An inconsequential joke about Jewish Divorces and the embeddedness of Antisemitism

Florida is a source of endless intellectual stimulation. While examining a mathematics text, a state-appointed auditor spotted a math problem written in the form of an antisemitic joke. Here is a confluence of pathologies. In the middle of a public scandal over the conducting of an audit of math texts intended to weed out suspected expressions of critical race theory, social-emotional learning, and other suspect “liberal” notions, the auditor turned up an example of casual antisemitism. The text book, “Thinking Mathematically” asked students to rate jokes from best to worst. One of the jokes asked: “Why do Jewish divorces cost so much? Because they’re worth it.”

According to the London-based Jewish Chronicle, the joke appears in a section entitled “Counting Methods and Probability Theory.” There is insensitivity toward students who might have divorced parents, for whom divorce may be no laughing matter. However, our focus is on antisemitism. The joke raises questions about the deep penetration of antisemitism to the point where many Americans seem to accept its expression as standard and not troubling. To be sure, once it was pointed out, the publisher apologized, announcing that the joke had been withdrawn from current editions and procedures are now in place to prevent the recurrence of similar missteps. Indirectly, this apology acknowledges the problem. But a well-regarded publishing house producing materials for children’s education did not have those “safeguards” in place. No flashing emergency lights went off when ethnic slurs against Jews entered the published text.

This side-scandal had little to do with the controversial focus of the audit. Instead, the flagging of the joke is a scandal adjacent to a significant public brouhaha to which its content is not necessarily related. For that reason, it points to several important challenges in facing 21st Century American antisemitism.

The first challenge lies in getting people to think about the topic. So many of us would like to just look the other way. After all, whatever our political orientations, we can all agree there is so much dysfunction in American education. So why focus on this singular event? “These things happen; “human error;” “Let’s not lose our sense of proportion;” and so on. We want to shrug our shoulders and move on. Yet, because of its modest dimensions, this incident has something to teach us about how deeply antisemitism remains present in much of American culture.

The second challenge lies in our lack of language to address these seemingly low-key events. Maybe we can use the term “embeddedness,” drawn from sociology. There it describes, among other things, how economic activity is located in and dependent on social frameworks, mores, and institutions. Likewise, we can use the term to describe the often submerged, unaddressed, unresisted way antisemitic ideas circulate in American society’s institutions, social life, and mores.

The third challenge lies in diagnosing where the joke does its harm. The math textbook “credits” Henny Youngman, the generally harmless, extremely talented American-Jewish 20th Century comedian, “king of the one-liners.” Youngman was not a purveyor of antisemitic material. Was he using humor to constructively criticize his own community, the unhappiness of marriages between Jews that he saw around him, and the costliness of divorce? (Youngman’s marriage was evidently long and happy, lasting 59 years and producing two children.) There is a role for humor in addressing these painful communal issues.

The problem with the joke, then, lies not in its content per se. We can imagine a context where its use might be appropriate to open a delicate discussion of a difficult topic. The problem with the placement of this joke in math textbook for young children lies in its context. Self-deprecating humor that gently opens a painful subject for an ethnic community is very different when applied outside that community without context or background. Of course, Youngman spoke to a different time when such things were accepted. Ethnic humor was often conceived of as a pressure release valve for bigotry. Let the non-members of the ethnic group tell jokes, the thinking went. That way they will be less likely to beat up members of the minority group. The reasons such jokes were accepted outside the ethnic community are today unacceptable. When an incident like this presents itself, like a Rorschach test of prejudice, we have an opportunity to confront embedded bigotry head on in order to raise awareness. Hopefully, that is what the educators in Florida, their textbook authors, and publishers are doing.