It's an ancient joke, I read a version of it in a jokebook from the 1940s where the protagonist was a mechanical engineer who knew just the right place to whack

It's an ancient joke, I read a version of it in a jokebook from the 1940s where the protagonist was a mechanical engineer who knew just the right place to whack a broken machine to make it start again. All those stories about a priest, a minister, and a rabbi, however, are 100% true. I know because I was the rabbi involved.