By JJ Ledewitz, Arts and Culture Editor
For Mordechai Schmutter, a Jewish humorist whose work has been published in many Jewish publications, writing comedy requires a lot of overthinking. While creating his work, he has to write in a specific way, so that if he writes something that is wrong, people will think he was just trying to be funny.
“But if I’m right people will say, ‘And look how he said it. He’s a genius,’” Schmutter told the YU Observer in an interview.
Writing comedy isn’t always easy, Schmutter said. “Some days it comes naturally, and some days I force out what I can to make a deadline,” he said, citing his deadline to answer the questions for this interview.
Regardless, he said he enjoys comedy writing over other genres of writing because it allows him to make stuff up. “I usually don’t, but at least I don’t have to cite my sources,” he added, “which is great, because much of the time I don’t remember what my sources are.”
Schmutter’s work has been published in many Jewish publications, such as Hamodia, The 5 Towns Jewish Times, The Queens Jewish Link, The Jewish Link of New Jersey, The Lakewood Shopper and The Baltimore Jewish Home, among others. He has also written three comic strips and has had his articles appear in other papers around the country and abroad. He has published eight humor books.
Schmutter began writing comedy toward the end of his teenage years, after reading a book by humorist Dave Berry and experimenting with humorous letter-writing. “I was staying at my grandmother’s that summer and she told me to write a letter to some relatives in Israel,” Schmutter said. “All my relatives who read them thought they were hilarious and passed them around.”
After that, Schmutter began to use writing as a means of introducing himself to people, as a way to avoid awkward in-person interactions. “I wrote little articles and left them around, and that way people in yeshiva had sort of heard of me before they met me” he said. This marked the beginning of his career as a comedy writer.
Schmutter believes that comedy in general – particularly about everyday life – is important because it shows us that all our insecurities and hangups are not just unique to us. “Everyone spaces out while driving. No one’s house is clean unless company’s coming over,” he said. “Everyone has banged their chest during Shemoneh Esrei on Shabbos.”
“It’s the realization that we’re not alone that allows us to laugh, in relief.”
Schmutter said he barely ever experiences antisemitism as a Jewish writer, since he does his writing at home around his Jewish family. That said, he found it very difficult to figure out how to write funny pieces in the period immediately following October 7.
“I knew I had to, because people needed to laugh, but I couldn’t actually think of anything that made me laugh,” he said. Soon enough, however, he was able to channel his frustration into a satirical article about how to be an antisemite in today’s world, based on the logic of antisemites.
Oct. 7 is also one of the reasons Schmutter has been wary of branching out into the non-Jewish world of comedic writing. “For a long time, I did really want to branch out. After all, comedians keep complaining that they can’t say anything offensive anymore, and not saying anything offensive is my entire appeal.” he said.
Schmutter reflected on a time when he got blowback for an article he wrote about the daily schedule of someone who is unemployed (while he himself was just laid off from his third job). “Most of this was about my own day, but I didn’t write that I was the one who was unemployed, because I didn’t need people to be distracted by, ‘Wait. He’s not unemployed. He writes articles for next to nothing.’”
At the end of the day, Schmutter loves comedy because laughing allows you to see that others have the same secrets you do. And, as he says, “It’s hard to laugh quietly.”
Photo Caption: Schmutter’s books
Photo Credit: Mordechai Schmutter