Need a laugh? Next up for the Arts & Ideas series is an evening of comedy, featuring award-winning NPR radio host and author Michael Krasny.
Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means, is slated for 7:30 p.m., Saturday, June 23. The program is a compendium of Jewish jokes that offers a window into Jewish culture.
The evening starts with some local improv comedy and will continue with Krasny’s side-splitting thoughts on Jewish humor.
Tickets are available at The J or jewishlouisville.org/laughter. Cost is $18 general admission and $36 for VIP seating, including a meet & greet with the author and a copy of his book.
Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since his bar mitzvah. With his background as a scholar and public radio host, Krasny delves into the themes, topics and form of Jewish humor: chauvinism undercut by irony and self-mockery, the fear of losing cultural identity through assimilation, the importance of vocal inflection in joke-telling. He calls upon communal memory through his use of Yiddish.
Borrowing from traditional humor and such Jewish comedy legends as Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Schumer, Let There Be Laughter is an absolute pleasure for the chosen and goyim alike.