Episode 14: Rob Kutner
On Writing for The Daily Show, Conan, and How Comedy and Judaism Overlap
Rob Kutner’s Five Books:
The Big Book of Jewish Humor by Moshe Waldoks and William Novak
As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
The Jews: 5000 Years and Counting by Rob Kutner
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The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Sarah Waring
Artwork by Dena Friedman
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.
Rob Kutner’s new irreverent book on Jewish history, The Jews: 5000 Years and Counting covers every major moment in Jewish history from Adam and Eve to Tuesday’s rerun of Seinfeld. This book will make you laugh, it might inadvertently make you learn, and it might just be a balm for our times that you didn’t know you needed (Simon & Schuster).
Rob Kutner is an Emmy, Peabody, Grammy, and TCA-winning writer for late-night TV including The Daily Show and TBS’ Conan. He is also the author of the humor books including Apocalypse How (Running Press, 2008) and the kids’ comedy-horror graphic novel Snot Goblins and Other Tasteless Tales (First Second, 2023).
He has also written material for the Oscars, Emmys, and two White House Correspondents Dinners, and was named a “SuperJew” by Time Out New York.
In our conversation, Rob will tell us about how going to a Christian school reinforced his own Judaism, how he made sure that the diversity of stories were included in his Jewish history, and his story about ordering a lulav and etrog to the Daily Show office.
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The Five Books: Rob Kutner on Writing for The Daily Show, Conan, and How Comedy and Judaism Overlap
Tali Rosenblatt Cohen:
Welcome to The Five Books, where each week we talk with a Jewish author about five books that are near and dear to them. My name is Tali Rosenblatt Cohen. Every week I ask Jewish authors about five books in five categories. We'll hear about two Jewish books that have impacted the author's Jewish identity. We'll hear about one book, not necessarily Jewish, they think everyone should read, a book that changed their worldview. We'll get a peek into what book the author is reading now. And we'll get to hear about the new book they've just published and how it came about.Today we'll be talking with Rob Kutner about his new irreverent book on Jewish history, The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting. Covering every major moment in Jewish history from Adam and Eve to Tuesday's rerun of Seinfeld, this book will make you laugh, it might inadvertently make you learn, and it might just be the balm for our times that you didn't know you needed.
Rob Kutner:
It actually really helped me through this time to write this book because when I took a step back and I looked at the big picture, I was like, man, I mean, right now it’s rough, but so was then and so was then and so was then and so was then. Like, we've just been through it so many times and then we always come through it.Rob Kutner is an Emmy, Peabody, Grammy, and TCA winning writer for late night TV, including The Daily Show and TBS's Conan. He is also the author of numerous books, including Apocalypse How and the kids’ comedy horror graphic novel, Snot Goblins and Other Tasteless Tales. He has written material for the Oscars, the Emmys and two White House Correspondents’ dinners and was named a Super Jew by Time Out New York. In our conversation, Rob will tell us about how going to a Christian school reinforced his own Judaism, how he made sure that the diversity of stories were included in his Jewish history, and about ordering a lulav and etrog to the Daily Show office.
I got this call from the receptionist in my office who said, Rob, your Jewish baseball bat and baseball are here.
That and more, all coming up next.
Welcome to the Five Books, Rob. I'm so happy to have you here.
So nice to be talking to you again.
Yes, we go way back. I had the privilege of representing you as a literary agent back in the day. You've written amazing books since then. And today we're going to be talking about The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting. How would you describe the book? What’s the pitch?
Depending on how Jewy you want to go, I could say it's Jewish history “al regel echad.” And if you're not that Jewy, I'll say it's my attempt to try to sort of summarize 5,000 plus years of history in an accessible paperback that a teenager with just a little bit of Hebrew school would understand but also like really benefit from or that anyone else who wants to just know the whole story in an accessible package can just pick up and read in a few hours.
And enjoy, I mean it's so funny.
And enjoy! Hopefully, hopefully that's — that's in there too somewhere.
Definitely. I think your last book was Snot Goblins and Other Tasteless Tales, I know you've also written. So I'm curious if you could tell us about the transition from Snot Goblins to the history of the Jews.
Well, I mean, it should be obvious, but I mean the simple answer for Jews is just nasal congestion. That's the common thread. Other than that, there's not really a common element. So, Snot Goblins was a graphic novel for kids. It was horror — an anthology of horror comedy stories. So, I wrote that book a few years ago, and then I've been sort of out there kind of in the book world. I think what happened was a publicist friend I know was friendly with the people at Post Hill Press, and Wicked Son, which is the sort of imprint of Simon & Schuster, they were looking to do a book like this.
So this mutual introduced us, or I should say this matchmaker matchmaker, shadchan-ned us together. And as soon as I heard the idea, I was like, that sounds like a great fit for me because I want to bring the humorous approach to everything. And also, this is something that I feel very passionately about, that I've been studying Jewish history and learning it throughout my life and all that. And I also feel frustrated a little bit that I feel like it's been misunderstood or maligned at this point in time as well.
I mean, it really is the perfect fit for you. As your agent we should have come up with that 20 years ago, but that's a great fit, yeah. I love that. You have received amazing professional recognition for your work. You've won five Emmys, a Peabody, a TCA, a Grammy. Amazing. I found an old interview with you where it seemed like you had some ambivalence about those awards. It's old and you said you felt like your Emmy was basically a pesel or an idol. So I'm curious to hear about that and also to see if that's still how you feel about these awards.
Well, mean, you know, all these things are complex. Like yes and no. I mean, like it's on the one hand, it's — obviously it's very exciting and gratifying to be recognized in your fields and in a way that other people do and the people outside of your field recognize. And it gives you at least a little tiny little soupçon of legitimacy so that if you bring a project or an idea to someone a little bit outside of your world, they'll say, okay, I'll listen to this person. They've earned some kudos. So to the extent that it has helped me professionally get people to take me seriously, I very much appreciate it. Of course, it was an exciting time to be part of that John Stewart show.
At the same time, I think people get really attached to these sort of worldly signs of achievement or, you know, maybe make more of them than they need to, I think, beyond the point of professional advancement. I think I may have said that in reaction to the fact that I had a rabbi friend come over and she was like, oh, can I touch it? Can I touch the Emmy? And I was like, is that okay? I think that's what got the pesel idea in my head.
That makes sense. Another golden object.
Yeah, exactly.
Book One: a Jewish book from childhood — The Big Book of Jewish Humor by Moshe Waldoks and William Novak.
This book was a Bible in my house as well. And full disclosure, my father contributed a page to it as well. So it was like, you know, we revered this book. So I want to hear when you encountered it and why you chose it.
That's amazing. I have to feel it was high school. I think it's possible someone sent it to me as a bar mitzvah gift who knew me very well. I don't remember how it came into my possession. And in that same way that like Mad Magazine kind of like opened up this vista into a world where you don't fully understand everything that's out there, and a lot of it seems odd and all that. But through humor, you find your way into kind of like grasping a lot more of the wide world out there and learning about a lot of, like, offbeat things. So just the ramshackle variety of styles of humor and topics and I mean it's just a giant opus and there's so many things packed into it from Hasidic tales to ads, like, scripts and stuff like that. Like, it just really — I think I was, you know, interested in Judaism, I was interested in humor, but I hadn't quite fully grasped like the deep, rich overlap between Jews and humor, at least going beyond just a couple of people like Mel Brooks. And I think that opened up a door for me that I didn't necessarily walk through at that time.
But, like, later on when I started doing Purim spiels, which I do every year, I started uniting those two lobes in my brain. I think that book was sort of the gateway that led to that. And this is obviously the outcome of it. So it was also extremely beyond gratifying that Moshe Waldoks himself gave me a blurb for it because that felt like almost the culmination of a journey.
From Moshe to Moshe. I love that.
Nice.
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your Jewish life as a kid.
Well, we had a bit of an arc and I don't mean the Noah's kind. My family started off in the very reform side of things. My parents were always very active in the Jewish philanthropic part of life in Atlanta and all that stuff. Then they went to Israel. My father started doing medical humanitarian work, became very invested in Israel and brought my brother and I along there on many, many trips. And that was sort of like the first precursor of it. And then a really odd thing happened, which was that I went to this Christian school, this Christian prep school in Atlanta, Georgia, where I grew up, which is an excellent school that my mother attended also. And I had been there since kindergarten, like all the way through. And as I got into high school, I think a lot of my sort of Christian, not a lot of Christian friends, but maybe they'll say Christian peers, started really kind of developing their religion. And some of them sort of developed a kind of evangelical streak to it. And they, you know, as teenagers are sort of full of energy and good intentions and bad judgment, they would come up to me and ask me, you know, why I hadn't accepted Jesus and that sort of thing.
And the question really penetrated and I wanted to sort of answer it. So I started researching, you know, and just getting into my tradition and just wondering like who we were and what my deal was. And that sort of supercharged the kind of spiritual journey for me where I got more invested in Judaism. I got more observant. I got more affiliated, interested in learning. I spent summer in high school in Israel. I later went on to Pardes. I made my parents make the house kosher, started keeping Shabbat, that sort of stuff. We also moved from reform to a conservative shul. So that was kind of an interesting path that I went along. But it was sort of triggered in a way, I wouldn't say exactly in rebellion, but maybe in response to an outside force. But you know, it stayed with me, I think, ever since.
And what a lovely response to be able to then fully own your own identity and explore it in a new way. And so did you also have an interest in comedy starting at a young age?
Oh yeah, yeah, yes. I mean, but when you say interest, it doesn't necessarily mean professional one. So I was very interested in it as a consumer and a person who makes jokes. And I used to write little cartoons sort of loosely based on the Far Side and pass them around in class, much to my teacher's chagrin. And I was just sort of someone who goofed around and wrote funny things with my friends and did videos and sketches just for fun. And it really wasn't until college that I started like, and pretty deep into college, that I actually thought about it as a career for myself. For me, it was always just very avocational.
I went into college pretty serious minded. I was majoring in anthropology and Russian studies, which are very hilarious majors. But there was a summer internship for Mad Magazine and I applied for it. I did not get it. But in the process of putting together samples to do it, I had so much fun doing it that I suddenly took this look around my life and I realized that, like, all these extracurricular activities I was doing were all comedy related. It was like the universe was telling me something. And then at that point I connected with a partner and a friend and we started writing together and started pursuing it professionally. But it was very much a part of my life. My parents are both, my father — zichrono livracha — and my mother, both extremely funny. My mother's grandfather — zichrono livracha — also very funny. So just like jokes were just like the currency in our household, just the way that we got through everything. And that was just natural. And it was only sort of later on that I, as I turned my head, that it became more of a professional idea.
What are the elements that for you sort of typify Jewish humor specifically?
Oh, good question. The basic headline is not to take yourself or anything too seriously, not to put too much trust in yourself or institutions, which I find very Jewish because it reminds me of the Passover Seder in the haggadah when it says, and think it even says this in the Torah, that we are supposed to eat the feast with our loins girded, meaning that we should be ready to move at any moment. We should be ready to run, which is sort of like kind of the Jewish leitmotif, I think, in a way. Like maybe this is a bit more resonant now than we thought it would be for the past few decades or so.
But the healthy side of that is not to get too attached to anything and also not to take any institutions too seriously to be, basically to be iconoclastic in the way that Abraham in that famous midrash was with his father's idols, like smashing idols to me is like the main thing. The second thing, which is sort of connected, is the kind of outsider marginal perspective, which is that, you know, again, we don't buy in to the hype. We don't feel comfortable with this. We question it. A joke that questions things, I mean, that's, I don't know how you get more Talmudic than that.
It makes sense that writing for shows like The Daily Show or for Conan, you know, that's like the sensibility that those shows bring to the news and bring to current events. So that thread makes sense.
Yeah.
Were those environments where you felt like your Jewishness was either an asset or a liability?
I mean, I think in the background of how I write and think about things, they were. I don't think that things got particularly Jewish in most senses. But yes, those are both very much about puncturing received truths from authority in different ways. There wasn't really anything Jewish about it except for the fact that obviously, like many of the writers were Jewish on those shows, unsurprisingly. The host of the first one clearly was. And, you know, I think Conan is in some ways an honorary Jew because of his sensibilities and because he grew up in Brookline, you know, surrounded by and, has lots of Jewish friends as well. So it was a very like, it was a good fit, I think, as you say.
That’s great. And are there any bits or pieces from The Big Book of Jewish Humor that stand out to you that you still remember?
I have to say I haven't revisited it in quite a while, maybe just because I read it so much in youth. I remember this Woody Allen story called “The Whore of Mensa,” where basically someone hires a really smart prostitute just to have an intellectual conversation with them. And to me, that was like, in some ways, that was the kind of pinnacle of the kind of joke that I've always liked or comic concept that I've liked and always wanted to — that really, really high concept, as they say in Hollywood, smashing together two frames from two different worlds and making them play together. And the high and the low of it I think are also — and that was really I think what Conan where I really like Conan as well, like, Conan was a very smart show about sometimes very stupid things. Or lowbrow, I'll say lowbrow things, like to me bringing those things together are sort of the platonic ideal.
I think you do an excellent job of that in your writing also. I loved the little bit with the influencer and the Kabbalist.
Thank you. I'm wondering how that's going to be received because it's a little bit out there.
Oh, I thought it was so funny.
Book Two: a Jewish Book from Adulthood — As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg.
It's a fictionalized version of the story of these four rabbis who are prominent of the time. It's this sort of mystical parable from the Talmud. They basically go into this sort of orchard, means they have this overwhelming spiritual experience. They kind of enter it together. They all have different experiences with the intensity of this encounter with the divine. For some, it makes them more pious. And for one of them, the lead, it actually drives him away from the faith. And it's sort of this heretic, this very famous heretic in the tradition. But it takes his journey seriously and I think for me, it was sort of like — brought to life the constant tightrope of faith and modernity, living in this very skeptical age. It's not really cool to be religiously inclined. There's a lot of things that are harmful coming from religion and also just like the whole question of, like, believing in higher powers. And, you know, it sort of took all that stuff seriously and engaged with it in this level that I really appreciated, and I think it sort of like — I don’t know if the word is inoculates exactly, but I feel like it sort of fills you up so that you sort of feel like you can encompass all the sides of that debate as your mind kind of ranges through those doubts and those anxieties.
This was a book that Yehuda Kurtzer also chose. And he also brought it up as a book that gives permission to people to ask the big questions. It sounds like that's what you're talking about. Some of those.
Yeah.
Some of I mean, those questions are, as I think you said, the assimilation question, right? There he's talking about Hellenist times, but also, I believe, in the book, he leaves Judaism, Rabbi Alicia Ben-Havuia, because of injustice, he's serving as a judge on the Sanhedrin, like the high court, and he can't reconcile the idea of bad things happening to good people, justice and injustice. That feels like something I hear from you also of just, you know, even with the next book that we'll discuss the idea of justice.
Yeah, I think that's obviously been at the forefront for me for a long time. I think, as you mentioned, like that came to for when I worked for The Daily Show, that was at least some part of me was trying to sort of think about, you know, how can we make the world more just through engagement and entertainment, in the case of that book, and laughter, in the case of what I was doing. As I said, my parents were very active fighters for social justice. My mom still is. And those things have always been really important sort of on the outside of my professional career is to be very involved in those things.
And so the other theme that you brought up from this book is assimilation, and I'm just wondering in your career what that balancing act has looked like for you.
Yeah, I mean we already touched on it a little bit with, like, the Christian high school. So like that was all swimming against the stream. In a way it was kind of easier there because I was sort of taking that punkish high school thing of like, look, I'm different from all you. I'm a Jew. Like I was kind of wearing that as a badge. But you know, as you get into adult life, I mean, in a way I haven't really addressed it because I've always just chosen to live in Jewish communities.
And in your professional life, it hasn't really been an issue.
I mean, not really. I think the more interesting wrinkle is that it's more like sort of me versus other kinds of Jews, I think. And I don't want to say versus, but like in distinction from, you know, for example, like I was like, one of only two or three even semi observant or really like strongly affiliated Jews at the Daily Show, which you would think would be like a heavily Jewish environment. And I think it was, culturally, for sure. But, you know, like, I was sort of irked when we didn't take Yom Kippur off. We did a show on Yom Kippur and I was the only one who took it off, like that sort of thing.
My favorite story about that time was, so the Daily Show was in Hell's Kitchen and Sukkot was coming up and I needed to get my lulav and etrog and the schedule was very busy. I didn't know if I was going to have time to do it. So I ordered from Eichlers Judaica, just a couple of blocks really across town to the east. I ordered a lulav and etrog sent to my office and I got this call from the receptionist in my office, she said, “Rob, your Jewish baseball bat and baseball are here.”
Book 3: a Book that Changed Your Worldview — Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.
Katherine was a journalist and she did this sort of, like, deeply reported almost storytelling account of life in the infamous slums of Mumbai, which people might remember as they were depicted I think in Slumdog Millionaire. Like these just enormous swaths of humanity that live in these tiny, like, extremely temporary shelters. And then this book, The Beautiful Forevers, alludes to — it's right next to it like chock-a-block with these like luxury hotels and just like, on paper that's like, that's really unfair and that sucks, injustice, et cetera. But, you know, the author really brings it to life because you see it through the eyes of the people and these are real people and you sort of like see their hopes and their heartbreaks, but really just all the fragility of everything. And I think it just sort of grounded me in a certain way about what do we need to live? What are the most important things? You know, maybe this is Jewish again. What if we lost everything tomorrow, as, you know, these people, it's very easy for them to do.
All those sort of themes continue to haunt me, especially ensconced in LA, and America, and the heart of wealth and accumulation and shelter and all those things. It became very present in my mind recently because the LA wildfires, which thank God did not have any effect in our house, however, there was fear that it was moving quickly and there’s the smoke — air quality was really bad. So we did sort of evacuate. And when you do that, it really concentrates the mind. You have to like, what do I take with me? That question.
And that started making me think about that book again. And in a way, I was able to just sort of easily say, this is really what all I need. These are really the essentials, and leave a lot of precious, meaningful things behind, not knowing whether they'd be there when we return or not. Of course, the pain might come later, the sadness, but at the time I was able to, at least I think in some way, detach, maybe thinking about the lessons of that book.
Do you feel like it impacted your perception of social justice or global inequality?
I mean, yeah, I think this book would shock the conscience, but not in a sort of hectoring lecturing way. I think it would just sort of get through to your heart. So the sense where you're like, you keep thinking this can't be, this should not be, and it should not be allowed in the world. And what can I do to change that? Or how can I fight the prevailing wisdom that we just sort of accept luck favors some and not others, that sort of thing. Like that's the sort of thing I can't swallow and I can't accept it.
You mentioned your father's medical work before and I've read a little bit of what you've written about. Can you tell us what he was doing?
Yeah, so my father was an ophthalmologist and he had a successful practice in Atlanta. And then someone took him on the NACO, the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry. Someone invited him to go on a mission. This was before the — Operation Solomon and Operation Moses when Israel airlifted the Ethiopian Jews to Israel. That was in the works, but there was a sudden awareness of the fragile state of the Jewish community in Ethiopia. And so they — this organization brought in some doctors and other people to come and help that community out and improve their healthcare and that sort of thing. And for my father, it was like a revelation. Like he was pretty mid-career. He was doing fine. He was very well established. He described it as like he said he felt like he saw the face of God when he arrived there and saw the work he could do. And then it just really transformed the trajectory of his life. So he started basically winding down his practice and he launched two different nonprofits. He was busy and he was never around, but boy, was it inspiring to see someone just like take that decision in their life and then just sort of will those things into existence and then start doing them. It was really into his 80s when he unfortunately got Alzheimer's and passed very quickly, but it really like struck him down. He was still very active at that point doing that stuff.
That is incredible. Both of your parents sound really like amazing role models. I can see the thread of all the social justice and speaking truth to power and making changes in the world around you. It's remarkable. Thank you for sharing them with us.
And I make poop jokes so you know, we all do our part.
You gotta have all sides.
Book Four: The Book You're Reading Now — Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake.
I actually just finished this book called Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. This is a botanist, I think he's in the UK. And there's a lot of these sort of omnimous books about like, here's this cool thing that's in the world you didn't know about in science. But this is about fungus in the fungal world. And I think a lot of us kind of know that, like, fungus is kind of, like, important, has some role in the food chain and the ecosystem. But I had no idea. Like it's just everywhere. It's like in us and fungus includes mold and all the stuff like that. It's operating at microbial levels and it's actually really vital for plants and animals and evolution. There's all these things that fungal things have these partnerships with nature. I don't want to lecture about it, but basically it's one of these things that both opens your eyes about a thing that you hadn't appreciated, but also is, like, just super interesting because you kind of are relearning about what you thought you knew about science and nature and all that. And I'm not, I’m the farthest thing from a scientist, so I'm not like any kind of domain expert, like it was just really interesting.
Book Five: The Author's Latest Book — The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting by Rob Kutner.
This book has something for everybody. There's, you know, all the different formats, all the different pieces of Jewish history and things that are of Jewish interest. Who do you envision as its audience?
Well, in the conversations I had with the editor, as I said, the idea was that it would be sort of targeted starting at like the bar/bat mitzvah cohort with the idea that, you know, from the publisher's perspective, it's a bar/bat mitzvah gift, right? It's the thing you give them instead of, you know, the Sisterhood's book about glorious Israel, whatever it is. That was their monetary interest. But it is sort of, as I said, aimed at, like, people with like just a bissel of knowledge. It's people who have, like, a sort of really background noise level awareness of things.
And it just...I think to me the idea was to put the details into relief, but also to connect it as sort of a story, like a continuous story with themes and the sort of roller coaster. Because I think also like a lot of us even with some decent Jewish background, we see all these things kind of in pieces, right? Like I know about this thing. You know, like I have a 12 year old son and he's gotten a Jewish day school background of education for a few years. And obviously we teach him things and we're a Jewish household, but he sees these things kind of discreetly. I think it's helpful to kind of stitch it all together. So maybe this was like, this was the journey that I was going on that I didn't have someone to tell me about at the time. Maybe this was me time traveling to my younger self, wondering why I didn't accept Jesus and here's why.
I mean, you write about the full gamut. You start with the snake's perspective and the story of Adam and Eve. You have Jewish pirates in post-Inquisition Spain, Crusades, the Holocaust, there are rabbi cards. How did you go about deciding, like, what to include and in what format?
That was really hard. If you want to say, like, cut down all Jewish history to like a paperback. I mean, when I started doing just the biblical section of it — I mean, it's divided into, like, basically roughly biblical, rabbinic slash medieval and then Renaissance and then modern period. But you know, you could do a whole book on just biblical stuff. You know, there's so much in there. I think I was just trying to focus on, you know, that sort of desert island question. Like if you don't know anything else, what would be, like, the most important takeaways that people just have to know about?
I think the choice I had to make a lot was like, is this really Jewish history per se? like, you notice that I have these like, you mentioned I have these rabbi action trading cards and I have a little bit of context for that stuff and I don't really have a lot beyond that. I don't have a lot of stuff about Talmud. I don't have anything about rabbinics. It's almost, there's very little about theology except sort of as it intersects with Jewish history or about Jewish law, that sort of stuff. That was the hard sort of culling I had to do is because the book would be endless. I had to really just stick to like, here's what happened next. And here's what happened next. And here's why it was important. Here's how it affected people. And here's what it led to. And here's why it affects us today.
And that sort of became the litmus test. You know, it leaves a lot off the table. I think one interesting thing for me in the process, you wouldn't be aware of this, but I had these sections in them that don't really fit in historically that are kind of like appendixes in the middle of it. Like I have a spotlight on women in Jewish history and gays and lesbians, et cetera, in Jewish history. And those occurred to me later because I was like, there's a whole story about these sort of kind of marginalized people that in tradition that isn't really told when you quote unquote “just tell the history” like I was just saying. I started doing it that first way, Jewish history, and I was like, this is a story of dudes, at least on the surface straight dudes and mostly straight Ashkenazi dudes. And then as I started going through it, I was like, well, we're missing all these stories. And so that sent me back into it to like unpack those stories.
And that was also like you mentioned the pirates, like there's all these sort of non-Ashkenazi, scattered lost tribe stories that I never really learned about, we never heard about. But you know, Jews everywhere, Jews of color, Jews in Africa, Jews in Asia, that sort of stuff. You know, the communities didn't really survive, I think, or they ended up in Israel, which is why we sort of don't hear about them as much. But I think that is such a fascinating part of the story, at least it was to me, that I felt like that had to be told. If you were going to drive away from the rabbinics and theology and all that stuff, you're going to have to go deeper into the history part if you take that seriously.
Yeah, and the people.
And the people. These figures are amazing. Like you saw in these, but like there was a sorceress, there was like a Jewish sorceress in I think it was Yemen, you know, the pirates you mentioned. There was a guy who was a professional skeptic who just wrote, like, treatises like debunking the idea of God. This is like back in, I think it was Afghanistan. I'm forgetting who these were, but like there's these amazing Jewish figures who are not the canonical figures that we learn about like, you know, [ ] or Abraham or Einstein. There are these people who are just like really sort of interesting and impressive in their way, but like they've kind of been lost from the narrative because they don't fit like the sort of simplistic through line of Jewish history, but they're very much a part of it in their way.
I mean, you've talked about how much you read and self-educated. What was the research like for this?
You know, it was interesting, I found some books. I have a few friends who are Jewish history scholars who helped me with some of the pieces like the Moroccan Jews and the pirate things and stuff like that. But there's some books out there that I think are either out of print or just very old that cover these things. They're just not canonized in the same way. They're just not talked about or taught. And then as far as the sort of Jewish women and Jewish homosexuals, you know, I'm not gonna lie, I started the bit with Wikipedia, as we all do. I started with Wikipedia, I didn't stop there.
And then whenever there was sort of missing pieces or I felt like it wasn't getting full pictures, I would sort of go to friends or people I knew who sort of, who were from those communities or sort of active or knowledgeable in those spaces. And I had them read them or give me resources. I see there were many things that — big pieces of the story that I didn't really even know about or sort of understand their perspective on.
I wanted to ask you about the tone and there were some little pieces that just — I loved Pogroms: It Takes a Village. There are some amazing bits. So I wanted to ask you how you felt about finding that right tone, like irreverent and still educational.
I think it was, you know, it was a bit exploratory. I'm not going to lie. And my editor and I sort of struggled for a while trying to find it. I think we tried different registers. I think in the end, what I tried to do was sort of just not be afraid to take the shots I wanted to take with jokes, as long as they were never, I mean, the same kind of standards I hold to my comedy anyway, which is never punching down, always trying to speak truth to power and trying to upset sacred cows, like we talked about earlier. Those are always my guiding lights. Then at the same time, also kind of enveloping those in larger contexts of appreciation and empathy with the communities and the people and the sort of stakeholders that those things were happening. So, but I also like try to sort of take shots at everyone when I can. You know, there's some shots at left wing people, right wing people, religious, secular people, that sort of stuff.
There was one sort of thing about where I was trying to grapple with Israel and the diaspora. And this was, you know, I was starting writing the book after October 7th, I was finishing it, like, and I gave up on it. Like I struggled with it, I went back and forth with it, and I decided, like, it's too raw and immediate a topic and it's going to be changing. It'll probably be changing by the time the book comes out. So I abandoned it because I didn't think I could really master what I wanted to say about it or what I even thought about it. I don't know, like in a way like you can only, like, deliberately set out to create a tone so much and some of it has to be kind of subconscious as part of your craft. To me, it has to be like, what is my truest comic voice? And for me, as a guy who takes Judaism and Jewish culture seriously and also sees a lot of problems and is very irreverent with things, in a way, I like to think it was basically my voice. And the question is whether that blend of reverence and irreverence will be appealing to others as well.
It was very appealing to me. I thought it was super funny and I can't wait to share it with my kids.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, as you are just saying, there's a lot that feels hard to find the humor in right now. And so I just wondered what your thoughts are on publishing a history of the Jews at this particular moment in history.
Yeah, well, I mean, the first thing you say is really true. I mean, I think you saw, like, what the struggle was with the Holocaust chapter, for example. I originally wanted to just put “the Holocaust” and just say “this page intentionally left blank” and do something like that along the lines of what is there to say. And my editor, to his credit, challenged me. He said, like, you've got to do something on this. Figure out something to say about this. And so that sort of thing was really hard. Publishers Weekly was not a fan — found that awkward, which I thought was hilarious. Like, I'm sorry the Holocaust was awkward for you.
But I think, yeah, I mean, it is hard to do those things and at the same time we have to. I'm not as hard hitting on things that I think are more serious like that. Like, you know, the pogroms, like I'm not making light of anyone's suffering, for example. You know, I'm basically taking aim at the instigators, who I repeatedly refer to as like racist assholes on horseback, I think. The other side of that, though, is that I found that it actually really helped me through this time to write this book because when I took a step back and I looked at the big picture, I was like, man, I mean, right now is rough, but so was then and so was then and so was then and so was then. Like, we've just been through it so many times and then we always come through it in one way or another.
And when you have that global perspective, like we were all sort of like, post-October 7th, we were all just like, and we still are really, I mean, we're still just, like, stuck in the rawness of the now. Like we're trapped in this black hole where everything is just surrounding us and this is never gonna get better and it's just horrible. Maybe there's some glimmers of hope now, but we were just so stuck in that moment that, like, to step out of that moment and look at the whole sweep of the history, you can see like, I'm sure people felt like that back then, you know, there wasn't social media to amplify it, but I'm sure that everyone was feeling like this and probably worse, existentially, people's houses were getting burned down. People were getting slaughtered, know, kicked out of their country, that sort of stuff. None of that stuff is happening yet. But when you understand that Jews have the sort of tools to make it through that, stick together and pivot. You have to imagine we're going to this time as well.
Yeah, I did note that you ended, you had a section with all of the different aliyot, all the different immigrations to Israel, and you end with Americans arriving in 2030.
Yeah.
So I hear both the hopeful and the yet that you just said of.
There's some, yeah, I put some darkness and some poignance into that because I think that's part of the Jewish story and that's part of the Jewish flavor, I think, of things as well, is we don't steer away from the laughter through tears.
Yeah. So I guess I just want to end with what are the things in Judaism that feel meaningful to you right now?
Wow, okay. And you want a short answer for that, right?
I really, I think I felt it more, I think, the past year, but like our sense of cohesion sometimes, sometimes it's not always there, like the joke is two Jews, three opinions. But I think also, like I saw the way people, Jews came together for each other in light of October 7th in a way that we always do, certainly within my own community, even though we don't always agree. I still think the iconoclasm is arguably more important than ever now that people are all sort of seeking their own forms of truth and authority. I think it's the people who ask the questions with sincere intentions, I think, as opposed to being trolls, which I don't think we are. I think those are really key people in our world, in our history.
You know, it's interesting the way the culture has shifted too, but like you get into like Jewish halachah and mitzvot and the sort of daily, like, practicality of it, like the day to day of it. Like we're kind of back at a moment where like maybe post pandemic where I think mindfulness, things close to home, doing things with their hands, like how you live your life every moment has sort of become of interest to people in a way that it hasn't. And maybe now that we're, the world's getting so digital, that stuff is more valuable. Like Judaism's emphasis on the here and now and my 16 year old daughter and her friends, like sometimes voluntarily have decided to put their phones away in their locker and stuff like that as a response to the overwhelming digitalization and virtualization of the world. Judaism is definitely not a virtual religion. There's nothing abstract about it really beyond the God part of it. The rest of it is so immediate and imminent that I think having a grasp on that in this increasingly weird abstract world is really vital that Judaism provides.
What a beautiful, hopeful way to end. Thank you so much, Rob. I hope lots of people will go out and buy the Jews. I think it's more important than...
Buy the book called The Jews.
Buy the book called The Jews, exactly. And it feels more important than ever to both, like, know the scope of Jewish history and to absorb it and consume it in a way that feels fun and hopeful and irreverent, as you say. So thank you for sharing it with us.
Thanks, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
Thank you so much for joining us today for The Five Books. Our guest today was Rob Kutner discussing his new book, The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting. You can find a link to the book and all the others Rob discussed in our show notes. If you enjoyed our show, please be sure to subscribe and share with your friends and family and rate and review in Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Rating and reviewing really does help new listeners find our show.
You can also now find us online at www.fivebookspod.org. You can email us feedback or author recommendations at team@fivebookspod.org. And you can find us on Instagram @fivebookspod. I'm Tali Rosenblatt Cohen. Our producer is Odelia Rubin. Editorial and website support from Sarah Waring. Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. Art by Dena Friedman.
Thanks especially to the Jewish Book Council.
