Recorded on November 8, 2009.
World-renowned historian and cultural critic
Simon Schama is best known as the droll, erudite host of the BBC’s
A History of Britain and
Simon Schama’s Power of Art. But he also indulges in a secret passion: collecting and recounting a vast array of Jewish jokes. Schama joins Festival artistic director
Lawrence Weschler to share some of his funniest jokes and unpack their complex cultural resonances in a sort of klezmer slapdown. Simon Schama is professor of history and art history at Columbia University and the author of over a dozen books. His articles have appeared in
The New Yorker and
The New York Review of Books.
