When we began this website, many people were drawn here by divrei Torah, but then they were put off by the humor. Since they could only recognize serious divrei Torah when they’re bound in a black book, they never came back. Others were drawn by the name Havolim, looking for letizanus, for jokes, and were put off by the serious divrei Torah. What can I do. The Beis Halevi first printed his teshuvos together with his divrei torah on the parsha, but in the later editions he separated them into two volumes, saying that the audience that was interested in the one was totally uninterested in the other. Lehavdil, I’ve done something similar, and have begun posting the serious Divrei Torah on my other site, Beis Vaad.But the truth is that there is no contradiction between humor and learning Gemara.
Stimulating the mind through humor is mentioned in the Gemara (Shabbos 30b) where it says that before he would begin the shiur, Rabba would say something that would make the students smile, and then his tone and demeanor would change, the mood in the room would shift from light-hearted to an extremely tense focus, and he would begin the shiur, expecting absolute attention, unforgiving of even the smallest lapse.
כי הא דרבה מקמי דפתח להו לרבנן אמר מילתא דבדיחותא ובדחי רבנן לסוף יתיב באימתא ופתח בשמעתא
Rashi says that one should begin with something comedic, and the rabbis/students would laugh, and their minds would open from the happiness.
ובדחי רבנן. נפתח לבם מחמת השמחה
I don’t think most people realize how wise and effective this method is. It sounds, to some, like just another quaint story in the Gemara. So for us, the modern thinkers, who don’t believe anything if it’s anecdotal, here are some interesting studies.
A 1976 study by the late professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, Avner Ziv, (the author of the entry on Humor in the Encyclopedia Judaica) found that those who listened to a comedy album before taking a creativity test scored 20% better than a control group that had not heard the routine.
