Wednesday

Another Jewish joke that slayed me from Epstein's essay, "You Could Die Laughing: Are Jewish Jokes a Humorous Subject?, one of the few jokes, Epstein notes, to make it out of that terrible experiment known as the "Soviet Union":

"On a laceratingly cold and relentlessly snowy morning in Moscow, Soviet citizens are lined up for five blocks awaiting a shipment of meat from Odessa. After an hour, a loudspeaker announces that the shipment is rather smaller than expected, so all Jews are asked to leave the line. An hour later, there is an announcement that the meat shipment has been further curtailed, so anyone who is not a member of the Communist party must leave the line. Two hours later, there is a further announcement that a large quantity of the meat in the shipment turns out to have been spoiled, so everyone is asked to leave the line except members of the Politburo. Three hours after that, the snow falling continuously all this time, there is an announcement that the meat shipment from Odessa has been cancelled. “Those Jews,” says one member of the Politburo to another as they shuffle off toward home, 'they always have it easy.'"