One way you can tell Jesus was Jewish is by his sense of humor. My dad pointed this out to me, and now I can never read the Gospels in quite the same way. “First take the plank out of your own eye, then you’ll see clearly enough to pluck the speck out of your brother’s”—and good luck with that first part, ya yutz. If the Bible is God’s love song to humanity, it’s in the vein of “My Funny Valentine”: there’s a note of affectionate irony running through it. David offers to build God a temple; God replies: “you, build ME a house?”
That fondly teasing, slightly put-upon spirit comes right through in the character of Jesus. “How long must I suffer you?” But he will suffer us, because he loves us. This is one reason why the new House bill, which would crack down not merely on menacing actions but on antisemitic campus speech, is as absurd as it is disastrously counterproductive. The whole concept of “hate speech” exudes the kind of “you can’t say that” energy that Jewish humor, with its freewheeling honesty about the loony world, defies.