Play With This Little Jew

Hooray! It’s official, girls across the world now have a fabulous little Jew doll to play with!  For a couple of decades now, other minorities have been getting all the hot doll action.  Black dolls, Asian Barbie, and little Hispanic Doras have been taking over the ever-growing set of empowered little girls with the ability to receive minority status.  Oy gevault, finally there’s a Jew doll for every little girl that prefers kreplach and coupons.

This American girl doll’s character is Rebecca Rubin, a Jewish girl living on New York’s lower east side circa 1914.  She’s a 9 year old hoodrat girl, living in the slums, and working on fair wages for garment workers.  When she’s not obsessing over child labor, you can find Rebecca sneaking her cousins through Ellis Island, pickling things, lighting shabbat candles, and teaching her younger siblings how to sew.

I’m still unsure what I think of this doll… For $100, little girls can have access to a poverty-stricken immigrant Jew doll.  It seems a bit expensive.  If I’m going to spend $100 on a doll, I want her to be a diamond-guzzling, Hermes-whoring little slut.  On the upside, as a Jew, I think it’d be nice to bring some of our culture to the rest of the country, where people still think we’re born with El Diablo-esque horns.  Little white girls in Houston might be throwing out expressions like “oy” and little black girls might become fond of foods like herring in cream sauce, who knows.  Hopefully people will stop hating Jews, and just learn to love us because we bring hours of amusement to their little girls.

What I’d really like to see next is a little Sephardic Jew doll… maybe an Abi Mendez or Sara Harounian.  She’d be similar to Rebecca, of course, but either Spanish or Persian in origin.  She’d love dolmeh and leek patties and be covered in a thick coat of body hair.  She’d belly dance, and love a good carpet.