Rebe, že se nestyděj! – Landmannová Salcia (2016)

At the zoo: "Dad, there's a parrot sitting over there. Can it laugh too?" "How could it not laugh, Morice! It has no wife, no mishpoche (family clan), so it has no worries! It just sits in its cage completely free!" Good humor includes the gift of seeing the imperfect world and its inhabitants with a kind perspective, the ability to lighten the burdens of life with a sense of paradox and situational comedy. Salcia Landmann's collection meets these criteria. However, it is something more than just a book for laughter: it refers to an entire vanished European culture. In the afterword, the author shows Jewish humor as an important part of the culture and lifestyle of Jewish communities. Most of the collected jokes come from Eastern European countries, whose Jewish populations were nearly exterminated during World War II. In addition to pleasant and intelligent entertainment, the reader may also feel nostalgia and sadness at times. The first volume of the two-part publication presents a selection of more than three thousand Jewish jokes. The collection is accompanied by an appendix that contains a glossary of Yiddish terms used, as well as a list of mentioned Jewish personalities. Salcia Landmann (1911–2002) was born in Galicia near Lviv. To escape the chaos of World War I,…