Old Jews Telling Jokes (17 page)

Ponce de Leon explored Florida in the 1500s looking for the “fountain of youth” and the American Jews pretty much found it at the Miami Fontainebleau, starting in the late 1950s. With the success that followed the war years, American Jews were able to do something that their forebears had never done: retire. While they still wanted to spend the summer months up north with their perfect
grandchildren, what was wrong with having a little sunshine during the dreary winter? Jewish communities developed in Miami Beach, Hollywood, Boca Raton, and for the fancy-shmancies, Palm Beach.

While Florida couldn’t actually stop the aging process, it could certainly slow it down. How slow? About twelve miles per hour if you’ve ever taken a drive around early-bird-special dinnertime. Retired Jews were able to stay active and fit doing all the things they liked the most: playing golf, practicing bridge, lobbing a tennis ball back and forth, betting nickels at mah-jongg, and, especially, complaining that their children don’t call enough.

The Jews certainly did not invent plastic surgery. Apparently the Indians were performing it as early as a thousand years ago. Whatever. The Chinese invented spaghetti but you wouldn’t ask for a Bolognese in Beijing. Plastic surgery is endemic to all contemporary American life, and isn’t limited to any particular ethnic group, but the Jews, as is their wont, have put their own spin on it.

When elective cosmetic surgery starting becoming possible and popular in the 1960s, the Jews were in a quandary. They liked the idea of a little nip and tuck but didn’t know whether it was, well, kosher. So a number of major rabbis were asked to opine on the subject.

Quoting various sources in the Halacha, most of the rabbis came to the same opinion: It was allowable to do the plastic surgery if one was preventing shame and suffering by correcting a defect in one’s looks. It was forbidden if the cause was vanity alone. And there the rabbis managed to completely satisfy their constituency. Not only did they give the Jews backdoor permission to have plastic surgery, but they gave them a good reason to find themselves defective!

Daniel Okrent, like Isaac Newton and that guy Murphy, has a “law” named for him. Okrent’s law: The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true.

So these three old Jews are sitting on a traffic island on Broadway as they do on most sunny mornings.

One of them says out of nowhere, “Ech. It’s terrible. I hate it. I just can’t stand it.”

The other one says, “Max, what’s wrong with you?”

Max says, “It’s being eighty-five years old. You know, every morning I get up, it’s seven o’clock, I go to pee. I stand there, I push, I squeeze, nothing comes out—a little dribble, dribble, dribble if I’m lucky. It’s terrible.”

His friend says, “I know what you mean.”

“Why? What’s your problem?”

“Every morning, you know, I try to move mine bowels. I push, I sqeeze, I grunt, I groan—maybe raisins if I’m lucky. It’s terrible.”

The third guy says, “I know what you mean. Being old, it’s just awful.”

Max says, “What’s your problem, Sol?”

He says “Well, every morning, seven o’clock, I pee like a golden fountain. Eight o’clock, I have a nice bowel movement. Nice juicy plums.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

He says, “I don’t get out of bed until nine.”

Eileen was married for forty-five years to the late Evan Lottman. She refers to him as the “best motion picture film editor in the business” and, although she would be the first to acknowledge bias, she may be right. Among many other films, Evan edited
Sophie’s Choice, Panic in Needle Park
, and parts of
The Hustler
and
Apocalypse Now
, and was nominated for an Academy Award for
The Exorcist
.

A little old lady in the nursing home goes up to the last remaining man in the nursing home.

She gets herself all dolled up and says, “How would you like some super sex?”

He says, “I’ll take the soup.”

Harry Riskin was selected as a “New Jersey Super Lawyer” by
New Jersey Monthly
magazine.

Becky and Jake have been married for fifty years and they’re at the breakfast table.

Becky says to Jake, “Can you imagine, we’ve been at this breakfast table for fifty years and it’s just been wonderful being with you.”

And Jake says, “Yes, I can remember. As a matter of fact, I can remember sitting here naked as a jaybird with you at this very breakfast table.”

So Becky says to him, “You know what? Let’s relive old times, Jake. Let’s get nude.”

So they strip and they get right down to the buff and they come back to the table and sit down.

Becky says, “Jake, my honey. You know my nipples are as hot for you today as they were fifty years ago.”

Jake says, “That doesn’t surprise me. One’s in the coffee and the other’s in the oatmeal.”

Richard Z. Chesnoff, in his role as a global correspondent, had the opportunity to interview Yasser Arafat many times. “Once in the late eighties at his headquarters in Tunisia,” Chesnoff says, “Arafat invited me to stay on for lunch. The table was filled with familiar Palestinian delights—hummus, tahini, parsley and bulgar salad, pita, etc. There was also a huge tureen in the middle of the table filled with liquid
with what looked like floating chunks of meat and vegetables. I asked what it was. ‘Chicken soup,’ Arafat said! ‘It’s my favorite and I have it every day.’ I laughed and told him he had more in common with Yitzhak Rabin, Israelis, and Jews than he thought. ‘We call it Jewish penicillin,’ I told him. I’m not sure he got it, and after he offered me a chicken leg with his fingers, I decided I’d rather not try it.”

Morris is about to turn ninety-five. His sons want to give him a birthday present but they don’t know what to get him. They talk back and forth—maybe we’ll give him this, maybe we’ll give him that.

They go to visit Morris in his nursing home. “Papa,” they say, “it’s going to be your ninety-fifth birthday. What would you like as a present?”

Papa says, “Well, fellahs, I’m getting a little lonely here. Maybe you’ll bring me a nice young woman, put her in my bed with me, and I’ll have an afternoon with her?”

The boys are shocked! They talk to one another—we can’t do that, it’s a nursing home, there will be a scandal, they’ll throw him out. One son says to the other, “Listen, I got an idea. They’re making inflatable dolls now that are so fantastic you can’t tell. And Papa doesn’t see so well, he doesn’t hear so well. It’ll be fine.”

The sons go and they spend a fortune on this blond, buxom blow-up doll. They put it in the bed, they bring their father in. They leave their father alone, they go outside and wait, and they hear a little noise—and all of a sudden, they hear an explosion, and the father screams. The sons run in and say, “Papa! What happened?”

The father says, “Well, this girl doesn’t talk very much. So we’re lying in bed, we’re making out a little bit, I started to nibble a bit on her breast, and all of a sudden she farts and flies out the window!”

Alan Gordon was an executive at a local paper distribution company when I was in high school. Some of us worked for him in the summer. We rode around the massive warehouse on a pallet jack, picking loads for the trucks to deliver. We got a Teamsters card and overtime after 5
P.M
. I used to try to remember all the words to “American Pie” as I rode around the warehouse. It helped pass the time.

Jake and Becky are an old couple. They’ve been dating for a while, and they decide “tonight’s the night.”

They get to her apartment and Jake says, “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

He comes back out and there’s Becky, standing on her head, legs akimbo, pants down, dress over her head.

“Becky, what are you doing?”

Becky says, “I figured, if you can’t get it up, you can drop it in.”