December 23-29, 2004

art

High Holidays

Life of the party: Barbara Rushkoff spoofs pop-culture touchstones like Highlights in Jewish Holiday Fun é For You!

Jewish celebrations get the Plotz treatment.

by A.D. Amorosi

Despite being Italian and Catholic with all the trimmings -- wife-beater tank tops and gold crosses in summer, wife-beater tank tops and silver crosses in winter -- I like to think I understand Jewish culture. Ate Passover crackers before I went no-carb. Sat shiva despite its lack of mirrors.

In my estimation, author Barbara Rushkoff has twice that knowledge of my culture.

"I like Christmas," says Rushkoff. "The whole "pretty feeling' of lights, wrapping gifts, company parties where you see your peers get drunk," says Rushkoff, the expatriate Philadelphian scribe whose first book, Jewish Holiday Fun For You! (Rizzoli), seeks to shred the culture gap between religions with impious glee.

Like she does through her Plotzworld.com blog and its precursor, the 16 zine-issues of Plotz whose mix of cheerily kitsch '30s through '70s graphics and Jewish pop culture predated Heeb mag, Jewish Holiday Fun is meant for anyone who wanted to know anything about her culture but was afraid to ask.

"That's what ultimately made me start writing Plotz," says Rushkoff (nee Kligman), nine months pregnant, from the Brooklyn duplex in the Park Slope neighborhood that she shares with husband, Douglas, an author known for his own slate of cyber- and media-related books.

"When I explain that I'm Jewish, it is sometimes met with puzzled looks. It bugs me that people think everyone celebrates Christmas. I can appreciate it, but I don't celebrate it." As for Hanukkah, "Doug and I don't exchange presents or anything. But we do light candles every night and say the blessings. This year we are using a very expensive menorah that looks like the Wailing Wall."

Smart and sarcastic without being snarky, warm and convivial without being winsome, the author is the same Barbara from the Northeast I knew from the punk '80s, one whose desire for That Girl/Rhoda-style independence sent her to Manhattan before decade's end. There, while becoming a freelance magazine writer and People mag staffer, she discovered a shocking anti-Semitism that wasn't so playful. Sometimes it was passive-aggressive (massive Christmas trees in the lobby of the Time Warner building). Sometimes not so much.

"I was raised Conservative," she says. "My Jewishness came out -- in speech, in experience. It didn't step up my time in synagogue. But the stupid anti-Semitic bullshit -- those instances made me feel more Jewish." She got older, more vocal, and lashed out, but with a brand of quirky personal humor bound by the fact she wrote like she spoke.

Plotz was born, a Xeroxed zine with a '50s graphic sensibility that borrowed elements from textbooks and magazines and included interviews with Jews like Beck and Jon Stewart. "I told funny stories that happened to revolve around being Jewish. It so came from my heart that I think it hit a real chord with people." Jewish girls in Texas nervously having bat mitzvahs, Asian friends regaling her with quaint Jewish sayings they picked up -- Rushkoff was proud of the range of responses.

"Some reviewers feel that my book is for Jews only. I disagree. Jews will "get' it more, but it is a humorous book anyone can laugh at." Yes, Jewish Holiday Fun is specifically about Yom Kippur and the High Holidays and such. "Jewish holidays are so interesting and funny and symbolic, but still people are afraid of them -- or rather, not interested in them!" says Rushkoff. That very morning, she did an interview with a Christian radio station that wanted to know things like, "What's meshuggeneh?" and, "what do you think of Israeli people who want to bring back daily sacrifice?"

But with its Plotz-like graphic appeal (courtesy of designers Sean Tejaratchi of CrapHound and Jack Pollock) and tongue-in-cheek semantics, Jewish Holiday Fun happily turns each Jewish tradition into a learning experience.

"Simchat Torah: The One Where You Run Around the Synagogue With Flags & Apples" uses the familiar Highlights setting to become Chai Lights starring Doofus and Moishey. The feminist "Shavuot: The One About That Lady Named Ruth" is told in sexy paper-doll speak. "It was originally written as a gothic novel a la Emily Bronté -- Ruth told in Old English. I really liked it -- but it seemed I was the only one who did." Finally, "Hanukkah: The One with the Menorah and Greasy Pancakes" is told as a tart TV Guide parody.

"I'd love non-Jews to come away laughing," says Rushkoff. "I don't expect anyone to be able to pass hardcore tests on Jewish holidays, but I hope to impart some understanding of what "us guys' do."

What the book did for me was make me pose a curious point to Rushkoff: What did I miss not being Jewish?

"I used to ask what I was missing not being Christian," she replies. "That attitude is really healthy. It keeps communication open between people. Now Kwanzaa? You got me there. That, I'm mystified by."