Why are most American comedians Jewish?

January 8, 2025 • 11:30 am

Well, I’m not sure that most American comedians working now are Jews, but surely they are still way overrepresented compared to the proportion of Jews in America, which is only 2.4%.

In fact, the first two comedians I thought of still working were Jerry Seinfeld and Sarah Silverman, both of course of the Hebrew persuasion.  But think of the great comedians of the past 50 years, and then of their religion.  As one site reports, “In 1978, 80 percent of American standup comedians were Jewish.”  But it’s not just the standups!

Here are are just a few well-known Jewish comedians (I’m leaving out ones that few people know, like Fanny Brice).

Groucho Marx
Mel Brooks
Rodney Dangerfield
Mort Sahl
Don Rickles
Henny Youngman
Jerry Seinfeld
George Burns
Lenny Bruce
Joan Rivers
Jackie Mason
Gilda Radner
Milton Berle
Curly, Moe, and Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges
Carl Reiner
Bill Maher
Jerry Lewis

I won’t go on; there are too many!  In fact, Wikipedia has three full pages of Jewish comedians, listed alphabetically (start here and continue by clicking at the bottom of each page).

There must be reasons for this inequity in comedy, and I’m also sure that many people have discussed this. But I don’t know of the speculations, so I asked three Jewish friends (one of them is ME) to give their theories.

1.) Malgorzata, my surrogate Polish mother:

Malgorzata lightheartedly suggested that the tendency of Jews to offer humor is the result of natural selection: since Jews have experienced dark times and pogroms throughout much of their history, those Jews who could laugh at themselves and the world were less likely to be depressed and to kill themselves, or more likely to tolerate intolerable situations. If there is genetic variation for humor, those with more “humor” genes would survive and reproduce. Other groups haven’t had such a history, ergo Jews tend to be comedians. (I am paraphrasing what she told me.) natural selection for people who could laugh and have a sense of humor because they would commit suicide.

2.) Me (PCC[E]):

I have a variant based on the impression of many Jews that the whole world of non-Jews hates them, something that is not far from the truth.  Jews, then, suffer from a lack of love from others.  To compensate for this, they become comedians, for what better way is there to get love and approbation than to have an audience laugh at your jokes? And they are not laughing at you, but laughing with you. That is s a form of love. This is a cultural explanation for the surfeit of Jewish comedians.

3.) Steve Pinker.  I asked him for his explanation, and this is his response (quoted with permission). Part of his theory jibes with Malgorzata’s, but he is looking for an explanation that itself is funny:

This has been a puzzle that others have (humorlessly) considered, including Ruth Wisse (former Harvard colleague and fellow Montrealer, grew up with my mother), and Howard Jacobson (British novelist, unlike most Brits proud of being Jewish). Something about humor being a subversive tactic, or a coping mechanism of the powerless and oppressed. The analyses were neither convincing nor funny.

But they may be consistent with the fact that many African Americans have been great comedians – Moms Mabley, Pigmeat Markham, Nipsey Russell, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and the greatest of all, Bill Cosby. (“Noah!”)

Of course this is a lighthearted post, but there is a real phenomenon to be explained, and I invite readers to offer their own theory, which is theirs.

51 thoughts on “Why are most American comedians Jewish?”

  1. A very long time ago I read that a disproportionate number of comedians were Jews and blacks because as minorities/outsiders, they had a non-mainstream/traditional way of looking at the world. Seems at least plausible to me.

  2. Isn’t there a biblical and interpretive tradition of Jacob (of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob fame) being a trickster? It’s a very small step from there to jokester. Perhaps he needs to head the list!

    1. But think of the great comedians of the past 50 years, and then of their religion”?
      The definition of JEW hasn’t meant somebody adherent to Judaism in centuries.

  3. For those who aren’t old enough to remember Bill Cosby’s classic “Noah” bit that Pinker refers to, take 8 minutes of your life to catch up. It’s 50 years old, but still LOL funny.

    1. My favorite was “To Russell, My Brother Whom I Slept With.” Knew it by heart as a kid.

  4. Hard to say. (Not sure that it’s even true, but probably.) It’s possible that Jews had few professions available to them in the old country, and that entertainment was one of them. Also, comedy is a way of stabbing the establishment in the eye while making it seem like innocent fun. Jews had a lot of reason to stab the establishment in the eye. They started their comedic stabbing campaign in New York and spread it across the country. Jews were instrumental in putting Hollywood and the movie business on the map. Jewish comedians make me plotz.*

    https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4058904/jewish/What-Does-Plotz-Mean.htm

    1. Back three hours later with another angle on this. I just finished watching a professional musician on YouTube do an analysis of a Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” She said two things that relate to this question. The first is that Dylan uses a lot of words in his songs. I’ve never thought about this before, but it rings true. (Not sure if it is true.) The other thing she said is that he is a great storyteller. That leads me to my point. It may be that Jews are brought up, trained, and socialized to be storytellers. That would explain the great preponderance of Jews in music, in literature, in film and, yes, in comedy.

      Robert Allen Zimmerman (Shabtai Zisel ben Aveaham): Bob Dylan

  5. Seems to me that many comedians are extremely intelligent (e.g., Rowan Atkinson [I know he’s not Jewish]), expressing, amongst other things, keen insights in their routines (Atkinson used much physical comedy and ingenious methods of problem-solving). Not sure how many of those Jewish humorists being considered are Ashkenazi, but if I recall correctly they, as a group, possess the highest IQ’s.

    1. Maybe Rowan Atkinson isn’t Jewish but my sister kept seeing him at her daughter’s preschool at a Jewish temple in LA. So I always thought he was Jewish but maybe his wife is? Not that that would means much in terms of this post but he was at temple quite a few times she said.

      I would agree with Margolzata here. Hard to want to end your life if you have some kind of seeing things in a lighter manner than what’s happening in reality.

      I also wonder if learning all the Talmud and bible stories and analyzing them lends itself to being a story teller. This might account for some of the Hollywood writers and song writers but I’m not sure about this. I really don’t know the process of being Bar Mitzvad but I think you analyze a text in the bible rather than always just reciting stuff. I could be very wrong here. Also, I remember my grandfather davening prayers and it seemed kind of like singing and a melody.
      This is all just guessing on my part.

      1. Centuries of persecution fostering self reliance, resolve, nurtured intelligence as a means of countering that oppression… comedic irony, insults, putdowns, etc.
        The notion of, take everything but you can’t take our intelligence, sense of humour.
        It helps if you have the gift of the garb, an inherent quality of individuals which seems handy for a comedian. 😁

  6. Humor is a type of creative genius. Jew are over-represented among comedians for the same reason they are over-represented among Nobel winners.

  7. As has been discussed on these pages before, and elsewhere, Jews are over-represented as high achievers in many fields of human endeavour. Being a comedian, particularly stand-up, requires many talents that we associate with high IQ: lateral thinking, creativity and a quick mind. Without getting too deterministic, I think the reasons for their over-representation as comedians is the same as for other fields- either innate or learned intellect. It can also help to have an accent and culture to project as an identity, like Irish and Scots in UK for example. Oh- and you forgot Woody Allen!

  8. My best friend growing up who was Jewish told me his dad knew Danny Kaye when he was a kid, and that he and the other kids used to regularly beat Danny up. Maybe that’s why Danny developed into a comedian.

    1. I have heard several comedians, Jewish and Gentile alike, say that they were bullied as kids, and they found that if they could make the other kids laugh they wouldn’t get picked on. This could be part of the explanation.

  9. I’ll give a relevant non-answer: culture. Jews often chose to isolate themselves from outsiders and were even more likely to be forceably isolated, thus having a long history of strong ties to the tribe and tribal identity. And in this society, humor was valued. It helped bring people together, fostered battles of wit, conferred status, and opened opportunities.

    Why humor? As a rabbi might answer — why not? Could have been a matter of chance, an elite core of jokesters rose to prominence and it stuck. Or perhaps a cultural love of humor is the default and for some reason or other it was never supplanted by a grim resolve to always be very serious about serious matters.

  10. And then there’s Nikki Glaser. Did anyone see her at the Tom Brady roast? Wow. As expected, she was reliably vulgar and certainly R-rated with her remarks (well, maybe even X-rated). I find roasts fascinating: showing affection and respect for your peers by savaging them with insults. I remember reading somewhere that someone said they felt honored to be insulted by Don Rickles (who, by the way, was reputed to be one of the nicest people in show biz).

    Anyway, I found this hilarious, but if there are any sensitive people here in this comments section who prefer the “clean” comedy of Jerry Seinfeld (not meant as a smack against the guy; I sometimes like him), well, don’t watch it. I don’t follow football, so I don’t know who those guys were, and I had to look up the ju-jitsu reference to Tom Brady to get the joke; like I said, Glaser can be savage:

  11. Lenny Bruce had some commentary on this topic as well, at least why Jews in show business. If I track down a specific reference I’ll add it later. (something about let’s go see the Jew be charming) It was related to low social position & getting out of a tough spot.

  12. I thought to turn the question around, and ask why so FEW
    comedians are of Russian or Dutch ancestry. But then I found that Jacques Tati—creator of by far the greatest film comedies in French cinema—is of Russian and Dutch ancestry. Tati’s paternal grandfather was Дмитрий Татищев, a General of the Imperial Russian army and a military attaché in Paris, where he went native. Come to think of it, there aren’t so many
    comedians who are French.

  13. I don’t have a theory (although Malgorzata’s has a ring of truth to it), but wanted to add Woody Allen to the list of great Jewish comedians.

    Edited to add:
    D’oh! I see Graham has already mentioned Woody at #7 above.

    2. Yes! I was going to say as well. My adolescent immersion in Woody Allen films is likely responsible for my lifelong philosemitism, despite being a goy (although according to 23andme I had a Jewish ancestor somewhere in the 18th century).

  14. And… entertainment full stop?!
    Musicians, songwriters, theatre producers, film makers…etc

    1. And the rare polymath of comedian/musician/mathematician like Tom Lehrer. Still with us at 96! National Brotherhood week is in a month… 🙂

  15. I’m Sephardic Jewish from my mother, and my dad was Norwegian-American from Minnesota. Most Midwestern Norwegian-American families have at least one Norwegian joke book on the bookshelf. Most Norwegian Americans having been poor, uneducated immigrants, the jokes are self-deprecating.

    “How do you sink a Norwegian submarine? Knock on the door.”

    “Did you hear about the short-lived Viking tribe? They put the horns on the insides of the helmets.”

  16. Another explanation of Jewish preeminence in comedy: Jews at least used to be polylingual (certainly the case in my family). The link between proficiency in multiple languages and comedy (and perhaps other forms of symbol manipulation) is obvious. Here is a classic Sid Caesar routine mimicking four languages:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SqEmkwADmY .
    However, I concede this theory suffers two defects. First, if it were true, we would have Swiss comedians, a concept which is almost a contradiction in terms. Second, some Jewish comics were also brilliant at purely physical comedy, such as the classic Bavarian Clock routine by Sid Caesar & Co. at:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOjn5_1Y-Jg

    1. Wikipedia (I know…) says he learned to mimic various languages whilst serving in his parents’ luncheonette as a child:

      By waiting on tables, their son learned to mimic the patois, rhythm, and accents of the diverse clientele, a technique he termed double-talk, which he used throughout his career. He first tried double-talk with a group of Italians, his head barely reaching above the table. They enjoyed it so much that they sent him over to a group of Poles to repeat his native-sounding patter in Polish, and so on with Russians, Hungarians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Lithuanians, and Bulgarians.

  18. All very interesting…but why so many in the US? In the UK, over the past 80 years or so, the sequence has largely been (1) ex-music hall stars (Max Miller, the Crazy Gang, etc), of whom the only Jewish member I can find is Bud Flanagan; (2) the ex-WW2 people such as the Goons; (3) the 60s Footlights graduates (Beyond the Fringe, Monty Python); (4) the more anarchic 70s/80s lot such as The Young Ones, much of whose humour goes back to the likes of Milligan anyway.

    These days there are quite a number of ‘ethnic minority’ comedians, such as Nish Kumar, Shappi Khorsandi, and Stephen Amos. Jewish entrepreneurs are as successful in the UK as they are anywhere else, including running media empires. But, as far as I can tell, there are not that many Jewish comedians. This is not a new phenomenon, so it’s nothing to do with the current obsession with Palestine. Not sure why.

  19. Hirschman C. The Contributions of Immigrants to American Culture. Daedalus. 2013 Summer;142(3):10.1162/DAED_a_00217. doi: 10.1162/DAED_a_00217. PMID: 24339451; PMCID: PMC3856769.

    The thesis of this article is that immigrants are over represented in artistic/creative occupations because selective pressures (due to marginalization, bigotry, etc) push them toward high risk opportunities

  20. Jerry,
    You forgot Jack Benny! I waste a lot of time watching his old shows on youtube.
    His interactions with Johnny Carson can be hilarious. Benny Hill claimed to have renamed himself after Jack Benny.
    Also, Marty Feldman was a Jewish Brit.

  21. There’s a famous bit from Lenny Bruce’s The Berkeley Concert entitled How the Negro and the Jew Got Into Show Business. Not that good but possibly relevant.

    1. Yes! See my comment #11, above, and I just now was coming to post what you put above: Track 10: How The Negro & Jew Got Into Show Business

  22. Another theory is that Jewish humor is rooted in the Jewish schoolroom, where the greatest kudos went to the student who could think of a new angle on the Talmudic question or find a connection between a couple of passages that no one had thought of connecting before. That isn’t to say that the Jewish schoolroom was a barrel of laughs– but it’s the background that formed the great Jewish comedians– or their parents. Bu the time it’s their grandparents’ schoolroom, they’re not great comedians any more or their humor isn’t very Jewish.

  23. I believe the reason most comedians are Jewish is because one or both of their parents were. This is actually the reason why anyone who is Jewish is Jewish.

  24. Humor is correlated with intelligence, and Jews are over represented in intellectual pursuits as well. Perhaps it’s a side effect of a community that is probably at least a half a standard deviation brighter than the general population.

  25. I think because of The Catskills (Borscht Belt). Had a place to start and practice comedy.

  26. Most of the entire founding and sustaining crew of artists, writers, and the usual gang of idiots at MAD Magazine would qualify for the list. And if we’re going to include written comedy, the marvelous poet and songwriter for all ages Shel Silverstein.

  27. One of the greatest humorists in Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia was Mikhail Zhvanetsky (Jewish, of course). He said once: humor is one of the most powerful weapons, and it is a weapon of the weak.

  28. Not only is comedy over represented with Jews, its over represented with non-Jews who for one reason or other you would think are Jewish:

    Chevy Chase
    George Carlin
    Niki Glaser
    Nathan Lane
    Whoopi Goldberg

    On your list of Jewish comedians you forgot Woody Allen! Inexcusable!

  32. I think this observation depends entirely on how one defines the genre — what kind of performer, material, and medium you’re counting in and which kinds you’re not.

    Listening to and watching what people around me are sharing with each other that’s comedy to them, probably none would identify themselves as “comedians” or be categorized that way by their fans, but it’s clearly about performances aimed at making people laugh. [Edit: And while I haven’t been paying attention, I really can’t think of any that I recognized as being Jewish, off the top of my head.]

  33. Why are their so many Jewish comedians? That is a rather good and interesting question. I would tend to make the following points.

    Jews (as a group) are high-IQ ‘outsiders’ in Western civilization.
    Jewish IQ is weighted towards the verbal side (this was a big shock for me). Asians are the reverse (weighted towards math). The Jewish weighting may (in part) account for the large number of comedians.
    In 1900, Jews were 7% of Harvard students. In 1920, they were 20% of Harvard students. Of course, Jews were less than 20% of the U.S. population in 1920. See point 1.
    The is a quote from W. Churchill that has some bearing on this “Some people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world”
    Jews are over-represented in many (most? all?) intellectually demanding occupations.

    Of course, many of these points have been made before.

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