Reginald D. Hunter. Photo: Screenshot

Recently, at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, an American comedian named Reginald D. Hunter told an antisemitic joke.

The joke stated that having an abusive wife who complains about being abused is “like being married to Israel.”

The joke is no doubt offensive to many Israelis and Jews. I find it offensive. Yet the joke is also funny.

I say it is funny based upon the fact that, according to reports, the audience laughed. If people laugh at a joke, it is, by definition, funny.

I don’t like the fact that the joke “worked,” to use the parlance of comedians, but I also can’t change the fact that it did.

So, why was the joke funny?

As a comedy writer myself (scripted comedy, not stand-up, but the principles are the same) I’ve given some thought to the question of what makes something funny. Having answers to the question does not make me a funnier writer, but I find it interesting nonetheless.

I will begin answering that question with an episode of the old The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the episode, Dick Van Dyke’s character, Rob Petrie, attends his young son’s elementary school class to talk about his job as a comedy writer.

After floundering, comedically of course, Rob teaches the young kids that we laugh when we are surprised. He demonstrates by re-entering the classroom and doing a pratfall. The kids laugh. See, he explains, you don’t expect someone to enter a room and fall down like that. You are surprised, so you laugh.

There are other types of comedic surprise. There is verbal surprise. Most people have heard the old Henny Youngman joke, “Take my wife. Please!”

This joke was funny because people expected “Take my wife…” to be followed by something like “for example.”  Instead he said “please,” changing the expected meaning, surprising the audience and getting a big laugh. The reason why it is not funny today is because the surprise is long since gone.

There is also the surprise of recognition. We hear something that makes us react with an unconscious, “Oh, my God, that is so true,” and that surprised recognition makes us laugh. Much of Jerry Seinfeld’s so-called observational comedy falls into this category. Seinfeld jokes about the safety instructions on airplanes: “They show you how to use the seatbelt, in case you haven’t been in a car since 1965. ‘Oh, you lift up on the buckle! Oh! I was trying to break the metal apart. I thought that’s how it works.’”

And the audience laughs because they are surprised by the recognition: “Oh, my God, that is so true.”

So, when Reginald D. Hunter said that having an abusive wife who complains about being abused is “like being married to Israel,” why was that funny? It wasn’t a pratfall or a verbal surprise. I would posit that the audience had the reaction of surprised recognition. And therefore, they laughed.

For me, as a Jew, it is not the fact that a possibly antisemitic comedian told an antisemitic joke that I find so horribly disturbing. It is the fact that a room full of people thought “Oh, my God, that is so true.”

Michael Kaplan is a TV writer-producer, playwright, and children’s book author. For his TV work, he has been nominated for four Emmy Awards, winning one.