Back in the 70s, there was a popular comic named Sam Levenson whose material consisted of affectionate reflections on his Jewish cultural background. There was a long tradition of several decades of Jewish comics that preceded him in what used to be called “show business.” Once—I believe it was on the Johnny Carson show, but I’m not certain—he defined “Jewish mother” for his audience; roughly paraphrased: A woman who has two chickens, one sick and one healthy, and she kills the healthy chicken in order to make soup for the sick chicken.

The joke drew laughter, of course. Why? Because it’s ridiculous, it breaks all the rules of common sense. In fact, it has the elements that good satire requires.

But think about it. Try looking at it in a “serious” way: Why did the sacrificial Passover lamb always have to be perfect, unblemished? One might answer that the slaughter of an imperfect and blemished lamb would not be “sacrificial”. Well then, the Jewish mother’s actions, without any words of explanation, graphically define Sacrifice. And sacrifice is necessary for healing to occur.

Such an ethos as that demonstrated by the Jewish mother is satirically absurd. It violates all common sense. It is a direct contradiction of the ethos of all secular utilitarian thought, those ideologies born of human consideration of what is good, ideologies that “think as men think,” as our Lord said to Peter. But Christ didn’t think as men think; he thought as God thinks. Irrationally, absurdly, as a Jewish mother thinks.

I once read about another famous comic who said that real Truth is so awful, so irrational, and so beyond our mere human capacity to make sense of it, that we have no choice but to make jokes about it. I don’t remember who he was, but I do remember that he was Jewish.