Update on A Joke to Start the Week - "The Buffalo Hunt"

UPDATE: Apparently some of our readers who don't understand Yiddish didn't get today's joke. The punch line was "Oy vey! Der milchiker tomahawk." 
EXPLANATION: The chief keeps kosher and just when he was about to use his tomahawk on the buffalo he was chasing, he suddenly realized that he had mistakenly taken his milchik (dairy) tomahawk which he couldn't use because the buffalo was fleishik (meat).


It's another Monday, and time for another Joke to Start the Week. This week we're sharing an English Joke with a Yiddish punch line.

In 1995 Saul Kaiserman, Director of Lifelong Learning at Congregation Emanu-El in New York, told one of his grandfather's jokes with a Yiddish punch line as part of the release party for A Fire Burns in Kotsk, a revealing and intimate portrait of Menachem Mendel of Kotsk. 

The book, written in Yiddish by Menashe Unger, was translated into English by Jonathan Boyarin, a Cornell University professor of Modern Jewish Studies.

Here's the setup: A chief on the American plains is out hunting for buffalo. He's hunting for days, going without food and water, just traveling across the plains. Day after day, no buffalo. And then...

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.

A Chanukah Joke - The Yiddish Speaking Chinese Waiter

The scene: a kosher restaurant. Two Yiddish-speaking diners are about to order when the Chinese waiter addresses them in Yiddish. 

They are confused, and ask the owner how he found a waiter who can speak Yiddish so well.

The answer is a classic punch line. Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.

Fyvush Finkel Tells His Grandfather's Favorite Joke - In Yiddish

Since 2010, the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project has recorded more than 600 in-depth video interviews that provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience and the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture. 

The interviews in the growing collection are conducted in Yiddish and/or English with narrators of all ages from a variety of backgrounds. 

Fyvush Finkel, the beloved comedian, actor, and singer who died in August, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on October 23, 2014 in New York. Finkel reminisced about how he inherited his grandfather's sense of humor and retold his grandfather's favorite joke -- all in Yiddish (with English subtitles).

Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)