Rachel Shuk­ert is the author of the mem­oir Every­thing Is Going To Be Great. She will be blog­ging all this week for the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and My Jew­ish Learn­ing​‘s Vis­it­ing Scribe.

Hel­lo! My name is Rachel Shuk­ert. You may remem­ber me from sum­mer camp, where I faked a recur­ring nut aller­gy in order to spend most of my time watch­ing Days of Our Lives in the air-con­di­tioned infir­mary, but I’m also the author of Every­thing Is Going To Be Great, my brand-new mem­oir of the two most­ly dis­as­trous years I spent after col­lege liv­ing in Europe and dis­ap­point­ing my parents.

This is my very first post for the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing blog, and it would prob­a­bly be a good idea to talk about my book and why I wrote it and what I’m doing for it and why you should buy it. I’ll do that lat­er. Right now, like every oth­er per­son in New York City, I only real­ly want to talk about Mad Men. But I’m going to do it in the style of a lead­ing com­ic light con­tem­po­rary to its ear­ly 60’s milieu. For those of you who don’t watch the show, per­haps this will serve as a valu­able primer.

For those of you who watch the show but don’t know Lenny Bruce, mazel tov on your high school grad­u­a­tion and look him up. For those of you who are famil­iar with nei­ther Mad Men nor Lenny Bruce, I don’t know what to say to you. I guess check back tomor­row when I promise to write about my book and/​or my feelings.

Here we go!

Dig: I’m Jew­ish, Don Draper’s Jew­ish, Pete Camp­bell is Jew­ish, Roger Ster­ling is goyish.

Bet­ty Drap­er is very goy­ish. Trudy Camp­bell, Jew­ish. Matthew Weiner’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Bet­ty Drap­er as an emo­tion­al­ly with­hold­ing shik­sa god­dess tro­phy wife for a man try­ing to sub­sume their his true iden­ti­ty behind a fake name and crum­bling façade of mas­culin­i­ty? Very, very Jewish.

Gin is goy­ish. Rye is goy­ish, even if the Bronf­mans dis­trib­ute it. Hang­overs are Jew­ish, as is mar­i­jua­na. Cre­ative is Jew­ish, Account Ser­vices is goy­ish. Plaid pants are goy­ish, but the plaid wall­pa­per in the Drap­ers’ kitchen is mys­te­ri­ous­ly Jewish.

Every­one at the old Ster­ling Coop­er is goy­ish, espe­cial­ly Ken Cos­grove, who’s so goy­ish he’s prac­ti­cal­ly a swasti­ka. The new Ster­ling Coop­er Drap­er Pryce is also goy­ish, but it’s try­ing to be Jew­ish. It’s like a giant con­ver­sion class. The buy­out by the British was goy­ish but the episode where the guy got his foot run over by the giant lawn mow­er was the most Jew­ish thing to hap­pen on tele­vi­sion since Sein­feld went off the air.

Joan Holloway’s tushy is Jew­ish, very Jew­ish. Her air of unruf­fled com­pe­tence is goy­ish. Adul­tery is goy­ish, but all of Don’s mis­tress­es, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of the dip­py school­teacher have been Jew­ish. Betty’s friend Francine may be casu­al­ly anti-Semit­ic, but she is very, very Jew­ish. Remem­ber what she said about all the Jews she saw on her vaca­tion to Ft. Laud­erdale? Switch things up a lit­tle and it could have been your Aunt Doris talk­ing about the trip the B’nai Brith Senior Group took to Bran­son, MO last sum­mer. ​“We were out­num­bered. It was uncomfortable.”

Rachel Shukert’s new book Every­thing Is Going To Be Great: An Under­fund­ed and Over­ex­posed Euro­pean Grand Tour is now avail­able. Come back all week to read more.