When a Book Calls Itself “Cool,” You Know it’s Gonna be Lame
Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe
Lisa Alcalay Klug
Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008
An illustrated handbook that seems to have been produced with the gift tables at Urban Outfitters in mind, Cool Jew is a Jewish pride manifesto hiding behind a facade of forced hipness. Beneath an embarrassing cover featuring the book’s title spelled out on a blingy gold necklace lurk 256 pages of poorly executed insider references and jokes that fall flat.
Much of the Guide seems designed to elicit the sort of chuckle shared upon finding that you and a friend both have Uncle Morts who sleep through Seder. Klug’s humor rests on trite, painfully obvious cultural references: Kosher wine, Miami, bagels with lox. We get it; we know. The book’s not-so-fresh innovation is to re-brand this sort of kitschy in-joke as “cool.” In the words of the book’s publicity material, ” Cool Jew does for matzah balls and gefilte fish what The Official Preppy Handbook did for plaid and polo, only with much more chutzpah!”
Klug aims for laughs, but she also aims to help those suffering from low Judeo-esteem. She presents the Guide as a collection of pride-inducing tidbits: a veneration of Jewish foods, a retelling of the story of Sandy Koufax’s refusal to pitch on Yom Kippur. The preface declares that the reader will learn how to “hip-hop your Hebraic with irreverence, good humor, and bona fide liberated Jewish self-expression.” Though the book’s cover advertises it as “Not Just for Jews!” the take-home message is clear: “This playful no-apologies approach to fully embracing being Hebraic helps put an end forever to Christmas tree envy.”
Klug leaves little room for those of us who shy away from synagogue, or who date blonde atheists. In a section called “Jews Who Outgoy the Goyim,” Klug’s position is clear. “Sometimes,” she tells us, “Jews aren’t so Jewish. They stray far away from the Mosaic time-space continuum and come out on the other side very un-Jewish.” Citing Ralph Lauren (ne Lifshitz) as abandoning his “real” self, she renders him symptomatic of a self-loathing epidemic in need of remedy. Her antidote comes in the form of references to Sacha Baron Cohen and “Moses is my Homeboy” t-shirts. “Shun shame and embrace fame,” Klug instructs. She writes, “every Jew is in some microscopic way already a Heebster”; her term for one who “knows it, flaunts it, digs it, and loves it.” She continues: “It’s simply part of the Jewish spiritual inheritance. Even if you’re ohm-ing in an ashram‚ or raising buffalo in Dakota, there is something inside of you that has never stopped being part of the Tribe.” Jews are “special,” “cooler,” and “hipper,” Klug tells us, repeating ad nauseam until the book is suffused with an odd sense of V.I.P. pride.
In sum: the Jewish people is a chosen one, and more kick-ass than the rest. Any other attitude equals “shame.” It’s OK to mock Jewish clothing through diagrams and bad puns, but it’s detrimental when a designer “assimilates” via polo wear. The goal is to focus inward. If we don’t hold fast to just how chosen we are, we’ll be lost to some terrible, un-Jewish fate.
But what constitutes abandoning culture or creed is never cut-and-dry. The question of what “self-loathing” Jews are loathing is too complex for a joke book to tackle. What’s more, Klug’s insistence on chastising readers with the “don’t be a Bad Jew” tactic is exactly the attitude keeping some at bay. She may mean well, but the oversimplification of “good” Jews versus “goy” Jews simply does not deliver.
As Philip Roth writes in his 1963 essay Writing About Jews, “The cry, ‘Watch out for the goyim!’ at times seems more the expression of an unconscious wish than of a warning: Oh that they were out there, so that we could be together in here!” As a vehicle for Klug’s continuity project, Cool Jew proves neither side-splitting nor effective.
