Jewish Holiday Fun...For You

Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Gift for Today's Jew
Review: I got two. One for me, and then one for my friend Laura who is just Jewish enough to not want a Christmas present but not so Jewish as to want something all Jewy.

Barbara (formerly Kligman, before she got married to author Douglas Rushkoff) Rushkoff was the editor of a zine I used to buy at Tower Records called Plotz. It was this crazy arty take on Judaism and pop culture, with all sorts of modern references like the Michelin Guide or Cliff Notes. It was the precursor to all the 'hip' Judaism things coming up today.

Now she's done a book, and it's about the funniest thing I've seen since those early National Lampoons. It takes each Jewish holiday and then recasts in totally artfully and realistically reproduced version of a book or magazine. So Chanukah is done as a TV guide for Jews during Christmas week, where the I Love Lucy marathon is actually Jewish episodes of Lucy. And Sukkot is like this old Sears catalogue of Sukkah kits you can buy and put together.

The book is produced by Rizzoli, so every page is superthick paper and full color, like an art book. Turns out the whole thing was designed by Sean Tejeratchi, who was the zine artist for Craphound, the art director of NYPress, and a famous record jacket designer. That's probably why it looks so good.

I can't say enough about this thing. It's really a coffee table book quality volume, with down-home humor and media satire that should be great confirmation of values for real Jews and really funny for reluctant modern Jews, too.

Rating:
Summary: Judaism-Not just for Jews!
Review: The above review already tells you what a great book this is, so I will not re-invent the above review. I will speak from my own experience having bought this book for 3 people and what they told me post-during-reading.

Character #1: My mom, age 50-something
Mom loved this book because of the parts she got, the parts she was not sure she got and the parts with stories and recipes that made her laugh and even remember some new stories to tell us (the offspring)
Character #2: My "jewish" gal pal from summer camp, age, late "20's":
Now she got almost all of it and called me twice during the reading to tell me how funny the part about...well, I will let you read that part. I think she just ordered some for her camp gal pals. Notice the jewish was in quotes...she is born jewish but is not observant in the nyc sense, but jewish in the mill valley sense...she loved it of course.
Character #3: My pagan-buddhist-god-no-wants pal:
He loved it because he viewed it as both comments on living today in America as a "something" as well as for the humor and what he called collage-pop-judaica-esque art.

So, do yourself and a loved one a favor...buy this book, makes a great gift ANY TIME OF Year...Yes, Jews and others can gifts at times that are not December-centric...
Enjoy :)

Rating:
Summary: A must-buy and great gift!
Review: This book is a hilarious and light-hearted primer for jewish holidays. Informative for jews and non-jews alike, it makes the holidays come alive. Written with a wicked sense of humor, this is great reading, and would make a great gift. It looks amazing too, so it could function equally well as a coffee table book and as a bookshelf book. If you like the authors excellent 'zine Plotz and website www.plotzworld.com you'll ADORE this book.