Abstract

Larry David’s work in both Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm is a continuation of a comic tradition that views humor as redemptive, a tradition that mocks persecutors and illogical paradigms. Larry David’s “dark Talmud” examines systems of thought and belief, searching for the inconsistencies and absurdities and, therefore, the humor. Although Larry David’s texts in Seinfeld are often characterized as “being about nothing,” this article contends that they reveal a postmodern system of ethics that, at its core, is both Jewish and funny.

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