The Golden Age and Decline of Jewish Humor In “The Last Jewish Story” by Denoël publishing house, Michel Wieviorka selected unpublished or little-known Jewish stories in order to understand what the Jewish world is outside of Jewish humor.
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Reading time: 3 min
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Sociologist Michel Wieviorka analyzes well-chosen Jewish stories and their historical trajectories, especially anchored in the world of Eastern Europe, in the world of Yiddish, which today has disappeared and was destroyed by the Nazis.
Michel Wieviorka notes that this humor only came from the Jewish community in France and the United States in the early 1960s, and with this humor, most often tinged with self-deprecation, he presents us with some of his stories. But beware, reminds the sociologist, laughter always contains an element of malice and always tends to be based on stereotypes and contains a dose of malice.
Michel Wieviorka asks: where does Jewish history end and anti-Semitic history begin? And he notes that the author of the story, or who tells it, matters a lot and even changes the way we read it. The book is fascinating and allows us to understand what the Jewish world is in addition to Jewish humor. With an alarming observation: the peak of Jewish humor in the second half of the 20th century was a golden age for the Jewish world. Its decline today is all the more worrying in the current context.
Whistleblowing animals by Éric Arlix at Imho publishing house
Éric Arlix is not a scientist. His books are not zoology or ethology textbooks. Éric Arlix is an artist who spans all genres, from stage to writing. Last year, a feature documentary, as he himself defined it, told us how ring-necked parakeets had settled on the Île de France since the early 1970s. Éric Arlix has documented himself perfectly. The rest is a loose interpretation of these animal behaviors, hence the term documentary fiction in Whistleblowing animals.
A small book of about one hundred pages tells about animals whose erratic behavior is for him signals that warn the world about the state of the planet and animal precarity. First, he tells us about the unusual journey of the Beluga, which in 1966 went down the Rhine to Bonn, Germany. It also tells the story of a very long journey of a group of elephants in China who left their reserve. natural in Yunan, go straight for more than 600 km to the north and finally return to the starting point.
And the author asks himself What did they want? what were they looking for? What logic or need did they respond to? Were these strange paths intentional or accidental? In any case, these are impressive enough facts and are so perceived that, according to Eric Arlix, these animals are whistleblowers.