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''If it wasn't for the Irish and the Jews!''|From the song "If it Wasn't For the Irish and the Jews"}}
 
No, this isn't [[I Thought It Meant|a place to list stale old jokes]], though it does have a very important connection to them. An [[Irishman and Aa Jew]] is much subtler (and older) variation on [[Salt and Pepper]] (by comparison, [[White Dude, Black Dude|think of the Irishman as the "black dude" and the Jew as the "white dude"]] -- [[Dissimile|although the Jew will usually have slightly darker skin]]); it is a fairly common but typically low-key form of [[Odd Couple]] pairing that largely originated in [[Vaudeville]], making it [[Older Than Radio]].
 
Simply put, it refers to any situation in which there is extensive collaboration or pairing between an [[Useful Notes/Ireland|Irishman]] or [[The Irish Diaspora|Irish-American]] (the latter is ''much'' more common) and a [[Useful Notes/Judaism|Jewish]] person. This can apply either to an onscreen pairing of two fictional characters or to a [[Show Business|behind-the-scenes]] collaboration in [[Real Life]]. Interestingly, the latter seems to be ''far'' more common, and the full [[Odd Couple]] potential of this trope is rarely exploited, probably ''because'' the ethnicities are those of the performers themselves, and not so important to the characters they play.
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== Film ==
 
* The great [[James Cagney]] [http://www.mahnishmah.com/system/scripts/modules/admin/pages/show_page.cgi?p=13241 got a lot of laughs] in the 1932 film ''Taxi'' by launching into [[Yiddish Asas a Second Language|fluent Yiddish]] in the presence of an [[Officer O'Hara|Irish cop]]; Cagney (an Irish-American) had learned the language in school and on the streets of New York.
* ''[[Take Me Out To The Ball Game]]'', starring [[Frank Sinatra]] and [[Gene Kelly]], features a musical number entitled "O'Brien to Ryan to Goldberg" on the subject of a double play; snippets of vaguely "ethnic" music are included.
* Jim and Michelle in the ''[[American Pie]]'' movies. (Jim is a nerdy, repressed Jew, while the stereotypically red-haired Michelle is equally nerdy but outspoken and bawdy.)
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{{quote| --"It'd be just my luck to pull a name like ''Paddy Murphy'' and then I'll have lost the Jewish vote- they'll say I palmed it".}}
* Even though he doesn't always play Jewish characters in his movies (and certainly isn't in this one), [[Adam Sandler]] as the title character in ''[[Billy Madison]]'' is tormented by a family of Irish-American bullies (and by Irish-American we mean ''very'' Irish-American: red hair, freckles, boorish and obnoxious, etc.) named O'Doyle. This eventually resulted in a [[Mythology Gag]] in another Sandler film, ''[[Click]]''.
* Similarly, ''[[Max KeeblesKeeble's Big Move]]'' has the titular Max, who is [[Ambiguously Jewish]] and even has a (somewhat) stereotypical [[Jewish Mother]], get picked on by red-haired, freckled tough guy Troy McGinty.
* There may be some [[Subtext]] along these lines in [[Weekend Atat Bernies|Weekend At Bernie's]]. While there is no indication from their Anglo-Saxon surnames "Wilson" and "Parker", the characters played by Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman conform to some extent to these stereotypes- McCarthy's character is a confident, outgoing, booze-swilling and not-too-bright merrymaker (who takes to praying the "Hail Mary" under duress), whilst Silverman's character is neurotic and constantly aghast at the horrible things happening around him. McCarthy's character's aggressive pursuit of the fairer sex seems like it is in contradiction to the usual stereotype of the prudish Irishman, but the sequel reveals that his private life may be more in keeping with expectations.
 
== Literature ==
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* A late 1960s/early 1970s British sitcom, ''Never Mind The Quality, Feel the Width'', used a fictional variant of this trope, with two tailors; one Irish and one Jewish, going into business together. A Rabbi and a Catholic priest were among the supporting cast. [[The Other Wiki]] mentions the series was not shown on all parts of the [[ITV]] network, but it was transmitted in [[Stroke Country|Northern Ireland]].
* Used on one episode of ''[[Good Eats]]'', of all things. A scene explaining how corned beef came (erroneously) to be associated with Irish cuisine employed a Jewish rabbi and and Irish priest sitting in a bar. After some dialogue and an explanation<ref>Before the Great Famine, a fairly typical Irish dish was boiled ''bacon'' with potatoes and cabbage; when destitute immigrants arrived in New York City, they found that bacon was too scarce and expensive, so they replaced it with corned beef, which they purchased from stores owned by their new Jewish neighbors.</ref> from [[Drop in Character|Alton's nutritional anthropologist]], we get the set-up to a corny old-fashioned joke: "A priest, a rabbi, and a nutritional anthropologist walk into a bar..." Then Alton, the priest, and the rabbi all roll their eyes and get up to leave.
* A rare modern-day example is found in Comedy Central's two fake news shows, ''[[The Daily Show]]'' and ''[[The Colbert Report]]''. [[Jon Stewart]] ([[Stage Names|born]] Jonathan Liebowitz) takes news stories heavily laden with corruption, stupidity, and disaster, and handles them with [[Deadpan Snarker|sarcasm and exasperated]] <s>ranting</s> [[Yiddish Asas a Second Language|kvetching]]. [[Stephen Colbert|Stephen Colber]]'''[[Stephen Colbert|T]]''', despite the French-sounding pronunciation of his character's name, is predominantly Irish-American and unapologetically Catholic, and watching his [[Patriotic Fervor|onscreen persona]] is like watching every single patriotic [[George M Cohan|George M. Cohan]]<ref> Despite what it sounds like, the name "Cohan" is Irish: the Jewish name is usually "Coh'''e'''n".</ref> musical [[Up to Eleven|all at the same time]]. He also shares Gracie Allen's [[The Ditz|obliviousness to reality]].
** Interestingly, in the 1999 comedy ''[[Big Daddy]]'' [[Stereotype Flip|Stewart played Irish-American corporate lawyer Kevin Garrity, while]] [[Adam Sandler]] [[Stereotype Flip|was his "tough," blustering Jewish roommate, Sonny Koufax]].
* [[Conan O 'Brien]] and his former bandleader Max Weinberg would do a lot of comedy bits together on both ''[[Late Night]]'' and ''[[The Tonight Show]].'' [[Inverted Trope]] because O'Brien was neurotic and self-deprecating while Weinberg was the morally-loose [[Casanova]].
* The two male leads of ''[[All in The Family]]'' were Caroll O'Connor and Rob Reiner. Although neither of their ''characters'' were written to match their real-life ethnicities (Archie Bunker was a [[White Anglo Saxon Protestant|WASP]] and Mike Stivic was Chicago Polish), there was a considerable amount of [[Subtext]] going on, which many viewers noticed; O'Connor modeled Bunker's mannerisms and speech patterns on many of the blue-collar Irish-Americans he had known growing up, while Reiner [[Not Even Bothering Withwith the Accent|made no attempt whatsoever to sound like a Polish-American from Chicago]].
* This was the dynamic between [[William Shatner]] and [[James Spader]] on ''[[Boston Legal]]'', at least to a degree.
* MTV's early 90's sketch show ''[[The State]]'' featured a musical sketch entitled "The Jew, The Italian, and the Redheaded Gay," which exploded into a loud, Vaudeville-type production.
* In a strange meta-example, ''[[ItsIt's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]]'' (frequently called "''[[Seinfeld]]'' [[This Is Your Premise Onon Drugs|on crack]]") can also be seen as the Irishman to ''Seinfeld'''s Jew: despite using the same general sort of setup, the characters in ''It's Always Sunny'' have unmistakably Celtic names (and run an Irish-themed pub) and their brand of [[Comedic Sociopathy]] generally comes from overconfident, un-self-aware [[Idiot Plot|abject stupidity]], while the gang on ''Seinfeld'' were nit-picky about themselves, constantly whining and complaining, intellectuals/professionals, and consisted of three Jews (OK, one Jew,<ref>Jerry</ref> one Jewish-Italian half-breed,<ref>George</ref> and one guy who isn't supposed to be Jewish but totally comes off as Jewish<ref>Kramer</ref>) and one Eastern European Catholic played by a Jew.<ref>Elaine</ref>
* One of the all-time most popular detective pairings on ''[[Law and& Order (TV)|Law and Order]]'' was Mike Logan and Lennie Briscoe (although Briscoe is only ethnically Jewish; he was raised Catholic). This trope also holds true for the tag team of the show's most popular detective (Briscoe) and attorney (Jack McCoy), who shared star billing for ten years. For that matter, both [[Mc Coy]] and predecessor Ben Stone were Irish-American prosecutors who consulted with Jewish District Attorney Adam Schiff.
* Mixed into one character to great effect in one ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch -- a commercial parody of an album of ''Irish Drinking Songs''.
{{quote| '''They picked me face up off the floor and said now "Who'd be you?"''' <br />
'''I"m Paddy O'Mally O'Reily O'Berg, the drunken Irish Jew!''' }}
* [[Averted Trope]] / [[Inverted Trope]] on ''[[Glee]]''. Despite being [[The Ditz]] and [[Big Man Onon Campus]], Finn is a lot more sensitive and soft-spoken than either his teammate [[Jerk Jock|Puck]] or his [[Love Interest]] [[The Prima Donna|Rachel]], both of whom fall squarely under [[Informed Judaism]].
* In ''[[Being Human (TV)|Being Human]]'', John Mitchell the bold overconfident Irish [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampire]] and George Sands the shy smart Jewish [[Our Werewolves Are Different|werewolf]] are best friends.
 
== Music ==
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* Colin Quinn has recently done a one man show on Broadway, directed by Jerry Seinfeld.
* [[Averted Trope|Contrary to popular belief]], Prohibition-era gangsters Dion O'Banion and Earl "Hymie" Weiss were not this trope. Weiss was actually a Catholic.
* Don Adams, star of ''[[Get Smart (TV)|Get Smart]]'', was the son of a Hungarian Jewish father and Irish Catholic mother, both of whom were effectively disowned by their families over the marriage. He was raised Catholic.
 
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