I remember a Gahan Wilson cartoon from some years ago. A group of toys are huddled together in an attic. One of them says: “Next time he comes up here to look at us, that’s when we get him!”
Imagine meeting all of the joyful distractions of your childhood: teddy bears, toys, games, dolls, children’s books, trading cards, comics, model trains, children’s shows on television.
That is what Michael Kimmel’s new book, Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America, will do for you. It will reintroduce you to your childhood, and it will lift that experience up for you in a way that you could never have imagined.
It is the story of the first-generation Jewish immigrants who created the toy industry. But Kimmel has written something much larger than a history of toys. He has written a cultural history of modern America, and at its heart is a powerful claim: That culture could not have existed without Jews.
First-generation Jews were central to the creation of contemporary childhood. They created the toys, the dolls, the games and puzzles for children, enchanted their imaginations, and inspired their fantasies of superhero powers or glamour or teenage popularity. They created the advice books for anxious parents, the advice columns in newspapers and magazines, and the fields of child and developmental psychology. In their struggle, over the course of the twentieth century, to assimilate, they stood out, transforming the culture they sought to embrace.
They were the children of refugees from pogroms. They had grown up in poverty.
And so, they imagined something different for the next generation: a childhood they themselves had never had. They created the toys, the games, the books, the comics and the stories that created our collective childhoods. We might even say that they invented the idea of childhood itself.
This is not just a story of success or achievement. It is a story of what it means to be an outsider, and to live between worlds. These Jews were simultaneously insiders and outsiders. They learned the language, the customs and the rhythms of America. But at the same time, they carried memories and identities from somewhere else.
Children are outsiders, too. They stand at the edge of the adult world, looking in. They are learning its rules, its dangers and its possibilities. They are both vulnerable and hopeful. Perhaps that is why so many Jewish creators were drawn to the world of childhood.
For me, the ultimate Jewish creation in modernity is the superhero.
It was not only the hidden superpower that a hero could utilize at precisely the right time.
It was deeper than that. What could be more Jewish than a secret identity, and a double life? As a child, the idea that an ordinary person could live in two worlds at once — one visible, one hidden — fascinated me.
Kimmel’s book made me remember. When I was no more than 10 years old, I started a little neighborhood newspaper. I typed each copy by hand. It had a circulation of about five, and lasted for two issues. That was the beginning of my writing career.
I now realize that I wanted to be Clark Kent — and maybe even Superman. (Recall the stories of kids who injured themselves by jumping off roofs in imitation of Superman.)
Why were so many comic book creators Jewish? Because if certain professions were closed off, you found new paths. If you couldn’t become an advertising illustrator, you created comic books. If you couldn’t enter established literary circles, you wrote for children. If you couldn’t break into traditional business networks, you built your own.
(Kimmel points out that the moral panic over comic books — in which parents participated — might have been essentially antisemitic. An editorial in The Hartford Courant referred to comics as “the filthy stream that flows from the gold plated sewers of New York”— a barely concealed dog whistle synonym for “Jewish businesses.”)
America, for all its flaws, allowed for that kind of reinvention. It offered something that Europe did not: space to create new industries. Toys, comics, children’s books, film and television were emerging fields. The established elites did not dominate them. They were open and fluid — places where people on the margins could build something new.
Consider the teddy bear. It began as a bear that former President Theodore Roosevelt hunted and shot. But in a Brooklyn candy store, immigrants turned it into a toy — but more than a toy. It became an object of comfort, something to hold at night, something that could absorb a child’s fears.
That represented a new phenomenon. Children were not just small adults, being prepared for the workplace. (Why do you think child labor laws were necessary?) They were emotional beings who needed care, imagination and protection.
But even as Jewish entrepreneurs helped shape American culture, the inner circles of that culture still did not fully accept them. They could influence what Americans read, watched and played with.
But they were still, in some sense, outsiders. That was a blessing. Because when you are slightly outside, you see things differently. You notice what others take for granted. You ask new questions. You imagine new possibilities.
In that sense, this story is not just about Jews. It is about immigrants. It is about anyone who has stood at the edge of society and dreamed of creating something better for the next generation.
In that sense, this is an American story.
When I look back at the toys and stories of my own childhood, I see them differently now. I see them as expressions of hope. I see them as attempts to create safety in an unsafe world. I see them as gifts from one generation to the next.
And I see something else, too.
I see another explanation of antisemitism. Perhaps it is because so many people have come to realize how much of their daily lives — even and especially in the things they barely notice — is a result of Jewish vision and invention. Antisemitism is not only hatred; it is a dark resentment, and even jealousy.
And, beyond that?
Jewish immigrants invented some of the biggest ideas that America has offered the world: Children matter. Imagination is crucial. Play is not frivolous, but formative.
It was a way of saying: The future deserves better than the past.
That might be the most Jewish idea of all.