VISUAL CONCEPT | COVER DESIGN | LAYOUT
Huvudredaktör: Nina Tojzner
Medredaktör: Malin Norrby
Förord: Micael Bindefeld
Berättartext: Samuel Adler
Uppslagsdel: Daniel Leviathan
Grafisk formgivning: Isabelle Falck
[My own translation from Swedish to English]
Do you remember your textbooks from school and how they described Jews and Judaism? They probably portrayed Judaism as a religion based on various factual knowledge that you were supposed to memorize. Perhaps the chapter on Judaism was illustrated with a picture of an ultra-Orthodox Jew with peyes (sidelocks) in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. During history lessons, you might have read about Anne Frank and the Holocaust.
Judaism is much more than that. What you're holding in your hand is a book about Judaism and Jewish life, but it's not a textbook with an outsider's perspective. Instead, you're invited into our homes. Here, Jews in Sweden share stories about Jewish culture, religion, and identity based on their own lives and family stories. Jews in Sweden have their cultural background from all over the world. Here, you'll meet Yemenite Jews, Jews with roots in India and Africa, homosexual Jews, religious Jews, secular Jews, and Jews who have chosen their Jewishness through conversion.
The foundation of the book is an Instagram account - @Stoltjude (Proud Jew). The account was started by the Jewish Youth Association in Sweden in 2015. Through people's own short texts, you will get a completely new picture of what it means to be Jewish in Sweden today.
Moodboard
PROCESS
As I began this project, I wanted to set a visual tone that matched the book's goal of showcasing the various ways of being Jewish.
I found inspiration in the Talmud, where rabbis have written interpretations of Torah passages in the margins over time. This tradition teaches that there's no one right answer to anything and that there's more than one way to be Jewish. The book is also based on an Instagram account, and I wanted that to come across in the visuals too.
Being Jewish involves having a distinct cultural vocabulary, which might be difficult for those not familiar with the community to understand. To assist the reader, we used the margins, similar to the Talmud, to explain Jewish and Hebrew terms. These explanations were also consolidated into a dictionary at the end of the book.
”Vilken fantastisk bok! Den är så vacker, smärtsam, rolig, sprudlande, sorgsen, ja allt på en gång. En bok som skimrar av den mångfald judisk identitet utgör. Den tar upp också upp så många allmänmänskliga problem och tankegångar att den går rakt in i hjärtat, även om läsaren inte är eller har koppling till det judiska.”
Björn Westerström
Pedagog, samordnare för Malmö stads skolors arbete mot antisemitism, mottagare av Hédi Frieds lärarstipendium 2022
”Något riktigt bra och användbart som jag definitivt kommer att rekommendera till andra som undervisar. Boken sticker ut på helt rätt sätt för att nå yngre generationer och passar utmärkt i klassrummet.”
Jonas Strömmer
