Jewish Humor

Can someone finish the joke that was told about the 30 year old single man living with his parents? I work in retail and had a customer stop in at exactly the moment the punchline was said. You'll get your mitzvah in for the day if you can tell me what it was - Thanks!

Basically the joke talked about an chasidic observant 30 year old single Jewish man whose observant parents arrange for him to meet with a marriage broker. The man asks the marriage broker many questions about his intended bride who supposedly comes from a very pious family. The punchline comes when the man asks "is she good in bed?... The marriage broker than says "some say yes, some say no".

Ha, that's great! Thanks!
It was nice for this New Yorker to hear the 'sounds of home' for a little while.

It was very nice of you and your guests to grant the caller from South Carolina a moment to imagine that he was telling the greatest example of Jewish humor ever told. Not that it wasn't good; it was a solid B. However, the great Jewish jokes,, the really great ones, leave it in the dust. To which jokes am I referring, you ask? First, there are two that give truth to Oscar Wilde's observation that life imitates art. I know this because my late mother--in her time the Northeast regional distributor for guilt--said these very words to me after I had heard these jokes. Okay, here goes:

Joke #1: A young man goes to his mother's house on his birthday. As a gift, she gives him two shirts. A couple of weeks later, he goes to her house for dinner, and he wears one of the shirts she gave him. As he walks in the door, she takes one look at him and says, "Vat's the metter, you didn't like the other vun?"

Joke #2: Question: How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: "Leave it alone--I'll sit in de dark."

These are "A" jokes, guaranteed to make people laugh, and laugh hard. However, there are some jokes that rise above even this exalted position to occupy the A+, or Pinnacle, category. I have told one such joke for 40 years. In only one instance has it failed to induce side-splitting, tear-producing laughter. That was because I made the mistake of telling it to a woman who was (a) Protestant, (b) passive-aggressive, (c) possessed of a rigid personality that allowed her to color only in between the lines. You get the picture. But, the other 10,000+ people who have heard me tell this joke and have loved it outweigh her outlier status so much as to make it almost nothing. In fact, to show you how good a joke this is, I'll give you the "back story" of one such telling:
I was in line in the "upscale" supermarket in our town. The people who shop here have their garbage picked up once a week from the top of their driveways by a huge, immaculate blue garbage truck. The people who shop at the other supermarket take their trash to the town dump.
In any case, I'm in line chatting with the woman who teaches the watercizing classes my wife attends. The check-out clerk is a young black fellow, dressed in clean, starched clothing--very buttoned up--including a bow ties, and possessed of a trained theatrical voice. Although only 5'7" or so, he could really project.
He was telling us what a bad day he'd had. Everything had gone wrong for him. To top it off, the weather was bad, too. And, his mother was ailing. I thought about it for a second, then told him, "You know, you need a good joke to lighten your mood. I'm going to tell you the chicken soup joke." He became very attentive as I began:

The rabbi is giving his funeral oration in the cemetery outside the village.
"Oh, this great man, he will be sorely missed! We will never see his like again. How will we ever . . ." .
From the back of the crowd, a little old woman pipes up, "Gib him some chicken soup. Gib him some chicken soup!!"
The crowd turns and the rabbi pauses. Then, he continues: "His loving family, all his many friends, the people whose lives he touched, all . . .".
Again, the old woman's voice is heard: "Gib him some chicken soup. GIB HIM SOME CHICKEN SOUP!!"
Enough. The crowd parts. The rabbi strides through to confront the woman. He towers over her and intones, "Madam. This man is dead. Chicken soup can't help."
"IT COULDN'T HOIT!" she says.

Well. The clerk, who to this point had been impassive, exploded with laughter. His big, trained voice rose right from his toes, bounced off the far wall of the market, and returned faster than the speed of sound (with apologies to the scientists in the audience). His whole mood lightened and changed in an instant. Gone were his woes. In fact, the next time he saw me, he said that he had told his mother the joke, and she, too, felt better. I asked him where I should send my bill.

So, there you have it; the one, the only Chicken Soup joke. There are, of course, others that are in this exalted category. I am sure you all have your own tried and true favorites, and I look forward to seeing them here.