The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting by Rob Kutner; New York: Wicked Son Book, an imprint of Post Hill Press; © 2025; ISBN 9798888-453513; 218 pages plus appendices; $18.
SAN DIEGO – Author Rob Kutner spices Jewish religion and history with jokes, shtick and anachronistic imagination in a book that is sure to offend some and delight others.
He tells the Adam and Eve story from the point of view of the snake; the flood story as told by Noah’s wife; and he eavesdrops on a family therapy session among the patriarchs and matriarchs –notwithstanding that Abraham and the grown Jacob were not contemporaneous figures.
And that’s just the beginning of this fanciful book. The author “discovers” Moses’ “secret diary;” calls King David a rock star (as Goliath learned on the battlefield); breezily works his way through the Tanakh; fractures the Chanukah story; and then sets about retelling tales of the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition; and Jewish settlement in the United States, with Tevye, Golde, and their two unmarried daughters starring in a sequel to Fiddler on the Roof.
He turns to a diary format to tell the story of a girl living on a kibbutz during the time of the Yishuv and Israeli independence; then switches to cartooning to relate the important contributions of Jews to the American movie business and reverts to straight narration to chronicle Jews from different countries making Aliyah to Israel.
Threaded throughout the book are profiles of such famous Jews as the Rothschilds, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Ze’ev Jacotinsky; Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and David Ben-Gurion.
This is a book that should be consumed in nibbles, not large bites, because like Jews’ 5,000-year religion and history, it is episodic. If you try to take it all in one or two readings, you’ll not absorb nor appreciate the humor as much as you would by reading a little bit at a time.
I read short passages from The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting as a reward for completing other tasks. That method took me longer (and delayed this review from finding its way into print), but I enjoyed the book ever so much more.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.
From the point of view of the snake no forbidden apple or literal fruit, the eating of which is encouraged by that talking snake, is mentioned in the story. However, the identity of this unknown forbidden fruit of pleasure in the world’s oldest and greatest mystery story can be explained by procreation and the family Adam and Eve do not have until after their eviction from Eden at the end of Genesis 3: Adam and Eve disobey the Genesis 1:28 commandment–the first commandment–to “be fruitful and multiply [in their body Garden]” when they become one flesh incorrectly (Genesis 2:24) by eating from the wrong tree in the allegorical Garden’s center (Genesis 2:9). So they disobey not just one commandment, but two at the same time. Finally, it is interesting that half of Eve’s punishment in Genesis 3:16 is painful childbirth–because she chooses to not have children in the Garden of Eden and God wants to remind her of her decision?