Insightful and often hilarious, Alan Zweig's documentary When Jews Were Funny surveys the history of Jewish comedy, from the early days of Borsht belt to the present, ultimately exploring not just ethnicity in the entertai... more »nment industry, but also the entire unruly question of what it means to be Jewish. The answers are surprising. Veterans of the 1940s and 1950s, an age when assimilation was a goal, deny, sometimes vehemently, that their comedy reflected anything of Jewish culture. For several of the younger comics, their biggest influences are family members, fathers, aunts, yentas. Many bemoan the loss of Yiddish, while arguing about the quintessential Jewish joke. As Zweig and his subjects shuttle from the universal to the particular and back again, the movie's real subject isn't so much comedy but what it means to be Jewish. It's an impossible question to answer, of course. But it's also one well worth exploring, especially in a movie as funny and heartfelt as this one.« less