I had high hopes for “The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies.” At first glance (across a crowded bookshelf), I thought, “This could be the one, a book with whom I could have a deep and meaningful relationship. We might not always get along, but I will laugh, and I will learn things.”
It had such an impressive pedigree, too. The authors are a couple of nice Jewish boys, successful and living in New York City: David Deutsch, the humor editor for Heeb magazine; Joshua Neuman, editor and publisher of same.
The back cover offered tantalizing and praise-filled quotes from famous humorists and respected newspapers. Alas, the praise was for Heeb, not for the book in my hands.
Still, I held out hope. After all, the back cover also offered a quote from the authors themselves, “Two gentiles talk to each other, it’s a conversation; two Jews, it’s a conspiracy.”
Did that make you laugh, too? Good. Now I’ve saved you $13.95 because that’s the funniest line in the whole book.
In the introduction, the authors reveal that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the blaming of Jews that occurred thereafter, inspired the pair to “chronicle Jewish conspiracy theories throughout the ages and try to capture the utter ridiculousness of their logic.” However, within a few paragraphs we learn, “this book is satire, completely made up and in no way intended to be taken as truth.”
Talk about mixed messages.
The truth would have been funnier (in its own disturbing way) and more profound than the exercise the authors put themselves and us through in this mishmash of rewritten biblical histories and tweaked conspiracy theories.
We were in trouble right at “Chapter One: In the Beginning.” An imaginary conversation between Abe Foxman, Paul Wolfowitz, Thomas Friedman, a proctologist, Alan Dershowitz, Louis Farrakhan, Jerry Springer, Barbara Streisand, Soupy Sales, Noam Chomsky and Elizabeth Wurtzel. The group of conspirators agrees that a book of Jewish conspiracies will show people who believe in those conspiracies just how ridiculous they are.
“It’s like a Trojan Horse. Let somebody quote this book as authoritative, and you can immediately dismiss everything else he says,” Wolfowitz says.
What follows is a series of historical rewrites and flights of fiction peppered with non sequiturs that attribute colloquialisms for masturbation to events of the Exodus, and mention of scatology and transgendered sexual confusion at every opportunity. There are big-nose jokes, money-lender jokes, Jews-written-into-the-history-of-the-colonization-of-America jokes, etc.
If you want the readers’ digest version, feel free to skim through the book for magazine-style pull-quotes such as “While lauded for its comfort and washability, the denim suspension bridge over the Chattahoochee River proved wholly inadequate.” (Head scratch, sound of crickets … )
One more complaint: If this book is written by self-proclaimed slackers (“throughout our years in grade school, high school, college, and grad school, very few have confused our writings with anything remotely resembling scholarship”) and aimed at making fun of people dumb enough to believe conspiracy theories, then why is it so completely dependent on the readers’ thorough knowledge of both biblical and American history in order to get the jokes?
So, maybe I’m the wet blanket. Lacking in both education and humor, I shall throw myself back at the bookshelf, seeking to find a better match for my low intellect and innate inability to grasp satire. Fine. I accept this.
For you, however, I recommend a subscription to Heeb instead of this book. The authors’ brand of humor seems much better suited to short-form commentary on entertainment and current events than to this book, which they were lucky enough to get a contract to write.
“The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies” by David Deutsch and Joshua Neuman, (269 pages, St. Martin’s Griffin, $13.95).