Artist Kimberly Brooks joins Zibby to discuss 10 THINGS EVERY JEW SHOULD KNOW BEFORE THEY GO TO COLLEGE, a book she illustrated alongside co-authors Emily Schrader and Blake Flayton. Kimberly shares what inspired her to create a clear, accessible guide for students navigating antisemitism and distorted narratives on campus. She and Zibby discuss the importance of arming the next generation with facts, the role of Jewish education, and why this book feels like both a shield and a toolkit at such a critical time.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Kimberly. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked with Zibby to talk about 10 Things Every Jew Should Know Before They Go To College. It's by Emily Schrader and Blake Clayton, illustrated by you, Kimberly Brooks. 

Kimberley: Correct. 

Zibby: Congratulations 

Kimberley: And edited and conceived by. It was my brainchild.

Zibby: Start from the beginning. Okay. One day you thought about it and just jump right in. How did this come to be? 

Kimberley: Well, I was, uh, promoting a book that I had written about painting. I'm an artist and I work in series and Judaism has never been my beat, although I am Jewish. And uh, so I was, it was in the middle of the pandemic and I had this book coming out called The New Oil Painting.

And this was basically something that really frustrated me about painting that many painters don't know. The materials that they're working with. So it was sort of like just basic information like the, the scaffolding that you should know. So. The pandemic happened and I thought, oh no, I'm not gonna be able to go to bookstores or art schools or anything.

I can't tour nothing. And it sort of was a crushing, um, ominous feeling as an author. So I said to my publisher, can we delay the the publication of this, they said, they said no. So I said, all right, okay, I'll try this clubhouse thing. And it, which was a non-visual medium, and that is sort of like this amazing platform where people could speak almost like a party line.

For those of you who didn't experience it during the pandemic, it was the only real, true social media where it was completely unfiltered so you could really hear what people were thinking. They weren't curating their digital portraits, they weren't putting filters on. It was just direct. You could hear what they were thinking.

So while I was presenting this book, uh, Hamas started firing rockets into Israel. So a war, you know, basically a skirmish was breaking out. So I started wandering into the Middle Eastern rooms and all the rooms to find out what was going on. And you know, when I paint, I listen to music or books and I thought, so instead, I really listened to Clubhouse.

It was like CB radio almost, but just with thousands of people talking to each other from all different nationalities and walks of life. And that's when I learned. Oh my goodness. People are telling so many lies about Jews, people, and, and American Jews didn't know just the basics even, I mean, many Jews actually were just sort of learning about what it meant to be Jewish or anything like that.

So a lot of people say, oh, I'm an October 8th Jew. I was more like an A 2021 Jew. I was a clubhouse Jew, like. You know, and so I met these people that knew so much and I just kept learning more and more, and I became more and more fascinated and interested in the subject. And I thought, you know, there really needs to be a book, like the book I wrote for the new oil painting, but for Jews because I have like a couple superpowers. One is that I paint, you know, that's like, I'm a, a quite, you know, quite a good painter. But the other one is that I know how to take very complex information and break it down into the smallest. Simplest parts, and because I think visually I make these whimsical drawings, that kind of air rate, what would otherwise be a dense subject?

I mean, I think you've skimmed through the book perhaps so you know what I'm talking about. So really thorny subjects such as the United Nations or the Occupation or Unah. And then also just, you know what it means to be a Jew. They're all. Kind of very methodically laid out in little bite-sized chunks, like very easy to use information.

And at the time that I was working on this book, I partnered with brilliant experts because I'm not an expert on this subject Emily Schrader and Blake Clayton and I had two kids in college at the time, and they had, Blake had just published a piece in the New York Times about his experience. I believe it was at George Washington.

Emily had, I had met her and she was telling me what she experienced at USC with the apartheid wall and this big month long, you know, carnival they have around it. And I thought, what is going on on campus? I mean, as a parent, I have no idea. We didn't experience this as a Gen X kid. You know, I didn't experience it, so I wrote it really for anybody that's going to confront a morass of misinformation.

Which namely my kids. And everybody's kids. 

Zibby: And why didn't you wanna put your name on the book? I mean, as more than not that being an illustrator is by any means, not enough. But it sounds like you were much more involved than just that. 

Kimberley: I was the editor. I'm the editor. I didn't put it on the cover, it's on the inside because it wasn't my field of expertise.

So they wrote, I herded the content and made illustrations for it. It wouldn't have, would not have been appropriate, I think, you know. 

Zibby: Okay. 

Kimberley: They were the ones that. They, they, they, they were the ones that had the knowledge. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: Like I didn't, I did not ghost right. Or whatever. I would just say, I would say to them, what do you mean?

Hamas is using the pipes of water in Gaza for rockets, and that's why they don't have a safe water supply. You know what I mean? Like yes. I was more like the teaser, got it out of information. A lot of people have said, oh, oh, this book should be, um, for everybody. A lot of people that have read the book said, I learned so many things that everybody should know.

Why don't you just call it 10 things every you should know. Mm-hmm. And I thought, well, I don't wanna compete with kin. You know that the rabbi who wrote those incredible books, but also that could. That title to me could be brisket recipes. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: You know, like, it, it, it, it, I needed it, the title needed to be acute.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: Because the crisis really is that for many of us, is that we are raising our kids in these safe, warm, cozy environments. We're setting them to maybe private school or public school, it doesn't matter but when they go to college, they're entering a sawmill of misinformation and it's. Crept into their history books, it's crept into their curriculum and now it's starting even earlier.

So it's, uh, you know. Especially after the last couple weeks that we've experienced, which is in the aftermath of several attacks on Jews in the United States, like the temperature keeps getting higher. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: And this problem isn't getting better, it's getting worse. So I really think, uh, I, I'm really.

It's, I think it's one of the most important things I've ever done, and I also believe that, I'm really excited to report that they're turning it into a textbook for many different temples and schools. And it just, you know, covers such a really wide swath and an important set of information so that Jews, when they do go to college.

Can defend themselves, just intellectually understand what they're being attacked for and on about, especially when it comes to these really subtle historical subjects such as the occupation and what international law says. So I think it's like it should be in every toolkit for every person going to college or about to go to college and their parents.

Zibby: So what did you learn that. Do you feel like people definitely didn't know for the most part before going to college? Like what are some of the things that you're like this, well, this obviously I'm gonna put in the book. 

Kimberley: Well, one of the biggest thing was the existence of a refugee agency called UNRWA.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: Which basically is the only refugee agency that's purpose isn't to settle refugees, it's to just create more refugees and they get a per head price per refugee. So they're de-incentivize to ever settle any refugees and that any Palestinian person who identifies as Palestinian living anywhere is considered a refugee and they raise money through the UN through our tax dollars to fund this totally corrupt agency.

Which has recently been defunded from America anyway, and that that money uses rockets to kill Jews. So that kept me up at night. Like I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. My money is going to an agency that builds rockets to kill Jews and Indoctrinates kids to hate Jews from the time that they're born.

So that's chapter five. It's called the Stick Up because people need to understand it. It's this, it's sort of inside baseball, but a lot of people, people that are very well informed. Like in the news or whatever. In the beginning, especially right after October 7th, I was like, do you know about Unah and how it works and how it's different than the United Nations Agency?

So that was a big one, and it's a whole chapter. The other one was the occupation chapter. A lot of people don't realize that the term Palestinian, the branding of this people was coined and created in 1964 by Yasser Arafat and that it formally applied to Jews who had emigrated to the area. You know, there were so many fascinating things.

Just like if you look at the map of Israel, which is admittedly weird with this sort of like elephant ear cut out of it, the Jews were sold, the land that had malaria in it. They didn't get the good stuff, and this is in the 19 hundreds. So the map was based on what the land that nobody wanted and that nobody could live in.

They got the desert and the swamps, you know, but they deployed their engineering prowess and they turned, you know, they turned it into the land of milk and honey. And then that's what also created this huge resentment. Oh, I, I now want it back. You know, so it wasn't, so there were many, many fascinating things.

And the other thing that I think I was really surprised about was the United Nations and the degree to which the United Nations has become. Just this twisted, like it started off with good intentions, but it's, it has become this really radicalized, twisted theater of dictatorships, that virtue signal, and they push all the eyes away from them by making like a ridiculous proportion of their votes against the evil Israel, which is not true and it's insane. It's lit. It's literally insane. It's laughable almost the United Nations. So how, that's three. I could go on and on. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Okay. What, here's my question, like what do we do about all of this misinformation? Right? It's out there. It looks like it's going into public record. It's in other textbooks.

It's, as you said in the curriculum. As we see all over Instagram and people's, you know, you know all these parents who are like, look what my kid is being taught and all of that. Yes, there's raising awareness, which your book does beautifully. What else can we do to help this problem before it gets worse?

Kimberley: Well, unfortunately, it's gonna get a lot ver worse because in the biggest school districts in America, like the L-A-U-S-D, they've inserted this poison ethnic studies curriculum, which is basically a mask, in my opinion, for creating an oppressor, oppressed, you know, narrative and that, and so they've just voted like nine to one to not work with the a DL or the traditional.

So that, that means theoretically the book should be called 10 Things Every, you Should Know before they start Kindergarten. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: Because if you teach a school district that has 600,000 people in it to hate Jews from an early age, we're gonna be, it, it's gonna be a disaster. It's already a disaster, I would say.

So what what can be done is, I wanna say this book, it has 590 citations. It is not political. It is not left, it is not right. It's just, uh, citations of facts of how, of what the truth is. It's not, it's just not political. So I think that as a shield, and there's a shield on the cover with the Jewish star on it, I feel like it's the one shield that we can offer to protect our kids so that they don't.

Become indoctrinated. You know, there's a lot of, uh, grandchildren of Holocaust survivors that are swinging free Palestine flags because they've been indoctrinated, ironically, the same indoctrination that was happening in Unah schools. Now gonna, is happening in America under the guise of this ethnic studies curriculum.

So, you know, and, and there's a, there's a very interesting book that I recently read called by David Bernstein called Woke Antisemitism. And it was published in 2022 before October 7th, which makes it all the more remarkable. And in it he documents in great detail how many Jewish organizations were captured by this ideology that creates Jews as this, you know, we're talking Jewish educational organizations, so now people have woken up a little bit to the problem of this paradigm that we're, you know, in as infesting, infecting, whatever you wanna say, but we just. So, so I, I think that knowledge is power, and so this to me is a shortcut to the knowledge, you know, and there's so many citations.

You can always learn more on any subject, but it also prepares kids for what kind of misinformation they're going to hear. So how to solve the bigger problem is the fact that we're such a small minority. We're never gonna be able to, we're never gonna be able to protect ourselves from all the libels that M-S-N-B-C and CNN, the New York Times.

And I mean, every day there's a story that's twisted that puts out there, and every organization does it like it's you know, we, as I said at the beginning, we just had such a week, and it was a week where so much misinformation was out there. They were claiming that Israeli soldiers were shooting at civilians at a humanitarian site.

And then of course, you know, two days later, Molotov cocktails are being thrown on, people praying for the hostages safe return in Colorado. I mean, it's all unacceptable and when people say, oh, Jews don't have a good public relations strategy. We are so small that it's not really fair. It's asymmetrical warfare, really.

So, you know, I never expected to be in this space because I'm an artist and I'm happen to be Jewish. I've never painted about the subject. I've never, you know, I, I, I work in series and I cover all kinds of subjects, motherhood, childhood, I, you know, I make these large historical landscapes and, you know, but, but here I am talking to you because.

The house is on fire. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: You know, so, so I think on some level reform, Jewish education has failed and I think we all need to kind of take stock in that, that we don't, that there, there's too many things that we don't know about our own religion even. And I think that some of the points that this book touches upon will strengthen our connection, which I think is important.

So like I said, I think it's one of the most important things I've ever done at a very perilous time. So. 

Zibby: Well, hats off to you for doing it because it is so helpful. I'm giving this, I have two juniors, um, in high school, so I was, ah, they're each getting their own copy and I'll be like, homework, like these are, this is our dinnertime quiz, um, as we read it this summer, but we need this.

And I think, I think that people are often intimidated because the other has so much information all the time, right? They're getting fed it like constantly soundbites, this, this, and they feel like bullied and ill-equipped, like, oh, well I don't have an answer, so I can't engage in this dialogue. And so they don't, and that's the, that's such a fear, right?

You have to get in, you have to be armed with the information or how can you fight? So I love your shield. 

Kimberley: Yeah. And, and honestly, the more that you learn, the more that I learned, the more I realized that the more furious I became. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: That of how mu, how deep the lies are. Like, I was like, whoa. You have one people that's been holding an olive branch consistently for, for decades and decades and decades.

And the other one, you know, it's hard for the Western mind to comprehend that there exists a people and an ideology, not everybody, but there's people within this ideology that want Jews either converted or dead. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: Like, that's like hard to, that's almost impossible to fathom. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: And that, that they may, they may act or pose as if they're trying to work on a solution.

In the interim so that they can get more weapons or whatever, but ultimately they don't want peace. There's a group of people that don't want peace. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: And, and Jews are the first in line, you know, it goes from. The Christians are next. They say first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people. So anyway, I don't, I hope I'm not sounding so alarmist, but when I was working on this three years ago, starting three years ago, a lot of people were like, oh, that's kind of curious.

Now they get it right. You know? 

Zibby: So what, what price have you paid personally, if any, for doing this book and being outspoken? 

Kimberley: Uh, I, I don't feel like I've, uh, paid a price. I think the art world has its own issues with antisemitism, and I, I feel very fortunate because I've live in a city with a lot of Jews, so there's, I have a good community around me, so I feel very blessed to have grown up in this golden age of America where all the, when you read, when you read the New York Times bestseller list. You didn't, I, I, I was an English major. I'm a huge reader. Nobody said, oh, this is a Jewish author. 

Zibby: Right. 

Kimberley: They were just a author that happened to be Jewish. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: Or an artist that happened to be Jewish. 

Zibby: Yep. 

Kimberley: Now they're a, a lot of curriculums are denuding the curriculums of, of western civilization, of their Jews.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kimberley: Because they're Jews, which is wild to me that this, uh. That the great ideas are gonna be marginalized just because of somebody's religion or race. It's really the opposite of what I think the good intentions of many people who were proponents of diversity and what of what voices. It's the opposite of what they intended.

So I'm sad for that. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, Kimberly, thank you so much for this. I hope they sell it in every campus bookstore, by the way, in case you get to college and you missed it. Like, there's still time, like there's no expiration date on the book, so congratulations. Thank you for a, the alarm bells needed to be sound sounded.

So I'm glad that you continue to ring them and make everybody pay attention because it is such an urgent issue, and this book is a fabulous way to, to combat a lot of the misinformation and hate. So thank you. Thank you for all that you do. 

Kimberley: And thank you for having me. 

Zibby: My pleasure. Okay. Thank you, Kimberly.

Bye. 

Kimberley: Bye.