Monday, May 02, 2022
How US toy makers and publishers created an alternative Jewish universe
I grew up on "Encyclopedia Brown," a series of books about a grade-school Sherlock Holmes who solves one-minute mysteries. You know the type: "If you didn't steal the bicycle, how did you know it was blue?"
Encyclopedia's world looked just like mine: white, suburban, middle-class. If he had a religion, it wasn't obvious — which, except when we peeled off on the major holidays or for Sunday school, was also true of me and my friends. I later joked that there should be an all-Jewish version of the books, in which the hero solves highly specific Jewish mysteries. I even proposed a name: "Encyclopedia Judaica Brown."
It turns out, there is such a thing: "Gemarakup" (roughly, "talmudic brain") is a children's book series created for the Haredi, or fervently Orthodox, market. Its hero, according to volume 2, loves "solving mysteries, almost as much as he love[s] studying Torah" (note that "almost").
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