John Lennon and the Jews

When was the last time you laughed hysterically during a philosophy lecture? The last time you doubled over in stitches during the Rabbi’s sermon?

In John Lennon and the Jews, Ze’ev Maghen takes his readers on an audacious, uproariously funny Magical Mystery Tour of the mind and heart. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in this provocative, creative and stunningly original work that the Jerusalem Post likens to a “dazzling intellectual amusement park.”

A chance encounter at LAX introduces Maghen to a trio of Hare Krishna missionaries who turn out to be Israeli émigrés. They insist that Judaism is archaic, irrational, immoral and just downright stupid; that affiliating with the Jewish people in our modern, globalizing day and age is pointless and passé. Their adamant universalism and “everything is everything” rejection of their Jewish identity put the author in mind of his favorite Beatle’s famous lyric, “Imagine there’s no countries…and no religion too.”

John Lennon and the Jews is Maghen’s confrontation with Lennon’s vision of one-worldism and other in vogue beliefs that threaten Jewish continuity today. This work is a journey through centuries, countries, sitcoms, and ideas that will leave no thinking, feeling person unaffected. “You have never had so much fun cogitating,” writes one reader. “It’s like sitting in a yeshiva in front of a highly erudite rabbi – on mushrooms.”