The seance

For months, Mrs. Pitzel had been nagging her husband to go with her to the seance parlor of Madame Freda. “Milty, she’s a real Gypsy, and she brings the voices of the dead from the other world. We all talk to them! Last week I talked with my mother, may she rest in peace.

Milton Pitzel could not resist her appeal. At the very next seance at Madam Freda’s Seance Parlor, Milty sat under the colored light at the green table, holding hands with the person on each side.

Madame Freda, her eyes lost in trance, was making passes over a crystal ball. “My medium …Vashtri,” she called. “Come in. Who is that with you? Who? Mr. Pitzel? Milton Pitzel’s zayde?”

Milty swallowed the lump in his throat and called, “Zayde?”

“Ah, Milteleh?” a thin voice quavered.

“Yes! Yes!” cried Milty. “This is your Milty! Zayde, are you happy in the other world?”

“Milteleh, I’m in bliss. With your bubbe together, we laugh, we sing.”

A dozen more questions Milty asked of his zayde, and each question his zayde answered, until, “So now, Milteleh, I have to go. The angels are calling. Just one more question I can answer. Ask. Ask.”

“Zayde,” sighed Milty, “when did you learn to speak English?”

Sports shuls

O’Brian loved to play golf and would go out alone to a course and get paired up with any group that needed a fourth. One day he went to his favorite course and the pro said, “I’m sorry O’Brian, but the only group I can put you with is one with three Chassidic rabbis.”

O’Brian says, “That’s fine with me.”

He joins the group and tees off. His shot is about 200 yards out and off to the right rough. Reb Moshe tees off 300 yards straight out into the middle of the fairway. Reb Yitzchak’s shot is about 290 and Reb Yaacov’s is 300, but slightly off center.

O’Brian says to them, “You guys must play and practice all the time.”

Reb Yitzchak says, “No, we study all the time and only play once a week. But, on our Sabbath, while we are in shul, we say a prayer asking God to give us one good round of golf each week.”

O’Brian is so impressed that he goes home and tells his wife they are converting. They study, convert, join a shul. About a year later, O’Brian runs into the threesome at the same course and they invite him to play with them. The game is exactly like last year’s.

O’Brian is doing nothing right, and the three are perfect. At the end, O’Brian tells the rabbis, “I don’t understand it. I converted, joined a shul, pray every week.”

Reb Moshe says, “You joined a shul? Which one?”

O’Brian says, “Beth El.”

Reb Moshe says, “No, no, no! Beth El is for badminton!”

The suit

Yossel goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.

“No problem,” says the tailor. “Just bend them at the elbow and hold them out in front of you. See, now it’s fine.”

“But the collar is up around my ears!”

“It’s nothing. Just hunch your back up a little … no, a little more … that’s it.”

“But I’m stepping on my cuffs!” Yossel cries in desperation.

“Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you go. Look in the mirror — the suit fits perfectly.”

So, twisted like a pretzel, Yossel lurches out onto the street. Reba and Florence see him go by.

“Oh, look,” says Reba, “that poor man!”

“Yes,” says Florence, “but what a beautiful suit.”

These jokes have been e-mailed to us by friends and associates who, for the most part, have downloaded them. We therefore cannot verify the authorship.