On Seinfeld
Jewish humor, Eastern Europe and Soup Nazis
“Do you think it’s safe for me to pick this one up?”
The two guys looked at me for a few seconds and then started laughing out loud.
On the morning of 19th September 2024 I was in the lobby of the Marriott in Chișinău and had read the news about Israeli intelligence blowing up the communication devices of Hamas leaders in Lebanon. I had also noticed a group of Israeli businessmen in the lobby, speaking in Hebrew. So, one day after the walkie-talkie attacks and two days after the pager attack, I was sitting there at my laptop, the two Israeli guys a few feet away chatting, when my phone rang. When I cracked the mildly offensive joke — offensive to whom, exactly? — they burst out into loud laughter. Having dated an Israeli-Russian lady and done some business with Israelis, I was already aware of their direct, slightly brash way of communication. And their humor.
The actual location, the actual day, left 18th September 2024, right 19th September 2024 in Chișinău.
The Commando 8 and the Marine Biologist
As a young adult I never really watched Seinfeld. I knew it existed but couldn’t quite get into it — I didn’t have access to that particular kind of fun, so to speak. Monty Python, yes, Blackadder yes, but Seinfeld somehow sailed past me. I got introduced to Seinfeld a few years later by a young American guy from Miami who was Jewish. His name was David. What are the odds. David and I used to hang out in Geneva, going for steak frites and a cask of red wine, that sort of thing. He told me about Seinfeld episodes he was downloading excessively from some torrent network — back then torrents were a thing. Eventually I started watching, on long train rides from Geneva to Venice, or when traveling elsewhere. It took me some time but eventually I was hooked. The show grew on me.
The characters and plot — both absurd and as normal and boring as it gets. Or maybe normal and boring is absurd. I am no longer sure which one is true. George Costanza, the neurotic nothing-achiever who could make a huge deal out of absolutely everything. A date, a sandwich, greeting a stranger, a phone call. Elaine Benes with her sardonic laughter when Seinfeld got a hilarious haircut and her genuinely unsettling dance moves. Unsettling bordering creepy. Kramer, with his non-existent Kramerica Industries and wild interests ranging from Cuban cigars to air-conditioning units with many, many BTU’s. He was the Assman. Newman, the sly and perpetually suspicious postman. And of course Jerry Seinfeld himself, with his endless stream of girlfriends, navigating New York life with a certain nonchalant precision.
Over time I realized much of it was taken directly from daily life — the kind of encounters you have every day with your partner, your boss, a stranger in a lift. It is the absurdity of ordinary situations. And there is a particular kind of humour running through it, perfectly embodied by Larry David, co-creator of Seinfeld alongside Jerry Seinfeld himself.
Dinner and stuff at Aranybástya where the view is probably the best in the whole of Budapest, restaurant-wise
David — the man with the cape — never really played a lead in the series, but much of Costanza’s character was modelled after him. And God knows how he managed to have such a beautiful daughter in Cazzie David, but he does.
Both Seinfeld and David have roots in what is today Ukraine, and what was once Hungary or part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. David has roots in Ternopil and Seinfeld in Ivano-Frankivsk. David is also tied to Budapest, where his family fled during the Holocaust.
I am writing this from Budapest, which has a strong Jewish tradition. Much of Eastern Europe does — from Ukraine to Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltics. Eastern Europe has been profoundly shaped by Judaism, and this is still visible today, if you know where to look.
No Soup for You
A few days ago I was in a Jewish deli here in Budapest with my girlfriend. I had a bagel, she had Eggs Benedict. The waitress was American-Israeli, and most of the other guests were too. When we finished I went to ask for the bill.
“Yes yes, I need a few minutes, I am busy right now,” she replied — not unfriendly, but loud, direct, and slightly brazen.
And immediately I had this flashback. It felt like I was deep inside a Seinfeld episode. There is one called the Soup Nazi, a soup shop everyone wants to go to because the soup is extraordinary, some chowder if I remember correctly, but the man who runs it is an unfriendly little dictator who governs his establishment with an iron fist. Eventually he loses his kingdom when Elaine discovers his recipes and threatens to expose them. When George asks for free bread and questions the soup overlord, he is stripped of his custom and asked to leave. “No soup for you.” It became one of the most quoted lines in American television history. Seinfeld, for this and other reasons, is sometimes called the most influential TV series of the 1990s, and many of its lines entered daily American speech. Sponge-worthy. Yada yada yada. There are many more.
About twenty years ago, in Geneva, I went for dinner with another Jewish friend — not David. David was a secular Jew; this one was more traditional. I asked him where he would like to go, aware of certain dietary restrictions. “Oh I don’t care,” he said. “We go wherever you want. My wife is not here. She is the strict one.”
As a Swiss with a Protestant upbringing, or at least that’s what the pastor tried to achieve, the concept of a religion with such complex and specific rules had always fascinated me — though not to the point of wanting to join any of them.
“It’s better that way,” he said, when I told him as much. “You telling me you wanted to become Jewish would have made me very suspicious.”
The interesting thing about Judaism and Western culture is how intertwined they are. Most Westerners don’t realize they use Yiddish words every single day, or that many of the actors they watch in Hollywood films and series have Jewish roots — and not just the obvious ones like Sacha Baron Cohen. Mila Kunis, Lisa Kudrow (yes, the one from Friends), Scarlett Johansson, Timothée Chalamet, Winona Ryder — all have roots in Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Belarus or other Eastern European countries. Speaking of Belarus, where Lisa Kudrow has roots, the same applies to Michael Douglas and Ralph Lauren, but right the latter is not an actor.
Eastern Europe, at the crossroads of different religions, political systems and the resulting complexity, has perhaps made this particular kind of humour inevitable. When you are confronted with Kafkaesque bureaucracy every day — where officials invent new reasons why already promised things don’t materialize and may never will — humor becomes a coping mechanism, a way of preventing people from going completely mad. The alternative might be fanaticism: what Hitler did in his final months, fantasizing about armies that no longer existed, leaving Germans with two options — radicalization or jokes, told behind closed doors. Something similar is visible in Russia today, where Putin speaks of settlements his army claimed to have liberated, only for Zelensky to be photographed walking through those same settlements a few hours later. You either cope through cynical humor, or you radicalize.
Perhaps fittingly, Sigmund Freud described humor as a protection mechanism the human psyche employs to avoid further mental damage.
There may be many other explanations. But for the definitive answer, perhaps we should ask Larry David.