Food is sort of like the Jewish sense of humor, a defense

Host: The night was tender and golden, wrapped in the faint aroma of roasted garlic and bread. Rain fell softly against the windowpanes, the sound gentle and rhythmic, like the heartbeat of memory. Inside, a small restaurant tucked into the corner of the old city pulsed with warmth—laughter, steam, and the slow murmur of people who had nowhere else they needed to be.

At a corner table, beneath the flickering light of a single candle, Jack and Jeeny sat. A half-finished meal lay between them: bowls of soup gone tepid, pieces of bread torn unevenly, a bottle of red wine almost empty.

Jack’s sleeves were rolled up, his hands resting on the table, fingers tracing absent circles around his glass. Jeeny leaned forward, her hair loose, her eyes alive with quiet thought.

Outside, the city breathed—a thousand unseen stories moving through the dark.

Jeeny: (softly) “Gil Marks once said, ‘Food is sort of like the Jewish sense of humor—a defense mechanism. It is one of the things that helped the Jews survive through 2,000 years of an often very harsh Diaspora.’”

(She smiled faintly, her voice carrying both reverence and ache.) “I think about that sometimes—how something as simple as food could be an act of resilience.”

Jack: (half-smiling, but with that usual shadow behind it) “You mean survival disguised as flavor.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Or flavor disguised as survival.”

Host: The candlelight trembled slightly as a draft moved through the room. Somewhere, a waiter laughed; somewhere else, a plate clattered. The sound folded into the stillness of their table like a rhythm they’d both learned to live by.

Jack: “Food as a defense mechanism… It’s strange, isn’t it? We think of defense as walls, weapons, strategy. Not recipes.”

Jeeny: “But that’s exactly why it’s beautiful. A wall keeps you alive; food keeps you human.”

Jack: “And humor?”

Jeeny: (smiling) “Humor keeps you sane.”

Host: Her words lingered, light as steam. Jack stared at the half-eaten bread between them, a flicker of thought moving behind his grey eyes.

Jack: “You know, my grandfather used to say that in the camps, food wasn’t just hunger—it was language. He told me once that people would share recipes they could never cook, just to remember who they were.”

Jeeny: (softly) “That’s not hunger. That’s prayer.”

Host: The rain outside deepened, turning from whisper to murmur. It slid down the window, catching reflections of the candle flame.

Jeeny: “Gil Marks was right. Humor and food—they’re both small rebellions. When the world strips everything away, laughter and nourishment are ways of saying, ‘You didn’t take everything.’”

Jack: “But you can’t eat memories.”

Jeeny: “No. But you can taste them.”

Host: Jack looked up then, the faintest trace of vulnerability crossing his face. He had the look of a man who’d lived long enough to distrust sentiment, yet could not fully turn away from it.

Jack: “You know what I find strange? Every culture has its suffering baked into its recipes. Spices in India, salt in the Mediterranean, sugar in the South. It’s like pain has a flavor—and every nation found a way to cook it differently.”

Jeeny: (nodding) “Exactly. Food remembers what history forgets. Every dish carries grief, migration, laughter. It’s an edible memory.”

Jack: “So the kitchen is a museum?”

Jeeny: “No. It’s a sanctuary. You eat not to forget, but to keep the dead alive.”

Host: A pause, tender and full. The restaurant around them had dimmed, the last few diners trickling out. The sound of cutlery faded, leaving only the soft hum of the rain.

Jack: “It’s funny—you call it survival. But to me, it sounds like resistance. When everything else collapses, you hold onto the small rituals—the stew your mother made, the bread that reminds you of home. That’s rebellion.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. The act of cooking becomes defiance. Every meal says, I am still here.”

Host: Jack’s eyes lifted toward the window, watching the faint reflection of himself and Jeeny mingling with the city lights beyond.

Jack: “Do you ever think humor and food are the same thing? They both take pain and transform it into something people can digest.”

Jeeny: (smiling softly) “Yes. They both turn suffering into something you can share. That’s survival—not by hiding pain, but by seasoning it.”

Host: The candle flame danced higher now, defiant against the dark. Jeeny’s voice softened as she spoke again, her words both gentle and fierce.

Jeeny: “The Jewish diaspora, the Irish famine, the African diaspora—every culture that’s known exile carries its humor and food like armor. Because when the world takes your home, the body becomes what remembers it.”

Jack: (thoughtfully) “And yet, people still call food ‘comfort.’ They don’t realize how political that comfort is.”

Jeeny: “Comfort is always political. Who eats, who starves, who gets to laugh—it’s all a kind of history repeating itself at the dinner table.”

Host: The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thick with the weight of things unsaid—centuries of hunger, migration, laughter in the face of extinction.

Jack: (quietly) “Do you ever wonder what our generation’s survival mechanism will be? We have food delivered in fifteen minutes, but we’re starving in other ways.”

Jeeny: “We survive through irony. Memes instead of meals. Jokes instead of prayers.”

Jack: (smirking) “So, we’ve traded recipes for punchlines.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But humor’s still the same—it hides the wound while keeping it open enough to feel alive.”

Host: The rain softened again, almost hesitant, as if the sky were pausing to listen. Jack poured the last of the wine into their glasses. The liquid caught the light, rich and red like memory itself.

Jack: “So maybe Gil Marks was right. Food and humor—they’re both defenses. But they’re not about fear. They’re about dignity.”

Jeeny: (raising her glass slightly) “And identity. You are what you eat—and what you laugh at.”

Jack: (lifting his glass in return) “Then here’s to the absurdity of endurance.”

Jeeny: (smiling, toasting softly) “And to the taste of survival.”

Host: Their glasses touched—softly, like an echo of something ancient. The flame between them flickered once more, then steadied, refusing to die.

Outside, the rain finally stopped. The city glistened beneath a veil of mist, alive again. The camera drifted out through the window—past the reflections of two figures who’d found warmth not in the food itself, but in the act of sharing it.

Host: “And as the night deepened, the world outside still turned, hungry and restless. But in that small corner of light, the old truth lived on: that to eat, to laugh, to remember—was to survive.”

Jeeny: (quietly, almost to herself) “Maybe that’s the secret, Jack. Every meal we share is a small prayer against forgetting.”

Jack: (nodding) “And every joke, a small rebellion against despair.”

Host: The candle burned low. Shadows stretched long across the table. The scene faded with their quiet laughter—soft, fragile, human—the kind that carries centuries in its echo, the sound of people who, despite everything, still find a way to eat and to endure.