.org/comedy.

To celebrate the class launch, YIVO will host a Launch Party on Thursday, March 21, 2024 at 7:00pm ET in person at YIVO (located in the Center for Jewish History building, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY) and on Zoom. The evening will feature a panel discussion with lead scholar Eddy Portnoy and special guests Judy Gold and Alan Zweibel as they uncover the diverse world of Jewish comedy past, present, and future. Register for the launch event at yivo.org/Comedy-Launch.

Combined, YIVO’s Shine Online courses have over 26,000 registrations from all 50 states and 70+ countries around the globe. More information about the series can be found at yivo.org/shine.

For more information contact:
Ben Kaplan
Director of Education

This online course is sponsored by: 
Edward Blank and Family
Ruth and David Levine
The Shine Trust

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story