Dumbass Sayings: “I Should Never Buy Gribenes From A Mohel”

In the 1993 film “Mrs. Doubtfire” there’s a classic quote where Robin Williams is dressed up like an old Jewish lady and says “I should never buy gribenes from a mohel, it’s so chewy.” Most people didn’t understand the joke, but if you do a little research you find out that “Gribenes” is a Jewish food dish of chicken or goose skins and a “Mohel” is the guy who performs circumcisions on babies. I can’t imagine how shocking this joke must have been for young Yiddish children who saw this in theaters. The movie is PG-13, but still... You basically have a joke in there about eating baby foreskins. That’s beyond unacceptable to joke about in society even today in 2014. Yet, because it was masked in Yiddish terms in the middle of a transvestite transformation musical montage it’s fine. The thing I don’t get is, the joke made it into the film presumably because it was an inside joke to people who knew these Jewish words. Even then, it’s about eating severed dick skin. How is that okay? The more you think about this joke the less funny it becomes. It’s funny if you’re just like “OH haha, it’s chewy! The old lady didn’t know it was a baby pecker…” But give it any more thought than that and it’s hard to see how this was approved.

Does this look like a plate of dick skin? Okay fine, maybe a little.