Josh Neuman wanted good blurbs for his first book, so he asked his parents for some words of wisdom. His mom, Janet, commented: “The book everyone will be talking about.” His dad, Lewis, said: “I think you went a little overboard on the Ferris wheel at Auschwitz.” But what could Neuman expect? His father’s parents fled Vienna, Austria, for the United States during World War II and left behind families who died in concentration camps. Neuman understood his father criticizing a picture of a Ferris wheel superimposed via Photoshop into an image of Auschwitz – especially when that picture sits between text explaining how the Jews faked the Holocaust.
“The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies,” a heavily-researched satire written by two Jews, Neuman and David Deutsch, may raise eyebrows for aiming right between the eyes of anti-Semites everywhere. The “Big Book” is built on the sarcastic confession that yes, the Jews are behind it all. From capitalism to homosexuality to the Holocaust to AIDS to 9/11, the book winks its way through tales of Jews pulling the strings.
The “Big Book” tumbled out of Heeb magazine, the three-year-old “New Jew Review” aimed primarily at 20-something Jewish hipsters who ironically and nostalgically enjoy attending bar mitzvahs. Neuman is the Heeb editor-in-chief and publisher and Deutsch is its humor editor. And depending on the expert, “The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies” and Heeb magazine are examples of either a renaissance of Jewish culture or the slow-but-agonizing death of it. They agree Jewish culture is on an incline, but which way is it moving? Is it going up or is it hurtling down?
Soon after Heeb went up in January 2002, agents were asking the editors for a book. “I didn’t want to do a ‘Best Of’ book,” says Neuman, who was music editor at the launch and took over editorial and publishing duties in August 2003. “We really wanted to approach historical events with irreverence.” He used The Onion’s book Our Dumb Century as a template for what Heeb wanted out of a book. Deutsch and Neuman, who met in early 1998 through a mutual friend, immediately bonded over a shared love of Normal Fell, the actor best known for his portrayal of Stanley Roper in “Three’s Company.” “We both really appreciated his genius,” Deutsch says. After much talk about Fell and his semi-illustrious career, the two realized they had similar interests beyond sitcom actors – namely writing. They began trading screenplays they had written and talking about ideas for books.
Neuman first brought his friend into Heeb’s pages by writing about Deutsch’s peculiar stand-up comedy career – one that included many a climax of angry silence for a routine based on Holocaust jokes. The piece, written for the spring 2003 issue of Heeb, cast Deutsch as the World’s Worst Jewish Comedian. It included a full-page photo of Deutsch – all smile and microphone in hand – and this description of him: “Too Jewish to be hip and too self-consciously hip to be successful at being Jewish, Deutch [sic] must find solace as a comic bottom feeder.” When Neuman became editor and publisher, he immediately made Deutsch Heeb’s first humor editor. “That was sort of a conspiracy, actually,” Neuman says about slowly but surely getting Deutsch from the bar in 1998 to the pages in spring 2003 to the masthead in summer 2003. “I thought Dave was just hilarious.”
The two began seriously discussing ideas for a Heeb book, concentrating on Sept. 11, 2001. “That period after 9/11 was our inspiration,” Deutsch says. “People claimed responsibility and they looked pretty responsible. But some people actually blamed the Jews.” Abe Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, even said, “Never in the history of the Jewish people has one terrible lie about ‘Jewish control’ spread so quickly and with such power, captivating not only those on the extreme fringe but the educated elite, particularly in the Muslim and Arab world.” The conspiracy theories came mostly from the Middle East – spread over the Internet – but they also came from such distinguished and diverse sources as Amiri Baraka, New Jersey’s poet laureate; the Saudi royal family; and Arab news network Al Jazeera. “There’s an absurdity to it,” Deutsch says. “Blaming the Jews is their reflexive response and we took that to its logical conclusion.” The conclusion being The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies. “We went over everything that was and could be the Jews’ fault,” he says.
Publishing company St. Martin’s Griffin bought the rights to the Jew-blaming book in December 2003. Neuman and Deutsch immediately began agreeing on the conspiracies, writing separately, conferring, confirming, learning each others’ strengths. “He was the structure, I was the shtick,” Deutsch says. “And we definitely got it down to a science of how to create a Jewish conspiracy.”
“There’s a ‘Where’s Waldo’ thing happening in the book,” Neuman says. “It was really tricky to make it more than one person finding something to gain. It got easier once we started using a template. That’s what the real Jewish conspirators do, too. They all start with a real correlation.” Neuman and Deutsch both took pride in the way their book read like real conspiratorial writings, such as those found on Jewwatch.com, the Jewish conspiracy Web site notorious for being the top site displayed when “Jew” is Googled. One of Jew Watch’s recent theories – one the “Big Book’s” Web site offers a link to – starts with the true fact that Pope John Paul II had Jewish friends while growing up in Poland. Jew Watch then connects that with John Paul’s status as the first Pope to extend diplomatic relations to Israel. And then an ethnic appraisal of the former Pope’s mother via an old photograph (“notice the Jewish facial characteristics” reads the site) and a few other parallels later, and the resulting headline was, “Was Pope John Paul II Jewish?”
Part of the reason both Deutsch and Neuman say they wrote the book is because they don’t think most anti-Semites find that headline ridiculous – or ever really laugh at all. “I think having a sense of irony is the best way to go about things in general,” Deutsch says. “Even if you’re intolerant, if you’re intolerant and have a sense of humor and irony, then you won’t go out and kill anybody.” Both Neuman and Deutsch do worry, though, that intolerants without senses of humor may read “The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies” and find great evidence of, well, Jewish conspiracies. “We shudder at the thought that some Saudi cleric will find (the “Big Book”) and take it as truth,” Neuman says.
This fear was justified before the book even came out. Once the book appeared on Amazon.com – without any sort of summary at all – people began referring to it as if it were an actual piece of anti-Semitic propaganda. One anti-Semitic blogger from Malaysia cited the “Big Book” as current reading in an entry about Al Pacino’s film portrayal of Jewish money-lender Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” At the time of her entry, the book would not be released for months. Another Amazon.com reviewer posted several one-star reviews of anti-gay marriage books with the same review: “Kudos to (author’s name here) for blowing the lid off these scheming queers. Might I also recommend ‘The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies’ by Joshua Neuman.” The “Big Book” wouldn’t come out for five more months.
But even with the book out since April, the issue of questioning its authenticity remains. For a satire full of fabricated conspiracy theories, there’s quite a bit of actual historical accuracy. “People with real backgrounds in history will appreciate the book,” Neuman says. “Some of this history is just so obscure … only five people in the world will be able to participate in some jokes.”
The idea of a changing Jewish community – one that embraces the younger generation – fascinates Neuman and Deutsch. Neuman said the whole concept of Heeb magazine was to appeal to a group of Jews – urban 20-somethings with leftist politics – who did not have a periodical of their own. No
t surprisingly, Heeb has a more ironic, idol-smashing attitude about Judaism because of its core audience. “A lot of people think this generation is taking a different stance on tragedy than other generations,” Neuman says. “They think we’re laughing at tragedy. No, we’re not.” He supports his argument with “The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies.” It’s always making fun of Jewish conspiracies, not Jews or the tragedies described in the book. The idea is that 9/11 isn’t funny, but a conspiracy that Jews caused 9/11 is.
It’s true Jews are accepted into mainstream culture; even though they make up only an estimated 5.2 million of the 296 million people living in America, they are considered ordinary in the United States. David Desser, a professor of cinema studies at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and co-author of “American-Jewish Filmmakers: Traditions and Trends,” says he thinks Jewish culture will survive, but in a more specific form. “Jewish kids of this generation are still interested Jewish culture and history, but now the constellation of things Jewish is in decline. There is less that is distinctively Jewish, and you kind of have to deliberately hold onto it to achieve Jewish culture.”
“Big Book” grabs onto a very specific topic very specific to Jews – conspiracies – and uses it to celebrate Jewish culture while mocking the conspirators. But Heeb is trying to combat this image of certain Jewish attributes creating a definite culture. “Our mission statement says that we’re interested in the inadvertently Jewish, the tangentially Jewish, the Jewish by side glance,” Neuman said to Mediabistro.com in April 2004. “It’s easy to point out what’s Jewish about klezmer, or pastrami sandwiches, or the 2nd Avenue Deli, but it’s not so easy to point out what’s Jewish about famine in Africa or Dolly Parton or something completely unconnected.”
Some Jewish leaders agree with Neuman, saying Jewish culture is becoming increasingly unique and relevant. Richard Seigel, executive director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, sees a new Jewish cultural renaissance occurring in America. “Young Jews are rediscovering a 3,000-year reservoir of experience and text and references and values they can mine,” Seigel says. “We’ve been kind of waiting for the next wave of Jewish energies to emerge and this may be it.” He said Heeb is a “phenomenon” and an “encouraging example” of the new Jewish culture. And the “Big Book” certainly mines the 3,000-year history of the Jews. It at least draws graffiti all over it.
Medill junior Matt Weir is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
