This is the third installment of our new monthly feature, in which we provide a Jewish joke and ask you, the COMMENTARY reader, to offer an exegesis of the joke, explaining what makes it funny—in no more than 250 words. Alas, we goofed. Owing to the hard rules of magazine deadlines, we had set it up so that our readers had no more than 10 days in which to respond before we had to pick a winner. So this month we’re holding off. We’ll feature the winning answer to last month’s joke (“The Thirsty Joke”) in next month’s issue (the June issue). The answer to the joke below will appear in the July/August issue. And so on.

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The Tomahawk Joke

Not long after the Kishinev pogrom, in 1903, Bentze Birnbaum arranges to buy land in the New World. What he doesn’t know is that the land is in Saskatchewan, in the midst of a tribe of Ojibway Indians. Wishing to assimilate with their neighbors, Bentze and his wife, Sarah, acquire a tepee, wear buckskin, pad around in moccasins, Sarah carries their youngest child in a papoose, the works.

One gray day in November, Sarah says toBentze that, with winter coming on, he had better go hunting to provide food for the family. So, ever the good husband, Bentze sets out to hunt up provender for Sarah and the children.

Two days later he returns, his scalp bloodied, his left ear hanging loose, claw marks all over his body.

“Nu,” asks his wife, “so what happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” says Bentze. “The first day out, I saw a rabbit, and I used up all my arrows trying to kill it, but with no good result. Farther out, I saw a pack of wolves, who, thanks God, didn’t see me.

“All very discouraging, but then, on my way back home, I notice what looks to me a gentle but very large grizzly bear, fast asleep. Ah, I think, steaks for the whole winter for Sarah and the kinder. I call out, ‘Hey, grizzly, darling.’ He wakes and sees me. He’s 50 or so yards away. He growls. Oy, I begin to think, maybe he’s not so gentle, this bear. He charges toward me. He’s now 40 yards away, now 30, now 20, now 10, when I reach into my belt and pull out—the milchiktomahawk.”

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You have until May 30 to send your interpretation, 250 words maximum,
to [email protected].