Years ago we went to comedy clubs often
and one night around 2 am a cab driver on stage
told stories about Bar Mitzvahs and I went up
to him afterwards and said You’re as funny
as Richard Pryor and he said you’re the only one
who thinks that. He was Larry David.
His show CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (what a title)
is a courageous show about Jews.
In this week’s episode he spilled coffee on a klansman’s robe
and felt he had a Talmudic obligation to clean
the robe and talk the dry cleaner, Jewish too,
into dry cleaning the robe. This morning’s edition
of The Forward asked two rabbis, both lawyers,
whether he did in fact have a Talmudic responsibility
to get that robe cleaned. Both rabbis,
pretty Talmudic themselves, ended up saying Maybe.
You're pretty darn funny too, Esther!