An old Jew eventually dies of old age and goes to heaven. He meets God and tells him a holocaust joke. And God says “That’s not funny”. And he says: “I guess you had to be there.”
(I like how philosophical the joke is, heard it from Ricky Gervais.)
this is one of my favorite jokes, and i draw it out quite a bit farther. when you make it longer, when you drop the punchline it hits better.
it might make a bit more sense too, to the listener. in short;
the man walks through the pearly gates, down a very long hallway. as he reaches the end of the hallway, he realizes he is in front of god himself. he says to god, ‘god, i want to tell you a holocaust joke’. god looks at the man and says, ‘sir, that is not funny’. the man says ‘oh, i guess you had to be there’
You got me stumped. Can you explain it?
Not OP, but there are at least 2 things going on here:
The first part is that the Jewish person is effectively treating this like an inside joke, where someone might not find it funny unless they were present in the situation that the joke references.
The second part to the ‘God not being there’ bit (which is what actually makes it funny imho) is basically saying that the holocaust was so horrible that God was clearly someplace else/asleep/absent to allow something like that to happen under his watch.
It’s sort of a lose/lose situation for God, really. Either he wasn’t there, as the protagonist of the joke is suggesting, or he was there, didn’t find it funny, but also didn’t care to stop it. So by telling a holocaust joke, the protagonist is in essence calling out his creator as being a shit god. Either derelict in his supposed duties (Jews are the chosen people, after all), or shitty in some other way (evil, apathetic, powerless, etc).
Yes, this nuance you added is what makes the joke really funny to me.
Sometimes, jokes are only funny if you experienced the original context they are derived from, I.e. “You had to be there”.
In this case, the Jew is stating that God (who is typically omnipresent) was explicitly not present during the Holocaust.
God was nowhere to be found during the holocaust.
That joke was funny for exactly 3 years.
Now let me tell you one about Palestine.
Zionism isn’t the same as Judaism. A lot of holocaust survivors are horrified by what Israel is doing (and we’re enabling).
Considering the actions of the Israeli government grotesque, and hating Jews are not the same thing.
You don’t have to be callus or confrontational every time people mention jews or the things they’ve been through as a minority community.
I get you’re angry at the injustices of the world, but it doesn’t help to paint an entire minority group with the brush of a genocidal government just because they’re loosely associated.
Are you telling me Allah is absent from Palestine?
And a whole classroom of kids getting gunned down is god’s plan and not something that can be stopped with common sense laws like the rest of the world has.
How can anyone still believe in that shit. The same people freely give away 10% of their income to a charlatan and believe Trump is god’s choice of a leader. I’m afraid you picked the wrong community if you wanted this conversation to be casual. They have a fucking book with a selfless hero that tells them exactly how to live and they IGNORE IT ALL!
Do you also scream at churches whenever they have mass?
Wouldn’t do any good. An organization built around raping children for centuries is still going strong. Good Christian morals tho
Well that’s certainly putting the “casual” in casual conversation.
Lighten up, Francis.
Considering the actions of the Israeli government grotesque, and hating Jews are not the same thing.
You don’t have to be callus or confrontational every time people mention jews or the things they’ve been through as a minority community.
I get you’re angry at the injustices of the world, but it doesn’t help to paint an entire minority group with the brush of a genocidal government just because they’re loosely associated.
Let me give you all another reason to downvote me. Religion has been one of the most destructive forces of society. Causing countless deaths, genocides, torture. Removing all civility from humanity. “Christians” elected one of the worst presidents twice. Even the pope threatened to excommunicate Biden for standing up for women’s rights. The world would have been better off without religion.
