''Old Jews Telling Jokes'' is a

web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single i ...

launched in 2009 created and directed by Sam Hoffman and produced by Eric Spiegelman and Tim Williams for Jetpack Media, Inc. It has since gone on to garner millions of unique views over several original series shot in places like New York, Los Angeles and Boca Raton. In 2010 OJTJ was published as a paperback book by Villard. Written by Sam Hoffman with Eric Spiegelman, it is subtitled ''5000 Years of Funny Bits and Not-So-Kosher Laughs." ''Its chapters consist of jokes and humorous anecdotes contributed by several Jewish personalities, including

Ed Koch Edward Irving Koch ( ; December 12, 1924February 1, 2013) was an American politician, lawyer, political commentator, film critic, and television personality. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and was may ...

Norman Stiles Norman Stiles (born December 4, 1942) is a television writer best known for his work on the show ''Sesame Street''. Stiles worked on the show from 1971 until 1997. Stiles is perhaps best known for writing the episode segments about the death of t ...

John Pleshette John Pleshette (born July 27, 1942) is an American actor and screenwriter, best known for his role as Richard Avery on the television drama ''Knots Landing'', and for portraying Lee Harvey Oswald in the TV movie '' The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald ...

and Annie Korzen. In the introduction Hoffman says his book "categorized the jokes into chapters, roughly tracing the trajectory of the Jewish experience in America". In addition to the book, the OJTJ series has also been distributed o
DVD
as two audio books

an

, a successful

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

television series Old Jews Telling Jokes (BBC Four series) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017j7vs and was named one of the Top 5 podcasts on iTunes in 2010. In 2011 OJTJ won a
Audie Award
for Humor. In May 2012, OJTJ opened as a
off-broadway play
at the Westside Theater. The BBC adapted the format for Some People With Jokes.

External links

Old Jews Telling Jokes website
*{{IMDb title, 1417759 2010 non-fiction books Jewish comedy and humor Joke books Yiddish culture in the United States 2009 web series debuts