Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Conversation on the bus

There was a yenta riding on a bus, and she sat down beside this older fellow. After a little while she asks the man, “Excuse me sir, but if you don’t mind my asking, are you Jewish?”

The man sets down his newspaper and answers her, saying, “Oh, no, I don’t mind your asking, but I am not,” and he goes to reading his paper.

A little time goes by and the yenta pipes up a second time and asks, “Excuse me sir, I don’t mean to bother you, but are you sure that you are not Jewish?”

“Oh, yes ma’am, I am quite sure, I am not Jewish,” he says in a nice but now-getting-annoyed voice, as he folds up his newspaper and stares out the window.

A few minutes go by and the yenta can’t help herself. “Sir, are you positively sure that you are not Jewish?”

The man has had it. “OK, you win. I’ll be anything you want. Are you satisfied? Yes, I am Jewish!”

“Oh,” says the yenta. “I would have never guessed. You sure don’t look it.”

All about the elephant

A professor of sociology at Harvard some years ago asked his graduate students, among whom there were several foreigners, to write papers on the elephant.

A German student wrote: “An Introduction to the Bibliography for the Study of the Elephant.”

A French student wrote: “The Love Life of the Elephant.”

An English student wrote: “Elephant Hunting.”

An American student wrote: “Breeding Bigger and Better Elephants.”

There was also a Jewish student in the class. He wrote: “The Elephant and the Jewish Problem.”