behind it there lies the sad question, “Is not the man right in his choice?”
It is the manifold hopeless misery of the Jews to which these pessimistical stories allude, which urged me to add them to tendency-wit.
Critical and Blasphemous Witticisms
Other jokes, cynical in a similar sense, and not only stories about Jews, attack religious dogmas and the belief in God Himself. The story about the “telepathic look of the rabbi,” whose technique consisted in the faulty thinking which made phantasy equal to reality, (the conception of displacement is also tenable) is such a cynical or critical witticism directed against miracle-workers and also, surely, against belief in miracles. Heine is reported to have made a directly blasphemous joke as he lay dying. When the kindly priest commended him to God’s mercy and inspired him with the hope that God would forgive him his sins, he replied: “Bien sûr qu’il me pardonnera; c’est son métier.” That is a derogatory comparison; technically its value lies only in the allusion, for a métier—business or vocation—is plied either by a craftsman or a physician, and what is more he has only a single métier. The strength of the wit, however, lies in its tendency.
