Jokes From Shaf
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Aurgust 26, 2025
Update 1206
Next Update
SEPTEMBER 2, 2025
VEGAS IN THE MOVIES UPDATE
A look at some of the best Jewish Stand-Up comics every week on the
Jewish Jokes Page, so take a listen as The Chairman brings you this
weeks Kosher laugh fest...
And today's Jewish Joke, from your host, tells you the difference between a Jewish optimist and a Jewish pessimist...
A Jewish Optimist and a Jewish Pessimist read a newspaper.
The Jewish Pessimist says “things can’t possibly get worse.”
The Jewish Optimist responds: “of course they can!”
With all the submissions The Chairman gets each day, this topic is the most popular.
With this in mind, we now have a category which features "The Jewish Joke of The Day".
Professor Irwin Corey was born Irwin Eli Cohen to a Jewish family on July 29, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York. Poverty-stricken after his father deserted the family, his mother was forced to place him and his five siblings in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York, where Corey remained until his early teens. He then rode in boxcars out to California, and enrolled himself at Belmont High School in Los Angeles. During the Great Depression he worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps and, while working his way back East, became a featherweight Golden Gloves boxing champion.
Corey supported Communist/Socialist left-wing politics. He appeared in support of Cuban children, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the American Communist Party, and was blacklisted in the 1950s, the effects of which he stated lingered throughout his life. (Corey never returned to Late Night with David Letterman after his first appearance in 1982, which he claimed was a result of the blacklist still being in effect.) During the 1960 election, Corey campaigned for president on Hugh Hefner's Playboy ticket. During the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Corey endorsed VermontUnited States Senator Bernie Sanders for the nomination and presidency. Corey was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
From the late 1940s, Corey cultivated his "Professor" character. Dressed in seedy formal wear and sneakers, with his bushy hair sprouting in all directions, Corey would amble on stage in a preoccupied manner, then begin his monologue with "However …" He created a new style of double-talk comedy; instead of making up nonsense words like "krelman" and "trilloweg", like double-talker Al Kelly, the Professor would season his speech with many long and florid, but authentic, words. The professor would then launch into observations about anything under the sun, but seldom actually making sense.
Changing topics suddenly, Corey would wander around the stage, pontificating all the while. His quick wit allowed him to hold his own against the most stubborn straight man, heckler or interviewer. One fan of Corey's comedy, despite their radically different politics, was Ayn Rand. Theatre critic Kenneth Tynan wrote of the Professor in The New Yorker, "Corey is a cultural clown, a parody of literacy, a travesty of all that our civilization holds dear, and one of the funniest grotesques in America. He is Chaplin's tramp with a college education". Corey frequently appeared at the hungry i nightclub in the 1950s and '60s, and remained the favorite comedian of club owner Enrico Banducci. In 1980, Corey appeared with Banducci, Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Bill Cosby, Jackie Vernon, and Maya Angelou in a tribute to the hungry.
Corey was married for 70 years to Frances Berman Corey, who died in May 2011.[3] The couple had two children, Margaret Davis, née Corey, an actress, and Richard Corey, a painter. Their two grandsons are Amadeo Corey and Corey Meister.[18][19] Irwin Corey turned 100 in July 2014.[20]
For an interview in October 2011, the 97-year-old Corey invited a New York Times reporter to visit his 1840 carriage house on East 36th Street. Corey estimated its resale value at $3.5 million. He said that, when not performing, he panhandled for change from motorists exiting the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, in exchange for cleaning their windshields with a squeegee. Every few months, he told the interviewer, he donated the money to a group that purchased medical supplies for Cuban children. He said of the drivers who supplied the cash, "I don't tell them where the money's going, and I'm sure they don't care." Irvin Arthur, Corey's agent for half a century, assured the reporter that Corey did not need the money for himself. "This is not about money," Arthur said. "For Irwin, this is an extension of his performing."
Corey died at the age of 102 on February 6, 2017, at his apartment in Manhattan with his son, Richard, at his side.
Here is Professor Irwin Corey doing his act...
August 26, 2025
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