Title: Doctor and the Spoon

General Information about Item:

• Verbal Lore, Joke
• Language: Hebrew
• Country of Origin: Israel
• Informant: Gilad Doron
• Date Collected: 11-3-18

Informant Data:

• Gilad was born and raised in Kibbutz Ein Hamifratz, Israel. He is currently the head coach of the Dartmouth women’s varsity volleyball team. He competed on the Israeli National team for 10 years, and later served as a coach for Mate Asher professional volleyball club in his native country. Hebrew is his native language, but he is also fluent in English.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: The state of Israel is located in the Middle East, with Hebrew being its primary language. Over 9 million people speak the language worldwide. Humor has been present here in this location, historically through works of Judaism, but in today’s culture primarily expressed in a mainstream, anecdotal form, most frequently mirroring American humor.
• Social Context: The interviewee is a native Hebrew Speaker, who learned English while growing up and preparing to serve in the Israeli military. He later graduated with a degree from Temple University. The joke was told to him by a native Hebrew Speaker back in Israel. The interviewee went to the doctor for some pains, and this joke is what the doctor replied to him with.

Item:

• This is a joke in Hebrew about a man who goes to the doctor with complaints. He says that his eye hurts every time that he drinks tea and is asking the doctor what he should do. The doctor then replies to him that next time he drinks tea, he should remove the spoon first.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

spoon2-2960gem

Hebrew Transcript:

English Transcript of Translation:

• “A patient comes to the doctor and says ‘every time I drink tea my eye hurts’. So he says ‘show me how you do it’. So he shows him and he said ‘why don’t you take the spoon out'”.

Informant’s Comments:

• This was the second of two jokes my informant told me, both from an interaction he had when going to the doctor in Israel. The informant said this was a joke his doctor made to him when he was younger and went to the doctors office because he was having some body pains. When I asked for a literal translation, he noted that there were a few words and concepts he could not specifically translate into English, so he provided me with a ‘loose translation’.

Collector’s Comments:

• This joke is a funny example of a short joke, which provides a normal context, then finishes with an unexpected punch line. The fact that a doctor told the joke to his patient is funny in itself as the joke is about a doctor and patient interaction. Although there are no specific references to the Jewish culture or life in Israel, the joke still provides insight in to the type of witty and sarcastic humor often found in modern Jewish humor. It may take the listener a few moments to piece together the joke and realize that the spoon in the tea cup is what is causing the eye pain.

Collector’s Name: Zoe Leonard & Bun Straton

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal Lore
• Joke
• Tea
• Health
• Doctor