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.

Recorded Sunday, November 08, 2009 at Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies.