New Yorker editor’s Jewish favorites

Bob Mankoff has been the cartoon editor at The New Yorker for 20 years. But he’s been a Jew for 72.

The celebrated cartoonist, who is stepping down from his prestigious perch in May, has therefore had a long time to formulate his thoughts on Judaism and Jewish humor.

Mankoff mined his Jewish experience for many of the 900-plus cartoons he has published in the magazine, such as one with this caption: “I’m not arguing, I’m Jewish.” (His most famous cartoon might be one with a man on the phone saying, “How about never — is never good for you?”)

Born to parents who understood Yiddish (his mom spoke it fluently; his dad, not quite) on the Lower East Side in 1944, Mankoff grew up in Queens.

“Assimilation has a tension to it, to maintain who you are, but to change,” he said. “That’s a great mix for comedy because humor always has a double perspective — on what appearances are and what reality actually is.”

Mankoff, who has written a memoir and been the subject of an HBO documentary, doesn’t plan on slowing down after leaving The New Yorker next month. He will teach a class at Fordham, continue to lead the Cartoon Bank, which licenses New Yorker cartoons, and work on a new project called Botnik Studios — it aims to inspire better jokes through computer algorithms.

JTA asked Mankoff to pick his favorite Jewish-themed cartoons from over the years, and he was happy to oblige. (The first one is a Mankoff original).