Rules and religion
To a non-Jewish reader, it might be hard to notice the symbolic humor of the title story. The story is poking fun at a kind of religious hypocrisy that is sometimes associated with Hasidic Judaism by other Jews who are not Hasidic. The joke here is that the Hasidic man is so firm in his rules about sex with a woman on her period (strictly forbidden by Torah), and masturbation (forbidden by Hasidic culture) that he decides to sleep with a prostitute, not noticing the hypocrisy.
The empathy crisis
This title story raises another ironic issue. Because of the obvious narrative quality of the man's experience, he has a choice. He can either leave his wife's point of view in the domain of dramatic irony through objectifying and dehumanizing her, or he can engage in deep, intimate love through empathizing with her. Instead, he plays the victim of her health problem, as if she conspired against him to have a period that never ends. Obviously, she isn't exactly enjoying herself, and the culture around her is demonizing her for her ceremonial uncleanliness, but the husband can only think of his own feelings.
Patriarchy and injustice
In several stories, we see an ironic motif. Although the humor of "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" keeps the tone somewhat mild, there is no mistaking the darkness that injustice causes in the dying man's story in "The Twenty-Seventh Man." The man is imprisoned in a Russian jail under Stalin's regime. That means he could die at any moment with no one knowing. They could ship him out to the gulag and let him freeze in the tundra. The injustice has reached a peak, but ironically, it's a real circumstance that really happened. The martyrdom is a revelation of dramatic irony; human evil and injustice is no longer shrouded in mystery; Stalin's regime shows injustice in full bloom, and the consequence is hard to fathom.
The crime and punishment
Pinchas Pelovits, the writer and the "Twenty-Seventh Man" in question is experiencing a situational irony. He is against the state's power for ultimate punishment, but is it for murder? For conspiracy against the state? What crime could warrant such extreme treatment and disenfranchisement? The answer is that he published something with an innocent mistake in it. He is in jail for a typo. This is a clear joke to the writers who may read this, because all the twenty-seven men are writers, and because every writer makes mistakes.
Religious diversity
In "The Gilgul of Park Avenue," an ironic companionship is discovered between a Protestant and the Jewish narrator. The moment is an important part of understanding the meaning of Judaism in the story. By including a sect of Christianity in the collection, Judaism is stretched to include anyone who has experienced a holy narrative of life, and the transcendentalism of this story is another hint in this direction. After all, Jewish folklore is all about narrative. The scriptures are literally "holy stories," pointing to the holiness of human experience, although a legalist might miss that.
