Literary Resistance

Literary Resistance: Jewish Humor as a Defense Mechanism examines how Jewish humor has functioned as a vital survival strategy and coping mechanism throughout 4,000 years of Jewish history, with particular emphasis on the Holocaust and its literary aftermath. Drawing on foundational theories by Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud, the book explores the four classic humor theories (Relief and Release, Superiority, Incongruity, and Relational and Group Humor) while defining the distinctive characteristics of Jewish humor: its self-deprecating nature, its primary audience of Jews themselves, and its remarkable capacity to transform tears into laughter.

Part I traces examples of Jewish humor from biblical times through the pre-Holocaust era before focusing intensively on how Holocaust survivors including Charlotte Delbo, Edith Bruck, Viktor Frankl, Primo Levi, Jorge Semprún, and Elie Wiesel employed humor as a defense mechanism in the most extreme circumstances imaginable. Part II shifts to literary analysis, examining how twentieth and twenty-first-century Jewish-American writers have incorporated Holocaust themes and humor into their fiction. Through close readings of representative works by Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Art Spiegelman, Thane Rosenbaum, Michael Chabon, Shalom Auslander, Nathan Englander, and Jonathan Safran Foer (writers who are either children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors or who felt compelled to engage with the Shoah despite being spared direct experience of it), the study reveals how humor continues to serve as a powerful tool for processing trauma, asserting resilience, and finding meaning in the face of unspeakable horror.