Kimberly Brooks, 10 THINGS EVERY JEW SHOULD KNOW BEFORE THEY GO TO COLLEGE
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:44]Kimberly Brooks is the illustrator of 10 Things Every Jew Should Know Before They Go to College
[0:49]and Illustrated Guide.
[0:51]She is an American artist and author known for her oil paintings, addressing subjects
[0:55]of history, memory, and identity, who exhibits in museums and galleries internationally.
[1:00]Her illustrated book The New Oil Painting is a regular bestseller in Sc category.
[1:05]She has two Jewish children who attend college recently, which also inspired her to partner
[1:09]with Shrader and Flaton to create this book.
[1:13]Welcome Kimberly.
[1:14]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to Zibi to talk about 10 Things Every Jew
[1:18]Should Know Before They Go to College.
[1:20]It's by Emily Shrader and Blake Flaton, illustrated by Hugh.
[1:24]Kimberly Brooks.
[1:25]Correct.
[1:26]Congratulations.
[1:27]And edited and conceived by It Was My Brain Child.
[1:30]Okay, start from the beginning.
[1:32]Okay.
[1:33]One day you thought about it and just jump right in.
[1:35]How did this come to be?
[1:36]Well, I was promoting a book that I had written about a painting.
[1:40]I'm an artist and I work in series.
[1:43]And Judaism has never been my beat, although I am Jewish.
[1:48]And so I was, it was in the middle of the pandemic and I had this book coming out called
[1:54]The New Oil Painting.
[1:56]And this was basically something that really frustrated me about painting that many painters
[2:01]don't know the materials that they're working with.
[2:04]So it's sort of like just basic information like the scaffolding that you should know.
[2:09]So the pandemic happened and I thought, oh no, I'm not going to be able to go to bookstores
[2:15]or art schools or anything.
[2:17]I can't tour nothing.
[2:19]And it sort of was a crushing ominous feeling as an author.
[2:23]So I said to my publisher, can we delay the publication of this?
[2:27]They said no.
[2:29]So I said, all right, okay, I'll try this clubhouse thing.
[2:33]And it which was a non-visual medium.
[2:35]And that is sort of like this amazing platform where people could speak almost like a party
[2:39]line for those of you who didn't experience it during the pandemic.
[2:43]It was the only real true social media where it was completely unfiltered.
[2:48]So you could really hear what people were thinking.
[2:50]They weren't curating their digital portraits.
[2:52]They weren't putting filters on.
[2:53]It was just direct.
[2:55]You could hear what they were thinking.
[2:56]So while I was presenting this book, Hamas started firing rockets into Israel.
[3:04]And so a war, you know, basically a skirmish was breaking out.
[3:07]So I started wandering into the Middle Eastern rooms and all the rooms to find out what was
[3:12]going on.
[3:13]And you know, when I paint, I listen to music or books.
[3:16]And I thought, so instead I really listened to clubhouse, it was like CB radio almost.
[3:21]But just with thousands of people talking to each other from all different nationalities
[3:26]and walks of life.
[3:27]And that's when I learned, oh my goodness, people are telling so many lies about Jews.
[3:34]People and American Jews didn't know just the basics even.
[3:40]I mean, many Jews actually were just sort of learning about what it meant to be Jewish or
[3:45]anything like that.
[3:46]So a lot of people say, oh, I'm in October 8th, I was more like a 2021 Jew.
[3:51]I was a clubhouse, too, like, you know.
[3:54]And so I met these people that knew so much and I just kept learning more and more
[3:59]and I became more and more fascinated and interested in the subject.
[4:03]And I thought, you know, there really needs to be a book like the book I wrote for the
[4:08]new oil painting, but for Jews.
[4:10]Because I have like a couple superpowers.
[4:13]One is that I paint, you know, that's like I'm quite, you know, quite a good painter.
[4:19]But the other one is that I know how to take very complex information and break it down
[4:23]into the smallest, simplest parts.
[4:26]And because I think visually, I make these whimsical drawings that kind of air rate, what
[4:33]would otherwise be a dense subject.
[4:35]I mean, I think you've skimmed through the book perhaps so you know what I'm talking about.
[4:39]So really thorny subjects such as the United Nations or the occupation or UNWA.
[4:44]And then also just, you know, what it means to be a Jew, they're all kind of very methodically
[4:50]laid out and little bite-sized chunks like very easy to use information.
[4:56]And at the time that I was working on this book, I partnered with brilliant experts because
[5:01]I'm not an expert on the subject, Emily Schrader and Blake Flaton.
[5:06]And I had two kids in college at the time.
[5:08]They had, Blake had just published a piece in the New York Times about his experience.
[5:13]I believe it was at George Washington.
[5:16]Emily had, you know, I had met her and she was telling me what she experienced at USC
[5:21]with the apartheid wall and this big month long, you know, carnival they have around
[5:26]it.
[5:27]And I thought, what is going on on campus?
[5:30]I mean, as a parent, I have no idea.
[5:34]We didn't experience this as a Gen X kid, you know.
[5:37]I didn't experience it.
[5:39]So I wrote it really for anybody that's going to confront a morass of misinformation,
[5:47]which namely my kids, you know, and everybody's kids.
[5:51]And why didn't you want to put your name on the book?
[5:52]I mean, as more than not that being an illustrator is by any means not enough, but it sounds
[5:57]like you were much more involved than just that.
[6:00]I was the editor, I didn't put it on the cover, it's on the inside.
[6:05]Because it wasn't my field of expertise.
[6:08]So they wrote, I heard the content and made illustrations for it.
[6:12]It wouldn't have, it would not have been appropriate, I think, you know.
[6:16]They were the ones that, they're, they're, they're were the ones that had the knowledge.
[6:21]Like I didn't, I did not ghost write or whatever.
[6:24]I would just say, I would say to them, what do you mean Hamas is using the pipes of water
[6:31]in Gaza for rockets?
[6:33]And that's why they don't have a safe water supply.
[6:36]You know what I mean?
[6:37]Like, I was more like the teaser out of information.
[6:41]A lot of people have said, oh, oh, this book should be for everybody.
[6:46]A lot of people that have read the book said, I learned so many things that everybody
[6:50]should know.
[6:51]Why don't you just call it 10 things every you should know?
[6:55]And I thought, well, I don't want to compete with Talushkin, you know, that, the rabbi
[6:59]who spoke those incredible books.
[7:01]But also that could, that title to me could be brisket recipes, you know, like it,
[7:08]what I needed, the title needed to be acute because the crisis really is that for many
[7:14]of us is that we are raising our kids in these safe warm cozy environments, we're setting
[7:20]them to maybe private school or public school, it doesn't matter.
[7:24]But when they go to college, they're entering a sawmill of misinformation.
[7:29]And it's crept into their history books, it's crept into their curriculum.
[7:34]And now it's starting even earlier.
[7:36]So it's, you know, especially after the last couple of weeks that we've experienced, which
[7:43]is in the aftermath of several attacks on Jews in the United States.
[7:47]Like the temperature keeps getting higher.
[7:50]And this problem isn't getting better.
[7:52]It's getting worse.
[7:54]So I really think, I'm really, it's, I think it's one of the most important things
[7:58]I've ever done.
[8:00]And I also believe that I'm really excited to report that they're turning it into a textbook
[8:06]for many different temples and schools.
[8:09]And it just, you know, covers such a really wide swath and an important set of information
[8:15]so that Jews, when they do go to college, can defend themselves just intellectually understand
[8:23]what they're being attacked for and on about, especially when it comes to these really
[8:28]subtle historical subjects, such as the occupation and what international law says.
[8:34]So I think it's like, it should be an every toolkit for every person going to college
[8:39]or about to go to college and their parents.
[8:41]So what did you learn that you feel like people definitely didn't know for the most
[8:48]part before going to college?
[8:49]Like what are some of the things that you're like this, well, this obviously I'm going
[8:52]to put in the book.
[8:53]Well, one of the biggest thing was the existence of a refugee agency called Unwa, which
[9:00]basically is the only refugee agency that's purpose isn't to settle refugees.
[9:06]It's to just create more refugees and they get a per head price per refugee.
[9:11]So they're de incentivized to ever settle any refugees and that any Palestinian person
[9:17]identifies as Palestinian living anywhere is considered a refugee and they raise money
[9:23]through the UN through our tax dollars to fund this totally corrupt agency, which has recently
[9:32]been defunded from America anyway.
[9:35]And that that money uses rockets to kill Jews.
[9:38]So that kept me up at night, like I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, my money
[9:43]is going to an agency that builds rockets to kill Jews and indoctrinates kids to hate
[9:50]Jews from the time that they're born.
[9:52]So that's chapter five.
[9:54]It's called a stick up because people need to understand it.
[9:58]It's this it's sort of inside baseball.
[10:00]but a lot of people, people that are very well-informed, like in the news or whatever,
[10:05]in the beginning, especially right after October 7th, I was like, do you know about UNMA?
[10:09]And how it works and how it's different than the United Nations agency. So that was a big one,
[10:15]and it's a whole chapter. The other one was the occupation chapter. A lot of people don't realize
[10:21]that the term Palestinian, the branding of this people, was coined and created in 1964 by
[10:30]Yasser Arafat and that it formally applied to Jews who had emigrated to the area. You know,
[10:39]there were so many fascinating things, just like if you look at the map of Israel, which is
[10:44]admittedly weird with this sort of like elephant ear cut out of it, the Jews were sold the land
[10:51]that had malaria in it. They didn't get the good stuff. And this is in the 1900s. So the map was
[10:58]based on what the land that nobody wanted and that nobody could live in. They got this desert
[11:04]and the swamps, you know. But they deployed their engineering prowess and they turned, you know,
[11:11]they turned it into the land of milk and honey. And then that's what also created this huge
[11:17]resentment. Oh, I now want it back, you know. So there were many, many fascinating things. And
[11:23]the other thing that I think I was really surprised about was the United Nations. And the degree to
[11:28]which the United Nations has become just this twisted, like it started off with good intentions.
[11:35]But it has become this really radicalized twisted theater of dictatorships that virtue signal.
[11:44]And they push all the eyes away from them by making like a ridiculous proportion of their
[11:49]boats against the evil Israel, which is not true. And it's insane. It's literally insane. It's
[11:55]laughable almost the United Nations. So how that's three. I could go on. Oh my gosh. Okay. What
[12:06]here's my question. Like what do we do about all this misinformation? Right. It's out there. It
[12:11]looks like it's going into public record. It's in other textbooks. It's, as you said, in the
[12:17]curriculum. As we see all over Instagram and people's, you know, you know, all these parents were like,
[12:23]look what my kid is being taught. And all of that. Yes, there's raising awareness, which your book
[12:28]does beautifully. What else can we do to help this problem before it gets worse?
[12:35]Well, unfortunately, it's going to get a lot worse because in the biggest school districts in
[12:42]America, like the LAUSD, they've inserted this poison ethnic studies curriculum, which is basically
[12:49]a mask in my opinion for creating an oppressor oppressed, you know, narrative. And so they've just
[12:58]voted like nine to one to not work with the ADL or the traditional. So that means theoretically
[13:06]the book should be called 10 Things Every Juicemail before they start kindergarten. Because if you
[13:10]teach a school district that has 600,000 people in it to hate Jews from an early age, we're going
[13:16]to be, it's going to be a disaster. It's already a disaster, I would say. So what can be done
[13:24]is I want to say this book, it has five hundred and ninety citations. It is not political. It is
[13:30]not left. It is not right. It's just citations of facts of how of what the truth is. It's not,
[13:38]you know, it's not, it's just not political. So I think that as a shield and there's a shield on
[13:44]the cover with a Jewish star on it, I feel like it's the one shield that we can offer
[13:50]to protect our kids so that they don't become indoctrinated. You know, there's a lot of
[13:57]grandchildren of Holocaust survivors that are swinging free Palestine flags because they've been
[14:03]indoctrinated. Ironically, the same indoctrination that was happening in UNWA schools is now going
[14:11]to, is happening in America under the guise of the Seth Nix studies curriculum. So,
[14:17]you know, and there's a, there's a very interesting book that I recently read by David Bernstein
[14:22]called Woke Anti-Semitism. And it was published in 2022 before October 7th, which makes it all
[14:29]the more remarkable. And in it, he documents in great detail how many Jewish organizations were
[14:36]captured by this ideology that creates Jews as this, you know, we're talking Jewish educational
[14:47]organizations. So now people have woken up a little bit to the problem of this paradigm that
[14:55]were, you know, infesting, infecting, whatever you want to say. But we just, so I think that
[15:04]knowledge is power. And so this to me is a shortcut to the knowledge, you know, and there's so
[15:11]many citations you can always learn more on any subject. But it also prepares kids for what kind of
[15:18]misinformation they're going to hear. So how to solve the bigger problem is the fact that we're
[15:24]such a small minority. We're never going to be able to, we're never going to be able to protect
[15:29]ourselves from all the labels that MSNBC and CNN, the New York Times. And I mean, every day,
[15:35]there's a story that's twisted that puts out there. And every organization does it like it's,
[15:42]you know, we, as I said, at the beginning, we just had such a week. And it was a week where so much
[15:48]in from misinformation was out there. They were claiming that Israeli soldiers were shooting at civilians
[15:54]at a humanitarian site. And then of course, you know, two days later, Molotov cocktails are
[15:59]being thrown on people praying for the hostage to save for turn in Colorado. I mean, it's all
[16:05]unacceptable. And when people say, oh, Jews don't have a good public relations strategy, we are
[16:12]so small that it's not really fair. It's asymmetrical warfare really. So, you know, I never expected
[16:20]to be in this space because I'm an artist and I happen to be Jewish. I've never painted
[16:26]about the subject. I've never, you know, I work in series and I cover all kinds of subjects,
[16:32]motherhood, childhood. I, you know, I make these large historical landscapes and, you know, but,
[16:40]but here I am talking to you because the house is on fire, you know, so, so I think on some level
[16:48]reform, Jewish education has failed. And I think we all need a kind of take stock in that,
[16:54]that we don't, that there's too many things that we don't know about our own religion even. And
[17:00]I think that some of the points that this book touches upon will strengthen our connection,
[17:06]which I think is important. So, like I said, I think it's one of the most important things
[17:11]I've ever done at a very perilous time. So, well, hats off to you for doing it because it is so
[17:18]helpful. I'm giving this, I have two juniors in high school. So, I'm very getting their own
[17:24]copy and I'll be like homework. Like these are, this is our dinner time quiz as we read it this summer,
[17:31]but we need this. And I think, I think that people are often intimidated because the other
[17:40]has so much information all the time, right? They're getting fetid, like constantly sound
[17:44]bites this and this and they feel like bullied and ill equipped. So, like, oh, well, I don't have
[17:50]an answer. So, I can't engage in this dialogue. And so, they don't. And that's the, that's such a
[17:55]fear, right? You have to get in, you have to be armed with the information or how can you fight? So,
[18:00]I love your shield. Yeah. And honestly, the more that you learned, the more that I learned,
[18:06]the more I realized that, the more furious I became that, that of how much, how deep the lives are.
[18:14]Like I was like, whoa, you have one people that's been holding an olive branch consistently
[18:20]for decades and decades and decades. And the other one, you know, it's hard for the western
[18:27]mine to comprehend that there exists a people and an ideology, not everybody, but there's people
[18:35]within this ideology that want Jews either converted or dead. Like that's like hard to,
[18:42]that's almost impossible to fathom. And that they may act or pose as if they're trying to
[18:51]work on a solution in the interim so that they can get more weapons or whatever. But ultimately,
[18:58]they don't want peace. There's a group of people that don't want peace. And Jews are the first
[19:03]in line, you know, it goes from the Christians or next, they say first the Saturday people,
[19:09]then the Sunday people. So anyway, I don't, I hope I'm not sounding so alarmist, but when I
[19:14]was working on this three years ago, starting three years ago, a lot of people were like,
[19:18]oh, that's kind of curious. Now they get it. Okay, you know, so what price have you paid personally
[19:26]if any for doing this book and being outspoken? I don't feel like I've paid a price. I think the
[19:35]art world has its own issues with antisemitism. And I feel very fortunate because I've
[19:43]live in a city with a lot of Jews. So there's, I have a good community around me. So I feel very
[19:50]blessed to have grown up in this golden age of America where all the, when you read the New York
[19:56]Times bestseller list, you didn't, I was an English major.
[20:00]a huge reader. Nobody said, oh, this is a Jewish author. They were just an author that
[20:05]happened to be Jewish or an artist that happened to be Jewish. Now, there are a lot of
[20:11]curriculums are denuding the curriculums of Western civilization of their Jews because they're
[20:21]Jews, which is wild to me that the great ideas are going to be marginalized just because
[20:29]of somebody's religion or race. It's really the opposite of what I think the good intentions
[20:36]of many people who were proponents of diversity and what voices. It's the opposite of what they
[20:43]intended. So I'm sad for that. Wow. Well, Kimberly, thank you so much for this. I hope they sell it
[20:50]in every campus bookstore, by the way, in case you get to college and you missed it. They're still
[20:54]time. There's no expiration date on the book. So congratulations. Thank you for the alarm bells
[21:03]needed to be sound sounded. So I'm glad that you continue to ring them and make everybody pay attention
[21:11]because it is such an urgent issue. And this book is a fabulous way to combat a lot of the
[21:17]misinformation and hate. So thank you. Thank you for all that you do. And thank you for having me.
[21:22]Nice pleasure. Okay. Thank you, Kimberly. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to totally booked
[21:29]with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[21:34]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[21:40]Oh, and bye the books.