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| June 30, 2005 |
REVIEW: The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies
 Heeb has been known to craft a clever concept every once in a while. Done in usually by their lack of restraint or lack of depth (I won't add mine to the chorus decrying their lack of taste), they nevertheless can cough up a good idea when they want to. So I wasn't surprised that they dreamed up the ever-so-witty look at Jewish conspiracy theories in the guise of an if-they-were-true bit of satire.
As Mayer Waxman wrote in his review of the book for Jewsweek (now Jewcy) magazine:
Jews were responsible for the Renaissance, the French Revolution, inciting World War I and assassinating JFK, let alone foisting on mankind the counterintuitive peculiarity of buying bottled water -- back in the plague infested Europe of the 1300s. Jews were of course behind the Crusades, the Great Depression, the sexual revolution, introducing malt liquor -- and violence -- into Harlem, and ending pro baseball's reserve clause which led to sky high priced concessions. But less well known is that it was a Jew, Guillermo de la Nussbaum, who, quite by accident, discovered America, and that it was a Jew, Moritz Gelbfisch, who outfitted the Klan.
To the most dimwitted reader, it might be too late to point out that the book is a work of satirical fiction. We'll forgive authors Deutsch and Neuman for any previous transgressions in the world of Jewish publishing, because this bit of faux literature is pulled off with just the right amount of hilarity and just the right tone of whim. Sure it'll offend the tight-sphinctered members of the community who think making light of the very conspiracies that have led to pogroms is in poor taste.
They shouldn't be reading this book. It even says so, calling them "people who shouldn't be reading this book." Despite them, this is a contribution in the best tradition of Borscht Belt comedians. It insults us Jews, but only with love. Then it insults those who hate us, and in a way many of them will probably be too dense to fathom.
Hence the magnificence of The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies. It's well-executed, and it's funny. It's smart, even smarmy. But it's also a fundamentally Jewish response to anti-Semitism. I recall the The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History and Culture made this point as well: We laugh so we won't have to cry. When you're as oppressed as we are, you have to make a joke out of it.
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