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Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe
It's never been hipper to be Jewish." --VH1
Cool Jew does for gefilte fish and matzah balls what the Preppy Handbook did for plaid and polo-only with much more chutzpah.
Cool The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe by Lisa Alcalay Klug delivers the kosher response to The Preppy Handbook . --Publishers Weekly
Cool Jew covers everything Hebraic from womb to tomb, finally putting an end to Christmas tree envy. Short essays, lists, instructional guides, photographs, and original illustrations celebrate Jewish cultural pride with love, enthusiasm, and irreverence.
Entries ranging from "Heebonics for the Yiddish Impaired" to "Self-Help for the Christmas Carole Intolerant" provide the long-awaited Jewish response to that WASP manual of the '80s, The Preppy Handbook.
In addition to cultural hilarity, Cool Jew features resourceful back-of-the-book material, including "People of Da Book" (authoritative texts on Jewish concepts and culture), the "Heebster Jewke Box" (tunes that rock the Heebster vibe), and the "Tribe Online" (an extensive listing of Jewish Web resources).
Cool Jew does for gefilte fish and matzah balls what the Preppy Handbook did for plaid and polo-only with much more chutzpah.
Cool The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe by Lisa Alcalay Klug delivers the kosher response to The Preppy Handbook . --Publishers Weekly
Cool Jew covers everything Hebraic from womb to tomb, finally putting an end to Christmas tree envy. Short essays, lists, instructional guides, photographs, and original illustrations celebrate Jewish cultural pride with love, enthusiasm, and irreverence.
Entries ranging from "Heebonics for the Yiddish Impaired" to "Self-Help for the Christmas Carole Intolerant" provide the long-awaited Jewish response to that WASP manual of the '80s, The Preppy Handbook.
In addition to cultural hilarity, Cool Jew features resourceful back-of-the-book material, including "People of Da Book" (authoritative texts on Jewish concepts and culture), the "Heebster Jewke Box" (tunes that rock the Heebster vibe), and the "Tribe Online" (an extensive listing of Jewish Web resources).
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2008
2 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 6, 2010
[This review also appears on FingerFlow.com, a site for review and discussion of creative works.]
Although meant to be a hip and humorous guide to modern Judaism, Lisa Alcalay Klug's Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe requires forty years of patience to schlep through. The book is packed with what is meant to be cute little "yiddish-isms" that get tiresome very early on: shnooked, shtickl, sh'mantra... How many words starting with "sh" can you possibly fit into one book? The author herself states at one point that the "sh" words can go "...on and on without end!" It certainly seemed that way.
Klug's writing style is sprinkled with awkward phrases that I can only guess are attempts at sounding hip and/or cute. Here's an excerpt from the first page of the first chapter:
"...as a Heebster, you don't just survive, you thrive! Being Jewish is about much more than bagels and loxy. It's about moxie, about feeling Yiddishe foxy! Because when you're of Da Tribe, you've got Da Vibe. It's not about deprivation. It's about celebration, exclamation and exaltation! When you embrace Da Place, you're blessed with grace. So let go of the pain. You're a link in the chain. Shun shame and embrace fame. Take charge and live large."
If you thought the above excerpt was clever, then you should definitely check out this book. However, if you groaned when you read it, like I did, then you'll have a tough time getting all the way through the guide. By the time I was done with this book, I was glad to leave all the "kabba lah lahs," "oyPods" and "Mani's" behind.
Another big problem with this book is that it is not very accessible to outsiders. I'm Jewish and attended religious school for over a decade and there were many jokes in "Cool Jew" that went over my head. I imagine non-Jewish readers will be quickly phased by all the inside jokes.
The book is packed with quizzes that force you to turn the book upside down to find the answers. With a quiz appearing every third page or so, I was quickly tempted to start skipping the quizzes because I was tired of constantly flipping the book. It's a shame, really, because the most interesting info about modern Judaism was located in the quizzes (such as different classic Jewish dishes and Yiddish words).
Not everything about this book was annoying. In between silly rap songs and overly-cutesy turns of phrase in modern Yiddish, occasional nuggets of interesting information shined through. For example, the descriptions of G-d and Birthmarks in the unfortunately titled Kabba Lah Lah chapter. And the descriptions of many Jewish dishes. And the multitude of Jewish-themed websites that I had no idea existed. It's too bad a lot of the good stuff was buried beneath writing that tried too hard to be funny in a way that few will get.
And this might just be a personal peeve, but I was hoping for more information about the less mainstream Jews. Perhaps 80%-90% of the book was focused on Ashkenazi and Hasidic habits, dishes, customs, etc. There was mention of Shephardic Jews, but hardly any information about what differentiates them from the other groups. Bukharian Jews, of which there might be more than 50,000 living in the USA (concentrated mostly in Queens, NY) only get a mention about having a unique yarmulke and language (to add insult to injury, the word "Bukharian" is misspelled in one place). The section about the lost tribes of Israel would have been the perfect place to go into detail about the customs, traditions and cuisine of this sizable group that were cutoff from mainstream Jewry for over 2,000 years. I guess Klug thinks all Jews eat cholent, gribenes and herring (I've personally had none of the above).
The bottom line is this: there are some sections of Cool Jew that yield thoughtful and interesting information. Unfortunately, wading through Klug's annoyingly insistent yiddishified language and humor will have you running to a different source for information about Jewry (wikipedia?). Or, if you come from a European Jewish background, you might understand more of the book, but I can't imagine how you could read this book without wincing at the non-stop barrage of bad puns.
Although meant to be a hip and humorous guide to modern Judaism, Lisa Alcalay Klug's Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe requires forty years of patience to schlep through. The book is packed with what is meant to be cute little "yiddish-isms" that get tiresome very early on: shnooked, shtickl, sh'mantra... How many words starting with "sh" can you possibly fit into one book? The author herself states at one point that the "sh" words can go "...on and on without end!" It certainly seemed that way.
Klug's writing style is sprinkled with awkward phrases that I can only guess are attempts at sounding hip and/or cute. Here's an excerpt from the first page of the first chapter:
"...as a Heebster, you don't just survive, you thrive! Being Jewish is about much more than bagels and loxy. It's about moxie, about feeling Yiddishe foxy! Because when you're of Da Tribe, you've got Da Vibe. It's not about deprivation. It's about celebration, exclamation and exaltation! When you embrace Da Place, you're blessed with grace. So let go of the pain. You're a link in the chain. Shun shame and embrace fame. Take charge and live large."
If you thought the above excerpt was clever, then you should definitely check out this book. However, if you groaned when you read it, like I did, then you'll have a tough time getting all the way through the guide. By the time I was done with this book, I was glad to leave all the "kabba lah lahs," "oyPods" and "Mani's" behind.
Another big problem with this book is that it is not very accessible to outsiders. I'm Jewish and attended religious school for over a decade and there were many jokes in "Cool Jew" that went over my head. I imagine non-Jewish readers will be quickly phased by all the inside jokes.
The book is packed with quizzes that force you to turn the book upside down to find the answers. With a quiz appearing every third page or so, I was quickly tempted to start skipping the quizzes because I was tired of constantly flipping the book. It's a shame, really, because the most interesting info about modern Judaism was located in the quizzes (such as different classic Jewish dishes and Yiddish words).
Not everything about this book was annoying. In between silly rap songs and overly-cutesy turns of phrase in modern Yiddish, occasional nuggets of interesting information shined through. For example, the descriptions of G-d and Birthmarks in the unfortunately titled Kabba Lah Lah chapter. And the descriptions of many Jewish dishes. And the multitude of Jewish-themed websites that I had no idea existed. It's too bad a lot of the good stuff was buried beneath writing that tried too hard to be funny in a way that few will get.
And this might just be a personal peeve, but I was hoping for more information about the less mainstream Jews. Perhaps 80%-90% of the book was focused on Ashkenazi and Hasidic habits, dishes, customs, etc. There was mention of Shephardic Jews, but hardly any information about what differentiates them from the other groups. Bukharian Jews, of which there might be more than 50,000 living in the USA (concentrated mostly in Queens, NY) only get a mention about having a unique yarmulke and language (to add insult to injury, the word "Bukharian" is misspelled in one place). The section about the lost tribes of Israel would have been the perfect place to go into detail about the customs, traditions and cuisine of this sizable group that were cutoff from mainstream Jewry for over 2,000 years. I guess Klug thinks all Jews eat cholent, gribenes and herring (I've personally had none of the above).
The bottom line is this: there are some sections of Cool Jew that yield thoughtful and interesting information. Unfortunately, wading through Klug's annoyingly insistent yiddishified language and humor will have you running to a different source for information about Jewry (wikipedia?). Or, if you come from a European Jewish background, you might understand more of the book, but I can't imagine how you could read this book without wincing at the non-stop barrage of bad puns.
September 1, 2008
Cool Jew was only a 'Cool Few' - Minutes of fun that is. I found myself wanting to enjoy this book more than I actually did. I understand this style of book is not intended for cover to cover type reading...but I found myself just flipping from page to page trying to find something that would jump out and grab my attention. Many things did indeed grab my attention - unfortunately nothing really kept it.[return][return]I enjoy an irreligious book...but the irreverance was more than I could appreciate. Though the book is intended to be tongue in cheek - I found it to be more foot in mouth, by taking a great tradition and reducing it to nothing more than Kitsch!
April 8, 2014
this book is too over the top for me, some subtlety would have been nice. however there is a full star in my rating for the web resource list in the back. the list of jewish oriented websites is worth the price for any library.
July 28, 2008
Loved this book. Really funny, really informative, really a great survey of all the fun Jewish stuff, people, foods, music, t-shirts, events and much more... Nothing like it anywhere!
Want to read
December 2, 2008I bought this book for one of my nieces.
Flipping thorugh, I like that she has references to "comic book Jews", including Rabbi Simcha Weinstein and the comic strip Shabot 6000.
Flipping thorugh, I like that she has references to "comic book Jews", including Rabbi Simcha Weinstein and the comic strip Shabot 6000.
February 6, 2010
Didn't really like this book. I had hoped it would be funny, but it tries too hard to be funny and is poorly written.
July 20, 2010
Funny. I am learning to be a member of the tribe...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews