BUT IS HE JEWISH?

Wolf’s humorous story collection pokes fun at the foibles of Jewish life.

Actor Jeff Goldblum has his legs surgically shortened to portray a famous little person who helped others escape from Auschwitz. A man suspects that a mohel about to perform a bris is actually a famous Nazi in hiding. Brothers raised in Conservative Judaism drift in separate directions in adulthood—one becomes more religious, one less—which leads to unforeseen consequences for one of their daughters. In these 60 stories, many only a few paragraphs long, the author explores the ironies and absurdities of Jewish American life, from questions about religious law to minor social transgressions. The title story contains an extended conversation in which the narrator’s Jewish mother attempts to determine whether the plumber he’s just hired is also Jewish (“What am I asking? I’d just like to know if he’s Jewish. That’s all. What’s so bad?”). The author’s prose exhibits the practiced economy of a standup comedian: “L’Affaire A-hole”begins, “Sy Blyweiss was pickpocketed at a nudist colony and immediately reported the theft to the police. Through a combination of state-of-the-art proctology and forensic science, investigators gathered and identified the culprit’s fingerprints.” Many of the stories are essentially long-form jokes that build to punchlines, which can be rather groan-inducing (several of these involve puns). The better stories end in less jokey places, either in moments of sincerity, as in “Changes,” a story of a hard-to-please father, or in moments of irony that do not rely on wordplay. Some pieces (collected in the “MISHEGAS” section) abandon narrative for lists and questions; the final section is made up of imagined dialogues between anthropomorphized animals. The text is accompanied by Weidner’s full-color, hand-drawn illustrations. Wolf’s humor is of a certain vintage and will likely appeal most to readers of his same generation, especially if they too are from a Jewish background.

A collection of short, slightly repetitive comic stories.